It's rare that I get an e-mail accusing me of being a Nazi, much less an expletive-laden one, but those were the words that stared back at me as I stopped by my office to check my e-mail after a particularly long day of teaching. The message immediately following that one had a subject line that read "anti-Semitic leftist professors."

I was at the end of my first semester of teaching Middle Eastern history at a large research university in the South. Like any new faculty member, my anxieties revolved primarily around not breaking the Powerpoint projector, not being mistaken yet again for a graduate student instead of a professor, and not spilling spinach dip on the dean at one of the innumerable faculty mixers held at the beginning of the academic year. Hate mail wasn't on the list.

Since neither of the letters specified exactly what I had done to place myself in the ranks of someone who, as one of the letters put it, "shoveled Jews into the ovens at Dachau," it took me a couple of days of inquiries and some Google searching to figure out what was going on.

Two weeks earlier I had spoken on a panel about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It was on the closing night of a weeklong Palestinian film festival called "Life Under Occupation" sponsored jointly by a few human rights groups on the campus and a Palestinian advocacy group for which I am the faculty adviser. The group is a university-approved student organization that aims to educate and raise awareness about the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli rule. Similar organizations are found on many American campuses...

I do not think Georgia Tech's disturbing trend of political radicalism was ever as apparent as on the night of Friday, November 11, 2005. After an "empowering" dinner program at the Women's Leadership Conference, I attended a movie screening and panel discussion hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). I was shocked to see the Student Center Theater filled to capacity, probably some 200 people for the movie and most remained for the panel discussion. Though the event was marketed as educational, run by Georgia Tech faculty, and paid for by Institute funds, it was far from fair and balanced. And, since the organizers failed to have at least one pro-Israel panelist, audience members' vitriolic comments were directed at me, the sole pro-Israel voice in the room, instead of at the panelists.

The program was disturbing from the very beginning. Adam Levenstein, a founding member of Atlanta Palestine Solidarity and a self-hating Jew, began applauding the fact that there was not a pro-Israel voice represented on the panel after it was announced by the moderator, Kirk Bowman, Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. According to Professor Bowman, a pro-Israel voice was absent due to the unfortunate coincidence of it being a Jewish holiday. Professor Bowman's statement was a passive way of suggesting to the audience that this could have been a real opportunity for dialogue, but it was clearly not their fault - obviously it is the Israelis' fault; a typical and overly abused argument belabored by the Palestinians and the theme of the entire week's events.

The other panelists were Laura Bier, Assistant Professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society...

...As if that was not bad enough, Professor Bier began speaking and managed to include the word "occupation" into every statement. It was like a propaganda lesson from the Nazis - if you say it enough, people will believe it is true. Regardless of the actual meaning of "occupation," it is irresponsible and even dangerous for anyone, especially professors and student groups, to apply the same word to a situation that terrorist organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad use to justify their actions and goal: a Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The word occupation succinctly de-legitimizes the State of Israel, further affirming my belief that Israel is continually facing an existential threat. The present situation in the Middle East is much more complex and deserves more than a one word description - a word that has become the Arab world's best international marketing ploy in history. Professor Bier's promotion of anti-Israel rhetoric leads me to question her intellectual capacity and objectivity on Middle East issues. Couple this with her statements condoning terrorism and her role as the faculty advisor of SJP, and one wonders why she was hired in the first place. By the way, she is also going to be teaching History of the Modern Middle East in the upcoming Spring semester...

Bier's position on Israel is on record in petitions she has signed. She opposes the continued existence of the Jewish State. While there is never any excuse for hate-mail, it is odd to hear an individual who has taken a position advocating the Jewish state as a legitimate target for civic annihilation, to then cry "hate-speech" when her position is criticized.

There are many student groups that recognize the right of both Jews and Arabs to enjoy the privileges of statehood, but Bier is not advising such a group. She has chosen to advise Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that takes a hard line position that would deny the right of a Jewish State to exist. Many reasonable people see injustice in a position that endorses the right of a Palestinian Arab state to exist, while denying that very right to the Israeli Jewish state.