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  • Robert Williams: Iran's New Proxy: American Universities
  • Amir Taheri: Western Universities: A Double Invasion

Iran's New Proxy: American Universities

by Robert Williams  •  May 19, 2024 at 5:00 am

  • "We are watching the demonstrations, and we like what we see, but it should not end with this.... These protestors are our people and will support Iran in an Iran-U.S. confrontation; Iran can repeat in the U.S. what it did in Lebanon but on a grander scale because the 'Hizbullah -style' groups in the U.S. are 'much larger' than in Lebanon.... America is the Great Satan and our enemy, but we have hope in these areas." — Foad Izadi, Teheran University, who studied at University of Houston and Louisiana State University, Ofogh TV (Iran), April 26, 2024.

  • [Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim] Qassem – who appeared almost taken aback at the eagerness of students on US campuses to join Hamas in its call for the genocide of Jews – was hopeful about the ability of America's students to help Hezbollah destroy Israel by turning the U.S. against its ally.

  • "We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the [Alavi] foundation," Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, November 22, 2009.

  • The Alavi Foundation, according to its website, has indeed funded many of the universities where protests were taking place. The universities include those of the Ivy league, such as Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, as well as UCLA and many others.

  • In 2016, Harvard employed Ali Akbar Alikhani – who had warned about "the Jewish threat" -- from Tehran University's Faculty of World Studies, which is reportedly closely tied to the Iranian ruling regime, as a visiting scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern studies....

  • Hooshang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council (AIC), has admitted that the lobbying organization was created by the Islamic Republic of Iran to work for its interests in the US. Amirahmadi has had and continues to enjoy a successful academic career at Rutgers University....

  • Some faculty members at Rutgers recently called for the genocide of Jews.

  • In addition, at least five US universities -- Virginia Tech University, the University of Washington, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette -- have allegedly been cooperating with Iranian entities that are sanctioned by the US and the European Union, including the Iranian Aerospace Research Institute, Iran University of Science and Technology, and the Sharif University of Technology.

  • Iran can only be rejoicing at the moral and educational collapse they have helped create on American university campuses, which are grooming America's future teachers, judges and political leaders. Now, however, these campuses appear to be incubating America's future terrorists and creating a national security threat.

Iran can only be rejoicing at the moral and educational collapse they have helped create on American university campuses, which are grooming America's future teachers, judges and political leaders. Now, however, these campuses appear to be incubating America's future terrorists and creating a national security threat. Pictured: Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protesters outside of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

"Iran, you make us proud" and "Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around," were among the chants by the pro-Hamas college students and the paid activists who organized them on U.S. campuses. They declared a "student intifada," conducted a Hamas-inspired "Day of Rage," bowed down to Allah and called for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."

Meanwhile, Iran and the mouthpieces of its Islamist regime were paying extremely close attention. According to Tehran University Professor Foad Izadi, who is American-educated and considered one of Iran's main experts on the U.S. and a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime:

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Western Universities: A Double Invasion

by Amir Taheri  •  May 19, 2024 at 4:00 am

  • They introduce themselves as university students, young scholars who are supposedly training to become the nation's political guides and mentors.

  • However, you soon found out that their understanding of political issues, including the current war in Gaza, is a reflection more of street politics than academic methods. In other words, the street, and its politique de la rue in French, have invaded the university or at least part of it that wears the label of "humanities", a witches' brew of once academic subjects corrupted by ideology.

  • The crisis in Western universities is further complicated by the advent of wokeism, a corrupted secular version of the seminarian's sympathy for the innocent scapegoat, a sympathy extended to all real or imagined victims of injustice. While the seminary is chiefly interested in the text, faculty ought to be equally interested in the context. In many "humanities" departments in Western universities, however, the text comes from propagandist pamphlets written by polemicist professors, while the context is regarded as a mere diversion from the truth.

  • Shakespeare said it best: "Now confusion has made its masterpiece!"

The street's way of doing politics, tagging slogans on the walls, distributing leaflets, burning tires and garbage dumpster, and setting flags and effigies of figures you don't like on fire has replaced the traditional, admittedly tiresome, debates, discussions, essay writings, and what in the 1960s protests were called "teach-ins". Pictured: Anti-Israel protesters in Paris on May 11, 2024. (Photo by Anna Kurth/AFP via Getty Images)

If you visit Paris these days, you may run into solemn-looking youths distributing a tract that's says: "Palestine is fighting for all of us!" or tagging this message on the walls: "Stop Genocide in Palestine!"

They introduce themselves as university students, young scholars who are supposedly training to become the nation's political guides and mentors.

However, you soon found out that their understanding of political issues, including the current war in Gaza, is a reflection more of street politics than academic methods. In other words, the street, and its politique de la rue in French, have invaded the university or at least part of it that wears the label of "humanities", a witches' brew of once academic subjects corrupted by ideology.

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