Alyssa Lappen exposes a meeting of radical leftists, Islamists, and Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, marked by conspiracy theories and victocratic paranoia: Columbia’s Anti-Jewish Conspiracy Theorist.

“There is a new blacklist across the country which is having a chilling effect on campuses everywhere,” exclaimed Monique Dols, a student of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad  at an April 13 “public service” session at New York City’s Cooper Union. Sponsored by the appropriately named group ‘Censoring Thought’ the event was a perfect example of how simply paying attention to the abuses of academia has been turned upside down into “censorship.”

Flanked by Massad and radical pundit Tariq Ali, Campus Anti-War Network “activist” Dols offered living proof of indoctrination at Columbia. Launching a tirade against the racist “new McCarthyism today,” orchestrated by “Washington and Tel Aviv” and directed against Middle Eastern professors, according to Dols, these two omnipotent governments are “afraid” of “a real debate that allows people to make up their own mind when confronted with occupation and dispossession. And today they want to reach in to regulate the terms of the debate in the university.” Dols is also a willing participant in Massad’s dark fantasies of conspiracy and persecution: Massad is the target of a “systematic attack at Columbia university,” she declares, in which “spy rings” infiltrate his classroom—the same spies who hope to decommission Middle East studies everywhere.
 
When he speaks, Massad unveils more details of the sinister conspiracy. According to him, “right-wing forces” with Zionist “ideological positions” have hijacked “political power and political discourse in this country.” Meanwhile, true “scholarship is de-legitimized as ideology” by these “witch hunters.” Massad rues that “students with political agendas” began “bringing unannounced, unregistered guests with them to class”; worse, one student soon began circulating a petition to get him fired “on the recommendation of people from outside the university.“ These upstart students were joined by ”two major traditional propagandists, Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer, who after failing in U.S. academia, excelled as thought policemen.” This comment produced much knowing laughter from the appreciative audience. …
 
Academic freedom for Massad is being free to teach without challenge that “Established scholarship enumerates all [Israel’s] racist flaws and institutional racist practices” which he says render the Jewish state “a racist state by law.” But any disagreement, Massad says, can be safely discarded as Zionist ideology, part of the conspiracy “propped up by the likes of Campus-Watch, the David Project, and the ADL [Anti-Defamation League],” who “make it…their business to attack scholarly criticisms of Israeli policy.” Failing to discard studies by “Israel’s apologists” amounts to “shutting down the educational process in favor of religious theories of creationism.” Evidently America can learn from Palestinian society’s principled anti-racism and passion for historical truth.
 
Tariq Ali then spoke and took the conspiracy mania fully over the edge. He sees “what is taking place on the campuses as part of the larger and wider project which was initiated by the Sharon government, soon before they went into Jenin [in March 2002] in the big attempt to crush the intifada.” The decision to persecute the poor academics “was made in Israel,” then “circulated” to Israeli embassies, which somehow made it happen worldwide. The Elders of Zion must be working overtime.

UPDATE at 4/25/05 10:30:51 am:

Columbia professor of philosophy Akeel Bilgrami, apparently a great admirer of Edward Said, issues more disinformation at the Columbia Spectator: The Crisis at Columbia.

Even if one doubts the wisdom of the committee’s formation and of its disapproval of one of Professor Joseph Massad’s classroom remarks on the basis of conflicting and inconclusive evidence, its report nevertheless did achieve some worthwhile things. First, it repudiated the idea that there is any anti-Semitism on the Columbia campus. Second, it revealed that there are outside forces that are interfering in the normal running of certain classes at Columbia by their presence, intimidating people from expressing their views, and it took a stand against this insidious phenomenon. Though the report did not make the connection, the conclusions are closely linked. These McCarthyite groups are perfectly aware of the fact there is no anti-Semitism at Columbia. Their concern has never been with anti-Semitism at all. That is just a façade to mobilize some students and mislead the public. Their concern is only with blotting out any opposition to Israeli Government policy, even if it means instrumentally creating “grievances” among students, for these purposes.