But wait, there’s more
T oday I continue my series investigating the taxpayer-funded fiasco at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Saudi-autocrat-denominated Middle Eastern studies institute.
When I first exposed the King Fahd indoctrination center’s myopic focus on Arab and Muslim aspects of the Middle East at the expense of the region’s deep Jewish and Christian history, Mohja Kahf, a professor there, responded here—as well as by emailing a similar jeremiad to my school’s administrators.
As for the latter, I can only surmise as to Kahf’s motivations. But I can happily report that no attempts to stifle my free speech and academic freedom on this issue occurred at my institution. In today’s academic environment of intellectual intimidation—particularly of those having yet to attend wokester re-education camp—such apt-administrative forbearance deserves sound recognition, which I gladly provide.
In previous columns, I addressed how Kahf and two of her fellow Fahdians at the Fayetteville flagship canceled feminist scholar Phyllis Chesler’s appearance at an Arkansas conference because they claimed Chesler’s criticism of Islamic honor killings “promote[d] bigotry.” Bigotry against murderers, I suggested with all due ridicule.
Kahf’s retort was that I “might have learned that as responsible educators [she and two of her colleagues] had good cause for concern about funding a speaker lacking qualifications in the field she was to address. And that any program’s event is expected to utilize the expertise of its faculty; a forum about Jim Crow laws, for example, would not be expected to invite a segregationist for counter-balance.”
Unfortunately for Kahf, however, I know of no pedagogy supporting her farcical assertion that Chesler—a highly credentialed progressive feminist who supports Israel’s right to exist—shares identity with vile racists. But as dreadful as Kahf’s comments concerning Chesler were, they foreshadowed far worse.
When I made a Freedom of Information Act request of Fayetteville’s Fahdian fortress, the responsive records showed that Kahf proudly posted on her university office door a race-baiting false analogy reflecting the foulest invectives hurled against Israelis. And she did so just three weeks after Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200, raped an unknown number of women, and kidnapped almost 240 civilians.
Kahf plastered to her office door a comic strip that reads, “[why is it that] [e]very time you hear this: If we include a Palestinian speaker, then we have to include the Israeli point of view for balance; and yet you rarely hear this … If we invite an African American speaker, then we have to include the KKK point of view for balance[?]”
There’s more. After Kahf proclaimed Israelis equivalent to awful racists, she emailed her department chair: “Sending this image [of the office door], taken this afternoon right after I put up the poster [with the cartoon equating Israel with the KKK], to make a record of it. (In the past, I have had items I posted on my door defaced; am keeping an eye out.)”
Yeah, that’s the real concern three weeks after the Palestinian-terrorist pogrom of Jews— whether someone would deface her precious poster equating Israelis with Klansmen. Way to read the room.
Kahf’s email also contains a “land acknowledgment” proclaiming: “Without restoring the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples, including Palestinians, we cannot achieve collective liberation.” Still think your kids aren’t being taught Marxism? And if you’re searching for indigenous peoples—Jews preceded Palestinians in the Levante by two millennia.
There’s even more. Kahf also prominently presented on her door—in English and Arabic—the mantra promoting the destruction of Israel: “Palestine, from the river to the sea.” (The Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea mark the borders of Israel.) National Public Radio reported: “The phrase [Palestine, from the river to the sea] has become especially politically charged in the days since the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed 1,400 people in Israel. Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Congress have condemned the slogan, with one congressman referring to it as a ‘thinly veiled call for the genocide of millions of Jews in Israel.’”
My FOIA request also produced a recent email from a UA Fayetteville professor who wrote the interim dean of UA Fayetteville’s Fulbright College, Kathryn Sloan, about “the concern [he] expressed six years ago as [he] departed [the Fahd Center], which was that [the center] had an antisemitic overtone in many communities throughout the state.”
Sloan responded: “Are you saying that [the Fahd Center] is antisemitic or it has the perception because of its founding benefactor and namesake?”
The faculty member replied: “I don’t think the [Fahd Center] is antisemitic, but I’ve been told by members of the Jewish community that such a perception has existed historically. I don’t know if that perception was related to the benefactor [Saudi King Fahd] or the program itself at a given time.”
Sloan was far from finished:
■ She emailed Kahf: “Thank you for your Op-Ed piece to correct the errors spewed by Steinbuch.”
■ About Kahf’s hectoring email to my school’s administrators, Sloan wrote, “Love it!”
■ And about me, Sloan unsolicitedly offered: “He is known to be quite . . . [fill in the blank].” (Ellipses and bracketed material all present in the original.)
I’ll accept Sloan’s invitation to complete her Mad Libs description of me. How about “spot on,” “insightful,” or “willing to call out misdeeds”?
Three finalists are vying for the deanship Sloan temporarily holds. Sloan isn’t one of them. Let’s hope the position is filled quickly.
This is your right to know.