Emailed Letter to the Claremont McKenna Chapter Presidents and Officers

Dear Claremont McKenna Alumni Chapter Presidents and Officers,

I thought I would direct your attention a series of articles I have written (and will continue to write) detailing the support of Professor Bassam Frangieh for terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Professor Frangieh is the head of Claremont McKenna's Middle East Studies department, but a petition he signed has called for the Israeli academics to be boycotted.

You can read everything I have written on Bassam Frangieh's views here, as well as Professor Haley's past criticism of those radical groups here. My full feature writings on him for The Claremont Independent are here and here. 

Frangieh has also said that he view Hamas, a terrorist group according to the State Department, "with great pleasure," rather curious views for someone that the college hopes will teach Arabic and Middle East studies to the next generation of American diplomats. (The links to those charges, and others, are reproduced below.)

President Gann, Bassam Frangieh, and Dean Hess have all refused repeated calls for comment. VP of Communications and Public Affairs Richard Rodner has tried to suppress the story and cover it up, by deleting all criticism of Frangieh's views from his Wikipedia page. (He signed his username "Rrodner".) Privately, Pam Gann has compared Frangieh's support of terrorist groups to the ballot testimony of Ken Miller, who testified in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which indicates a rather false moral equivalence.

The story -- and there are several more postings to come --  has gone international, but we still have no comment from the Claremont administration. Perhaps you, in your official capacity, will be better about getting a response?

I am writing another story on the alumni reaction. If you would like to comment on it, please reply to this email or call me at [phone number redacted]. I will also honor the anonymity of any emails between us.

The David Project On Bassam Frangieh and Claremont McKenna Response

Searching for moral clarity at Claremont McKenna

Written by Matthew Ackerman Thursday, 09 December 2010 17:11 

 

A fascinating article was published this past weekend by the Claremont Independent, a self described “conservative and libertarian” independent student newspaper for Claremont McKenna College, one of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the country. (h/t Phi Beta Cons)

By getting some of Professor Bassam Frangieh’s Arabic interviews and writings translated, and reading them carefully, one Charles Johnson has compiled a damning indictment of Frangieh’s Jew-hatred and support for Islamist terrorism. For instance, Frangieh has written,

Even if the best one hundred Arab poets loaded themselves with dynamite and exploded in the streets of Arab capitals, it would not be enough. For real change to come about, thousands of people will have to die; thousands must martyr themselves. It appears that only massive revolution will succeed in overturning the corrupt regimes of the Arab world. Only then can significant and radical change take place.

Johnson also uncovered Frangieh saying, in Arabic, that he viewed Hamas’ victory in Palestinian Authority elections in 2006 “with great pleasure” and saw Hamas and Hezbollah as all that stood between Arabs and “humiliation.” Johnson also reported this past April that Fragnieh had also in 2006 signed on to a petition supportive of Hezbollah that condemned Israel as a “Zionist killing machine.” And if all that isn’t good enough for you, Johnson also uncovered another petition Frangieh signed in 2007 that characterized then Senator and current Vice President Joe Biden’s plan to partition Iraq as a “Zionist plot” cooked up by “Zionist masters.”

It should be said that signing petitions is not the same as mouthing words oneself, but the act of signing certainly fairly binds a person to the contents therein. And the quotes unearthed by Johnson deserve to be examined in their context, in the remote chance that they can somehow absolve Frangieh of holding these atrocious views. (Frangieh could of course also come out now and say he condemns terrorism and Jew-hatred, but let’s not hold our breath.)

The professional fate of Bassam Frangieh or the Department of Middle East Studies that he heads, the conclusion of the campaign being waged by Johnson, or even what exactly is in Frangieh’s head (something we can’t possibly know, as we can’t know that of anyone) is not terribly important. What is important is how Claremont McKenna responds to the revelation of strong evidence that there is an unrepentant Jew-hater and supporter of Islamic terror among their faculty.

