Dear John,
Imagine a major academic conference, with hundreds of students, professors and administrators present, where a Palestinian rapper, Tamer Nafar, is asked to entertain the audience and declares, “Go that anti-Semitic”, (sic), to which the audience offers encouraging laughter, and then he adds, “Let’s try it together because I need your help. I cannot be anti-Semitic alone.”
This actually happened at the University of North Carolina, (UNC) Chapel Hill in a joint event sponsored by University of North Carolina and Duke’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program Studies Program entitled: “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities.”
All of this is being brought to you at taxpayers’ expense. By a program entitled Title VI of the Higher Education Act. (HEA).
Title VI of the Higher Education Act came about during the height of the Cold War, when folks in Washington realized that Americans students were ill-equipped to fight the Soviet threat because they were woefully ignorant of foreign languages and cultures.
They therefore appropriated sums of money to establish regional studies centers, including Soviet Studies, Asian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, etc. so that we would have a pool of graduates who could well represent America’s national security or commercial interests.
It is within our Middle Eastern Studies Departments that we encounter the biggest problem, today.
What happened at the University of North Carolina was so outrageous it caught the attention of a US Congressman, who wrote a letter to Seretary of Education, Betsy Devos, which triggered an investigation.
But every day there are thousands of small assaults being made against the State of Israel and the United States in classrooms throughout the country.
Most of these professors, who are funded by Title VI, might well carry with them the thin veneer of scholarship and of academic discourse. Yet, when you scratch that veneer, most of their research, writing and instruction have devolved into one-sided, decidedly anti-American, post-Colonial, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda masquerading as scholarship.
This amounts to nothing more than the paltry substitute for a real, solid education.
Under the guise of scholarship, one racist, anti-American, anti-Semitic professor quotes and footnotes another and a virtual cannon of “pseudo scholarship” that is based on the ancient, but always mutating virus of anti-Semitism, and passed down for generations.
And what is even more pernicious is that in order to get the funding, these highly biased professors have to conduct teacher training workshops of teachers for kindergarten through 12th grade. What they generally use for their curriculum guide is a highly biased, one-sided book entitled, “The Arab World Studies Notebook” which is produced by the Middle East Policy Council, which receives its funding through Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi oil conglomerate, Aramco.
Within the curriculum guide, entire chapters are devoted to teaching Islam in the classroom, and pro-Palestinian poems and essays meant to engender hatred of Israel and Jews are throughout the chapter labeled “Palestine.”
We, at EMET, believe that this amounts to nothing more than “trickle down propaganda” that infects the hearts and minds of America’s most vulnerable and impressionable young students.
What children learn in the classroom at an early age effects their minds for years, and today’s students become tomorrow’s policymakers and though-leaders.
This has been going on for decades.
EMET is the only organization that has been constantly working on this.
In 2008, we successfully worked with Congress to pass an amendment to the law which appropriates the funding to the universities for Title VI of HEA that says that as long as the universities are getting this money at the taxpayers’ expense, there has got to be “a diversity of perspectives” and a wide range of viewpoints.”
Under the Obama administration, EMET assembled a huge group of pro-Israel organizations and met with the Department of Education, (DoE), who is in charge of dispersing these funds to the universities, twice.
The first time we met, July 31, 2014, they feigned ignorance of our amendments to the law, and told us that “we have our agency regulations.” I then asked, “I must be very ignorant but do agency regulations tremor the federal law?” To which they had to respond that the federal law does supersede agency guidelines.
And the second time we met with them, October 22, 2014, after they had had a chance to read the law, they offered the following flimsy excuse, "When we read the law, asking for a 'diversity of perspectives', we felt that some of the readers of the grant applications should be white, some black, some old, some white." To which I had to respond that "It is obvious, when reading the law, that the legislative intent was to have a 'diversity of perspectives' and 'wide range of viewpoints with the classroom.'"
We also have met twice with the Department of Education under President Trump, on March 22, 2018 and on November 8, 2018.
When we described what was going on to the official that handles this issue for the DoE, he expressed genuine concern about the situation. So much so, that he decided that from now on, in order to get the funding, the universities were going to have to write an essay regarding what they do to promote “a diversity of perspectives” and a “wide range of viewpoints.”
It is interesting to note that the Department of Education never once mentioned the word, “Israel”, in the request for the essay.
Yet every single university that applied for the funding to the Department of Education wrote in their essays how they are promoting an exchange of professors with Israel, or a junior year abroad with an Israeli university.
Why is this?
Obviously, because they realize where their biases lie.
Yet, out of the 16 universities which were awarded grants for their Departments of Middle East Studies, fully half of the Department Chairs, who signed these essays expressed support for an academic boycott of Israel.
Obviously, therefore, they are receiving American taxpayers’ dollars under fraudulent terms.
And, I ask you: Can there possibly be a greater assault on academic freedom than a boycott of a nation that is supposed to be part of the purview of study for a student? What about the academic freedom of the student, to explore one nation under that university's regional purview?
EMET is not done in fighting the battle of ideas, however.
Just today, I had a meeting with a staffer for a member of Congress who is trying to propose further amendments to the law to make sure that there are some safeguards in place here.
These issues are critical to the survival, not only of Israel, but to Western civilization as we know it. It is not only Israel that is being vilified by these university professors, but the United States.
Please understand that during the Weimar Republic, before the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the very first institutions that embraced Nazism were the universities.
As the philosopher, Henreich Heine once said, “Never underestimate the power of ideas. Philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study could destroy a civilization.”
We will never stop fighting the battle of ideas. For the United States, for Israel, and for Western civilization as we know it.
But we cannot do this alone.
EMET needs your support to continue on this fight.
At this time, when Jews all over the world are about to sit down and celebrate Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, we ask that you please support EMET so we can continue this incredibly important fight.
Support for Israel will not continue in this country, as long as American students keep receiving such a one-sided, biased education.
Please give to us as generously as you can. For the sake of Israel, the United States, and Western civilization as we know it.
Thank you very much.
Invest in EMET. Invest in the Truth.
And Warmest Wishes to You and all of Your Loved Ones for a Shana Tova a Happy New Year,
Sarah N. Stern
Founder and President
The Endowment for Middle East Truth, (EMET)
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For those wishing to donate by check, please make checks payable to EMET and send to:
EMET
P.O. Box 66366
Washington, D.C. 20035
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