[Crossposted from JStreetJive.]

Ivory Towers of Submission

One of the first rules of investing in the Stock Market concerns short selling. That rule states that there is no limit to potential loss in short-selling if the stock price rises as opposed to simply losing your initial investment in a standard buy. Well, the Academy is now a perfect example of this bottomless pit.

This site has reported on the deplorable state of the American Academy concerning the Middle East before. But since the triumph of the Obama administration, the arrogance, stupidity and astounding prejudice against Israel among the professoriat and their impressionable students has sunk to almost unfathomable depths. Consider some cases in point:

• At a recent lecture at Harvard's prestigious Belfer Center entitled "Moderating Islam: The Ideological Dimension of the War on Terror", which focused on initiatives in the West to assimilate young Muslims into societies that value democratic values, one of the Center's directors quickly turned the discussion into an indictment against Israel for exposing the United States to Muslim wrath. After that turn, the consensus emerged that attacks on abortion clinics were of a more immediate threat to American values than the thousands of corpses generated by militant Islam each month. One professor declared that he could not recall a single attack on the United States since 9/11. He must have been in a coma during the scores of attacks and thwarted attacks including the recent Fort Hood massacre and the unsuccessful "underwear" bomber.
• A professor of political science at the same institution instructs her students that the worst sin committed by the West today is "essentialism", the philosophic concept that any entity must possess a discrete set of characteristics or properties. In other words, to attribute violence to Islam - in spite of incontrovertible evidence in the form of mountains of corpses that pile up every day from Baghdad to Thailand - is dreadfully in error, akin to a hate crime. The professor chooses to view the evidence from a "nuanced" perspective, borrowing the apologist theme from such eminent fellow academics as the Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen whose popular book, "Identity and Violence" decried the compartmentalization of groups and demanded that the West view everyone as possessing "multiple identities" - in effect, providing apology and cover to a global, supremacist ideology that espouses a cult of death. The same professor chooses to present one Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi , the most widely viewed (television and internet) radical cleric in the world, as mainstream and moderate. Sheikh Qaradawi, supported by the "moderate" regime in Qattar, has preached, among other lovely sermons, that "The last punishment of the Jews" was carried out by Hitler who "managed to put them in their place."
• An upcoming conference at Tufts University is entitled, Looking Past, Looking Forward: The History and Future of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Some of the participants include: Henry Siegman, Former Senior Fellow and Director for the U.S./Middle East Project, Council on Foreign Relations and Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin of Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva are ostensibly representing the Israeli position.

Henry Siegman has long been recognized as an apologist for the PLO and Yasir Arafat. Recently, he has been among the chief advocates of an imposed "solution" to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, favoring the Palestinians, of course. Samantha Power, now holding a leading position in the Obama administration, has expressed a similar animus towards Israel with a similar "solution". Much of his funding over the years has come from Saudi Arabia and Palestinian sources.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, for his part, has also been a hyper-critic of Israel and Zionism: "I feel responsible for the victims of Zionism." His speeches and writings mirror the positions of the most radical Palestinian factions. No wonder he has found a home at Israel's most outspokenly anti-Israel university, the home of Neve Gordon and Jeff Halper. The problem is that he is now ensconced at The University of Pennsylvania.

Were these anti-Israel demagogues confined to the lunatic fringe of Ben Gurion University or adjuncts to Arab "think tanks" like Henry Siegman, they would have limited influence. The real problem is their career trajectories into the corridors of power in Washington and the world. The Kennedy School at Harvard, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, the University of Pennsylvania's School of International Relations,Tufts' Fletcher School, etc. are virtual funnels for high positions into the State Department. The Walt-Mearsheimer phenomenon is replicated around the country and around the world. If any Israeli scholars are present on campuses, they are almost without exception, extreme, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist ideologues. Recently, the chief visiting scholar of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights was the founder of B'tselem in Israel. There have been a handful of notable exceptions: Martin Kramer at Harvard's Olin Center and Efraim Karsh. Yet they remain a handful.

In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned of the revolving door of the military and industry, a message that has been grist for the Left's mill for decades. What we are witnessing now is the "University-Islamist complex." For the near future, the practical consequences of this relationship will be nothing short of disastrous for Israel and the West.

[Update 4/9: Edited first paragraph and changed title.]