FrontPageMagazine.com
March 31, 2005
Those of us who watch Middle East studies at Columbia University differ
as to which professor of that lot is the most egregious. Joseph Massad,
with his malign theories and intemperate extremism? Rashid Khalidi, with
his roots as a PLO flak, his funny-money chair, his strange ideas, and
his false gravitas? No, my favorite is Hamid Dabashi, that paragon of purple
prose, male hysteria, and – now we learn – trouble telling the truth about
his own biography.
This news comes from the "Columbians for Academic Freedom" website,
where a student named Aharon posted an item titled "Press Rules." In it,
he notes that Dabashi told a radio interviewer on March 6, 2005, that he
"stopped speaking publicly because of a rash of threatening phone calls
that go way beyond academic arguments." Then Dabashi played one of those
allegedly threatening calls:
Mr. Dabashi, I read about you in today's New York Post. You stinking
terrorist Muslim pig. I hope the CIA is studying you so it can kick you
out of this country back to some filthy Arab country where you belong,
you terrorist bastard.
But Dabashi also wrote an article for the Times Higher Education Supplement
on October 18, 2002, in which he recounted what happened in June 2002 (after
I co-authored an article that mentioned him) – namely someone leaving the
identical message:
Hey, Mr Dabashi, I read about you in today's New York Post. You stinking,
terrorist Muslim pig. I hope the CIA is studying you so we can kick you
out of this country back to some filthy Arab country where you belong.
You terrorist bastard.
This double use of the same call, years apart, spurs several thoughts:
(1) It confirms my doubts about the onslaught of threatening calls he supposedly
received due to my critique. The call he received is indeed vile and inexcusable,
but it is not a threat. (Meaning, law enforcement would not find it actionable.)
(2) The recycling of this call years apart confirms how few calls he
received – or why else would Dabashi keep coming back to the same old one?
(3) Dabashi falsely presented a call from 2002 as though it happened
in 2005.
(4) His claim in the March 6, 2005, radio interview that he "has stopped
speaking publicly" because of threatening phone calls is untrue. (Earlier,
by the way, he made the same point less strongly, telling the New York
Times in January 2005 only that he "has canceled several appearances.")
As Aharon writes, that telephone message in June 2002 "certainly did not
lead to him ending his public speaking - I've heard him myself since Summer
2002." A little research turns up plenty of instances of his public speaking.
Here are four examples, just from the beginning of 2003 and only in New
York City:
· January 24, 2003 – Dabashi organized and gave an opening night
speech at a Palestinian Film Festival.
· February 15, 2003 – Dabashi spoke to the "Campus Anti-War
Network Benefit" at Pier Sixty. A picture of him at this event includes
a caption that says he "brought the house down with his indictment of the
Bush administration" (and also mentions Campus Watch and myself).
· March 26, 2003 – Dabashi addressed "an antiwar teach-in" that
attracted an audience of 3,000.
· April 2, 2003 – Dabashi took part in a panel at the Asia Society
sponsored by the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy.
(5) Dabashi's inability to get the facts of his own life correctly emulates
his mentor, Edward Said, who famously lied about his childhood, as Justus
Weiner so remarkably exposed in a September 1999 article, "'My Beautiful
Old House' and Other Fabrications of Edward Said."
In yet another way, then, Hamid Dabashi brings discredit to his department,
his university, and his field of study.
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