At long last, my article about the Middle East Studies program debuts. It is on page four of the newest issue of The Claremont Independent. I want to personally thank everyone that offered their thoughts and their time to get it to this quality. A thousand thank yous.
Please let me know what you think in the comment section.
Gann Equates Frangieh Signing Pro-Hezbollah Letter to Miller’s Court Testimony
Charles Johnson CMC ’11
Editor Emeritus
Claremont McKenna’s Middle East Studies department graduated its first major this December and its Arabic Department is planning its summer long immersion program in Arabic language and culture. Yet the extremist views of Bassam Frangieh, its director, and President Gann’s moral equivocation about those views raise serious concerns about the fledgling program’s focus and fairness as it plans its expansion.
While teaching at Yale during the 2006 war in Lebanon, CMC Professor of Arabic Bassam Frangieh signed a virulently anti-Israeli, pro-Hezbollah letter which condemns Israel as a “Zionist state” “motivated by historical ambitions vis-à-vis Lebanese territory and waters and by a racist supremacist ideology that denigrates the indigenous population [of Lebanon], their culture, and their very existence.” The letter calls upon Lebanon to adopt Hezbollah — which it terms the “Lebanese Resistance” — as its legitimate army. Its signatories pledge “conscious support” for that resistance, and deny that Israeli retaliation was due to the “heroic operation carried out by HizbAllah.” That “heroic operation” is the thousands of rockets fired on Israeli population centers beginning on July 12, 2006 and the simultaneous kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers near the border. All told, forty-four Israeli civilians were killed by an estimated 4000-rocket barrage, with some 1400 wounded. According to the letter, these actions by Hezbollah were “to safeguard the dignity of the Lebanese and Arab people.” The letter encourages signatories “not to be swayed by the (il)logic that accused HizbAllah of having destroyed the economy,” and to “hold Israel fully responsible for its age-old policy of destruction and war crimes. The principle of the Lebanese Resistance [HizbAllah] is to be a detterent[sic] force against Israel's ability to pursue that policy with impunity.”
These statements aren’t mere endorsements of a political organization, even a radical one. America classifies all of Hezbollah as one of the world’s leading Muslim terrorist groups. The Lebanon-based terror organization has been linked to at least 659 killings between 1982-1985, including an April 1983 attack on the U.S. embassy that killed over sixty people; a 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and a 1994 bombing of a Jewish Argentinean culture centre; and a January 15, 2008 assault on a U.S. Embassy vehicle in Beirut, to name just a few. Federal authorities believe that Hezbollah is stepping up U.S. operations and its deputy-secretary general promises rearmament, boasting that it has more rockets now than ever before.
In addition to supporting Hezbollah, the letter demands discrimination against Israelis and Israeli academics:
[We the undersigned call upon] Free-thinking intellectuals the world over, and advocates of justice and peace, to publicize the history of Israeli aggression and to pressure the American and European governments to halt their military and material maintenance of the Zionist killing machine. Similarly, we call upon our peers in the world to announce a boycott of Israeli products, and of Israeli academic and scientific institutions that do not condemn the Israeli aggression against Lebanon [Emphasis mine].
As if to remove any doubt, the letter clarifies that this boycott extends even beyond Israelis themselves, but to “pro-Israeli companies, whatever their nationality.” How can our Middle East Studies department hope to encourage thoughtful and cordial scholarship when the head of the department endorses such views?
At risk is cordiality of CMC professors, some of whom are graduates or assistant professors from Israeli institutions — and the spirit of respectful scholarship to which the College aspires. But our administration seems entirely untroubled. Sources close to President Gann reveal that she has been engaging in a bit of moral equivocation over the question of Frangieh’s support of Hezbollah. At a meeting in February, Gann claimed that she strongly supports academic freedom — and that “while she had received strong letters from alumni concerned with Claremont professor Ken Miller’s testimony on behalf of Proposition 8’s defense team, she defends his right to academic freedom — just as she does Frangieh’s,” says one source. Gann declined my request for a statement or to speak with the Claremont Independent, but Dean Hess released a statement, deeming Frangieh’s support for Hezbollah “an appropriate exercise of his rights to free speech and academic freedom,” although Hess made clear that Frangieh was speaking on “his own behalf.” Hess continued: “Although CMC does not support or take a position on individual statements generally, we do strongly support the rights of our faculty and students with respect to the appropriate exercise of their rights to free speech and academic freedom.”