According to Johnson, the only response thus far was the president of the college’s comments last spring equating Frangieh’s views with those of another professor who supported Proposition 8, the ballot measure that amended California’s Constitution to make it plain that the state did not recognize same-sex marriage. As Johnson correctly notes, that in itself is a moral equivocation of monstrous proportions.

That is not to say that the college’s response to the issue is therefore straightforward. Simply firing Frangieh might not be an option if he is tenured. So what could they do?

The case of Kevin MacDonald, a Jew-hating professor of evolutionary psychology at nearby California State, Long Beach could serve as an example. After its own initial foot-dragging on this issue, in 2008 both the Academic Senate and the university president ultimately released statements condemning MacDonald’s views and making plain that they were not welcome at the school. More to the point, after the patently antisemitic nature of MacDonald’s views on Jews became widely known at the school in the early 2000’s, he quickly became a campus pariah, shunned at faculty meetings, subject to, by his own account and those of others, a thousand of the petty cuts that were open to the campus community even though his tenured position prevented them from firing him.

That was so because, with some exceptions and not, unfortunately, altogether (activities against MacDonald did not pick up steam at the school until he was also accused of “white supremacy,” a more difficult, though defensible, charge to make against him), most people on campus saw his Jew-hatred for what it was, and saw it as unacceptable.

Such is simply not the case on campus today when Jew-hatred comes from the mouth of a professor of Arabic who identifies with the radical political left and not from the pen of a professor of psychology who identifies with the radical political right. The state of affairs is so parlous that we can’t even be assured any longer that schools will draw bright lines around Holocaust denial.

So, the minor affair at Claremont McKenna over its professor of Arabic, whatever its conclusions, will likely remain one more shining example of the inability of the vast majority of our campuses to view bigotry against Jews with moral clarity. Some of our students are demanding better. To make the case for Israel, we need to learn how to support them.

Claremont McKenna Cover Up: Can’t Hide Prof’s Terrorist Loyalties – or His Wife’s Blame Israel First Mentality

Author's note:

Today, in Big Peace, I detail Executive Director of International Programs Aleta Wenger's "blame Israel first" views  and CMC VP of Communication and Public Affairs Richard Rodner's Wiki-cover up of Bassam Frangieh's wikipedia page.

I want to be very clear up front: I'm not writing about Ms. Wenger because she's Frangieh's wife. I'm writing about her because it is part of a pattern on the part of CMC's administration of hiring directors of international programs that single out one country -- Israel -- for criticism. This is a bigger deal then just mere professors because they are in a position of control over entire departments and indeed, over, our reputation as one of America's best colleges. And both Ms. Wenger and Professor Frangieh have been used to help sell Claremont McKenna.

Still I confess that Wenger's statements on their own, odd though they are, aren't a smoking gun, but part of a wider story and that's why they are included in a series.

In fairness, unlike Frangieh, who I contacted repeatedly about the first story I wrote in April, I didn't contact Wenger. I figured that she, like the rest of the college,  Rodner included, wanted to ignore the well-documented hostility to Israel and terrorist support on our campus. Again, let me state that I will publish any statement, from any administrator, at any time, on any issue related to this. 

Unfortunately, they have chosen to be quiet about this rather explosive story and their PR director has gone from ignoring it to suppressing it. 

For those who forget, CMC VP Richard Rodner, remember, is supposedly the brains behind Claremont McKenna's new website -- but apparently, he felt the need to delete all criticism of Frangieh's support for Hezbollah and Hamas and then signed his user name.

As for the rest of the story, they'll be more posts to come that analyze the petitions in greater detail and that make use of some more interviews and documents I'm having translated. (The new translations will be posted here so you can view them on your own because some people, wrongly, accused me of not giving enough "context.") I'm really, really curious as to what "context" support for Hezbollah, which murders Americans and whose head wants a second Holocaust, is OK, but perhaps there is such a context.

Either way, we'll never know if Frangieh and Claremont McKenna's administration continues to refuse to honor the principles of the liberal arts -- the purpose of which is to make men free, not support organizations that lead to their enslavement.


