US vs. Europe

[MJ]

I came occross the following article in the last weekend's issue of Financial Times. I think this material is worth being introduced in the Forum.

 

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FRONT PAGE - WEEKEND FT: Rowing alone By John Lloyd

Financial Times; Aug 03, 2002

 

The respect Americans once accorded to Europeans' culture, wisdom and manners has not just disappeared, it has turned into an aggressive contempt. The US, at least at the elite level, and perhaps more widely, has become seized by the idea that we Europeans are weak, whingeing and hopeless; ungrateful, mean and ignorant; guilty, cynical and exhausted. And anti-semitic. Especially anti-semitic.

American Jews are numerous among neo-conservative intellectuals and commentators, and much of the belief that Europe is a nest of Jew baiters does come from the right. In one comment (among many), the columnist George Will wrote in the Washington Post that Europe "offers anti-semitism without the Jews". He continued: "Anti-semitism is a stronger force in world affairs than it has been since it went into a remarkably brief eclipse after the liberation of the Nazi extermination camps. Today, many people say that the Arabs and their European echoes would be mollified if Israel were to change its behaviour. People who say that do not understand the centrality of anti-semitism in the current crisis. The crrsrs has become the second - and final? - phase of the struggle for a final solution to the Jewish question."

Of course, not all Jews believe that. The liberal literary critic, Leon Wieseltier, writing in the New Republic, chided the more hysterical commentators for believing as one had said he did that loudspeakers could summon Jews to Times Square for transportation. This was nonsense, he wrote. America was the only place, apart from Israel, that Jews could call home. But this commonensical judgment was, of course, about America. No sensible Jew would choose Europe as a dwelling place. "European nationalism," he wrote, "includes no conception of the multi-ethnic state. European culture is permeated with contempt for otherness."

Even more shocking was the enrolment in the anti-European stakes of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the best-known US commentator on foreign affairs inside and outside his own country, whose book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, had posited a "social democratic internationalism" as a way of coping with the strains of globalisation - one agreeable to many Europeans.

But, in a column in May, Friedman wrote that the anti-semitism coming out of Europe suggests Europeans want a lot more than an end to the Israeli occupation. They want Ariel Sharon to commit a massacre against the Palestinians, or they want to describe what he did in Jenin as a massacre, so that the Europeans can finally get the guilt of the Holocaust off their backs and be able to shout: "Look at these Jews, they're worse than we are!" Neither Will nor Wieseltier offer any evidence of this anti-Jew mania: it seems to have passed into the realm of the obvious. For his evidence, Friedman says he had shared a conference platform with a French reporter, Eric Rouleau, who said that what the Israelis did in Jenin (60 bodies recovered) was worse than what the French did in Algeria (1m killed). That was indeed one foul remark: but it is not necessarily anti-semitic as opposed to anti-Israeli: to adduce an addled French journalist as proof of European Jew-hatred is heroic in its assumptions.

I found the anti-semitic charge so horrifying that I asked everyone I met if it was serious. Although some were embarrassed, they usually said "yes, they thought there was something to it". At a dinner organised by the German Marshall Fund of the US, a think-tank specialising in US-German relations and debate, a collection of policy people and commentators assembled to talk about "anti-European-ness" were, in the main, sceptical of my protests. I said the charge was based on a few instances of intellectual baseness in the UK, on the Oxford don Tom Paulin calling for Israeli settlers to be killed; the firing by Professor Mona Baker of two Jewish translators from the specialist translation magazine she owns; the boycotts on Israeli academia demanded by groups of academics and by the Association of University Teachers and on the - anti-semitism of radical Muslims, mainly in France.

Wendy Sherman, of the Albright Group, the consultancy created by the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, asked me why I had brought the subject up. "As a person of Jewish background," she said, "I found it odd that you should mention this first."

"Because I found it so unfair," I said. Later, another member of the group told me that a senior EU official had said to him: "We know why the US supports Israel so much: it's because of the power of the Jews there."

