Another McCarthyite Smear Job: A Top Middle East Scholar, Juan Cole, is Falsely Accused of Being "ANTI-SEMITIC" to Stop Yale From Hiring Him

Right-wing columnist John Fund has launched a disingenuous diatribe against one of the USA's top Middle East scholars, U. Michigan History Professor Juan Cole, in his 4-24-06 Opinion Journal essay, "Cole Fire: Yale Is Set To Ditch Taliban Man And Hire A Notorious Anti-Semite." [1] Note that his harsh title employs the no-holds-barred term "notorious anti-Semite." Far from being true, this defamatory attack merely illustrates that the American mainstream media's right-wing fanatics will trundle out the accusation of "anti-Semitism" to smear anyone who dares to disagree with Israel or its pro-Israel lobby. [2]

Not surprisingly, Mr. Fund uses the McCarthyite tactic of guilt by association to fabricate his otherwise-nonexistent case against Juan Cole. For instance, he accuses Professor Cole of having blogged his support for a supposedly "anti-Semitic" Harvard study, "The Israel Lobby And U.S. Foreign Policy," by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. [3] However, Fund's argument illustrates the classic error in logical reasoning that is known as an "ipse dixit": the mere allegation that something is true doesn't make it true. Where's the probative evidence?

Hence, when Fund argues that two distinguished scholars from ethnically-Hebrew backgrounds drew conclusions that are somehow "anti-Semitic," that allegation doesn't make it true. Where's the evidence? And what about the contrary evidence? So many scholars and pundits have come forth to defend the level-headed objectivity of the Mearsheimer-Walt study that his "anti-Semitism" allegation altogether lacks credibility. [4]

Furthermore, Fund's harshly-worded title reveals his most obvious motive for the scurrilous attack - he hopes to intimidate Yale into revoking its offer to Juan Cole. Fund alleges that Professor Cole is unqualified because his academic expertise is limited to the history of the nineteenth-century Middle East. However, that claim is belied by the fact that a great university like Yale: (a) offered him a faculty position: (b) certainly is not known for extending offers to unqualified academic slouches; and (c) doesn't consult nasty hatchet pieces by right-wing journalistic hacks to determine who it should hire.

Finally, we can infer Fund's underlying strategic motive for this unwarranted attack, and it is even more disturbing. The USA's right-wing fanatics have successfully driven the top Middle East experts out of the State Department and replaced them with neocon ideologues, so their next goal is to drive the top Middle East experts out of academia, thereby adding academic freedom to the other freedoms - like speech and press - that they're willing to destroy to create a neofascist National-Security Fortress America.

The fanatical American Right has used sleazy McCarthyite intimidation tactics to destroy the careers of far too many people, including their latest smear job on Profs. Cole, Mearsheimer and Walt. The pro-Israel lobby's definition of "anti-Semitism" has become so overbroad that they've finally transformed it into meaningless nonsense. Indeed, they wield that defamatory term like a blunt instrument with which cudgel anyone who disagrees into fearful submission. It's high time for every American - regardless of one's religion or ethnicity - to start resisting these destructive intimidation tactics by issuing our own cease-and-desist order: "ENOUGH!"
*
[See link for foot and end notes]