Left unsaid is what an “inappropriate” exercise of academic freedom is. Surely “conscious support” for a terrorist organization and its “heroic operations” would rise to that level? Does President Gann really equate the federal testimony of one professor on technical issues having to do with ballot initiatives and minority representation with another professor's support for Hezbollah terrorists? The issue here is not about the right to be pro-Palestine or pro-Israel — that is a right we wholeheartedly support. Indeed, even though it raises questions about political balance, Professor Frangieh ought to be free to condemn the Israeli government’s foreign policy or human rights record. But what CMC’s administration fails to understand is that endorsing a known terrorist organization and characterizing its actions as “heroic” is entirely different. Would they consider it acceptable for a professor to declare support for the Ku Klux Klan or al-Qaeda? Of course not. Then why is the College blinding itself to the crimes of Hezbollah?
Indeed, Professor Miller’s expert testimony in court was very far removed from his classroom teaching. He has been scrupulous to encourage all perspectives in his classes. By contrast, it seems that the views of Professor Frangieh suggested by his signing of the letter are also borne out on campus, as he has invited a bevy of speakers to campus hostile to Israel, America or both. Frangieh is undoubtedly a popular professor of Arabic, but his politics — and their occasional influence on class discussion — have some students troubled, they tell the CI, although none were willing to speak on the record for fear of retribution.
This past year, Frangieh invited the ambassadors of Bahrain and Syria to campus. Both countries refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. That may soon change with Bahrain, but Syria still funds attacks on Israeli civilians throughout the region — something the Syrian ambassador, Imad Moustapha, outright denied during his visit. Frangieh instructed his students to warmly greet the Syrian ambassador with singing from the Koran. Imagine the outcry from pro-Palestine students were they instructed to greet an Israeli official with paeans from the Torah. Students of Professor Frangieh say that he did nothing to try to balance the perspectives of the Syrian ambassador, who seems to have run roughshod over the truth in his lecture. Jesse Blumenthal CMC ’11 called him to task when he claimed that Israel’s bombing of a plutonium-enrichment plant in Syria was an American invention. Blumenthal whipped out his smartphone and pulled up an article from The Times of London showing that it was, in fact, a plutonium-enrichment plant. At that point, the Syrian ambassador claimed he didn’t want to get into “petty” back-and-forth.
Along with the Muslim Students Association, Frangieh (although he himself is not a Muslim) also invited Imam Zaid Shakir, who in a very incendiary speech blamed the massacre at Ft. Hood on a genocidal America’s problems with guns, not on the stated jihadi motives of the perpetrator, Major Nidal Hasan. Yet another major guest was PLO member Sari Nusseinbeh, who during the first intifada helped terrorists avoid arrest and secure funding.
Well-placed sources say that the Board of Trustees hopes to create a new generation of Claremont-educated foreign officers with Middle East expertise. But even that is questionable: the Middle East Studies major does not allow Hebrew or Persian/Farsi to be the language of instruction — making it rather Arab-centric. Hebrew is currently taught by a CGU graduate student, and Persian/Farsi has been offered by the Zoroastrian Council at CGU.
To date, no speaker brought by the Middle East Studies Department or by Frangieh has espoused a favorable view of Israel — raising legitimate questions over whether the department is presenting students with a fair range of viewpoints or has become biased and radicalized. The timing could not be more pressing. At the time this article goes to print, Professor Frangieh is searching for a tenure-track assistant professor in time for the summer school. Administrators would do well to do background checks on all prospective professors.
Through his silence, Professor Frangieh, who ignored repeated requests for comment, forces us to question what he hopes to build with the Middle East Studies department. Frangieh was quoted in an article related to the controversy over the airport detention of his student Nick George POM ’10 that people, “study Arabic not to work for terrorist organizations,” but to “build bridges with people, to understand their culture, to understand their language, in order to have a more harmonious world.” If that’s the case, the CI is troubled by Frangieh’s repeated refusals to meet with us or even return our emails. We would all be well served if Professor Frangieh would openly address the implications of the letter he signed, or to publicly retract the statements implied by his signature and issue an apology. The CI believes in academic freedom, but it also believes in academic responsibility. Asking Frangieh for a comment hardly seems unreasonable.