Many Europeans do ascribe the pro-Israeli bias of US administrations to the power and wealth of the Jewish lobby. Walter Russell Mead, a senior scholar at the Council for Foreign Relations in New York and author of a scathing attack on European valour in April's edition of Atlantic Monthly ("appeasement is Europe's second nature"), told me: "The Europeans saying that the Jewish lobby is so powerful is very like the anti-semitic argument that the Jews are a conspiracy. The lobby plays a role but it's not a huge one. Much more powerful than the Jewish lobby is the fact that this is a Christian country. Jews going back to

Palestine is part of God's plan."

In Washington, William Kristol, a former foreign policy aide to the Bush Snr presidency and editor of the Weekly Standard, said: "We are sympathetic to Israel generally because they seem so much like us. They take religion seriously. They are willing to fight their enemies. They are patriotic and proud of their state. They are a settler society with a dangerous frontier." I asked Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the most prestigious of America's many foreign policy journals, why this was happening.

He said: "It's clear that there is an anti-Israeli bias in Europe. I don't think it's necessarily anti-semitic. Anti-semitism is a very serious charge. The Israelis believe that the Europeans would not lift too much of a finger to help them. If they had to rely on the Europeans to protect them they wouldn't be around today."

As for the broader Diaspora, he said that "many Jews feel that the Europeans did little to save them during the Holocaust". I said this confused anti-semitism with lack of courage and, in most instances, courage to risk the death mandated by the Nazis for aiding Jews. He said he was not sure. Europe simply fails to empathise with the Israeli plight, It might be atoning for its colonial past, and so shows more sympathy to the Palestinians."

The view that Europe is atoning for its former colonies is part of the charge sheet of many of those who feel contempt for Europe. Mead, in his Atlantic Monthly piece, writes that "when the Europeans pulled out [of their colonies] they left huge messes and deep hatreds behind them: India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, Tutsi and Hutu. In business, academics, politics and military matters, US links with the developing world today generally match anything Europe has to offer."

Mead's determination to assert that in no respect can Europe offer anything better, or wiser, or deeper than the US is echoed elsewhere including among those who are not to the right. One of the main themes in US discussion is that the US is dominant everywhere, and for as near to forever as is politically thinkable. "The US," write the Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and William

Wohlforth in the lead essay in the current Foreign Affairs, "has no rival in any critical dimension of power. There has never been a system of sovereign states that contamed one state with this degree of dominance."

But, it is not just that the US is militarily, economically, culturally and technologically hegemonic: it is also that, because of that dominance, its leaders, diplomats and soldiers regard the world from the point of view of the hub on a wheel, looking down its spokes. At the end of one of these spokes is Europe - fractious at times, but united, peaceful and prosperous. Bosnia apart, Americans are unlikely to be at hazard there now.

So those who tend US foreign and security policy Cohn Powell at the State Department, Condoleezza Rice at the National Security Council, President George W. Bush himself are preoccupied with the other spokes. European leaders will still be closer to them in tradition and philosophy. But the US does not routinely route its policies for the more turbulent countries and regions at the end of the other spokes in the wheel - the Middle East, China, Russia, India and Pakistan, Latin America through Europeans to get their advice and assistance. Hegemons are hegemonic.

At the German Marshall Fund discussion, the Washington Post columnist Stephen Mallaby said that "the policy gridlock now is such that US leaders spend all of their time getting a domestic consensus. The effort to seek European opinions is just too much".

The American-European controversy has been described by the policy analyst Robert Kagan in an essay, Power and Weakness, which is seen in Europe and in the US as a summation of the present state of affairs. Kagan does not dwell on any real or assumed European characteristics: he sees present attitudes as a product of recent events. Both the "transatlantic power gap" and the "broad ideological gap" are products of widely differing experiences and differing responses to these experiences. Europeans have become risk averse, pacific, multilateral. Americans have not. "American military power has produced a propensity to use that strength. Europe's military weakness has produced a perfectly understandable aversion to the exercise of military power," he said.

