...The conference will discuss "new national security regulations" and the "publishing environment faced by scholars writing about the region," as well as "pressures from concerned citizen groups," all of which are seen as impediments to "open discourse and academic freedom."

Ironically, it is the very goal of open discourse and academic freedom that has led organizations such as Campus Watch (a "concerned citizen group" for which I work) to criticize the preponderance of politicized professors in Middle East studies. The Brown University workshop only reflects the one-sided approach to Middle East studies that exists in departments across the country.

The viewpoints represented at this event are far from excluded anywhere in academia. The spin that the dominant voices in the field face repression is positively Orwellian. It is normally pro-American and pro-Israel speakers who are left out of the equation. Proving the point, Blogger Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric quotes a member of a campus group at Brown on the workshop:

"There are no pro-Israel speakers, and neither Hillel nor Brown Students for Israel were even asked for input on a conference about the future of Middle East Studies."

The two workshop organizers hardly inspire confidence in a fair and impartial inquiry. Elliott Colla is associate professor of comparative literature and director of Middle East studies at Brown, and Marsha Pripstein Posusney is professor of political science at Bryant University and an adjunct professor of international relations at Brown. Colla was a signatory to a conspiracist open letter, penned in 2002 and signed by a number of academics, claiming that Israel would use the war in Iraq to commit "ethnic cleansing" against the Palestinians. Colla was one of the speakers at an event following an anti-war rally earlier this year in Rhode Island, where he maintained that Iran "doesn't pose a threat to the United States." He also took part in a 2004 panel discussion on "Censoring Campuses" at Columbia in which he made the predictable claim that academic freedom was "being attacked," no doubt in reference to the perceived threat of outside criticism...