And the administration must explain itself in equating Professor Miller’s testimony on gay marriage with Professor Frangieh’s endorsement of Hezbollah. The letter’s proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions affronts and threatens the very principle of academic freedom that President Gann and Dean Hess profess to champion. Were an Israeli academic or student to suggest a boycott of Arab or Muslim products or universities, would President Gann really be so silent? In the Fall 2010 issue of CMC Magazine, Claremont McKenna celebrated its global ties — ties Gann renewed on a recent two-week junket to the Middle East last month where she met with foreign royalty and diplomats. As President Gann and Professor Frangieh hope to build an Arabic study abroad program in the Middle East by 2011, it’s worth asking just what effect Frangieh’s views will have on the program’s balance. President Gann must be unequivocally clear that we accept Israel and Israelis as part of our global community, and that endorsement of terrorists has no place here or in Claremont’s Middle East program abroad.
In 2006, the Claremont Independent called for and supported the Arabic language program, but it now looks as if Claremont is becoming yet another haven for anti-American, anti-Israeli radicalism. This is disappointing, as the College is excited about the new Arabic studies department, according to sources on the Board of Trustees, who hope that Claremont can create a new class of foreign officers. If we are to reclaim that promise, Professor Frangieh and President Gann must do the courageous thing: either openly justify their positions or back down from them. As always, the Claremont Independent will gladly publish responses. Let us, to paraphrase Professor Frangieh, build a bridge to a more harmonious campus.
To read the full text of the letter signed by Professor Frangieh, visit: http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=601. Charles Johnson is editor emeritus of the Claremont Independent. He writes at Biggovernment.com and Claremontconservative.com.
17 comments:
Charles wrote:
"To date, no speaker brought by the Middle East Studies Department or by Frangieh has espoused a favorable view of Israel — raising legitimate questions over whether the department is presenting students with a fair range of viewpoints or has become biased and radicalized."
Uhhh it's pretty difficult to espouse a favorable view of an apartheid state like israel when they continue to violate international law without hesitation.
As for the boycott, since when has a boycott been considered discrimination? I don't buy israeli made products because I want as little of my money as possible to fund an apartheid regime and the oppression of the Palestinian people. Theres a difference between disliking a nations politics and discrimination.
Lowell
As a student of the Arabic program for the last two years I would like to address several problems with Charles Johnson's article. Firstly, there are some factual errors which demonstrate the poor reporting of the author: students ARE allowed to use equivalent levels of Hebrew or Farsi to complete the Middle Eastern Studies Major, though it might be more useful to learn a language that is spoken by 280 million people in over twenty countries than by 7 million people in one country (many of whom also speak English). Secondly, the first Middle Eastern studies major will graduate in May 2010, not in December 2009.
Now that those pesky details are out of the way, I would like to address the greater inaccuracies with Charles' reporting. Bassam has never promoted his political views in class (to be honest I do not know them as I have never asked), and has stated explicitly on the first day of class for his Trends and Movements in the Modern Middle East course that we will cover many topics, but not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because he wants the class to remain a-political. Does this sound like the words of a man seeking to promote his own agenda? I think not.
Bassam also embraces the Jewish community on campus, contrary to Charles' claim. Approximately one-third of the students in his Arabic classes are Jewish or of Jewish heritage (by my estimate, this is not an official statistic). In fact, during the first several months of Arabic class, the students with backgrounds in Hebrew found it much easier since they had prior exposure to a similar language. Bassam has also encouraged students to pursue Hebrew, sending out an email to the entire Arabic program earlier this semester announcing beginning, intermediate, and advanced Hebrew classes, which he strongly advocated.
Having been briefly in Beirut this past summer I can attest to the remaining devastation of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. This is a photo from the American University in Beirut, looking out onto a bombed out building.
Bassam's signing of a letter supporting the defense of Lebanon during the Israel-Hezbollah war comes from a man who's birth-country was under attack (regardless of the deserved-nature of that attack or not) by a disproportionately powerful army. If Charles does not think he would be upset if another country attacked America (even if America might have been asking for it, as I'm sure Charles thinks Lebanon was), he is lying. That Charles cannot understand this nuanced of an angle is telling.
I take great offense at Charles' article, as should the rest of the school. Bassam is an amazing professor and has done so much for this school. That Charles would publish such a petty and harmful article to one of our school's finest assets disgusts me. I am a senior in the middle of writing senior thesis, and yet it is of such pressing matter that somebody speak out against Charles that I am willing to take the time and defend Bassam.
@Lowell,
The phrase "apartheid" state is disgusting.
@Rebekkah Binns,
The first Middle East studies major is David Franzel, who completed his thesis in December on the gulf states. The course catalogue currently states that Arabic is the only language.
