Columbia University's Hysterical Professor By Daniel Pipes Others may have sympathized on learning that Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, felt threatened by a graduate student at his own university, but not me. The incident began late on Sept. 27, 2004, when Victor Luria, a Ph.D. candidate in genetics and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, wrote Dabashi an e-mail taking strong exception to what Dabashi had written about the IDF in an article, ?For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine,? http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/709/cu12.htm he published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. In response, Luria wrote to Dabashi: I have rarely seen such a revolting excerpt of anti-semitism as your article in Al-Ahram. Your article implies no right of Israel to exist. ? As an Israeli citizen, I welcome the right of Palestinians to have an independent state and a capital in East Jerusalem. At the same time, you clearly deny (and you are not even a Palestinian) my right to have a country. Rather than answer Luria?s critique, Dabashi early on Sept. 28 forwarded his note to several top Columbia officials, including the university?s provost, Alan Brinkley. He also commented on what Luria had written: I consider this slanderous harassment a conduct unbecoming of a student of Columbia University towards a member of the faculty whom he has never met or known. I bring this defamatory attack against a Columbia faculty to the judicious attention of your respective offices. Given the military record of this person, I also feel physically threatened. I would be grateful if Columbia Security were also to be informed of this slanderous attack against my character and appropriate measures taken to protect my person from a potential attack by a militant slanderer. Dabashi concluded, ?For the time being, and in the best interest of our university, I will refrain from contacting the New York Police Department directly.? Underwhelmed, Brinkley wrote him back the same day,. Dear Hamid, I see nothing threatening in this message, however unfair its conclusions might be. I also see no grounds for alerting security, although you are certainly free to contact them if you feel otherwise. I very much doubt the New York City police would have any grounds for intervening in this matter. I?m sorry this attack has occurred, but you are no stranger to controversy and have encountered such ad hominem criticism before. This is one of the unhappy prices of a public life, and I would recommend ignoring Mr. Luria (whom I do not know). Yours, Alan Indeed, Dabashi is ?no stranger to controversy? and some of it concerns me. I report his exchange with Luria (which was first reported in the New York Sun) because it helps explain Dabashi?s behavior two year earlier, when he claimed to be threatened by an article Jonathan Schanzer and I co-authored on June 25, 2002. We mentioned Dabashi as one of six professors in a catalogue of academic radicalism regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict. The reference to Dabashi, replicated here in its entirety, merely noted two of his actions: Columbia University: Hamid Dabashi, a specialist on Iran, compared Israel?s military maneuvers in Jenin (to prevent future suicide bombings) with the Nazi Holocaust. When one student protested his canceling class to attend a rabidly anti-Israel sit-in, he sneeringly replied, ?I apologize if canceling our class in solidarity with [Palestinian] victims of a genocide . . . inconvenienced you.? Dabashi contested neither of these facts but instead bellyached how publicizing them disrupted his life by making him and his students the victims of ?racist and obscene? harassment, leading his computer to be hacked, and causing spams to be sent from his Columbia account. In reply, I condemned any such actions but also requested proof that they had actually occurred. Dabashi and I went back and forth on this point, most notably on MSNBC?s ?Donahue? program. HAMID DABASHI: The hacking of our computers, and the fact that our e-mails are flooded with e-mails following his attack on us, and putting us on his Web site, is now documented that Columbia University security, NYPD, intelligence division of the New York police department, so as in Chicago and Michigan. PHIL DONAHUE: You mean documented with the police? DABASHI: With the police. That is, we are being attacked by hackers and by those who, following his attack on me-his initial attack on me was in the New York Post on June 26 [sic]. Immediately after that, I received tons of death threats, racist, obscene and threatening voice mails. And immediately after that, the last week of August, tons of e-mails ? hundreds, thousands of e-mails, to the point that Columbian security could not increase my quota enough. DANIEL PIPES: You must send me this information. Would you prove it to me? DABASHI: If I may just, th

"the point being that the russian design was actually better in many cases than the American" I think you're not grasping something. It's a myth. Therefore the point is a myth. It's like telling us about Santa Claus, and then telling us that Claus may be a myth, but the point is that Reindeer can fly.