Further, argues Kagan, the European reliance on the US's provision of security means that threats - such as that of Hussein's Iraq - actually are greater for the US than for Europe. "In the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East and in most other regions of the world (including Europe) the US plays the role of ultimate enforcer - it is precisely America's great power that makes it the primary target, and often the only target. Europeans are understandably content that it remain so."

This is a way of saying that Europeans are strategic couch potatoes: a view that not all European leaders would reject, especially those frustrated by European reluctance to increase military expenditure and reorganise diverse forces. But is it reflected in the US administration? Or is this - as some argue - merely a squall in the policy and commenting communities, the chattering classes, with little or no political weight?

It is not a mere squall. Not only is the administration concerned about European weakness and angered by European complaints, it has quite deep divisions on how to react and bow to plan. Richard Haass, head of policy planning at the State Department, seen as the most "liberal" or pro-European voice, says that "there's very little we can do in the world unilaterally. There's almost nothing we can do better unilaterally. We may disagree on particulars - on climate warming, the International Criminal Court, and so on. In many instances, when there is a real crisis in the world, the first thing the president's staff will do is to get a list of those whom the president should call in Europe."

When in Washington, I attended an event at which a foreign policy official was speaking off the record to a group of mostly business people. Nothing that was said directly contradicted what Haass told me: indeed, the official stressed bow moving were events held in Europe immediately after September 11, such as the mass march in support of the US in Germany and the playing of the US national anthem at the last night of the Proms in London. But the tone was different: it was more sceptical of European intentions, more critical of European actions.

"We've drawn the straw of being the guardian of global security - unwillingly," said the official. So that when we talk about Iran and Iraq - you would have thought the Euro countries would have said - how dangerous are these states? Not to have worried so much about what we are going to do. Europe should feel threatened. I read the cables every day and Europe is threatened. This is an attack on a civilisation. Bigger than anything we have faced of this kind before. It could be London or Paris or Rome. There are days when I sit in my office and I have a parade of foreign visitors. Each one has a problem for the US to solve. And I say to myself at the end of it - how can we take on all of this? That's why we need friends and partners, to share the burdens. There are big historical possibilities now and we all need to realise them. Sometimes, when you're dealing with Russians, you get the impression that they still have a habit of global thinking which the Europeans have lost - and it makes them easier to deal with.

"If we can't find a way to mobilise the countries that have benefited from neo-liberal values; if we can't co-operate, then we won't succeed. Europeans are our partners in this - our strongest partners. We've just got to pull together. We can't do it alone."

But pulling together has meant, and still means, doing it with the US hand on the tiller. The US has provided security for its allies for nearly six decades. It has done so, at root, because it has defined its national interest broadly, as coterminous with the preservation of democratic states, and because it did not want another (to the Soviet Union) strategic rival, even a friendly one. Now it has no rivals, it is tempting for it to conclude that this is the best of all possible worlds. Power may have a contempt for weakness, but it also has a fear of growing power.

The Europeans closest to the US administration believe there is a real, lasting problem here. I told Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to Washington (andformer principal aide to foreign minister Joschka Fischer), that Haass had said the US wanted a strong Europe playing an active role in the world, sharing the US's burdens. "Richard believes that," said Ischinger. "But they all don't. Americans think about how to implement their foreign policy objectives with the confidence of a state which can do it. Let's face it: our capabilities don't allow us to think seriously about strategic issues. But when they talk about wanting a stronger Europe, do they really mean it? Many on the conservative side are not in favour of that."

Europeans worry about the effects of power they call it American unilateralism. "Engaging in multilateral negotiation," Ischinger said in a speech in Washington in May, "does not seem to be a natural reflex for, the one remaining superpower which is a continent in itself. But is 19th century realpolitik an alternative?"

The answer to the ambassador's rhetorical question is, for the moment, yes. It means that Europeans are now in the uncomfortable position of being thought about, by a large part of the US elite, in the dismissive, contemptuous or condescending way in which the British used to think about the rest of the world - including the rest of Europe - when they were top dogs. That was pretty bad. So is this.

[MJ]

I think this one is worthwhile, too.

__________________________________________________

 

Europe Has One Voice. And Another and Another

NY Times

September 22, 2002

By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH

OXFORD, England

 

WHAT is Europe’s position on Iraq? The answer is:

A)nobody knows, and

there isn’t one.

 

“Unfair!” the leaders of the European Union will cry. Hasn’t the European Union’s Mr. Foreign Policy, Javier Solana, just been in Washington to coordinate Europe’s position with the vice president and the national security adviser? Hasn’t the union’s external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, spoken eloquently on the subject? Didn’t the union’s foreign ministers, meeting three weeks ago in Hamlet’s town of Elsinore, make a statement calling for United Nations inspectors to be allowed back in?

Yes. But who is listening? Meanwhile, the larger countries of Europe all want to speak for themselves.

France’s president, Jacques Chirac, has called for a United Nations ultimatum to Iraq, but in a form that dismays the Bush administration. It would omit authorization of the use of force, reserving that question for a second resolution to be considered later. And if Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, wins his election in Germany today, it may partly be because he has taken a position even more distant from America’s: he has told the crowds that he will not “click his heels” to Washington and let peaceloving Germany participate in an American-led war against Iraq. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has been working closely with Washington in preparation for military action against Saddam Hussein.

What we hear are three different voices from the three leading powers of Europe. Many positions, and therefore none. Some Americans may be surprised, since recent commentaries have portrayed an increasingly clear divide between Europe and the United States. Others may think of “Europe” as the nations on the Continent, with Britain as something quite different, but it would be hard to imagine a serious European foreign and security policy without Britain.

In the last decade, the Europeans are supposed to have grown closer and learned from their confusion during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and over Bosnia. The European Community has become a European Union, which claims to have a “Common Foreign and Security Policy,” agreed on by the foreign ministers and heads of government of its 15 member states, and a “High Representative,” Mr. Solana, to carry it out.

Europe, we are assured, is increasingly speaking with one voice.

So why the cacophony? “The European Union is 15 individual states,” Mr. Patten said in an interview. “Foreign policy goes right to the heart of what it means to be a sovereign state. The wonder is that we manage to develop common positions on as many issues as we do.”

There are some solid achievements of European policy. Stabilizing and reconstructing the Balkans is now largely Europe’s work. The world has Mr. Solana and Mr. Patten - and George Robertson of NATO - to thank for the fact that it doesn’t have a crisis in Macedonia as well as in Iraq. Europe also contributes far more aid to poor countries than the United States does.

But when it comes to the prospect of armed confrontation, Europe splits and splutters.

Robert Kagan has argued, in an article in the American journal Policy Review that caused much discussion in Europe this summer, that this Hamlet-like approach reflects a deep transatlantic difference in the attitude to power. Europe, he said, is Kantian, multilateralist, legalistic and driven by economics; America is Hobbesian, unilateralist, realist and driven by national interest. There is some truth in what Mr. Kagan acknowledges to be a deliberate caricature.

EUROPEAN publics have been increasingly reluctant to spend money on the military since the end of the cold war. If you ask what it means to be European today, one of the most prevalent answers still goes something like this: to move beyond the power politics of sovereign, competing, bellicose nation-states that brought Europe to ruins in 1945.

But quite as important is the fact that there really is no single, common European attitude. “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus,” writes Mr. Kagan. But actually, the British are quite martial and the French are quite Martian. Certainly over the period from the end of the Vietnam War until the Sept. 11 attacks, the British have been more ready to see their soldiers come back in body bags than Americans have been. The French still have the remains of a post-revolutionary universalist project, outdone only by the American one.

