University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole has long taken radical, public positions on the ongoing struggle in the Middle East. As Winfield Myers writes, he has tried to vilify Middle East scholar Martin Kramer, because of his devastating critiques of Cole:
He has a relationship with the so-called "Middle East Forum," which runs the McCarthyite "Campus Watch," and which was part of a scheme to have me cyber-stalked and massively spammed.
Nothing new here:
Cole's accusations against Campus Watch fit his pattern of responding to criticism by engaging in conspiracy-theory-mongering and ad hominem attacks. To explain his failure in 2006 to land a chair at Yale University, he blamed a "concerted press campaign by neoconservatives," who used Cole's frequently intemperate writings on his blog, Informed Comment, to paint him as a radical.
As for the clinker, as shown by David White in his article "Juan Cole and Yale": The university's verdict was "based on an assessment of Cole's scholarly work ... deemed insufficient." Would there were more such honest and responsible calls.