I can't even begin. Good Lord, you have a seriously handicapped and biased system of beliefs about the Romans! No advances? Glassmaking? Agriculture? Architecture and Engineering? Must I list them? Funny, how you mention Islamic Architecture. Buildings. Oooh, you're on my home turf now. Now think really hard about this: Why is it that the very greatest examples of "Islamic" architecture can be found where Muslims overran advanced civilizations, such as the Byzantines, or Spain, or India, and NOT in their own homeland? Why does the architecture of the Hagia Sophia and Alcazar and Taj Mahal outshine anything in Mecca or Medina? Compare that with the Roman or British or Empires, when the greatest Roman architecture was to found in Rome, and the greatest British architecture found in Britain. And in China, the highest example of traditional architecture, the Forbidden city, was the heart of the empire. What does this strange pattern say to you? Empires built solely on COnquest, like the Muslims, Mongols, and Conquistadors, conquer but rarely build. They absorb but do not advance.

"Much of the Arab and Greek philosophy and discoveries were made available after the fall of Constantinople and was one of the sparks for the renaissance." Ummm... Constantinople fell TO the Muslims. Therefore, if, as you claim, this store of information was in Constantinople prior to that point, it's quite clear that the Byzantines and NOT the Muslims were the ones preserving it!

"Empires built solely on COnquest, like the Muslims, Mongols, and Conquistadors, conquer but rarely build. They absorb but do not advance." SGTObvious, let me disagree with your theory about empires and architecture&engineering. - Mongols. You are right they didn't leave any significant building in their homeland in the steppes..., but that's mainly because by origin they were a nomadic people moving from here to there looking grass for their livestock, not the best background for a flourish architecture. - Muslims: Islam was originated in today' Saudi Arabia, another land of semi-nomadic people more focused in caravans than in agriculture or cities, nevertheless, they learned quite quickly. For instance, they did wonders about irrigation works in Spain, doing much more than the Visigoths had done. Another example, in the building of the Alhambra, the best craftsmen from Baghdad and Damascus were hired to get the skills the local craftsmen were not able to offer. - Conquistadors: I guess you are referring to the Spanish empire. I believe Cartagena de Indias in Colombia or Havana in Cuba don't fit very well with your statement about the "Conquistadors" (as you put it) hardly built anything. You can argue you enjoy more the Aztez, Mayan or Inca architecture, but that's another story. Tercio PS1: Btw, the first University ever founded in the Americas was set in Peru as early as 1551 by the "Conquistadors". Might we think the "Conquistadors" did something more than conquest?. PS2: A nice example of Spanish military engineering in US following: http://dhr.dos.state.fl.us/services/magazine/02summer/castillo.cfm

Without Islam, we would have had to invent a different word for "assassin."

Boy, are people being really selective in what bits of history they're using here. THe university system being an Islamic tradition that the Europeans copied? Um, anyone ever hear of The Lyceum? Monastic orders? Be careful when you do this. This whole 'Islam saved Hellenic knowledge' theme is a busted paradigm. There's evidence that kills it dead(deacon). Like 'How the Irish Saved Civlization' which shows that the same texts at the Cordoba library existed in Irish monastaries and Irish itenerant clergy cirulated the texts through out Europe on their travels. The medical breakthroughs? Hello? Anyone ever heard of Galen? Yes, I understand why Sorkoi and Uchiita are making their arguments in trying to undo or staunch blatant cheauvanism or bigotry. But, be fair, and above all be honest and factual. Entymology? Please, did the sciences exist without the Arabic names? Absolutely(can you do geometry without algebraic principles? No. Were the Ptolemeic Greeks calculating the circumfrence of the Earth using algebra before Islam came to be in the 7th century? You betcha.). Be fair, be honest and accurate..

"Now think really hard about this: Why is it that the very greatest examples of "Islamic" architecture can be found where Muslims overran advanced civilizations, such as the Byzantines, or Spain, or India, and NOT in their own homeland?" Maybe because the capitals and heartland of the Islamic empire were to be found in the fertile crescent: Damascus, Kufa, Baghdad, Samara, Cario (a city founded by Muslims rather re-occuppied). Most momentual archeticture tended to be in the capitals. Most impressive Hellenstic archetiture is not found in Makedonia but in centres of Hellesntic monarchies which were often centres main settlement in fertile crescent e.g Antioch, Selecuia... Alexandria... Does this address your point?

The western european appriation of Greek philospy came via Arabic commentarties and translations. Most people who know about these things do not find difficult to understand that Muslim contribution to philosophy.

Without Islam, we would have had to invent a different word for "assassin." The lack of word did help Julius Ceasar in Ides of March- also we probably need another word for hashish...