Alum Starts Watchdog Group

Joining the nation-wide debate over anti-Semitism on college campuses, a Harvard graduate has launched a website that details what he calls pervasive anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments on college campuses across the United States.

Daniel Pipes ’71 includes Harvard on a list of 14 colleges and universities, including Columbia and Stanford, whose professors and administrators he says propagate bias and student unrest.

The website was launched last Wednesday, one day after University President Lawrence H. Summers’ statements on anti-Semitism at the University. Pipes says the timing was coincidental and, even considering Summers’ stance, he says Harvard will remain on his list.

Campus Watch (www.campus-watch.org) is the latest project launched by Pipes’ Philadelphia think tank, Middle East Forum.

Pipes’ interest in the political climate at Harvard was piqued last spring by the uproar surrounding a Commencement Day speech whose title, “American Jihad,” had sparked angry petition drives and drew national press attention.

Right away, Pipes weighed in on the debate with an article in the New York Post called “Harvard Loves Jihad” that compared the speech title to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The new website, which maintains “dossiers” on a handful of professors and institutions, exposes what Pipes calls a trend in “appalling bigotry” in academia. The site identifies incidents of anti-Semitism and pro-Islamic activity on college campuses and lists news stories reporting on how the academic community is responding to violence in the Middle East.

The website criticizes professors and administrators who, according to Pipes, have engaged in an exclusive “hegemonic discourse” that is anti-American and pro-Islamic.

In particular, Pipes said, many Middle Eastern specialists disregard competing viewpoints and base their own opinions stem on a “disregard of militant Islam” and on anti-semitic viewpoints.

“There is near wall-to-wall support of one set of ideas at universities and colleges in this country,” he said. “It is in my opinion that these ideas are unhealthy, and that they are outside the mainstream of American thinking.”

After the controversial Commencement speech, Pipes conducted research that he says revealed that most Middle Eastern specialists support a “soft” definition of jihad—as opposed to the definition that he endorses, which describes jihad as an aggressive military struggle.

Wasim Quadir ’03, president of the Harvard Islamic Society, wrote in ane-mail last night that while anti-Semitism is “reprehensible,” the website does harm.

“This website seems to be part of a systemmatic program to intimidate those who crititicize Israel by conflating such legitimate criticisms with anti-Semitism, ensuring that only one side’s voice will be heard,” Quadir said.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis contributed ot the reporting of this article.