World
Mideast Wars At Yale
Controversial U-M academic is rejected for Yale appointment.
Was campaign against him politically motivated?
Liel Liebovitz
New York Jewish Week
New York
uan Cole, one of the
country's top Middle
East scholars, was
poised for the biggest step of his
career.
A tenured professor at the
University of Michigan, Cole
was tapped earlier this year by a
Yale University search commit-
tee to teach about the modern
Middle East. In two separate
votes in May, Cole was approved
by both the sociology and his-
tory departments, the latter the
Connecticut university's largest.
The only remaining hurdle
was the senior appointments
committee, also known as the
tenure committee, a group con-
sisting of about a half-dozen
professors from various disci-
plines across the university.
In what is shaping up as the
latest in a series of heated battles
over the political affiliations of
Middle Eastern studies profes-
sors, the tenure committee voted
down Cole's nomination. Several
Yale faculty members described
the decision to overrule the indi-
vidual departments as "highly
unusual."
The reasons behind the rejec-
tion remain unknown; several
calls to a Yale spokeswoman went
unreturned.
But university insiders say
the uncharacteristic rebuff may
have been influenced by several
factors, central among them the
political commentary that Cole
writes on his blog, "Informed
Comment." They also contend
that Cole's nomination was tor-
pedoed by senior professors in
both departments who were con-
cerned with Cole's controversial
persona.
Often favoring a pugilistic
tone and consistently criticizing
Israel's policies in the West Bank,
j
Cole has attracted a visibility
that has made him a favorite
target of several conservative
commentators.
When Cole's potential hiring
became publicly known, several
of his detractors, including the
American Enterprise Institute's
Michael Rubin and Washington
Times columnist Joel Mowbray,
took steps to protest the deci-
sion. They wrote op-ed pieces.
Mowbray sent a letter to a dozen
of Yale's major donors, many of
whom are Jewish, urging them to
protest Cole's hiring.
Cole, while refusing to com-
ment on the tenure committee's
vote, believes that "the concerted
press campaign by neoconser-
vatives against me, which was
a form of lobbying the higher
administration, was inappropri-
ate and a threat to academic
integrity.
"The articles published in the
Yale Standard, the New York
Sun, the Wall Street Journal,
hood repeated often enough and
in high enough places may begin
to lose its air of absurdity."
"The issue is complicated:'
according to one Jewish official
at the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor, who asked not
to be named, "because Cole is
seen as a scholar who does not
intimidate students in class with
his Mideast views, but has an
appalling Web site, highly critical
of Israel. So what are the bound-
aries of outside behavior affect-
ing academic decisions?"
Opponents' Offensive
Yale Political Science Professor
Frances Rosenbluth, who was
part of the search committee,
said Cole emerged as a clear
choice.
"The committee read his work
very thoroughly ... We inter-
viewed other people, we sent out
letters to the field of contempo-.
rary Middle Eastern studies, and
[Cole] is very highly regarded as
ship in favor of blog commen-
tary."
The same day, Eliana Johnson,
a Yale undergraduate, and
Mitchell Webber, a Yale gradu-
ate who is now a law student •
and a research assistant for
Alan Dershowitz at Harvard
Law School, published an op-ed
in the conservative New York
Sun. Echoing many of Rubin's
points, Johnson and Webber
referred to Cole as the "profes-
sor best known for disparaging
the participation of prominent
American Jews in government!'
Those op-eds had little to say
about Cole's academic back-
ground, focusing most of their
criticism on what the U-M pro-
fessor had written on his blog.
Both pieces appeared to blur the
distinction between American
• Jews and some Bush administra-
tion officials.
On Aug. 29, 2004, for example,
Cole wrote a blog entry calling
several Bush neoconservatives
"pro-Likud
intellectu-
als" who wish
"to use the
Pentagon as
Israel's Gurkha
regiment, fight-
ing elective
wars on behalf
of Tel Aviv."
"These arti-
cles," said Cole,
"attempted
to make my
critiques of the
Likud, on both
sides of the
Atlantic, look
like an attack
on American Jewry in general,
which is manifestly not the case.
For these people, Likud equals
Israel equals Jews, so all criti-
cism of revisionist Zionism and
Greater Israel expansionism is
anti-Semitic."
Despite the op-ed pieces, Cole's
nomination was approved by the
history and sociology depart-
"The idea that I am any sort of
anti-Jewish racist because I think
Israel would be better off without
the occupied territories is bizarre,
but I fear that a falsehood repeated
often enough and in high enough places may
begin to lose its air of absurdity."
U-M Professor Juan Cole
Slate, and the Washington
Times, as part of what was clear-
ly an orchestrated campaign,
contained made-up quotes, inac-
curacies and false charges:' he
said. "The idea that I am any sort
of anti-Jewish racist because I
think Israel would be better off
without the occupied territories
is bizarre, but I fear that a false-
a scholar!" But before Cole was
even named as a candidate, some
opponents took to the op-ed
pages of various newspapers.
Writing in the Yale Daily
News on April 18, Rubin, a neo-
conservative who often writes
about the need for a strong U.S.
policy against Iran, accused Cole
of having "abandoned scholar-
ments in late May. The approval
gave rise to a renewed wave of
activity. Writing in the conser-
vative Washington Times on
May 22, columnist Joel Mowbray
wrote a sharp critique of Cole,
attacking the professor's tenden-
cy to label those who disagree
with him as Likudniks, Zionists
or neocons.
Letter To Donors
Then Mowbray sent a letter
to a dozen of Yale's prominent
donors. "Yale is poised to hire
and award tenure to a professor
who doubts that the 9-11 attacks
had any connection to funda-
mentalist Islam, blames Israel
for causing terror attacks against
the U.S. and contends that Iran's
nuclear ambitions are only a
threat in the minds of American
`neocons' and their Tel Aviv
counterparts:' Mowbray said in
the letter.
It goes on to address Cole's
non-scholarly temperament"
(citing one particularly profane
entry from Cole's blog), as well
as his "piedilection for name-
calling over honest debate."
Several Yale faculty members
said they had heard that at least
four major Jewish donors have
contacted Yale officials urg-
ing that Cole's appointment be
denied. But the major opposition
to Cole, most faculty mem-
bers say, came from within the
departments themselves.
One university insider said
most of Cole's scholarship per-
tains to the Baha'i faith and is
limited to the 18th and 19th cen-
turies, a liability for a professor
charged with teaching about the
contemporary Middle East.
Second, the source said, critcs
said Cole appears to lack collegi-
ality. Finally, Cole's politics may
have played a role.
"
❑
This article first appeared in the
New York Jewish Week on June 2.
June 15 • 2006
25