Britain and France are deeply conscious of being former world powers. Both have their own interests and traditional alignments in many parts of the world, including the Middle East. Both are desperate to keep their places at the top table of world politics. This means articulating, especially for domestic consumption, a distinctively French or British position, but also trying not to lose out with Washington.

Germany is gradually redefining itself as a “normal” nation-state. “Normal” here translates as more like France and Britain. Over Iraq, and in the heat of the election, Chancellor Schröder talked of “a German way” in foreign policy - a phrase that grates on the ears of anyone who recalls the old German Sonderweg, or “special way.” His justice minister even reportedly compared President Bush’s methods to those of Hitler.

Meanwhile, Italy and Spain, whose conservative governments are now reflexively pro-American on many matters, are keen to insist that Europe’s big three is actually a big five.

What’s more, by 2005 the European Union will contain not 15 but probably 25 member states. Most central and east European candidate states are small, but have special interests in two crucial regions: the Balkans and the former Soviet Union. Poland is a big country, the Spain of central Europe, and aspires to make Europe’s big five a big six.

European policy may now be better coordinated, but there will be a lot more to coordinate. For the next few years, at least, the centrifugal and centripetal tendencies will probably balance each other out.

WHAT could bring Europe closer to speaking with one voice? Perhaps a clear and common enemy. After all, the Soviet Union was the great negative external integrator of Western Europe for 40 years. But who is there now? For some Europeans, especially on the left, the lead candidate is now the United States. If you ask “Why do we need a European superpower?” they reply, “to counterbalance the overmighty and cowboy-like U.S.”

This is a real motive. But it comes up against several obstacles. For a start, as we are again seeing over Iraq, Britain will never unambiguously choose Europe against America. Then there are Spain and Italy, at least under their current governments, and pro-American Poland.

In fact, every European country is torn between worry about the United States and fascination with it.

Anyway, what sense does it make to define yourself against the country with which - for all the differences - you have so many values in common? There is a fine dialectical answer: Europe must be strong enough to stand up to America so it can work more closely with America. But that subtle logic seems unlikely to rally and weld together the electorates of 25 very different consumer democracies.

The ever closer cooperation of these old and new democracies has made Europe a better place than it has ever been in its long history - peaceful, increasingly prosperous and free, its countries and regions deeply intermeshed, yet still richly diverse. Today’s Europe is in many ways a super place, but not a superpower.

[bellthecat]

NY Times - that Israel's mouthpiece in America - isn't it?

 

MJ - am I correct in assuming that you are one of the "hairy-chested tub-thumpers"?

[MJ]

The Cat,

 

If I didn't know what a rational, balanced and thinking person you were ( Lord have Mercy on me...), I would have said that your outburst above is equivalent of the last Resort of an Arrogant Scoundrel trying to kill the messenger when he has no arguments against the message, but given that I know you better ... than that, just will correct you by reminding all that NY Times is the mouthpiece of American leftism.

 

Now, this one is more interesting. I am not versed in British (?) slang, and don't know what it means... Am I correct in assuming that over the sudden (?) you have gotten interested in my chest? If so, your courtship tactics leave a great deal to be desired…

[bellthecat]

Well, if your recent NY times postings are typical, and the NY times really IS an example of American leftism, then I can scarcely imagine what a mouthpiece of American rightism would be like!

 

But, seriously, I recall reading somewhere that the NY times (at least I think it was the NY Times!) has considerably altered its editorial stance over the last 12 months.

 

MJ, it's American - though since it probably will now not be reported in the likes of the NY times, you may not have heard of it! I heard the Democrat predecessor of Donald Rumsfeld use it to describe American warmongers and rabble-rousers like Rumsfelt.

 

Steve

[bellthecat]

I was also going to point out that the above, by a NY Times writer, is suspiciously similar the the Turkish propaganda that states that the Armenian Genocide is a fabrication encouraged by western Europe so that they, to reuse Freidman's words, can "get the guilt of the Holocaust off their backs" by showing that Turkey did it first.

 

Steve

[MJ]

You know, Cat, some other time I might have wanted to dissamble you and then assemble back so that it would've reminded a portrate by Picasso - just for fun and not out of importance, but I have had a long day, am tired, and need to catch some rest to be able to function tomorrow.

[MJ]

[bellthecat]

Yes, thumping those tubs all day must be tiring.

[MJ]

Cat,

 

I have a question to you (after an introduction), and I may not sound original since that question has been addressed to you in the past by Boghos, I remember.

 

I have observed you in this forum for quite some time. You have impressive knowledge of certain (at least certain) aspects of history, and I presume of architecture and archeological sciences. Your materials on such subjects have been quite informative.

 

However, I have to admit that with all that, I am really puzzled at your behavior. I have an impression that this forum is sort of a place for you to dump your daily frustrations, to discharge your anger (and you come across as a very angry man). As a rule, you jump in to make some out of line or hateful comment or dump some ideological crap. Don’t you think that it does no service to this forum neither it serves you in any meaningful or positive way? OK, I guess you can discharge for one day, but it doesn’t change your life, right? Next day you are the same angry person...

 

Don’t you think that you could find some better ways to resolve your problems?

[alpha]

This is an interesting topic that in some respect touches upon the points raised by MJ.

 

http://dardz.virtualave.net/29/29_2.htm

[bellthecat]

Poor MJ. Look! It's YOU that you are describing.

[MJ]

Very creative...

[THOTH]

Guys - lets not get into all of this...I think each has made their points concerning the other -

 

(lets look at the bright side shall we?)

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MJ:

Cat,

 

You have impressive knowledge of certain (at least certain) aspects of history, and I presume of architecture and archeological sciences. Your materials on such subjects have been quite informative.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by BelltheCat:

MJ. Look! It's YOU that you are describing

---

And now MJ is commenting in BelltheCat's creativity! I think sometimes we just focus on all the negative stuff! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[alpha]

The fact that NY Times has an Israeli and Jewish bias is undeniable. Even though NY Times has a readership that goes beyond the boundaries of Tri-State area, yet it remains primarily a NYC newspaper. Considering the fact that Jews compose a significant percentage of population it shouldn’t surprise you the Jewish bias of NY Times. Every metropolitan newspaper has a little tilted bias toward an ethnic group that is represented in greater numbers in a given region. Those of you who follow LA Times for many years should have noticed that it has a little Armenian bias. In 92-93 during the peak of Artsax war, while Washington Post was calling the actions advancing Armenian army as “occupation of Azerbaijani lands”, LA Times was interpreting it as “liberating of Armenian territories”. In addition it shouldn’t come to surprise that Jews have a significant role in shaping public opinion in US, by having controlling role in major news organizations and NGOs. That is one of the reasons why Israel gets disproportionately more media coverage. No other country gets as much front-page news coverage as Israel. After all the size of that country is only the size of Maryland. I praise Jewish intellectuals for achieving to such prominent roles that enables them to have a significant impact on shaping public opinion in the only remaining superpower. We, Armenians, have a lot to learn from them.

 

The following article that appeared in today’s NY Times is an interesting perspective on an Israeli bias of the above-mentioned newspaper.

 

Web Site Fuels Debate on Campus Anti-Semitism

By TAMAR LEWIN

 

Web site started last week by a pro-Israel research and policy group, citing eight professors and 14 universities for their views on Palestinian rights or political Islam, has opened a new chapter in a growing debate over campus anti-Semitism.

 

In a show of solidarity with those named on the Web site, nearly 100 outraged professors nationwide — Jews and non-Jews, English professors and Middle East specialists — have responded to the site by asking to be added to the list.

 

The Web site, Campus Watch (www.campus-watch.org), with "dossiers" on individuals and institutions and requests for further submissions, is a project of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, whose director, Daniel Pipes, has long argued that Americans have not paid sufficient attention to the dangers of political Islam.

 

The professors who were named include two from Columbia, Hamid Dabashi and Joseph Massad, and one each from Berkeley, Georgetown, Northeastern, the University of Michigan, the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Chicago. Those named have differing interests, and differing academic status: John Esposito of Georgetown, for example, is interested primarily in political Islam, and considered a leading scholar in the field, whereas some others are young professors known mostly for criticizing Israel.

 

The appearance of the Web site, just a day after Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, made a widely publicized speech on campus anti-Semitism, is another indication of the tensions on campuses over the developments in the Middle East.

 

Some of those who asked to be added to the site said they were showing solidarity in opposing what they see as an assault on academic freedom. Others were more interested in showing that mainstream Middle Eastern scholars shared the views criticized on the Web site.

 

Mr. Pipes said the Web site was no threat to free speech. "We're engaged in a battle over ideas," he said. "To bring in this notion of academic freedom is nonsense. No one is interfering with their right to say anything they want."

 

The response from Judith Butler, a comparative literature professor at Berkeley, circulated on the Internet, providing boilerplate for many other professors: "I have recently learned that your organization is compiling dossiers on professors at U.S. academic institutions who oppose the Israeli occupation and its brutality, actively support Palestinian rights of self-determination as well as a more informed and intelligent view of Islam than is currently represented in the U.S. media. I would be enormously honored to be counted among those who actively hold these positions and would like to be included in the list of those who are struggling for justice."

 

Those named on the site said they were heartened by the support.

 

"It's a new genre springing up, and I'm especially glad that it includes Jewish scholars," said Professor Dabashi, who heads Columbia's department of Middle Eastern and Asian language and cultures. "This is about McCarthyism, freedom of expression. It's very important that it not be made into a Jewish-Muslim kind of thing. I am most concerned for my Jewish students, that they might feel that they shouldn't take my class, that the atmosphere would be intimidating, or that they couldn't express their opinions."

 

He and others named on the site have been deluged with negative e-mails.

 

Many academics see Campus Watch as an effort to chill free speech about the Middle East, and are particularly perturbed by the "Keep Us Informed" section, inviting the submission of "reports on Middle East-related scholarship, lectures, classes, demonstrations and other activities" — in other words, they say, inviting students to turn in their professors.

 

"It's that whole mode of terror by association, with the cold war language of dossiers, and we're watching you," said Ammiel Alcalay, a Hebrew professor at Queens College. "It's not so intimidating for people like me, with tenure, but it makes graduate students and untenured professors very nervous, and makes it even harder to talk about Israel."

 

Mr. Pipes said he had hoped the Web site would inspire new dialogue on Middle Eastern policy.

 

"We weren't trying to rile people," he said. "For me, `dossier' was just a French word for file. Maybe that word could be changed, if it is obscuring our argument, which is that Middle Eastern studies at most universities present only one interpretation, a left-leaning one that offers only groupthink on the subject of terrorism and intolerance."

 

He said the site was getting 3,500 hits a day, and had received hundreds of negative responses, including about 88 from academics asking to be added to the list — a reaction he took as further evidence that the field of Middle Eastern studies is monopolized by one viewpoint.

 

Many academics say that Campus Watch has added to a sense that those in the field of Middle East studies are under siege.

 

"Last year, Martin Kramer wrote a book arguing against federal funding for Middle Eastern studies in universities, and that scared people," said Lisa Anderson, dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and soon to be head of the Middle East Studies Association. "Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer are part of the same group. Meanwhile, there's concern that the rhetoric around the Arab-Israel conflict is becoming increasingly associated with anti-Semitic sentiments, and that's scaring people too."

 

The universities on the Campus Watch site include Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, New York University and Berkeley, and others less prominent, where Middle Eastern tensions have erupted, including Concordia College in Montreal, where a recent fracas forced the cancellation of a speech by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.