29 Comments

1. jedrury:

This guy appears on the PBS NewsHour as a Middle East expert. That meets its vetting standards;

“Hmmm, website seems to correspond with our views, let’s get him on!”

Dec 14, 2004 - 8:25 am 2. Fausta:

On a slightly related issue (and showing my age here), doesn’t the meme of blaming everything on the CIA sound so “1970s”?

Dec 14, 2004 - 8:28 am 3. Fresh Air:

Frequent visitors to this site will recognize the agent provacateur in all this, none other than Dennis the Peasant’s favorite pet troll, Joseph Mailander aka Lil Joe. It’s actually his idea that the Fadhil brothers are backed by the CIA. This will come as a surprise to no one who has read Lil Joe’s posts here at Roger’s Place.

Dec 14, 2004 - 9:31 am 4. Morgan:

Professor Cole,

If you’re turning to Lil’ Joe for ideas about what is “extremely important”, it might be time to hang up the robes.

Dec 14, 2004 - 10:26 am 5. Percy Dovetonsils:

…doesn’t the meme of blaming everything on the CIA sound so “1970s”?

Harummph! I wish the CIA was competent enough to pull something off, anywhere. Hell, if the CIA is paying anyone, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Riverbend.

Oh, Lil’ Joe, you’ve gone so far. Your hero Robert Scheer would be proud.

Dec 14, 2004 - 10:55 am 6. thibaud:

Cole apparently has a bee in his bonnet because one of the Fadhil brothers questioned Cole’s knowledge of Iraqi history. No fury like an Arabist perfesser scorned by an arab.

As to the controversy, I’ve been stirring the sh*t with my alma mater on this. Wrote to Cole and cc’d the regents, the provost, the dean and the head of the U-M History Dept, Prof Becky Scott, a former teacher of mine who wrote me a recommendation for grad school. No response yet.

Dec 14, 2004 - 11:04 am 7. thibaud:

Interesting non-legal issue raised here. Should experts, including tenured professors, who wrote weblogs that focus primarily on the subject of their expertise, be allowed by their employers to abandon on those weblogs the ethical and behavioral standards that their employers expect from them in their official capacity?

I raised this in a call with the U-Michigan’s associate counsel today, asking him whether– leaving aside any issues related to a professor going out of his way to libel a trio of ordinary Iraqi citizens (and quite possibly adding to the danger of their being assassinated as Pentagon “spies”)– the U-M wanted a stain on its reputation like this.

He noted that they’re already in the WSJ’s gunsights for their affirmative action [idiocy] and that Cole’s on perfectly sound legal ground. IOW “nothing we can do, so sorry, thanksforyourconcernI’llbegoingnow, hmm?”

Then the university lawyer volunteered an odd analogy. He said, suppose you (thibaud), a technology biz guy, had your own website and designed and offered through it a video game (!) that was suggestive and violent…. What would your company say?

I stopped him and proposed a more exact analogy. Let’s say I’m an expert on open-source, a partisan of Linux and a diehard opponent of MSFT, and that I generate revenue for my employer mainly through presenting and marketing myself as an open-source expert. As a partisan, I decide to set up my own blog that’s devoted mainly to pushing and exploring open source issues.

Now let’s say three twenty-ish programmers come along and create a Windows-based cool technology that generates a lot of buzz. Suppose I dislike the technology, think it’s cloogey, and think that it perpetuates the evil Windows empire etc.

Now here’s the analogy to what Prof. Cole did: suppose I post on my website a warning about the dangers of DARPA-funded hackers and link to a website that insinuates the three programmer brothers are a MSFT trojan horse with Pentagon funding. Three questions:

1) should my employer tolerate this behavior on my part?

2) though controversy comes with the territory, does it really help an expert’s reputation to be spreading malicious and ridiculous rumors about imagined “enemies”?

3) if the answers to the above are No, then what ethical and behavioral guidelines should the employer apply to a blogger’s personal site that deals mainly with the subject of his expertise?

These stumped the lawyer. Perhaps Prof Scott or Dean McDonald (also a history prof) will provide an intelligent answer.

Dec 14, 2004 - 11:18 am 8. jvk:

Thibaud, good luck trying to move the university. It seems we are unable to question the views and utterences of the academic elite, no matter how abhorrant or treasonous we may find them. Rememeber Prof. DeGenova (”I hope for a thousand Mogadishu’s) at Columbia. Is there any price to be paid by these people for this, or do they just get their 15 minutes of fame and invitations to lecture at leftwing get togethers?

Still I’m glad to see an alum of the school telling them how they feel.

By the way Roger, it’s Indiana University, not the University of Indiana. Just thought I’d mention it. Thanks for the blog, I enjoy it very much.

jvk

Dec 14, 2004 - 1:12 pm 9. thibaud:

Yeah, the lawyer made the argument that such speech is protected, that they’re constantly receiving outrage from alums, the press etc over harebrained comments (Catherine McKinnon is a U-M prof), whaddya whaddya.

What’s different in this case from DeGenova’s case, I think, is the weblog angle. Cole’s trying to have it both ways.

OTOH he banks on the weblog to extend his professorial reach and promote his supposedly expert views. His comments and mini-editorials on his weblog are public pronouncements on vital issues that reach, via the blogosphere, an audience in the millions. This is the voice of a tenured prof at one of the world’s leading research universities and the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association. Journalists, scholars, policy-makers: please harvest Juan’s wisdom.

OTOH he uses his weblog to indulge his large reservoir of spite. Every day’s batch of posts contains malicious, often completely undubstantiated slurs upon real and imagined enemies of the perfesser: Wolfowitz, the Fadhil brothers, and of course Israel, Source of All Evil in the Modern World. But such vitriol’s perfectly cool; it’s just a personal website, and besides, the web’s all about rambunctious and free-spirited commentary, right?

It’s like an English prof who likes to post sadomasochistic porn on her website from time to time. Shouldn’t the university ask her to take it elsewhere? Perhaps Cole could use a pseudonym, like Atrios or something?

Dec 14, 2004 - 1:34 pm 10. Sun-Tzu:

Cole’s defense seems to be along the line, “Now, I’m not sayin’ this is true, mind you. Just raisin’ the question, thass all. Just, y’know, wantin’ to put all the possibilities out there on the table.”

The funny thing is, one could have done similar things during the Clinton era. Frex, “I’m not sayin’ that Bill&Hil actually had people killed, mind you. It’s just funny how all the folks around them just kinda keep on dyin’.”

Or, even now, “I’m not sayin’ that evolution didn’t happen, mind you. And I’m not sayin’ that creationism is right. I’m just throwin’ that out there, for everyone to think about.”

And if you said something like that, you’d be dismissed as a right-wing loon and they’d be right. Yet, somehow, when it comes to a left-leaning person, and a professor to boot, somehow, silly theories are somehow supposed to be accorded serious consideration.

Funny, no?

Dec 14, 2004 - 1:35 pm 11. thibaud:

Another gem from the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association:

http://www.juancole.com/2004/12/press-roundup-for-sunday-guerrillas-in.html

“The Iraqi killer of Reserve Navy Lt. Kylan Jones-Huffman has been brought to justice in an Iraqi court. Although he has since changed his story, he at one point admitted to killing Jones-Huffman with a bullet through the back of the neck while the latter was stuck in traffic in downtown Hilla. The assassin said that he felt that Jones-Huffman “looked Jewish.” The fruits of hatred sowed in the Middle East by aggressive and expansionist Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza against the Palestinians and in south Lebanon against Shiites continue to be harvested by Americans.”

Dec 14, 2004 - 1:43 pm 12. Wallace:

Paying property taxes to support the whacky perfesser makes me think I ought to sell our house on Torch Lake Michigan. That and the fact that Michael Moore has know built there.

Dec 14, 2004 - 1:51 pm 13. Terrye:

What a dick.

I would be really disgusted if my kid wanted me to pay so that he could be brainwashed by this anti semite, anti American, anti democracy parasite.

Blaming everythig on Israel and the CIA should in and of itself be enough reason to question his credentials. It is not that simple and most rational people know that. The history of the region is more complicated that that.

Maybe he is a plant..but he has no right to attack the brothers. What did they ever do to him?

Dec 14, 2004 - 2:24 pm 14. TedM:

Good catch on our old friend “Joseph” being the miscreant who is quoted by cole.

In the comments section of HarrysPlace on this same dumb professor, there is a comment by someone called Benjamin. Not only does he support cole, but he also takes a rap at Roger and his blog. Complained that he (benjamin) has been banned here.

Dec 14, 2004 - 2:50 pm 15. chuck:

Blaming everythig on Israel and the CIA should in and of itself be enough reason to question his credentials.

Oh, come, Terrye, it just shows that he can look below the surface. The CIA publishes weekly reports in the NY Times, but who knows what they do the rest of the week? And who would ever expect the small nation of Israel to be the true motor of world history? Such esoteric understanding is reserved to the select few.

Dec 14, 2004 - 2:55 pm 16. chuck:

TedM,

Benjamin is a well known pain in the butt at Harry’s place. He has recently taken to posting at Michael Totten’s blog. He’s a party line sort of guy and can be safely ignored.

Dec 14, 2004 - 3:01 pm 17. PeterUK:

Here is that juvenile international pariah Benjamin’s comments at Harry’s Place…and he still cannot understand why Roger barred him!

He was the attitude of an unhousetrained polecat.

Dec 14, 2004 - 3:35 pm 18. PeterUK:

Here http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/ is that juvenile international pariah Benjamin’s comments at Harry’s Place…and he still cannot understand why Roger barred him!

He was the attitude of an unhousetrained polecat.

Dec 14, 2004 - 3:36 pm 19. Syl:

My feeling on Cole is that yes, it is protected speech (as long as every other professor there is allowed to say anything at all as well). But since we want to take America back from these goons the best way to counter this nonsense is to treat it as, well, nonsense.

Ridicule is often a more effective weapon than outrage.

Make Indiana University fodder for SNL.

Dec 14, 2004 - 4:38 pm 20. Terrye:

Syl:

I went to IU. I live within an hour drive of the place.

This idiot is dependent on a university in a state that voted 60% for Bush.

The alumni tend to be pretty conservative.

Dec 14, 2004 - 4:50 pm 21. Syl:

Terrye

Good! Then you all will be unhappy when your alma mater is the butt of jokes on SNL and will make your unhappiness known to the PTB.

I have this feeling that the Left thrives on the outrage of the conservatives and the Right. Outrage convinces them they’re right. But they just can’t deal with ridicule because that dismisses their arguments.

Dec 14, 2004 - 5:11 pm 22. richard mcenroe:

JVK ó Oh, don’t underestimate Prof. de Genova…

He called for a “million Mogadishus”, if I recollect…

Dec 14, 2004 - 6:40 pm 23. Yehudit:

“Another gem from the president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association:”

thibaud, it’s worse than that. Check this out. (In the blogosphere, everything you have ever commented on any blog comes back to haunt you. . . .)

Dec 14, 2004 - 7:31 pm 24. Duke:

Juan Cole uses the same techniques that every educated jerk I know uses: extrapolated facts about obscure documents to prove a point. Robert Kennedy Jr was on FOX something or other quoting House Bill #(god knows what) to prove his point while nobody could possibly check on the House Bill.

We are a nation of educated morons who have specialized in a narrow field and know how to write papers filled with bullshit in order to get a good grade. How would you like to come up against Cole in class when you were 19 years old and knew nothing and needed a decent grade to graduate? You’d parrot his party line. That’s what I did and it worked.

Dec 14, 2004 - 7:32 pm 25. M. Simon:

I’d like to expand on what Yehudit says:

This is a bit on the relationship of the good prof. to Kylan.

All the stuff below is from the linked url.

–==–

KYLAN didn’t support the decision to go to war in Iraq. But he believed that once begun, it was crucial for us to finish the job. He had a running email dialogue with anti-war University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, right up to a few days before his death.

Professor Cole had a personal correspondance with the murdered sailor, and didn’t fucking mention it.

He doesn’t have the simple decency to recognize – even in passing – the humanity of the murdered man. Why do that? It would get in the way of his ideologically sound point. Back in August, Kylan was a human being. Now he’s a token in Cole’s ideological game.

Dec 15, 2004 - 2:03 am 26. M. Simon:

richard m,

Since about 1,000 or so Islamics got killed in Mogadishu calling for a million of them would wipe out Islam.

I’m down with that.

Dec 15, 2004 - 2:08 am 27. M. Simon:

Simon’s Law:

When the Jews are invoked to settle an argument in which they are not involved the argument is over.

Dec 15, 2004 - 2:17 am 28. David Thomson:

ìI hate to be a conspiracty theorist, but so far that is the only thing that makes sense to me in the behavior of the Nutty Professorî

Nutty professor? Juan Cole is simply the typical intellectual who supported John Kerryís bid for the presidency. Thereís nothing at all unusual about him. Kerryís unofficial foreign policy revolved around blaming the Israelis for the rage of the Islamic nihilists. Subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, anti-Semitism is the standard theme of the national Democratic Party.

Iíve repeatedly advocated for studies concerning the thinking of the hard core Democratic Party membership. This almost certainly wasnít done before the national election because of the fear that it would damage Kerryís chances for victory. The election is over. What are the Pew Foundation and the major polling organizations waiting for?

Dec 15, 2004 - 6:29 am 29. thibaud:

Subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, anti-Semitism is the standard theme of the national Democratic Party.

Not sure I agree– Biden and Holbrooke and Lieberman et al are solid supporters of Israel– but you’re right that something very weird, and deeply saddening (to an old-time hawkish lib Dem like me), has occurred within the past four years to the Dems’ base.

A large number of what Orwell called “smelly little ideologies” have crept into the mainstream of the Democratic Party under cover of Bush-hatred, one of which is a creeping Euro-view of Israel as the Source of All Evil in the Modern World. Prior to 2000, the likes of Juan Cole would have been a ranter on the fringe of the national debate, perhaps an occasional NY Review of Books contributor but otherwise ignored for the most part by the MSM and of course by the party elite.

Today Cole is front and center, the go-to analyst on Iraq rather than the hack called up to represent “the other side” in Israel-vs-Arab debates. Very disturbing. Demands a full-court press against NPR and the other shills for Cole’s incompetence and hatred.

Dec 16, 2004 - 11:59 am

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