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Some Senators don’ t think so, and they have sent a series of questions about the matter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. More on their query can be found here: “Senate Republicans question Department of Education Middle East studies grants,” by Marc Rod, Jewish Insider, November 15, 2024:
Two Senate Republicans wrote to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Thursday, raising concerns about federal funding for Middle East studies allegedly provided to anti-Israel professors on college campuses.
The letter, from Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) focused on National Resource Centers and Foreign Language Area Studies grants provided by the Department of Education.
A recent report by a nonprofit group that scrutinizes government spending alleged that $22.1 million of those funds have gone toward Middle East studies programs and, specifically, to professors with strident anti-Israel views.
“The Biden-Harris administration should not channel American taxpayer dollars toward extremist professors who inculcate their students with hatred of America’s strongest ally — and sole democracy — in the Middle East,” the senators wrote. “This potential abuse of taxpayer funds is not just wasteful but may run contrary to the intent of the programs and the law.”
According to the report and letter, one grant to Columbia University supported a course taught by Professor Joseph Massad, who praised the Hamas Oct. 7 attack as “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.”
Joseph Massad finds the mass rape, torture, mutilation, and murder of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas — designated as a terror group by the American government — to be “awesome” and “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.” He also expressed his hope that the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 would lead to the destruction of the Jewish state. This was of a piece with many decades of anti-Israel and antisemitic venom coming from Massad. A documentary film about the Columbia Middle Eastern Studies program, Columbia Unbecoming, shows Massad comparing Hamas’ war against Israel to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, with the terrorist organization playing the role of the beleaguered Jews and the Israelis cast as the new Nazis. Massad also has taken part in anti-Israel activism on and off campus. In a 2015 talk at Cornell, for example, he advised students on how best to demonize Israel, suggesting that with Europeans, Israel should be accused of “colonialism,” while in America what worked best was accusing Israel of racism. Massad frequently shows up at anti-Israel rallies to offer his support and advice. Should he be given tens, or even hundreds of thousands of federal dollars, to support his “scholarly research”?
Though not mentioned by name in the letter sent by Senators Blackburn and Lummis, another Columbia professor supported by federal funds is Hamid Dabashi, who has spent the last two decades making incendiary comments about Israelis and Jews. “Rich and powerful” Zionists, he claimed in a 2018 Facebook post (now deleted), “controlled the American government.” He repeated this antisemitic conspiracy theory about the all-powerful Jews, in several other social media posts; when they were reported on, he deleted them. He has compared Gaza to Auschwitz, and Israelis to Nazis — a comparison he makes frequently. and when various media outlets reported on these posts, Dabashi scrubbed them. Like Massad, Dabashi is also active in anti-Israel campus activities, including moderating events by Students for Justice in Palestine, a group the university has since suspended for inciting violence against Jewish students.
The Middle East Institute at Columbia hired a new faculty member this year: Mohamed Abdu. In January, before he was hired, Abdu gave an interview to a socialist podcast and declared his support for Hamas. He later helped organize a student protest to disrupt a talk by Hilary Clinton. And lest anyone have any doubts about his sympathies, he went on Facebook to set the record straight. “Yes, I’m with the muqawamah (the resistance), be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad,” he wrote in a post four days after Hamas attacked Israel, rejecting the “false reports accusing Arabs and Muslims of decapitating the heads of children and being rapists.” Abdu’s statements, it should be repeated, were all publicly known and reported before Columbia decided to hire him.
Should there not be a policy at the Department of Education that prohibits providing federal funds to individuals who endorse in any way a group designated as a terrorist organization by the American government? Shouldn’t federal funds be cut off, as well, from those who inculcate hatred of our most loyal ally, Israel, and its people? Isn’t it time for a complete audit of all the recipients of the National Resource Centers and Foreign Language Area Studies grants provided by the Department of Education, to make sure that none of that money goes to the likes of Joseph Massad, Mohamed Abdu, and Hamid Dabashi, enthusiasts for Hamas?
Just think about what happened to Socraties when he was found Guilty of Sedition we have many Liberal Collage Professors and Administor’s who should be drinking their Cup of Hemlock
Gather those profs all together into two loads.
…..for the gas chamber.
We are living in a world obsessed with a dark, evil, idealized figure, Mohammad, and the ongoing hatred fomented by his supporters and furthered on college campuses.
At the level of college professor, the standards must be inclusive of divergent points of view not only expressed by students but also acknowledged in their works and respected in their grades.
These are not college educators but Marxist re-education camps using religion. Frankly, they DO NOT BELONG in the roles of professors here as their racist, bigoted, violent and blatant disregard for the terms and conditions of their employment and their egregious violations of Federal laws warrant their immediate removals and they should not be allowed to teach on any other campus, college level or elsewhere here within the US.
We have freedoms here that are in direct opposition with the totalitarian missives inherent in both the Koran and other Islamic texts.
Let these ministers of evil be permanently castigated and rhetorically neutered…surely they can find cheering masses among the violent, uneducated hate-mongering in other countries.
We don’t want them as educators here and we welcome their deportations for sedition against our country and Constitution.
I’m not a US citizen, but if I were, I’d want there to be a standardised job description for university educators, with funding made conditional on fulfilment of its requirements.
I am happy that competent people in our govt are presenting the question!!