On to the meatier stuff, I'm very disturbed that you think it is acceptable for a professor to support Hezbollah and for our president to equate support with Hezbollah to support for California's constitution. It is fine to support Lebanon against Israel. It is not fine to support Hezbollah and condemn Israel in those terms or to sign a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli academics.
He has brought representatives from the the PLO, the Syrian government, the Bahrani government, and al-Jazeera -- all of whom are anti-Israel, to one degree or another. The comparison with America and Lebanon is similarly revealing. They are not equivalent. One is overrun by Hezbollah and another is run by a democratically-elected government.
First off, I detest the notion that any anti-Israel organization shouldn’t be allowed on campus. This deprives students of hearing other viewpoints. I don't support any of the organizations listed in the response to Ms. Binns, yet they are all legitimate organizations which we as a school are lucky to have visit. The PLO (according to Israel) is the official representative government of the Palestinian people, but since you don't believe Palestinians exist, let's just agree that they represent many people who identify as Palestinian.
As to the listed governments, they do provide support and help for tens of millions of people. It is unfair to categorically declare that any representative of a government shouldn't visit CMC because of the actions of other's. Plus, these visits can provide a unique view on government in unstable regions. I won't even mention Al Jazeera, the closest thing the Middle East has to an open democratic forum. They have some nicks against them but representatives can teach us much about how the press operates in a closed country.
As for your post, it only highlights how anti close minded you are. First off, signing a letter does little to indicate ones true political agenda. His ideas could have changed since then, or more likely, he didn't read over and understand, or even agree with the letter, but signed it either due to pressure or since he agreed with parts of it. Or perhaps a Lebanese person signing a pro Hezbollah letter in 2006 was a sign of nationalistic sympathy during a war. How many crazy things did you say when 9/11 happened. I certainly regret some of the things I said.
Secondly, he was born in Lebanon and I'm sure that impacts his views. When I hear fellow American's chant some nationalistic creed I disagree I don't get my panties in a knicker. I try and take their viewpoint, empathize with them and understand them, and move on. But I guess you don't try and understand other's points of views and just run for headlines. Guess what! Israel invaded Lebanon first in 1982 and again in 2006. Were they justified in entering? In my opinion, yes, but I can see why someone of Lebanese descent might have a different viewpoint.
As for the complaints in the letter, Israel is technically a Zionist state, and assuming that Jews or Israeli's are a race, it is a "racist" state. I still support it but all of the claims so far in that letter were at minimum debatable.
Onto Hezbollah, from a Lebanese viewpoint, they were a "freedom fighter" organization. True, in 2006 they were on the US terror list, but they had been removed after condemning 9/11, recently added again in 2003, and weren't on the EU's terror list. In 2006, it was debatable whether Hezbollah was a terrorist organization and as someone who was Lebanese, I can see why Bassam, in 2006, may have supported them. The '82 war didn't end in both sides magically accepting new borders. It landed in a buffer zone being created and I can see why settlement expansion in a buffer zone can aggravate the neighbors. I don't support Lebanon or Hezbollah here, but I can see why one can legitimately take either side. You can even trace this back to '68 and the unsettled land disputes from then. Point being, this is a huge grey area. And yes, Israel did technically pull back to the blue line but there were still disputed land areas.
Onto the proposed boycott, how can you, as a conservative, be a fan of banning boycotts. I could see how if Bassam actively supported a boycott and let it interfere with his job, we could levy criticism, but I don't see any evidence. What he does in his free time is his own business.
Finally, onto Bassam himself, I can honestly say that he is one of the most admired professors at CMC. Talk to some students or read the evaluations, but he is consistently ranked as one of the top 10 profs at CMC. As far as his teachings go, part of being in a good ME studies program is learning the lack of open discourse there. If that means bringing over snooty ambassadors who spit out falsehoods, an incendiary speakers who get giddy when a massacre occurs, or an active terrorist sympathizer over, even better. That's the reality over there. These are things any ME major should have to face. College is not about spouting back the politically correct information we've all been brought up with. It’s about opening one's mind, considering other viewpoints, and growing, something you have yet to accomplish as evidence by this article.
I shudder to think that anyone thinks I am "politically correct" or that I don't seriously consider others points of view. I do, but supporting Hezbollah and being the head of a Middle East Studies department is not something that ought to go hand in hand. Comparing Miller's testimony and Bassam's signing of a pro-Hezbollah letter is the height of moral relativism.
