From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Tim Adams | The Observer | 30 November 2003 He's 'The Elvis Of Academia' and 'The Devil's Accountant'. A relentless thorn in America's side, Noam Chomsky has spent 50 years bringing his country's elite to account. Here, he talks to Tim Adams about genocide and genitalia. On the railings outside my local train station at Harringay, in north London, someone has carefully placed a series of small white stickers.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Stanley Fish | The Chronicle of Higher Education | 26 November 2003 How will academe's leaders respond to the assault under way on its autonomy and professional integrity? Stanley Fish asks. Two columns ago, I analyzed "The College Cost Crisis," a report written (or at least signed) by U.S. Reps. John A. Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, a California Republican, both members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Michelle Goldberg | Salon | 6 November 2003 Neoconservative critics have long charged Middle Eastern studies departments with anti-American bias. Now they've enlisted Congress in their crusade. On Oct. 21, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that could require university international studies departments to show more support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding. Its approval followed hearings this summer in which members of Congress listened to testimony about the pernicious influence of the late Edward Said in Middle Eastern studies departments, described as enclaves of debased anti-Americanism.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Sarah Shields | commondreams.org | 16 November 2003 When I was in preschool, I heard fairy tales about all-powerful kings who arbitrarily threw people into dungeons. When I was in Hebrew school, I learned how Jews were rounded up by rulers during times of instability. When I was in High School, I studied the American political system that guaranteed the rule of law. I saw that rule of law working in the spring of 2002, when we offered a symposium on National Security and Civil Liberties.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) VIJAY PRASHAD | Counterpunch | 13 November 2003 In mid-October, my email in-box began to receive forwards from Michael Bednar, a graduate student in the department of history at the University of Texas, Austin. The subject line suggested that it was an email joke: "Congress moves to regulate postcolonial studies." Thanks to the vigilance of Michael Bednar many of us now know that the US Congress is poised to transform the relationship between university and college level international or area studies and the US government.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Robert Fisk | CounterPunch/Independent | 4 November 2003 Is "Palestinian" now just a dirty word? Or is "Arab" the dirty word? Let's start with the late Edward Said, the brilliant and passionate Palestinian-American academic who wrote--among many other books--Orientalism, the ground-breaking work which first explored our imperial Western fantasies about the Middle East. After he died of leukaemia last month, Zev Chafets sneered at him in the New York Daily News in the following words: "
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Sarah Cassidy |Independent | 28 October 2003 An Oxford University professor who rejected a student because he was Israeli was suspended from the university yesterday and ordered to undergo equal opportunities training. In an unusual public statement spelling out the results of disciplinary proceedings, the university said Andrew Wilkie, an eminent pathology professor, would be banished from the institution for two months without pay. Pembroke College later announced that the academic had resigned as a fellow and as a member of its governing body.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) AFP/Aljazeera | Aljazeera | 28 October 2003 One of Britain's most prestigious centres of learning has suspended a professor who rejected an Israeli student's application, reportedly because of the Jewish state's mistreatment of Palestinians. The University of Oxford on Monday suspended Andrew Wilkie without pay for two months after he told Amit Duvshani there was "no way" he would accept someone who had served in the Israeli army.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Arthur Neslen | Aljazeera | 29 October 2003 The decision by Oxford University to suspend a professor without pay for two months for refusing to teach a former Israeli soldier has ratcheted up campus tensions and may spark an academic rebellion. Andrew Wilkie, a pathology expert at the prestigious Pembroke College, was suspended on Monday and told to undergo equal opportunities training after he told Amit Duvshani, a masters student at Tel Aviv University: “No way would I take on someone who has served in the Israeli army”.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Basem L. Ra'ad | Al Quds University Web Site | March 2003 To understand the current hardships of Al Quds University and other Palestinian educational institutions, it is necessary to explore the geography of Israeli occupation. This geography shows the real colour of the degradation to which people are subjected and the effects of long-standing colonizing policies. One would have thought a simple, self-evident right to education should be guaranteed.