After exams, I'll be talking with some more media for how to coordinate the release of the new stuff I've unearthed. This isn't going away anytime soon. It'll keep going until Claremont McKenna honors its motto: Civilization prospers with commerce. Well, one commerce is the commerce of ideas and refusing to engage in it is the death of the liberal arts.

So let's have at it. Let's have a debate about our college's support for someone who continues to support terrorism.

Anyways, here's the latest story:

Despite repeated calls for a statement from alumni, from faculty members, from parents, and from students, no one in Claremont McKenna’s administration has spoken out to my Big Peace article about Professor Bassam Frangieh’s support for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

But Richard Rodner, Claremont McKenna’s vice president of public affairs and communications, deleted all mention of Frangieh’s support for terrorist groups from his Wikipedia page. (He used the rather obvious username of “rrodner” when making the deletions.)

This deletion should end all pretense that the college cares about supporting Bassam Frangieh’s “academic freedom” to support terrorist groups. Rodner didn’t respond to my request for statement, but a subsequent edit from Texas (IP address: 97.77.198.18 ) noted that the petition that Frangieh signed was signed by hundreds of other academics – as if that excuses their proposed boycott of all Israeli academics. (It would seem that calling for that boycott would be the very opposite of academic freedom, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to our administrators or to those academics.)



Alas, to date, no one – not Pamela Gann, Claremont McKenna’s president, not Gregory D. Hess, its dean of faculty, not Hilary Appel, its assistant dean of faculty, has responded to my request for a statement.

It seems unlike that they ever will given how much Claremont McKenna has invested in the Middle Eastern program. After all, President Pamela Gann, journeyed to four Middle Eastern countries on a fact finding junket, where she, with Professor Frangieh and Ms. Aleta Wenger (Professor Frangieh’s wife and “executive director of international programs”) hobnobbed with royalty and the Middle East elite.
In any event, it turns out that Bassam Frangieh isn’t the only one in his family, or at Claremont’s campus, that has some odd views on politics in the Middle East. Meet his wife, Aleta Wenger.

Since her three-year stint in the Peace Corps in 1979, Wenger has lived all throughout the Arab world – Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Cairo, and Doha. In 1993, after she took the Foreign Service exam, Wenger went from Peace Corps veteran to the diplomatic corps. Today, she advises Claremont McKenna College students on scholarships to pursue the study of foreign policy and diplomacy.

But she isn’t the slightest bit diplomatic about what she thinks about America’s closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, writing often and ad nauseam on internet sites. A close examination of her online statements reveal that she has some rather confused views on the State of Israel for someone who has spent so much time in the Middle East.

In a July 20, 2010 New York Times article comment, she commended an American movement to do an end run on Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Here’s what she wrote:

I’m against the Israeli blockade of Gaza and do not believe for one minute that the Israelis are allowing in food and medicine, and other commodities, to the level needed by the civilian population. I now have a good cause to support financially, and am very happy that my fellow Americans are interested in joining the blockade movement. Now to see if I can get on that boat. As a retired U.S. foreign service officer now unleashed, I can do and say what I want. Now let’s hear all of your readers tell me how naive I am… but I’m telling you, I’ve truly been there and seen it all… go Gaza flotilla ships go!!! [emphasis mine]

Left unremarked is that that “blockade” is supported by Egypt, as well, as Israel – and that it was in response to the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel that the blockade began.

The running of the blockade is not so much about humanitarian supplies, as Greta Berlin, one of the organizers confessed, “is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it’s about breaking Israel’s siege on 1.5 million Palestinians.” For its part, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh said that it would refuse any aid from Israel-intercepted flotilla, telling the press that “We are not seeking to fill our (bellies), we are looking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.” If we take Hamas seriously, then they are either deliberately starving their people – or the Israelis are correct – that the goods onboard the flotilla were already readily available in Gaza.

