In the first of what would become a series of open-ended, philosophical questions, Ramadan began by asking the audience how to find meaning in the relatively short time they are given on earth. “What is the meaning [of all this]?” he asked rhetorically. After pausing for a moment, he added an unexpectedly blunt and morbid caveat: “One day you will not be able to pose that question — because you are all going to die.” The audience responded with nervous laughter.

Tariq Ramadan — a member of the world’s most famous Islamist family, as the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan el-Banna — spoke at Stanford University on April 12, 2011, in a lecture entitled, “The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism.”

Sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the event was packed, with people spilling out the auditorium doors and standing in the aisles. The audience of at least 250 appeared to consist largely of Muslims and non-students, most of whom hung on Ramadan’s every word. In summing up the palpable awe of the audience, Stanford religious studies professor Shahzad Bashir, who gave the introduction, gushed that:

If ever there were a case where the speaker did not need an introduction or a very short one, it would be for Dr. Tariq Ramadan.

Ramadan is a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University and despite his extensive writings on that subject, he adhered closely to the title of his talk, rarely mentioning religion until the question and answer session.

In the first of what would become a series of open-ended, philosophical questions, Ramadan began by asking the audience how to find meaning in the relatively short time they are given on earth. “What is the meaning [of all this]?” he asked rhetorically. After pausing for a moment, he added an unexpectedly blunt and morbid caveat: “One day you will not be able to pose that question — because you are all going to die.” The audience responded with nervous laughter.

Ramadan then lamented the lack of understanding between the ethnic majority populations in “pluralistic societies,” or developed nations, and the minorities. He argued that education is the key to reconciliation: “You have to educate yourself . . . by [leaving your] comfort zone and [understanding] other traditions hands on.” He pointed to the existence of “segregated societies” in the U.S., Britain, and other countries as evidence that many “pluralistic societies” were not rising to the occasion and that “the Anglo-Saxon model of hybrid identities is failing.” He pointed favorably, however, to France’s de facto model of allowing ethnic communities to form their own enclaves instead of integrating into French society. Perhaps he forgot about the 2005 teenage immigrant rampage through the banlieues or the recent ban on face-coverings. It seems that multiculturalism’s sharp decline in popularity has yet to reach Ramadan.

He continued by delineating the three concepts that make up a peaceful and progressive society: humility, respect, and consistency. Humility, he explained, means believing that “the other [religious] traditions have something to give me. . . . [It] means listening first and then talking.” Ramadan defined respect with the following sentiment: “Not only am I humble with what I think, but I acknowledge the fact that your opinion is legitimate, although I don’t share it and I don’t understand it.” He contrasted respect with the concept of tolerance, arguing that “tolerance is about power” (as in, a superior deciding to tolerate an underling), while “respect is on an equal footing.” Ramadan’s description of the final dimension, consistency, deserves to be quoted in full if only because the world would be a more peaceful place if his radical co-religionists would take it to heart:

Consistency . . . is the relationship between humility and respect. [It] means that at the very moment you are sharing values and speaking about principles that are, for you, the best principles there are; you also are able to be critical with your fellow members of your tradition. . . . [It means] that you make the difference between what are your principles and where are they implemented. . . . What we have very often are people comparing their principles to the practices of the other. . . . When you compare your ideals with the practices of the other, you are always the winner.

Ramadan’s point was that congratulating oneself for moral superiority over opponents is unhelpful and that judging cultural ideals against real practices is an unfair comparison. The problem with all this high-minded rhetoric is that Ramadan’s behavior can hardly be called humble, respectful, or consistent. In 2004, he was banned from entering the U.S. after it was discovered that he had donated funds to a charity with ties to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization designated as such by the European Union, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. His statements are littered with misleading historical inaccuracies

and conspiracy theories, including a recent interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in which Ramadan questioned whether al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were behind the 9/11 attacks. As for consistency, French author Caroline Fourest was able to write an entire book,Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan, detailing the contradiction between Ramadan’s public support of diversity and respect and his active support of political Islamism.

He continued to describe difficult concepts such as suffering, love, and the end of life, while shying away from the politicized subjects on which his career has been built. In a blatant case of pandering, he implored his audience:

Don’t forget to tell the people you love that you love them. . . . Profound love is the way by which you liberate yourselves and look at yourselves in a positive way.

That statement would have been beautiful if it had not come across as so painfully insincere. It could have been inscribed in a greeting card.

Similarly, Ramadan described all belief systems as essentially equal:

Think of it as a mountain. We all have the same top, but there are many ways to reach it. Humility is realizing my path is not the only one.

Though this is a wonderful concept that goes over well with audiences, Islam has shown over the centuries that it is forging a path to quite a different summit in quite a different manner from most of its counterparts — something that Ramadan did not acknowledge.

Having apparently discovered his inner flower child, he added, “In every tradition, peace is the final goal. Peace within, peace without.”

He then elaborated on the need for people to:

[R]ead books, read more, get a sense of history . . . [and] get a sense of religions. . . . Often when you ask other people about other religions they have no idea. Or they don’t even know about their own religion. . . . A basic knowledge of religions is necessary if you are serious about pluralism.

When Ramadan next stated that, “in the Islamic tradition, philosophy was perceived as something which was against religion; which is completely wrong,” he was exactly right. The influence of Enlightenment philosophy on Western Europe cannot be overstated, and an equivalent intellectual revolution never occurred in the Islamic world. If anything, the Enlightenment’s analogue in the Middle East has been the rise of Islamism and violent jihadist groups, with Ramadan’s grandfather being one of the latter’s first leaders.

The question and answer session led to a thorough airing of the political views that had been previously gone unexamined. In response to a question about how “the weaker” such as “Palestinians, Muslims and blacks” should resist “oppression,” Ramadan recounted how, as he put it, “when Israel was killing innocent people in Gaza,” Switzerland chose to break its neutrality and take the side of the Palestinians; not to do so would have been to implicitly support the “oppressor.” The implication was that if even neutral Switzerland decided to support the Palestinians, everyone should. He did not bring up Hamas’s use of human shields or its deliberate choice to store weapons in hospitals and near U.N. buildings, nor did he mention Richard Goldstone’s recent recantation on the entire official narrative of the Gaza War.

The obligatory question, “What is jihad?” also came up. Predictably, Ramadan responded by repeating the standard apologist line: “The meaning of jihad is not really war. . . . Jihad is to make peace with yourself.” He then made the blatantly false statement that “the association of jihad with war is from the Crusades.” On the contrary, Islamic jurisprudence has considered “jihad” a term for warfare since at least the tenth century, 100 years before the Crusades.

Finally, in response to an audience member asking how to respond to those Islamists who refuse to accept Ramadan’s rosy view of reality, he stated that, “there are people in every single religion . . . [who] think dialogue is worthless. . . . In every religion there are people who are not ready for it.” He then suggested, “You can sometimes challenge them by referring to the text.” Unfortunately, it is by referring to the text — the Koran — that many Islamists have successfully recruited young Muslims to violent jihad around the world. Ramadan offered no solution to this problem.

It is no exaggeration to say that the world would be better off if everyone adhered to Ramadan’s notions of humility, respect, and consistency. Such idealistic pronouncements, however, only serve to obfuscate the real issues facing the world today. It will take more than words, for instance, to stop the persecution of Christians across the Muslim world, the violence directed at Israel, the export of Wahhabi supremacism from Saudi Arabia, and the brutal Iranian theocracy. Ramadan would have done well to explain how his lofty “philosophy of pluralism” can be brought down to earth and used in real solutions to society’s most intractable problems.

The haunting mixture of hope and apprehension, excitement and uncertainty, that marks the arrival of each new year has come and gone. In a blur, the first three weeks of winter quarter have disappeared. Yet imagine for a moment that the new year is not 2011, but 2021.

To young students like us, that year seems impossibly far away. But those who are further along in life’s journey know that 10 years can pass in a blink of an eye, leaving only nostalgia and regret in their wake. The question remains only of what we will do with that precious time.

So what world will greet us when the digits “2-0-2-1” stand emblazoned in front of Times Square’s ball? As we begin our 30s, Sept. 11 will be a distant two decades past. Our parents will be among the more than 50 million Americans older than 65. And, if we do not press our representatives to make wise choices in the years ahead, the United States will likely be a mere shell of its former self.

Since the start of the financial crisis, the stewards of our nation have failed utterly in their duty to make decisions that act toward the betterment of our country rather than the enrichment of its oligarchy. They have acted selfishly and recklessly by allowing the national debt to reach a predicted $20 trillion by 2021, much of which will be owed to hostile foreign powers. They have replaced reason with partisanship, ensuring that endless, useless bickering silences rationality and innovation on every occasion. And they have dug in their heels at a time when only sweeping, unprecedented reform can save this country from total collapse. The United States of America, as resilient and powerful as it is, simply cannot endure another decade of this sickening chicanery.

Should you think this description of the present situation is somewhat overblown, allow me to offer you some additional figures. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has reported that 46 states are facing budget shortfalls this fiscal year totaling $112 billion, leaving Alaska, Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota as the only states in the union with their fiscal houses in order. Unfunded state and local public pension liabilities, according to a recent New York Times article, total a mind-blowing $3.6 trillion. Newsweek’s report last summer on the “best countries in the world” awarded America’s education system 26th place internationally, 12 notches below Kazakhstan, based on international standardized test scores. And the American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual Report Card for America’s Infrastructure gave us a miserable “D” in that arena last fall.

It is easy to glaze over these statistics without processing them, but the problems they quantify can no longer be ignored or wished away. These numbers are hard, unforgiving, objective indicators of the future that we will inherit if we do not act now, swiftly and decisively. If it is our responsibility to improve this world for the benefit of our descendants—and I believe it is—then we can no longer afford to let shortsightedness continue to rule the day.

A solution will begin to arise only when all of us emerge from our apathy, rise together in a show of overwhelming force and say as one, “We demand sanity.” We demand the end of earmarks, lame duck legislation, recess appointments and other political sleight of hand that flagrantly disrespects the constitution. We demand a sustainable health care system that provides for the needy without annihilating our fiscal well-being. We demand an education system worthy of our children’s time and our proud history. And we demand that the voice of the entire American people be heard and respected rather than dismissed as the rabble of the hoi polloi.

Until you and I demand all this, together, nothing will change. And anything short of a radical rethinking and restructuring of the leviathan that is the United States government will lead only to a delayed recurrence of the same problems that plague us today. So rise up, break through the Stanford bubble, and make a difference while you still can. The world of 2021 depends on it.

Beinin pointed out that a culture has emerged in which Palestinians are willing to deem Israelis “one of us” if rubber bullets or other Israeli military actions cause them to suffer debilitating injuries during rallies. He described a recent tour of the West Bank led by an Israeli who had “lost sight in his left eye” at one of these rallies and, as a result, was considered a hero by the Palestinians. “I might as well have been going around with Yasser Arafat,” Beinin exclaimed.

Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin made the latest in a series of appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program “Other Voices” on November 2, 2010. The subject of the show was “Israel-Palestine: A New Protest Generation” and, as before, it provided a platform for Beinin’s anti-Israel animus.

The show began with a brief discussion of what Beinin delightedly called the “overall decline” of the United States, evidenced by the “failure even at the crude military level in both Iraq and Afghanistan” and the resulting inability to employ the military “as an instrument of policy.”

Following these inflammatory claims, the interview turned to its focus: the recent phenomenon of young, Jewish Israelis—most of whom belong to a group called “Anarchists Against the Wall”—participating in Palestinian rallies against the “illegal settlements” and the West Bank security barrier. As Beinin put it, these Israelis stand “shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians” with the goal of preventing “some of the violence that the army might direct against them.”

Beinin pointed out that a culture has emerged in which Palestinians are willing to deem Israelis “one of us” if rubber bullets or other Israeli military actions cause them to suffer debilitating injuries during rallies. He described a recent tour of the West Bank led by an Israeli who had “lost sight in his left eye” at one of these rallies and, as a result, was considered a hero by the Palestinians. “I might as well have been going around with Yasser Arafat,” Beinin exclaimed. This Israeli, he boasted, was one of the leaders of what he called the “successful divestment [from Israel] campaign at Hampshire College” in 2009. In fact, it was not a successful divestment campaign, as was widely acknowledged at the time.

In an ominous development, Beinin noted that these young Israelis are now “following Palestinian leadership.” To be more specific, he remarked, they “help [the Palestinians] conduct the struggle as the [movement's] popular committee has decided it should be conducted.” Beinin claimed that these young Israelis are motivated by their willingness to look at their “colonial privilege” and “[think] about it seriously,” something the older “Israeli peace movement” did not do. Members of this “militant, persistent Israeli opposition,” he later added, are willing to act repeatedly as the front line in the protests, despite the “enormous psychological and physical toll” involved.

Palestinians, Beinin contended, organize regular meetings to coordinate their activities with this new cohort of Israeli activists. He narrated a typical dialogue:

If [the Palestinians] say, ‘We would like you [the Israeli activists] to bring hundreds of Israelis on this day,’ we might tell them, ‘that’s not possible; it’s a holiday. How about that day?’

“It’s the Palestinians who are running the show,” Beinin noted approvingly.

He went on:

The Israeli young women . . . [have begun to] meet with the Palestinian women separately. Then they come to the [larger group] meetings and say, ‘This is what the Palestinian women want.’

This gender segregation is necessary because Palestinian women, as Beinin pointed out, “don’t come to meetings with men they don’t know.” The fact that the Palestinian contingent would completely ignore its female members were it not for the participation of Israeli women apparently does not bother Israeli “peace activists.”

Host Paul George commented on the “sourness of Israeli politics, the definite move further and further right” before asking Beinin, “How do these young Israelis break out of this—get an alternative viewpoint and put their lives on the line like this?” Beinin chuckled, saying “this is exactly what I’m trying to figure out.” Some of the young people in the rallies have ex-Communist or otherwise leftist parents, he explained. Others are “animal liberationists who’ve become anarchists . . . [who] look at society and say, ‘oh, no, this society is wrong from top to bottom.’” And still others have right-wing parents who “are not on for this kind of thing at all,” he added. Beinin blithely commented that these “right-wing parents” are not very conservative compared to the “neo-fascism of mainstream Israeli politics.”

Before turning to audience questions, the host asked Beinin for his take on the proposed legislation in Israel to modify new citizens’ oath of loyalty to the state. Though individuals who choose to become Israeli citizens today must swear loyalty to Israel as a democratic state, “the new wording will call Israel a democratic and Jewish state,” Beinin proclaimed, prompting audible tongue-clicking from the audience. “The content of what Netanyahu is demanding,” he continued, “is that Palestinians endorse Zionism” even though “the PLO in 1988 recognized Israel.” This last comment was ironic coming from Beinin, as he made sure to emphasize earlier in the program that many Palestinians today feel no loyalty to Fatah, the PLO’s successor organization. Additionally, recognizing Israel in one carefully-worded political statement is a far cry from endorsing Zionism. Beinin capped off his discussion of this issue by claiming that “there are lots of Jews who don’t endorse Israel as their homeland.” To the extent this is true, academics such as Beinin bear some responsibility for helping to cultivate anti-Israel sentiment among Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.

In the question and answer session, Beinin was confronted about his earlier description of Israeli society as neo-fascist. He backed away slightly, saying he “wasn’t ready to go there yet,” before adding, “there certainly are . . . people in very powerful places in Israeli politics and society who I would not hesitate to call neo-fascist . . . and Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister, is one of them.” He referred again to the “fascist element in Israeli society,” claiming that leftist Israelis’ own use of the term “fascist” legitimizes its use.

Beinin then contended that “mainstream Israeli political culture has a very simple explanation for [anti-Israel sentiment worldwide]: they’re anti-Semites.” As a corollary, he added, “the only thing that means anything [to Israelis] is any diminution of the support of the United States.” In other words, Beinin continued, “the battleground is here. That’s where the cutting edge of the struggle is.” Presumably, by “struggle” he meant the struggle to end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Minutes later, he and the host both encouraged the audience to actively “take on” American financial support for Israel.

As one would expect, Beinin has been energized by what he believes to be the growth of the Israeli anti-Israel movement. He did acknowledge that this movement is “still marginal in Israeli politics” and that the actual demonstrations reached their peak several years ago, but he clearly pined for a leftward swing of the pendulum of Israeli politics and seemed more than willing to give it a hard push. Hopefully, the survival instinct of Israelis is sufficiently strong to prevent that from happening.

[His] “all or nothing” mentality has been seen again and again in Palestinian leaders, most notably with Yasser Arafat at the 2000 Camp David Accords. Presenting the so-called “right of return” as a non-negotiable prerequisite for the establishment of a Palestinian state reveals a complete lack of interest in finding an actionable solution to the conflict. Whether he realized it or not, Doumani was implying that Palestinians do not want an independent Palestine—they want Israel.

UC Berkeley history professor Beshara Doumani came to Stanford University on September 29, 2010, to give a lecture sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies titled, “The Iron Law and Ironies of Palestinian History.” He was introduced by notorious Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin, who managed to insert his repeated, and unfounded, claim that academic freedom in the post-9/11 era is “very much still in jeopardy.” Beinin, quoting from Doumani’s faculty bio, noted that he specializes in “recovering the history of social groups, places and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East.” This seemingly innocuous description belied a very specific, partisan subtext.

Taking a unique perspective, Doumani laid out his argument that current discourse throughout the Palestinian national movement is too “state-centric,” focusing on Palestinian nationhood as an end in itself without regard for “the lives of ordinary Palestinians” or whether they support such a goal. The wants and needs of the entire Palestinian diaspora, Doumani argued—including “those who are citizens in the State of Israel”—must be taken into account in discussions of a future “Palestine.”

Doumani repeatedly emphasized “the denial of the Palestinians’ right to exist as a political community” as the most egregious and harmful fault of “the Zionist movement and its supporters, Great Britain and the United States.” This denial, he alleged, has shown itself in the 1922 charter for the Mandate for Palestine (which, while it does not use the word “Arab,” repeatedly mentions the rights of non-Jews and the Arabic language); Israel’s insistence after 1948 that the Palestinian refugee issue was humanitarian and not political; and finally, Israel’s refusal to recognize Hamas following its victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections.

“This non-recognition,” Doumani stated boldly, has allowed “the twin engines of this conflict, which are of course territory taking and demographic displacement, to continue unabated as we speak.” The professor apparently felt no need to mention Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel’s existence, the continual glorification of terrorism on Palestinian television, and the Palestinians’ repeated rejections of peace deals spanning decades as “engines of this conflict.”

Doumani then began discussing the “five ironies” that “each mark a . . . moment of erasure of the Palestinians and birth of Palestine or the other way around.” These included statements such as “the destruction of Palestine in 1948 marked the creation of the Palestinians as we know them” and “the recognition by Israel of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians signaled the end of the PLO as a significant political movement.” Most interesting, however, was the fifth irony, which Doumani described as follows:

The Palestinians today are being force-fed a state or two against their will. . . . I say force-fed because a state that can be a territorial home for Palestinians as a political community is not on the table. The Palestinians are being asked to give up the right of return as well as East Jerusalem and half of the West Bank. . . . This state has become the vehicle for pre-empting Palestinian nationalism. If it succeeds, it will . . . lead to the permanent disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. . . . There is really no support for the PA’s [Palestinian Authority's] negotiating posture today among the majority of the 11 million Palestinians in the world.

This “all or nothing” mentality has been seen again and again in Palestinian leaders, most notably with Yasser Arafat at the 2000 Camp David Accords. Presenting the so-called “right of return” as a non-negotiable prerequisite for the establishment of a Palestinian state reveals a complete lack of interest in finding an actionable solution to the conflict. Whether he realized it or not, Doumani was implying that Palestinians do not want an independent Palestine—they want Israel.

Doumani concluded his remarks by restating the importance of the Palestinian diaspora to negotiating the state of Palestine; praising the Palestinians for finding loopholes in Israeli law that allow them to gain foreign passports; and highlighting the untapped potential of the Palestinian community in Israel. With regard to the latter, he lamented Israelis’ concern that their Arab compatriots might comprise a fifth column within their country while essentially encouraging those Arabs to realize those fears. “There is no reason why Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot be the leaders of a Palestinian national movement,” Doumani maintained. Although he claimed to be “agnostic” on the issue of a one-state or two-state solution to the conflict, he noted, “There is one state already. . . . The solution is a state for all its citizens.”

During the question and answer session, an audience member confronted Doumani on his final statement. “Why is it,” the man asked, “that there is no outcry against the treatment of Palestinians in Arab countries [such as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria]? Are these countries really states for all their citizens?” As might be expected, Doumani sidestepped the question. “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” he answered flatly. “If it’s wrong elsewhere, it’s wrong in Israel. I’m just asking that the right of equality for all people be applied to Israel.” In Doumani’s world, the right of equality for all people need not be applied to Muslim countries, and the fact that Arab citizens of Israel enjoy more political freedom than citizens of any Arab nation is irrelevant.

Other audience questions involved the role of international law, the American-Israeli relationship, and the possibility for coexistence. Doumani claimed that Israel has “no leg to stand on” with regard to international law and that “the free ride is over” in the American-Israeli relationship. Finally, Doumani concluded, coexistence is “the only solution I can see.” That may be, but coexistence under whose terms?

Beinin began his opening remarks by lamenting the “unhealthy” state of the Arab-Israeli conflict debate—something he chalked up to the allegedly disproportionate influence of pro-Israel groups. Invoking the typical “Israel Lobby” paranoia, he claimed that organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) discreetly control the debate with publications such as Commentary Magazine and think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to Beinin, these organizations routinely “attempt to ban [anti-Israel academics] from speaking [on college campuses] and attack them politically when they come up for tenure.”

Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin joined colleague Steven Zipperstein, a professor of Jewish culture and history, for an event on June 2, 2010 titled “Israel and Palestine: How To Talk About It and What To Talk About.” It was co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies—the first such joint sponsorship in the history of the two programs. Beinin lived up to his reputation for holding views whose outlandishness is matched only by the ferocity with which he clings to them.

Beinin began his opening remarks by lamenting the “unhealthy” state of the Arab-Israeli conflict debate—something he chalked up to the allegedly disproportionate influence of pro-Israel groups. Invoking the typical “Israel Lobby” paranoia, he claimed that organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) discreetly control the debate with publications such as Commentary Magazine and think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to Beinin, these organizations routinely “attempt to ban [anti-Israel academics] from speaking [on college campuses] and attack them politically when they come up for tenure.” Using alarmist rhetoric, he claimed this behavior is tantamount to “a McCarthyite campaign of exclusion.”

As an example, he labeled “ridiculous” the characterization of Columbia University Edward Said professor of Arab studies Rashid Khalidi as anti-Semitic, adding that, “advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people is not anti-Semitism.” Anti-Semitism aside, Khalidi—a former spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and a well-known anti-Israel ideologue—is hardly a dispassionate “advocate.” Moreover, neither Khalidi’s academic career, nor that of his likeminded colleagues, has suffered as a result of politicized scholarship; that is, unless one considers mere criticism permanently damaging.

Beinin went on to describe the rhetoric used to discuss the conflict as “demagoguery” in which “Jews whose opinions are similar to the bi-nationalist positions historically held by Albert Einstein [and others]…are effectively excommunicated and labeled self-haters.” Invoking the first of what would be several references to Jewish scripture and morals, he then asked, “Does all of this [name-calling]…help us be a light unto the nations?”

Beinin explained that he had been a member of an Israeli “anti-occupation group” in the 1970s and that “for decades, [he] supported a two-state solution to the conflict…because it seemed achievable and had international support.” Recently, however, he decided that “the failure of the Obama administration to halt the settlement project…[has] made the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel highly unlikely.” He made no mention of the Palestinian failure to govern since the Oslo Accords, nor Hamas’s destruction of Gaza. He continued: “The de facto one-state status quo will continue until the balance of forces changes,” and until that time, American Jews must, as he put it, “[resist] the occupation as best we can.” Resistance to this “oppression” is required of Jews as a biblical duty, he claimed, reading Leviticus 19:16 in Hebrew and then in English: “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s blood is being spilled.” This recitation of a biblical commandment felt forced, as if he were trying to placate critics who find his views threatening to Israel or to Judaism.

Beinin concluded his remarks by quoting from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a section of the Jewish Oral Law, which states that the world has three pillars: truth, justice, and peace. Channeling the misguided preoccupation with viewing Judaism as a vehicle for “social justice,” Beinin focused on that pillar, stating that a solution to the current conflict should begin with “a full hearing…to the grievances of all parties,” since “exacting full retribution” against those responsible for the conflict—in his view, primarily Israel—cannot be determined by human beings “in any case.” “Enough justice must be established,” he continued, “to enable reconciliation and coexistence.”

Then it was Zipperstein’s turn to speak. Although he was to provide the pro-Israel perspective in the discussion, Zipperstein’s speech consisted primarily of elaborating on the overarching theme that both sides of the conflict are equally at fault and thus deserve equal respite. “No one needs to be a saint to be recognized as deserving a state,” he said, and “no people needs to prove that they are a light unto the nations in order to live in peace.” After sharing several gems of wisdom such as “Israel and Palestine remain, for the foreseeable future, linked at the hipbone, wishing the other would go away,” he summed up his remarks by stating, “Neither side in this dispute can be bludgeoned into making peace.”

An open discussion between the participants followed that included topics ranging from the role of American Jews in the conflict, to the nature of the Jewish state, to the future of the Palestinian people. In brief, Beinin argued that “we [American Jews] have no credibility to speak abstractly” about the conflict in a non-academic arena since American Jews do not experience it firsthand; that Israel is “an undemocratic state” which cannot be a democracy until a “civil war between religious settlers and secular liberals” occurs; and that a Palestinian state, if it came to exist, would probably be “a horrible state with dictatorial tendencies.” At least on the last point, he was close to the truth.

Though it was apparent throughout the event that Beinin labored to keep his rhetoric low-key and more nuanced than usual, his radical views inevitably slipped out. And, as much as he would like to wish otherwise, peppering his speech with biblical quotes did not—and never could—make up for that.

Full Moon on the Quad, one of Stanford’s most beloved and widely-known traditions, has been cancelled for the first time in its history. Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman cited health concerns connected with the H1N1 flu, or “swine flu,” in his announcement of the event’s cancellation on September 22. Boardman said it would be “unconscionable” for Stanford to allow Full Moon to go forward in the face of these concerns.

Though Boardman made reference to the “virulence” of the swine flu, Reuters and others reported in mid-September that the virus is in fact no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. This has led some Stanford students to believe that University administrators are merely using the epidemic as an excuse to cancel an event that they “have been wanting to cancel permanently for a long time,” as Mina Bionta ’10 put it. These students feel that Full Moon surviving as long as it did is close to a miracle given the University’s remarkable propensity for destroying fun wherever it may crop up.

Boardman’s decision, which he made following a recommendation by senior managers at Vaden Health Center, Residential Education, Student Life, and Student Activities and Leadership, has drawn backlash from a wide swath of Stanford students. “I’m really sad that [Full Moon] was cancelled because I was looking forward to experiencing the event as a senior,” said Bionta. Some students, such as Dean Schaffer ’10, objected to the cancellation on purely philosophical grounds—“This [cancellation] really offends my laissez-faire tendencies.” And others, including Kendra Peterson ’11, pointed to the anti-social tendencies of many Stanford students and lamented the loss of “the only opportunity for them to kiss.”

It is clear that this decision was made after much thought and with Stanford students’ best interests at heart. Most of the student body can surely appreciate that. However, it is unfortunate that lowering the risk of a flu outbreak on campus (which is still very likely) must come at the cost of losing one of Stanford’s greatest traditions. One can only hope that University administrators will think very carefully before robbing future classes of this unique experience as well.

On June 24, the Brookings Institution held an interesting event, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran.”

A monograph of the same name will soon be released by the think tank, enumerating the choices U.S. policymakers have over Iran. These are the options that emerged from the briefing:

1. Persuasion. Ken Pollack described it as the policy of “carrots and sticks,” except keeping silent about the sticks. The biggest downside to this approach is that it cannot work without substantial international support.

2. Engagement. This is different from what Obama is calling “engagement.” It is a policy of all carrots and no sticks — kill them with kindness. This is the approach the United States took with China starting with Nixon’s visit in the 1970s. The biggest downside is that the time frame for achieving the U.S. goal (elimination of Iran’s nuclear program) is huge, in the span of years to decades.

3. Invasion. There are countless downsides to this approach, mainly that it would require domestic support, which at this point it simply does not have.

4. Air strikes. Though some hard-liners have favored this option, it also has many downsides. To be successful, it would require superb intelligence. And even if it were successful, it would likely only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few years, it would throw support to Iranian hardliners, it is not repeatable (i.e. the United States would be out of options after this if Iran continues its nuclear program). And, most importantly, this option provides no answer to Iran’s support for terrorist groups.

5. Israeli air strikes. This option has all of the same downsides as U.S. air strikes, but with a lower chance of success due to Israel’s much smaller military.

6. Popular revolution. While the previous options focus mostly on halting Iran’s nuclear program, this option implies that the regime itself, not its behavior, is the real problem. Though this is an attractive option, it is impossible to predict and it is hard to know how best to help a fledgling revolution without discrediting or exposing it. Additionally, to succeed, the regime in power must lose the will and/or capacity to use violence, which at this point is not guaranteed.

7. Insurgency. The idea of promoting an insurgency inside Iran to precipitate regime change also appears attractive at first glance, but to be successful we would need to recruit reliable, highly capable people, which are hard to find. Even then, the chance of success is low.

8. Military coup. As with the popular revolution, this option is impossible to predict. Revolutions are spontaneous. It would also require the United States gathering superb intelligence that could be passed on to the coup organizers.

9. Containment. Allow Iran to get a nuclear bomb and simply limit the political damage it might cause because of it. This policy did work during the Cold War. The question is, though: could the United States deter a nuclear Iran?

Suzanne Maloney, one of the co-authors of the monograph, said that she believes the current protests are far more significant than the student protests of 1999 and 2003.

This is the first open, organized opposition movement since the Islamic Revolution, which is highly significant. She stated that two things have led to the current crisis.

First, Ahmadinejad over the course of his term has alienated much of the elite and ruling clerics. And second, people were simply outraged that their government had become so base and corrupt that it would attempt to rig even such a relatively unimportant election (since the president has little real power).

Bruce Riedel, another co-author, stated that, first of all, the vision of Iran as a regional hegemon has been set back greatly by the current events. He then explained that there are three possible scenarios for the future.

First is the “Fizzle Out Scenario.” This is what Mossad thinks will happen. The protests will slowly start to decline due to police intimidation, and the situation will become somewhat normal again. Yet even here, the regime will be weaker than it was before the current crisis, since there will be lasting internal strife.

Second is the “Tiananmen Square Scenario”: brutal crackdown on the protesters. This is the worst possible outcome for Obama (let alone for the protesters), since it would show that Obama’s approach has failed. In this scenario, the United States would likely move towards the “Containment” option, as both parties would be less likely to negotiate. Israel would also likely advocate speeding up efforts to destroy the Iranian nuclear program.

The third scenario is “Change,” in whatever form it may come. This would validate the Obama approach, but would still leave Israel nervous until Iran ceases aid to terrorist groups.

Riedel also stated that we can live with a nuclear Iran. It would be unpleasant, but it would be doable. According to him, the regime is not crazy. However, if Iran does get the bomb, it will become much bolder in its foreign policy, somewhat like Pakistan. Iran obtaining a nuke would also likely launch an arms race across the entire Middle East.

The event concluded with all six co-authors of the book stating that they believe Ahmadinejad will be the president three years from now. Current events, they said, will not lead to regime change.

Georgetown University Professor John Esposito is the media’s favorite go-to man for questions about Islam. As the founding director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, he is also notorious for downplaying radical Islam. Stanford University hosted his latest round of apologetics on May 13.

Esposito, who spoke at Stanford last year, was on campus to promote the film version of his recent book (co-authored with Dalia Mogahed of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies), Who Speaks For Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. He was joined by the film’s executive producer, Muslim convert Michael Wolfe. The 55-minute film claims to present the results of the “largest, most comprehensive study” of Muslim opinion ever done. The crowd’s political leaning were evident in the audible hisses that greeted the cinematic image of former President George W. Bush.

A question and answer session with Esposito and Wolfe followed the screening. Don Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Forum at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford and an affiliated scholar with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, was the first to offer up a challenge. Emmerson pointed out a question posed in the film, “Do you believe a woman should be allowed to work in any job she is qualified for?” is answered affirmatively by large majorities of Muslim men and women, but that the film never clarifies for what exactly the respondents believe women to be qualified. Thus, Emmerson concluded, “No quality control is evident in either the film or, if I may say so, in the book.” Esposito had no response.

Emmerson went on to question the film’s claim that “[the term] ‘jihad‘ always has positive connotations for Muslims.” “I can attest,” he said firmly, “that this is simply not true.” Emmerson continued, “In Indonesia…Muslims try to avoid the word ‘jihadi‘ because they know that it means somebody who engages in violence, and they don’t want to be identified [with that].” Esposito responded with classic academic hair-splitting, claiming that, “If you really listen to what [the woman] is saying when she refers to jihad, she refers to a specific set of data on jihad. And that’s referring to a particular poll that was done and the data that comes out of that poll.”

In answering the next question, Esposito repeated his decade-old claim that radical Islam poses little to no national security threat to the United States. Citing the allegedly “small” number of post-9/11 arrests that resulted in terrorism charges, Esposito, with palpable disdain, told the audience, “I run into Americans all the time who ask me, ‘How many embedded cells do you think there are?’” (In fact, the 9/11 Commission cited inadequate FBI investigation of these very cells as a contributor to the September 11, 2001 attacks.)

Esposito downplayed radicalism in American mosques, recounting a lecture where an audience member brought up the statistic of 80 percent and attributing the figure to a “Muslim basher.” A number of counterterrorism experts and Islam scholars have cited the 80 percent figure, but in doing so, they are usually referring to the number of American mosques whose leadership is influenced by Saudi-funded Wahhabi extremism. As an alleged expert, one would expect Esposito to be aware of this fact, even if it is rather inconvenient.

Shifting his focus to Europe, Esposito cited a recent, unnamed Gallup study on European Muslims to make the outlandish claim that, “the vast majority of Muslim Europeans, are far more open to their society and far more pluralistic in their hopes and their aspirations than indigenous, liberal, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” Assuming Esposito was referring to the May 7, 2009 study by Gallup and the U.K.-based Coexist Foundation, his conclusions were way off the mark. The study merely demonstrates that general European populations tend to perceive “ambiguous allegiances” among Muslims based on the elevated importance of the latter’s “religious identities,” a suspicion that is hardly without basis. But for Esposito, it comes down to picking and choosing facts that best fit his narrative.

The most memorable exchange of the night occurred between Esposito and a man who identified himself as an Arab Muslim living in the U.S. The latter raised serious problems with the interpretation of the data presented in the film, as when he demolished the film’s laughable conclusion that women in Muslim countries wear the hijab (head scarf) because they have an “amazing idea of the distinction between its internal and external meanings.”The majority of Muslim women wear the hijab, the questioner said, because of cultural and religious pressure, and he feared that the documentary would, as he put it:

Decrease pressure on movements for women’s rights, reforming Islam, and democracy, [because] the image we get from this movie is that there is a utopia in the Islamic world that we don’t know about. But the reality is that there is no utopia.

Esposito dodged the question by responding that one must distinguish between religious and secular Muslim women. “It’s about what women want,” he asserted. “Interviewing secular women who speak good English doesn’t mean they reflect what Muslim women want.” But, apparently, Esposito’s conclusions do?

The views presented in the film, as well as Esposito’s answers, reflect an interpretation of Islam and Muslims that does not jive with reality. Esposito’s obfuscation when faced with tough questions, his dismissal of the threat of Islamic terrorism, and his refusal to take seriously points of view different from his own reveals an anti-intellectualism that is detrimental to the field of Middle East studies. If Esposito and his ilk are “speaking for Islam,” the world’s Muslims are in trouble.

“RESEARCH LIFE NOT DEATH”
“LENNY FOR DEAN”
“OFF ROTC”

Thus read the pins on the shirt of one Lenny Siegel, erstwhile leader of the “April 3rd Movement” (A3M), the group of students that nearly tore Stanford apart in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Siegel, a member of Stanford’s class of 1970 who was expelled for his radical activities before graduating, was on campus the weekend of May 1 leading A3M’s 40-year reunion. The final part of the reunion program was a “historical walking tour of campus,” which this writer participated in and observed.

The tour generally consisted of Siegel leading the group of roughly 50 people between the various sites on campus where his group engaged in illegal, often violent, activities. The group wound its way from Old Union (“Our favorite place for sit-ins”) to Stern Hall and then back to the Clock Tower. During the tour, several former A3M members decided to confess some of their past crimes, which ranged from stealing sensitive university financial records to assaulting ROTC cadets and destroying property. Siegel himself admitted to many of these activities, recounting the story of how he broke all of the Bookstore windows after being fired from his job there. One greying man chimed in by recalling fondly, “The Lou Henry Hoover building was the best building to break windows in. Two stories of solid glass.”

The high point in the event came early on, as Siegel led the group—chanting “Please-a, please-a, no Condoleezza!” all the way–to the President’s Office in the Main Quad. The intent was to make known his group’s demand (together with Stanford Says No to War) that Condoleezza Rice be investigated for war crimes and, if found guilty, prosecuted. The fact that Siegel nailed the demand to the office door (as he nailed a similar demand to the door of the Board of Trustees office in 1969) earned him press coverage from the local ABC and CBS affiliates as well as several publications. Also present during the ceremony was one representative of the Raging Grannies—a group surpassed in obnoxiousness only by the likes of Code Pink—and several of the cliche orange-jumpsuited, hooded Guantanamo “prisoners.”

Following the nailing was an impromptu speech by A3M alumna and current president of the far-left National Lawyer’s Guild Marjorie Cohn. With impassioned rhetoric, Cohn accused the former Secretary of State of being complicit in the torture of prisoners and of creating a “false connection between WMDs and Saddam Hussein” that led to an “illegal war of aggression.” Cohn continued by claiming that if any war crimes were committed, everyone in the Bush administration is liable for them, all the way up to and including the Commander-in-Chief. Though she called for an investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of many in the administration, the outcome of such an investigation was by no means in doubt in her mind; she concluded her diatribe by exclaiming, “We will not stop until they are punished!”

Returning to the tour, Siegel then took the group to the most politically charged spot on campus: Hoover Tower. Siegel explained that, during his time at Stanford, he preferred to target the university administration itself rather than the Hoover Institution, though he “understood” why some of his colleagues focused (and continue to focus) more on Hoover. One member of the group then held up the May 1 issue of this publication, ridiculing its front-page headline (“Campaign Contributions Study Indicates No Partisan Bias at Hoover”) as if it could not possibly be true. Had this individual actually taken the time to read the article, he might have found it more believable. This knee-jerk far-left attitude was apparent throughout the group, however, embodied in comments such as “You know that because of global warming the Earth’s population will be 1.5 billion 100 years from now” and complaints that several anti-Condi news pieces were in fact “sugar-coating” the issues and giving the former secretary too much credit.

Moving right along, the tour’s next stop was Encina Hall, site of the well-known “Encina sit-in,” in which Siegel and his “activists” took over the building for a day in 1969. The highlight of this stop was Siegel’s proudly describing how he discovered that the bricks in campus sidewalks at the time could be pried out of the ground by hand, broken in half on the curb, and then thrown at police officers. “That’s why they changed the sidewalks,” he said, laughing.

The tour concluded at the Intersection of Death with stories of how members of A3M often spent more time handing out flyers and pamphlets to passing cyclists than they did in class. Siegel said he personally missed three midterms because of exactly this. However, after being pressed by a student on the tour, he was forced to admit that the vast majority of Stanford students at the time did not share his zeal. “Most of the time, most of the students were still students,” he conceded, explaining that some students had their noses buried so deep in their books that they did not even learn about the Encina sit-in until after it had ended. The only times campus was truly galvanized, according to Siegel, were the springs of 1969 and 1970.

Despite this limited timeframe of mobilization and generally low level of student participation, Siegel and his movement did succeed in kicking ROTC off campus and forcing the Stanford Research Institute to officially separate from the university. The return of these radicals to campus was a sober reminder of the detrimental effects these actions continue to have today. Hopefully the current generation of Stanford students will leave a more positive legacy.