I don't give two hoots what the Europeans think about Hezbollah (although I will notice that you did not mention the U.K. or Australia which also consider it a terrorist organization or the fact that the EU has narrowly considered calling it a terrorist organization before.) America calls it a terrorist organization and did so in 2006. In fact, we know how that many Hezbollah terrorists fired rocks from the homes of Lebanese so as to maximize the civilian death toll.
We rarely, if ever have the other side represented. The Middle East Studies program needs to be open to the Israeli government's position for it to have any pretension of objectivity, which it has thus far lacked.
Apparently you all missed the part where I said that he was a popular professor of Arabic. I have nothing against Frangieh personally and I don't want to see him get fired, only to have the department be balanced. I would like Gann to issue some kind of a statement on Israel or some kind of an apology.
Charles,
I think Rebekah and Anonymous pretty much covered everything I was going to say so I won't repeat it. But just to go back to your stated reason for writing this article ("balancing the Middle Eastern Studies department"), think about this:
An ideologically "balanced" Middle East Studies department would theoretically reflect the overall "balance" of opinion within the Middle East, just like a balanced Politics department would have similar numbers of liberals and conservatives. Now, regardless of your own opinions on regional politics, you can't deny that the vast majority of people in the Middle East disagree with Israeli and American policies. Israel makes up 2.6% of the region's population, and in a representative MES program, pro-Israeli would receive about that much weight.
As far as I can tell, the program has always been open to minority opinions--one thing everyone seems to agree on is that whatever his own convictions, Bassam tolerates other people and their viewpoints. But until the program hires 50 professors and none of them are pro-Israeli, you don't really have a legitimate reason to complain.
I think you will find this extremely interesting. I am a high school junior, an avid reader of your blog, and a fellow Conservative. My brother is currently a cadet in the Air Force ROTC at West Virginia University. Recently, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to visit my brother's college and held a town meeting in which he answered questions from the public. My brother took advantage of this to ask him about the state of America's military policy against Israel. Here is the full story: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/top-officer-iraq-no-fly-zone-applies-to-israeli-jets/
My brother is the "young airman" mentioned in the article. He asked the chairman if someone like himself would ever be ordered to fire on an Israeli - aircraft or personnel. The scary thing is that the chairman refused to answer his question. The video is also on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuXF15QyykY#t=74m06s
Although this in no way pertains to your university, it does raise serious questions about the government's military policy regarding Israel. I truly enjoy reading your posts every week, and I would like to know your opinion on this matter.
Factual Point
I think you and Ms. Binns are making two seperate arguments about the language requirement in the CMC Middle East Studies program: what is possible and what is accessible.
The requirements of the program core courses as listed in the catalog state, "Arabic 44. Continuing
Intermediate Arabic – or equivalent
competency in another Middle
Eastern language" (emphasis added). Therefore, if a student can prove competency in Hebrew or Farsi, they would be able to use it for the ME Studies major.
However, given the language situation in the CUC, using another language other than Arabic will not be a practical option. The language classes at CGU are mostly designed for people to learn to read the languages for academic scholarship. Students in a ME Studies program need to have communicative competency in the language if the goal is to create future foreign officers.
Issues surrounding the Signing
1. The victory of the Ward Churchill against University of Colorado gives us a sense of the wide range of comments that come under academic freedom for professors. While it is sad and highly ironic for a professor to support a boycott of other intellectuals, it would be included in his right to express his professional opinion.
2. President Gann, while potentially making an error is comparing Ken Miller's case and Bassam Frangieh's, was absolutely correct not to qualify her statements about professors' ability to exercise academic freedom. Once she beings to comment on professors' positions, she opens herself up to criticism of being unprofessional. As a college president who receives enough flack for many of her actions and choices, she does hereself and CMC a favor by playing it safe.
Just wondering if you think anti-Israel statements or support for a boycott of academics from a single country should trigger the Bias Incident policy. When the opinions are sincere, it is clearly the expression of a bias against a specific group. Or are some biases acceptable while others are not?
All who has so far commented on this blog and supported Professor Frangieh's letter are proving just how miserably Claremont McKenna has failed in providing you with a sound education. Let's take these statements one at a time (skipping the blatantly false apartheid statement, for which the author gives absolutely no evidence).
To Rebekah: the notion that it is merited, reasonable, or right to be upset -- and therewith to sign a letter in praise of terrorists who murder innocent men, women, and children indiscriminately -- because one’s country is being attacked by a “disproportionately powerful army” without reference to what that country’s own actions were is downright insane. You say, Rebekah, that we would feel the same way if America was being invaded – “even if America might have been asking for it.” But isn’t that the whole point? What America’s actions are – and what it stands for – would make the whole difference.
You describe a classic case of moral equivalence. Let me explain in a classic example that many have used before. One man pushes an old woman out of the way of an oncoming train. Another man also pushes an old woman, only this time into an oncoming train. They both pushed an old woman – are their actions equally wrong? Obviously not – but that is exactly the same reasoning you use in your argument. Yes, I’m sure the Germans were upset when they started getting their ass kicked in World War II – that doesn’t make their claim to justice any stronger. What a country stands for and its own actions are crucial for understanding the context of any invasion. Is that not a “nuanced” enough approach to the issue?
The same reasoning is exhibited by the first Anonymous poster. “I try and take their viewpoint, empathize with them and understand them, and move on,” you say. The failure of your education at CMC (speaking now to all who hold such beliefs) is precisely that you have stopped thinking for yourselves; you have stopped using your reason to discriminate between good and bad, better and worse. Only someone who believes that all cultures and points of view are valid would say that it did not matter which country was being invaded! Only someone like that would say that it is better to “move on” no matter how unreasonable or unjust the other point of view is.
Also to Anonymous, perhaps the professor didn’t understand the letter, or his ideas have changed since then. Well, that should be incumbent on him to clarify. He was given an opportunity to respond and he refused.
To Nick: you say that to be truly ideologically balanced, the views taught at the university should be proportional to the number of people who believe in that view. Think about this argument. Suppose there are two, and only two, possible views about the nature of the world, and say for sake of argument that they are incompatible. Now, say that over time, the majority of mankind – say a supermajority – came to believe one but not the other. Does that make it any less probable that the other alternative is actually the true one? Just because more people believe something does not make their beliefs any more valuable intrinsically. Indeed, think about your argument applied to slavery. If only 5 percent of Americans believed in 1856 that slavery was evil and against natural rights, should only five percent of American professors been allotted to take that point of view in the universities, even though that is the only feasible alternative to the opposite view of popular sovereignty? Why, then, truth would never win out! Especially because understanding truth requires the cultivation of reason…which, alas, these posts, and Professor Frangieh’s letter, are confirming is hard for most human beings to acquire.
I forgot to touch (briefly) on the whole notion of academic freedom. Of course academic freedom should be rigorously defended. But there is a natural limit to this defense. Academic freedom presupposes that professors believe in it; you cannot have academic freedom if professors don't believe in it. It is self-defeating, then, to embrace even those ideas that reject academic freedom.
As a practical matter, clearly having one professor who does not believe in academic freedom will not shake the whole foundations of the academy; but at the same time, the idea that dozens of them would bind the academy in a contradiction would probably be reason enough not to tolerate even that one professor.
Dear Charles,
This is an incredible article! Shame on all of these people criticizing it and you. I think you hit the nail on the head here, although I was disappointed when I read that you are not trying to get him fired. Honestly, since reading that article I have been afraid to leave my dorm room. I have heard rumors that professor Frangieh keeps an RPG in his office. Granted, that could easily be false, but you can never be certain when it comes to terrorists; at the very least I'll bet he has an AK-47. I've even heard him talking on the phone in Arabic, saying things like "derka derka" (translation: kill the infidel) and "mohammad jihad" (translation: kill the Jew). I also take your fears of department radicalization to heart. I am acquainted with several students who study Arabic and I am seriously concerned about their dedication to our great nation. CMC's venerable patriotism is at stake here and the only way we can preserve it is to reach the bottom of this mess. We must send Mr. Frangieh to a supermax prison and his flock of loyal minions he calls the Arabic department must be subject to a polygraph test to confirm their patriotism. Thank you, Charles, for such an eye-opening piece of investigative journalism.
Why should it be necessary for Frangieh to bring speakers who support Israel? Whenever CMC hosts speakers on the topic (usually at the Ath), they tend to be pro-Israel. At any rate, they don't bring speakers in equal numbers or caliber from both sides. Isn't that a problem as well?
On the contrary, whenever CMC hosts speakers at the Ath talking about Israel, they are nearly always critical of Israel. Why? Because Professor Haley is openly pro-Palestinian.
Oh no Chuck's writing is online!?
We're doomed.
You people are insane. THe PLO is a thug cowardly organizatin of butchers and thungs. They have a culture of death and do nothing but murder children..their pure scum. Only academics Left wing campuses would have such nutjob views about murderers.
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