However the Gaza blockades looks, it looks like Aleta Wenger has a deep-seated suspicion of Israel. In an August 4, 2006 comment on Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, she suspected the I.D.F. wanted to bomb a university:

I would like ABC to run a full story on the status of AUB [American University of Beirut], including the hospital, with a status report about the physical plant of the most renowned university in the Arab World. Has AUB also been bombed by the Israelis? Since they are now bombing Christian villages in the north of Lebanon, perhaps AUB is next in line. Shame on the Israelis and I welcome more balanced coverage from ABC on this war. [Emphasis mine]

Without a shred of evidence, she suggests that Israel would bomb a university. This from a country that actually sends text messages to notify people not to house terrorists firing missiles – or face a retaliatory strike.

Of course Hezbollah knew well that Israel would retaliate, which is why it deliberately fired missiles from the homes of Christian villagers. Their calculus worked a bit like this: if Israel destroys the home of the Christians, that’s a win. If the Christians flee and Lebanon becomes still more Muslim, that’s also a win as there is no love lost between Lebanon’s Maronite Christian and Shia Muslim communities after the 1980s civil war.
In the most recent war, The New York Times reported about those Christians and their ordeal at the hands of Hezbollah on July 28^th, 2006. Here’s how one villager described it:

“Hezbollah came to Ain Ebel to shoot its rockets,” said Fayad Hanna Amar, a young Christian man, referring to his village. “They are shooting from between our houses.”

“Please,’’ he added, “write that in your newspaper.”

Israel, threatened with promised rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, had indeed bombed Christian suburbs of Beirut – but only because Hezbollah had made them into human shields.

Ms. Wenger’s one-sided “blame Israel first” mentality is similar to that of her husband, Bassam Frangieh, who in a series of statements and petitions, has made it known that he supports the terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Hamas. In 2006, Bassam Frangieh supported a petition that denounced Israel as a “Zionist killing machine” and praised Hezbollah as the true resistance army of Lebanon.

Today, Professor Frangieh directs the Middle East Studies program, which purports to teach the next generation of diplomats, while Wenger, an ex-diplomat, serves as the “executive director for international programs” at Claremont McKenna College, America’s best conservative liberal arts college. There she advises on numerous foreign studies fellowships, including several for the study of languages critical to national security.

She was quoted most recently in a press release, celebrating Claremont McKenna ranking as 10^th for most Fulbrights awarded per capita of any college in America.

“We are also very proud that our graduates will play a role in promoting mutual understanding, a primary goal of the Fulbright Program,” she said.

Apparently the promotion of “mutual understanding” doesn’t extend to Israeli policy which she condemns in her comments, impugning the most sinister of motives to the most steadfast of America’s allies in the Middle East.

This one-sidedness could be tolerated in professors, whose classes students may elect to take or not take, but not in the campus advisor for the Fulbright Award. In her capacity as campus advisor, every student interested in that program must consult with Wenger during the application process. She also serves on the National Awards committee and the Off Campus Study Committee and as campus advisor to the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Diversity fellowship and the Boren National Security Education Scholarship. Wenger’s one-sided views against Israel raise serious questions about her fitness to be a campus advisor for a scholarship critical to America’s national interest.

Unfortunately, these sorts of questions won’t be posed by Claremont McKenna’s president, Pamela Gann, who is presumably more intent to ignore the charges than to address them. That would be scandalous enough in its own right, but Richard Rodner’s deletion of those charges from the public through his Wikipedia edits, harms the public interest of knowing just what Bassam Frangieh’s views are on contentious topics, topics which will assuredly come up in his capacity running a proposed study abroad program in the Middle East.

Claremont McKenna’s administration it seems would prefer to borrow a page from the regimes with which its president consorts on her junket – Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – and censor the truth, rather than answer for it. This is all the more troubling as the ties between the Arab states and Claremont will grow stronger as Gann seeks to raise money for Claremont’s proposed satellite school in Jordan.

The truth about Bassam Frangieh and his views must win out and be exposed for all to see before the ground is broken for that project. Nothing less than the future of America’s Middle East diplomatic corps is at stake.

 And, as always, I would be interested in hearing the response from any administrator, at any time, because I would like to understand the context that makes these views acceptable in administrators at Claremont McKenna.

If Claremont McKenna's administration supports his right to speech, why does the administration suppress others' attempts to let that speech -- which supports terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas -- speak for itself?