-♻RetweetNEU Professor Slimes LGF, Jihad Watch
Sat, Jan 1, 2005 at 6:02:08 pm PST
Northeastern University economics professor M. Shahid Alam, who wrote an execrable article comparing the September 11 hijackers (favorably) to the American Minutemen, has reacted to his critics with an article for the radical left journal Counterpunch: Testing Free Speech in America.
Of course, Professor Alam sees himself as a hero, standing up for free speech against “hate websites.”
“Hate websites,” like LGF and Jihad Watch, that simply report the words he wrote.
For example, when an LGF reader sent the following email to Professor Alam:
You are a disgrace to your position. How dare you state the those people killed that their people “might live, free and in dignity”? Where is your sense of justice and pride in the country that allows real freedom? You tell me what freedom and dignity the women in Afghanistan lived with! I await your reply.
I am a South African living in the US and I witnessed the transition from a one party dictatorship to a free democracy in SA and no children and civilians were slaughtered like bugs to do it. The South African people had nothing to lose yet they lived and died for freedom with real honour and dignity. There is no justifications for terrorism and by doing so, you make yourself complicit in murder. Learn from South African history that one need not use terrorist tactics to achieve goals and then educate yourself professor that one need not justify murder.
Dean Levitt
Professor Alam, misunderstood hero of free speech, wrote:
Why is it that the only hateful mail I have received is signed by Levitt, Hoch or Freedman?
In a previous incident in 2002, Professor Alam claimed that his Northeastern University email account had been “spoofed” to send antisemitic emails: Prof. blacklisted. (Hat tip: Geepers.)
A Northeastern professor said he was harassed and “blacklisted” because of his views about the political unrest in the Middle East. Now, the question has been raised: does anti-Semitism plague Northeastern’s campus?
The discussion about anti-Semitism began when professors in Northeastern’s economics department received e-mails from Professor M. Shahid Alam, a tenured professor in the department, containing anti-Semitic material.
Professor Alam said he is not anti-Semitic and never sent the e-mails, but knows how they were sent.
About two weeks ago, Alam said he discovered that a website started by a pro-Israel research group had posted a dossier (file) on him. The site (www.campus-watch.org) posted dossiers on a number of professors at universities throughout the country, asking students to spy on them and report back to the website, Alam said. The site alleges that the professors in question are not sufficiently pro-Israeli, therefore they are anti-America as well, Alam said.
Alam said he has been targeted by Campus Watch because of a commentary he wrote in July that was published in a few Middle Eastern newspapers. He said his words were later taken out of context and published in the Jerusalem Post to make him appear anti-Semitic and supportive of terrorists.
As a result of the dossiers, Alam claims that he and the other professors named on the website were “spoofed,” an internet term meaning that someone illegally hacked into their e-mail accounts and sent messages disguising themselves as the individual professors.
“After an investigation, we have concluded that professor Alam did not send the e-mails in question,” said the Director of University Communications Ed Klotzbier.
Klotzbier said the investigation revealed that the e-mails did not originate from a Northeastern account or machine, and that at no time did Northeastern believe Alam supported terrorism or anti-Semitism.
In the case of Professor Alam’s reply to the LGF reader I quoted above, I have the original email headers showing (in several ways) that the email came from the professor’s account at Northeastern University. What are the odds that his account has been “spoofed” again?
Professor Alam also claims to have received “death threats.” This is a constantly recurring technique of radical Islamic apologists, noticed many times at LGF, used whenever they come under criticism. I’ve offered several times, publicly, to these people that I will help them track down these threats, if they provide me with the log data and email headers to see if they came from LGF. Not one person who claimed to receive death threats has ever taken me up on the offer. The same offer is hereby extended to Professor Alam.
But please note: while I’m being accused (again) of running a hate site that generates imaginary death threats, I posted the following as an update to my original entry about Professor Alam’s foul masterpiece of moral equivalence:
If you decide to contact the professor or his university, please remember that the best way to make your points heard is to be polite.
The director of Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, has a very eloquent reply to Professor Alam’s smears: Jihad Watch, LGF slimed by Shahid Alam.
Frank says:
