FREEDOM of, from, and with

Freedom Responsibly without Impunity, Without the Gored Ox of Subjectivity

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ampus 2002

The Bay area SFGate sister to the San Francisco Chronicle covered “Campus Watch” surveillance and dossiers and those whom it listed or presumed to blacklist.

Labeling the writings of researchers and academics as “un-American” is damaging to democracy and debate. “It is a kind of gutter name-calling” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern history and director for the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago, who is listed” on the Campus Watch website.

The Campus Watch listing of institutions “to watch” reportedly included the University of Chicago, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University” and eleven other institutions. A graduate student at Berkeley was singled out for having taught a course in “Palestinian poetry.” Chicago came under criticism for being “‘an extended rant against Israel’” and its professors’ referencing “modern Israel as Palestine.”

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ingled-out teachers, professors and a graduate student were accused of disseminating “dangerous rhetoric” and being “‘hostile’ to America.” Following the Campus Watch dossiers, targeted professors were reportedly “spammed with tens of thousands of racist, obscene and threatening e-mails.”

In protesting the intimidation and breach of academic freedom, scores of professors across the United States “asked to be added to a ‘Campus Watch’ Web site” listing.

“Campus Watch” Web

A project of the Middle East Forum think tank, Campus Watch was founded in 2002 by the forum’s director Daniel Pipes and Winfield Myers. One of the tactics of Campus Watch is said to be “encouraging students to submit reports about college professors.”

Myers is a former senior editor of conservative publications “the Intercollegiate Review” and “Campus magazine”; and author of a pamphlet titled “Asking the Right Questions in Choosing a College.”

Daniel Pipes is an academic, writer and Harvard graduate, a former adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani; sides with Israel in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; supported the U.S. war on Vietnam; and received an honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University and a Bar-Ilan University (Israel) -Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies’ “Guardian of Zion Award.”

The Middle East Forum founded by Pipes in 1990 (becoming “non-profit” in 1994) is said to center on the idea “that the United States has vital interests” in the Middle East region; to advocate “strong ties with Israel” and to seek “a stable supply and a low price of oil.”
 

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ampus 2018

Another professor’s point

The award-winning economist and Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University opined in August 2018.

Those who have served the current US president are necessarily tainted by the experience. While they should not be barred from speaking at universities, they should be accorded none of the trappings of institutional esteem such as fellowships, named lectures, and keynote speeches.…

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…Students and faculty who sympathize with Trump may perceive such practices as discriminatory. But there is no conflict between encouraging free speech and exchange of views, which these rules are meant to support, and the university making its own values clear.

“Like other organizations, universities have the right to determine their practices in accordance with their values. These practices may diverge from what specific subgroups within them would like to see, either because there are contending values or because there are differences on the practicalities of how to realize them.

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… [S]ome students may believe that requirements for a certain course of study are too stringent or that examinations are a waste of time. Universities allow free debate about such matters. But they [universities] reserve the right to set the rules on concentration requirements and exams. In doing so, they send an important signal to the rest of society about their teaching philosophy and pedagogical values. Allowing full debate of Trumpism while refusing to honor it would be no different.

“Universities should uphold both free inquiry and the values of liberal democracy.

The first calls for unhindered exchange and interaction with Trumpist views.

The second requires that the engagement be carefully calibrated, with not even a semblance of honor or recognition bestowed on those serving an administration that so grossly violates liberal democratic norms.

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ani Rodrik is an economist, researcher and academic who is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, Centre for Economic Policy Research (London), Center for Global Development, Institute for International Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and is co-editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. 

He has received research grants from the Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation; and in 2002 he was presented the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought from the Global Development and Environment Institute. 

Rodrik is currently Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Among his latest publications: Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane Economy (2017); Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science (2015); The Globalization Paradox (2011); and One Economics, Many Recipes (2007).

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irport 2018

Freedom to and Freedom From

A Sinister Listing

“Transportation Security Administration officers” have called in “an explosive unit” around her. Teams of dogs have searched her. “Agents” have separated her and her two-year-old child for the screening of each alone. She has been taken to private rooms and forced her to open her pants and show her underwear.

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n full view of other travelers passing through the checkpoint, officers “have removed and inspected all of the contents of her bags.” After she has cleared security, TSA officers often are “waiting for her at the gate; and, in front of the passengers who will travel with her on the flight, they require her to undergo additional pat-down searches. 

Border officers have questioned her “about her religion and her online opinion writing criticizing government policies, raising First Amendment concerns.”

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hy?

“The (U.S.) government refuses to tell her why she is repeatedly harassed every time she travels or give her a meaningful chance to correct whatever error is causing it.”

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ainab Merchant is a citizen of the United States of America who is repeatedly and shamefully harassed by personnel at U.S. airports. 

Merchant is “founder and editor of ‘Zainab Rights,’ a media organization covering current affairs, politics, and culture” and a Harvard University graduate student in international security and journalism.

Sources

SF Gate “Professors want own names put on Mideast blacklist / They hope to make it powerless” Chronicle staff writer Tanya Schevitz September 28, 2002 https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Professors-want-own-names-put-on-Mideast-2766666.php

SF Gate describing itself as a “Hearst-owned website sister-site of the San Francisco Chronicle” has a readership (or reach) of “30 million.” https://www.sfgate.com/aboutsfgate/

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Myers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_Watch

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pipes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Forum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dani_Rodrik

Project Syndicate Commentary “No to Academic Normalization of Trump” Dani Rodrik

August 7, 2018 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/no-academic-normalization-of-trump-by-dani-rodrik-2018-08

ACLU https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-files-complaint-dhs-over-unfair-blacklisting-us-citizen

Common Dreams “ACLU Files Complaint With DHS Over Unfair Blacklisting of U.S. Citizen: WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of Zainab Merchant” August 14, 2018 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2018/08/14/aclu-files-complaint-dhs-over-unfair-blacklisting-us-citizen

American Civil Liberties Union “Zainab Merchant” https://www.aclu.org/bio/zainab-merchant

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB