Misplaced Pages

Juan Cole: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 10:35, 21 May 2006 editHumus sapiens (talk | contribs)27,653 edits added pov warning, per talk← Previous edit Revision as of 19:08, 22 May 2006 edit undoCyde (talk | contribs)28,155 editsm →References: rm. broken refNext edit →
Line 166: Line 166:
] ]
] ]
28 Christopher Hitchens, Slate, May 2, 2006-->

Revision as of 19:08, 22 May 2006

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Juan R. I. Cole is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan. Since 2002, he has become prominent as a media commentator critical of U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East.

Education and background

Cole was awarded Fulbright-Hays fellowships to India (1982) and to Egypt (1985-1986). He speaks Arabic (Modern Standard as well as Lebanese and Egyptian dialects), Persian, and Urdu, and is familiar with Turkish.

Cole has travelled extensively in the Middle East . He was formerly a member of the Bahá'í Faith.

Career

Academic career

Cole is a Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History in the History Department at the University of Michigan. From 1999 until 2004, he was the editor of The International Journal of Middle East Studies. He has served in professional offices for the American Institute of Iranian Studies. He was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in November 2004.

Extra-academic career: media commentator, blogger, and pundit

From 2002 onwards, Cole has became increasingly active as a media commentator in UK and US media on topics related to the Middle East. His focus has primarily been Iraq, Iran and Israel. In 2002, Cole started a blog entitled: Informed Comment covering "History, Middle East, South Asia, Religious Studies, and the War on Terror". The blog has won various awards as of April 2006 the most prominent being the 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism from Hunter College. It has also received two 2004 Koufax Awards: the "Best Expert Blog" and the "Best Blog Post".

Cole has published political writings in The Guardian, the San Jose Mercury News, Salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Review, The Nation, Tikkun, and has appeared on Al Jazeera. In 2004, the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations requested Cole's testimony at hearings to better understand the situation in Iraq.

Views

On the war in Iraq

Cole is a staunch critic of current US policy in Iraq. He claims that the occupation regime is following unwise policy decisions based on faulty assumptions, that it is being carried out with brutality, and that it is unsucessful in curbing the resistance. He also portrays himself as having been an opponent of the war early on, but in several posts on his blog prior to the war he suggusted that war is the only way to remove Hussein, and expressed his opinion that "I remain convinced that, for all the concerns one might have about the aftermath, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the murderous Baath regime from power will be worth the sacrifices that are about to be made on all sides"

On the influence of Zionism in US foreign policy

Cole has been a harsh critic of a group of current and former US government officials, which he alleges have ties to the Likud Party. Cole believes these individuals cannot be trusted to put the interests of the US ahead of those of their alleged other loyalties. Charging that this group has dual loyalties, Cole writes;

That is true, but not in the way Lake imagines. I believe that Doug Feith, for instance, has dual loyalties to the Israeli Likud Party and to the U.S. Republican Party. He thinks that their interests are completely congruent. And I also think that if he has to choose, he will put the interests of the Likud above the interests of the Republican Party.
I don't think there is anything a priori wrong with Feith being so devoted to the Likud Party. That is his prerogative. But as an American, I don't want a person with those sentiments to serve as the number 3 man in the Pentagon. I frankly don't trust him to put America first.

In a commentary on an article written by Richard Sale, a UPI correspondant, and published in the World Peace Herald Cole stated that American Israel Public Affairs Committee "can arrange for representatives and senators to sign the most outrageous and one-sided letters to the president demanding support for virtually all Israeli military and foreign policy goals."

Cole has stated:

"Again, I underline that the American Jewish community does not support most AIPAC positions (a majority are much closer to Americans for Peace Now), and that this issue has to do with a small fanatical leadership of a specific lobbying organization, nothing more."
"American Jews were less likely to support the Iraq war than the general US population. So no one should blame 'the Jews' for the Iraq War. Mainly they should blame Bush and Cheney and Delay and Frist. But the case for an Iraq War was significantly bolstered by American supporters of Ariel Sharon (by no means all of them Jewish) high in the Bush administration."

Cole sees support in the controversial Mearsheimer and Walt 2006 working paper The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy Cole has since started a petition to The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to defend the authors from what he calls "baseless charges of anti-Semitism". Cole's critics view the petition, as well as the definition of antisemitism he gives, as essentially self-serving.

Efraim Karsh, Professor and Head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, writes:

"Cole may express offense at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but their obsession with the supposed international influence of "world Zionism" resonates powerfully in his own writings. How else can one describe his depiction of U.S. foreign policy as controlled by a ruthless Zionist cabal implanted at the highest echelons of the Bush administration and employing "sneaky methods of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of intelligence" to promote its goals? And what of Cole's claim that the pro-Israel lobby aipac, in alliance with the Christian Right, represents a sinister force controlling congressional decisions on policy toward Israel? "The Founding Fathers of the United States deeply feared that a foreign government might gain this level of control over a branch of the United States government, and their fears have been vindicated," Cole laments...Cole is of course not the first nor the last to argue that U.S. foreign policy has been hijacked by the Jewish state (one recalls Pat Buchanan's description of Congress as Israel's "amen corner"). But, while most anti-Israel (indeed, anti-Jewish) critics tend to hide behind the more neutral term "neocons," Cole does not shy from labeling prominent Jewish members of the Bush administration (or, for that matter, anyone not overtly hateful of Sharon) as "Likudniks...Cole provides no proof whatsoever for this conspiratorial thinking--there is none.."

Other critics have also expressed the opinion that Cole's views are influenced by anti-semitic themes. Steven Plaut writes that Cole "believes that a group of Jewish 'neo-conservatives' largely runs U.S. policy toward the Middle East. His recurrent theory is that a nebulous 'pro-Likud' cabal controls the U.S. government from a small number of key positions in the Executive Branch" . Critics have complained that Cole's criticism of certain US government officials with ties to Israel amounts to an "anti-semitic conspiracy theory" and that it is an example of new antisemitism . .

In a response to charges of anti-semitism, Cole has asserted that his US neoconservatives and Israeli Likudnik critics have used claims of "anti-semitism" against him not because they believe he is antisemetic, but rather as a tool of intimidation due to his political views:

"So this is the way it goes with the Likudniks. First they harass you and try to have you spied on. Then they threaten, bully and try to intimidate you. And if that fails and you show some spine, then they simply lie about you. (In this case the lies are produced by quoting half a passage, or denuding it of its context, or adopting a tone of pained indignation when quoting a perfectly obvious observation)... The thing that most pains me in all this is the use of the word "anti-semite."

Cole has also accused his critics of "...encouraging a new kind of anti-semitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should criticize Likud Party policies."

Controversy

Career

Subjects of extra-academic commentary vs. areas of academic expertise

Professor Efraim Karsh, who has published widely on modern middle eastern affairs has challenged Cole's expertise on subjects he addresses in his blog: "Having done hardly any independent research on the twentieth-century Middle East, Cole's analysis of this era is essentially derivative, echoing the conventional wisdom among Arabists and Orientalists regarding Islamic and Arab history, the creation of the modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, and its relations with the outside world." . John Fund, in the Wall Street Journal wrote that: " scholarship is largely on the 19th-century Middle East, not on contemporary issues.

Intellectual standards and integrity

On the occasion of Juan Cole's assumption of the presidency of the Middle Eastern Studies Association of North America, Archaeologist, Historian, and Campus Watch Director Alexander H. Joffe wrote an article entitled "Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies" in the Middle East Quarterly. Joffe introduces the article by stating that Cole's election, "marks an endorsement of his work by hundreds of professors in various fields of Middle Eastern studies in American universities," and in the article criticizes Cole as symptomatic of a "widespread urge" among Middle Eastern Studies scholars "to promote polemic over scholarship." Other critics have echoed these concerns

Joffe also raised issues of Cole's intellectual integrity, pointing to instances in which Cole altered his blog posts after they were demonstrated to contain incorrect historical information, without indicating he had made any changes. cited in .

Cole has also been criticized by Jonah Goldberg and others for failing to acknowledge his own past positions on the war in Iraq and elections in Iraq and Iran. In response, Cole defended his positions on the specific issues on his weblog. He responded to Goldberg as follows:

"I think it is time to be frank about some things. Jonah Goldberg knows absolutely nothing about Iraq. I wonder if he has even ever read a single book on Iraq, much less written one. He knows no Arabic. He has never lived in an Arab country. He can't read Iraqi newspapers or those of Iraq's neighbors. He knows nothing whatsoever about Shiite Islam, the branch of the religion to which a majority of Iraqis adheres. Why should we pretend that Jonah Goldberg's opinion on the significance and nature of the elections in Iraq last Sunday matters? It does not."

Goldberg took issue with Cole's characteristic ad hominem style in responding to detractors, but some pundits, such as James Wolcott support that style of argumentation ]

Yale Position

In early 2006, Cole was shortlisted for a professorship of contemporary Middle East studies at Yale University. This has attracted controversy.



Misc

Campus Watch "dossier"

Cole threatened legal action against Daniel Pipes and historian Martin Kramer, after an organization they are involved in the leadership of (Campus Watch ) published a Juan Cole "dossier" on the Campus Watch website. A screenshot of the document Cole objected to, can be seen online . Cole asserted that the dossier incorrectly portrayed him as a supporter of Islamic extremism, exposed him to acts of violence, and that it therefore constituted "stalking".

Translation disputes

Osama Bin Laden Video

Right before the November 2004 US Presidential election, Osama bin Laden released a video in which he said:

"...your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaeda. No. Your security is in your own hands. And every that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security."

MEMRI, an organization specializing in producing translations of Arabic language and Farsi media, used the modern standard Arabic definition of "wilayah" as "province or administrative district" to translate "wilayah" as "U.S. state" and suggested that bin Laden was attempting to speak to voters in individual states to influence their choice of candidate . Al-Jazeera translated the expression in question as "every state".

Cole disputed MEMRI's translation on his blog, saying:

"A re-interpretation of the speech, put in motion by the neoconservative organ, MEMRI, has been flying around the web, suggesting that Bin Laden is threatening individual American states if they vote for Bush...their conclusion is impossible"

Cole speculated that bin Laden was not using the standard Arabic sense of "wilayah", as in the Arabic name of the United States of America, (الولايات الأمريكية المتح) but rather, either an archaic or a fundamentalists' sense of the word meaning "government", or that he might have lapsed into a local idiom in which "wilayah" might mean "city".

Yigal Carmon's article defending the standard translation of the word can be found in this article in the National Review Online.

Cole was also threatened with legal action by Yigal Carmon of for making what Carmon described as "several claims that are patently false" about the organization on his blog -- this was reference to the same blog posting that disputed the bin Laden translation. Cole claimed that "MEMRI is funded to the tune of $60 million a year by someone", was a "a sophisticated anti-Arab propaganda machine" which "cherry-picks the vast Arabic press", and that is was a "public relations campaign essentially on behalf of the far right-wing Likud Party in Israel" In a personal letter to Cole, Carmon objected to Cole's statements, saying that they went, "beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and...qualify as slander and libel" Carmon also objected to Cole's, "trying to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich, sinister group.

Cole posted Carmon's letter on his blog, along with a suggestion that Carmon was threatening to sue not because he found Cole's remarks libelous, but out of an attempt to silence him using a Strategic lawsuit against public participation. Cole did not however, repeat his "$60 million a year" claim, but instead, referred to MEMRI as "well funded" and encouraged his readers to write to MEMRI in protest, saying, "Israeli military intelligence is used to being able to censor the Israeli press and to intimidate journalists, and it is a bit shocking that Carmon should imagine that such intimidation would work in a free society. "

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Christopher Hitchens attacked Cole for his comments on a private discussion list that suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel had been mistranslated. Ahmadinejad's phrase was translated by Farsi speaking Nazila Fathi of the New York Times' Tehran bureau as "wipe Israel off the map". A similar translation was provided by the Associated Press and by Al-Jazeera. Iran's official IRNA news agency also quoted him as telling a conference: "Israel must be wiped off the map".

Cole translated the same passage as "the occupation regime must end". Hitchens argued that "the regime occupying Jerusalem" is a reference to Israel, and that the passage clearly meant "annihilate", and ended with; "One might have thought that, if the map-wiping charge were to have been inaccurate or unfair, Ahmadinejad would have denied it. But he presumably knew what he had said and had meant to say. In any case, he has an apologist to do what he does not choose to do for himself. But this apologist, who affects such expertise in Persian, cannot decipher the plain meaning of a celebrated statement and is, furthermore, in need of a remedial course in English."

Pointing out that the translation Hitchens found fault with was an early draft, taken from a private discussion group formed to develop ideas with other academics and journalists, Cole defended his interpretation. Cole wrote;

"The precise reason for Hitchens' theft and publication of my private mail is that I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks."

He also demanded an apology from Hitchens for making public his message. He also referred to Hitchens' piece as being either ghost written by a right-wing think-tank, or the product of Hitchens' "...very serious and debilitating drinking problem." Cole also quoted from a Hitchen's column of two months earlier, in which Hitchens had come to the same conclusion as Cole. "The recent fuss about the obliteration of Israel is largely bullshit: Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for this has been intoned pedantically and routinely ever since he first uttered it."

Andrew Sullivan, a friend of Hitchens', dissected Hitchens', Cole's, and a third-party translation of Ahmadinejad's speech, and concluded, "It seems to me that Cole is trying to imply that Ahmadinejad is referring solely to the occupation of Jerusalem, and making a metaphysical or metaphorical point rather than an empirical one. But the full text proves definitively otherwise. ...He utterly rejects the withdrawal from Gaza or the West Bank as sufficient. And he wants the country wiped off the map - and even erased from the historical record. Cole's rhetorical sleight of hand strikes me as deliberate deception, an attempt to deny the existence of a real genocidal evil in the world that Cole himself knows exists. Why? You decide. But Cole has exposed himself more brutally than Hitch ever could." In his response to Hitchens, Cole had pointed out that he was not an "apologist" for Ahmadinejad, whom he called a "little shit" and of whom he had written in the original email: "I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies."

Bill Scher, on the Huffington Post blog, wrote that, "High-profile arguments between pundits, experts or intellectuals can be distracting sideshows. But the online fight between U. of Michigan history professor Juan Cole and neocon writer Christopher Hitchens, over the accuracy of translated remarks of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is important. And potentially useful in preventing the neocons from successfully re-running the Iraq playbook for Iran."

Cole exchanged emails with Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, regarding Hitchens' use of his email from the Gulf2000 discussion group and published Weisberg's response on his blog. Cole commented, "Hitchens, having come into this material, could have called me and interviewed me. Journalists interview me all the time. I could have been given the opportunity to set them in context and to respond to his points. How could he possibly even understand what I was getting at from a couple of disconnected emails someone handed to him?" Slate editor Jacob Weisberg responded to this, saying "In my judgment, there is no ethical issue here. Commentators are under no obligation to call people they write about. And Hitchens correctly described the email he quoted from as being from your Gulf discussion group. Your substantive disagreement about the translation and the issues around it are a fit matter for public debate, which appears to be taking place."

Cole explained his position on Ahmadinejad's words further: "Ahmadinejad, however, has condemned mass killing of any sort and was not threatening military action (he is in any case not in command of the Iranian military). He compares his hope for an end to any Zionist regime in geographical Palestine to Khomeini's prediction that the Soviet Union would one day vanish. It wasn't a hope to kill Soviet citizens, but a desire for regime change. Ahmadinejad's hostility to Israel and his Holocaust denial and bigotry are beneath contempt. But he has not threatened military action, and has no unconventional weapons, and his words, however hurtful, do not constitute a legitimate basis for a war of aggression on Iran."

MEMRI's translation of the phrase is similar to Cole's: "'Imam said: 'This regime that is occupying Qods must be eliminated from the pages of history.' This sentence is very wise."

Selected bibliography

  • Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi`ite Islam (I.B. Tauris, 2002) ISBN 1860647367
  • Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Bahá'í Faith in the Nineteenth Century Middle East (Columbia University Press, 1998) ISBN 0231110812
  • Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's `Urabi Movement (Princeton University Press, 1993) ISBN 0691056838

External links

Cole and other pundits

References

  1. Juan Cole CV, Juan Cole's Academic Web site, accessed April 23, 2006
  2. Hitchens, Galloway and Cole, Juan Cole, Informed Comment, September 16, 2005
  3. Juan Cole @ University of Michigan, Professional Homepage, accessed April 23, 2006
  4. MESA Board of Directors, MESA of America Website, accessed April 23, 2006
  5. Lifetime Awards for Molly Ivins, Anthony Lewis, Editor and Publisher, March 27, 2006
  6. 2005 Koufax Awards, Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly blog, February 23, 2005.
  7. Essays and Op-Eds, Juan Cole's Website
  8. Juan Cole's Senate Testimony Brief, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 20, 2004
  9. Shock of the Week: Liberals in Liberal ArtsJuan Cole, Informed Comment blog, November 28, 2004
  10. Monday, March 31, 2003Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, Monday, March 31, 2003
  11. Dual Loyalties, Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, September 09, 2004
  12. FBI steps up AIPAC probe
  14. Franklin Met with Naor Gilon, Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, August 31, 2004
  15. Fixing the Intelligence Around the Facts Part Deux, Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, June 20, 2005
  16. Cole, Juan. Breaking the silence, Salon.com, April 19. 2006.
  17. Cole, Juan. Petition to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Cole's blog "Informed Comment", April 27, 2006
  18. A Petition for... Himself, Tony Badran, Across the Bay blog
  19. ^ Juan Cole's Bad blog, by Efraim Karsh in the The New Republic
  20. Old Juan Cole: A Very Sad Soul by Steven Plaut (FrontPageMagazine) March 23, 2005
  21. Anti-Zionism, criticism of Israel and Anti-Semitism revisited, Ami Isseroff, ZioNation - Progressive Zionism and Israel Web Log, 30.04.2006
  22. Juan Cole, Media - and MESA - Darling by Jonathan Calt Harris (FrontPageMagazine) December 7, 2004
  23. Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies Alexander H. Joffe, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2006 13(1)
  24. Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
  25. Yale's Next Tenured Radical? Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
  26. Juan Cole, "Character Assassination", Informed Comment, December 8, 2004
  27. Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
  28. Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
  29. Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
  30. Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
  31. Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
  32. Making Cole-slaw of history, Martin Kramer, Sandbox blog, 10 July 2005
  33. Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
  34. Cole v. Goldberg, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, February 07, 2005
  37. Cole Fire, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, Monday, April 24, 2006
  38. Cole is poor choice for Mideast position, Michael Rubin, Yale Daily News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
  39. Yale's Next Tenured Radical?, Eliana Johnson and Mitch Webber, The New York Sun, April 18, 2006
  40. Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? Campus Watch, Martin Kramer, Sandstorm blog, September 18, 2002
  41. Dossiers: COLE, Juan, Screenshot on ei: The Electronic Intifada
  42. Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
  43. Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech at Al-Jazeera. 01 November 2004
  44. Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
  45. Osama vs. Bush. Bin Laden tape threatens U.S. States not to vote for Bush at National Review Online. October 31, 2004
  46. Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
  47. Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic. November 23, 2004
  50. The Cole Report, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Tuesday, May 2, 2006
  51. Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
  52. Hitch vs Cole, Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish blog, May 3, 2006
  53. Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War! Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, May 03, 2006
  54. The Importance of Cole v. Hitchens, Huffington Post, May 4, 2006
  55. Cole/Weisberg Correspondence on Hitchens, Juan Cole, Informed Comment blog, Friday, May 05, 2006
  57. Special Dispatch Series 1013 MEMRI, October 28, 2005
  58. The Importance of Cole v. Hitchens, Huffington Post, May 4, 2006
Categories: