Florida Atlantic University Peace Studies Program
By DiscoverTheNetworks.org
April 2005

·         Boasts a homogeneously leftwing faculty

·         Peace Studies courses serve as a forum for leftwing political activism

·         Played host to Hamas-linked scholar Mustafa Abu-Sway

In December 2003, Lynn Appleton, a sociology professor and associate dean of the Peace Studies program at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), authored a memo that vaulted both her and the program to national attention. In the memo, Appleton bemoaned the evident lack of student interest in a course titled “Islam and Politics,” and urged her FAU colleagues to drum up enthusiasm for the course. “Enrollment is small and stagnant,” grumbled Appleton in the memo, adding, “Could you put up some posters — very rapidly! Is there an email list of majors to which information could be sent? Let me know what you are able to do.” In closing, Appleton wrote, “I would hate to see the course cancelled.” 

What made the memo controversial was that the instructor for the course it so passionately endorsed was Dr. Mustafa Abu-Sway, a Palestinian lecturer from al-Quds University in Jerusalem. Abu-Sway was no conventional professor. As Daniel Pipes, a scholar of Islam, documented in an investigative report, Abu-Sway has a long track record of extremism. In addition to serving as a board member and fundraiser for two organizations aligned with the terrorist group Hamas, he has maintained contacts with several known terrorist operatives.

Just as extreme is Abu-Sway’s militant opposition to the state of Israel: he has been quoted on several occasions calling for its destruction and replacement by an Islamic state. Confronted with Pipes’ charges, Abu-Sway did not back down. Portraying himself as a victim of a First Amendment witch-hunt, he claimed, “If you speak about the hardships that the Palestinian people are enduring, you are given a hard time.” Rather than addressing the substance of Pipes’ charges, Abu-Sway deflected them as nothing more than “character assassination” and suggested that his critics were motivated by racism: “If my name was George or Brian, they wouldn’t question my position or relationships,” he declared.

Revelations of Abu-Sway’s extremist background did not prompt the FAU Peace Studies program administrators to sever ties with the professor. To the contrary, the university directed its ire at Daniel Pipes. In January 2004, FAU released a heated statement castigating Pipes and his co-author Asaf Romirowsky. “The shrill criticism that is being directed against the university by Mr. Pipes and Mr. Romirowsky serve only to demonstrate their lack of understanding of these fundamentals,” the statement read. Far more generous was the university’s treatment of Abu-Sway. In 2004, the Peace Studies department decided to allocate special funding to host an Honors College Fulbright Scholar; that scholar was none other than Dr. Mustafa Abu-Sway.

That an extremist in the mold of Abu-Sway should wind up teaching in the Peace Studies Department was no coincidence. Since its advent as an undergraduate degree program in 1999, and as a graduate program in the fall of 2003, the Peace Studies program at FAU has devolved into a de facto forum for the radical political views of the professoriate. Rather than adhering to the stated aim of the Peace Studies program—which promises “to provide students with a deeper understanding of the complexity of peace and the resolution of conflict from an interdisciplinary perspective”—professors at FAU have annexed it in the service of the regnant leftwing orthodoxy.

The example of the executive committee tasked with administering the FAU Peace Studies program illustrates the point. This five-member committee is really a brain trust of leftist ideologues. For instance, the aforementioned Lynn Appleton is a leftist feminist whose primary focus in her courses is gender studies. Philosophy professor Robin Fiore, meanwhile, is a feminist social theorist who serves as an advisor for the school’s College Democrats; in her off hours, she is a practicing environmental activist. Another committee member, English professor Andrew Furman, is a champion of leftwing “multiculturalism” whose writings have appeared in such publications as the radical leftist journal Tikkun. Along with Fiore, Furman is a committed environmentalist, a role that is embraced with still greater zeal by committee member Max Kirsch.

A professor of comparative studies at Florida Atlantic, Kirsch’s preferred cause is the Florida Everglades. His enthusiasm for the Everglades affords him the opportunity to rail against globalization, which he has long opposed. In Kirsch’s tendentious framing, globalization is not only a bane to Florida’s environment but is also a threat to human rights. A description of a graduate seminar called “Human Rights and the Environment,” which Kirsch teaches as part of the Peace Studies program, provides a revealing glimpse into the admixture of leftist environmentalism and anti-corporate angst that informs Kirsch’s anti-globalization scholarship. In language more reminiscent of a political tract than a course manual, it states: “Definitions of human rights now regularly encompass the rights of access to resources that sustain human life, even as access to those resources are rapidly being controlled by corporate interests and traded in world economic forums.”

Kirsch charges that globalization undermines the “provision of adequate health care”; reduces the “availability of education” to Florida residents; fails to provide “appropriate life-sustaining employment”; and causes the “exclusion of community voices from policy making.” Kirsch regularly invites anti-globalization and environmentalist speakers to address FAU students. Among those who have appeared at Kirsch’s request are the radical feminist anthropologist Helen Safa, who delivered a lecture called “Forms of U.S. Hegemony in Puerto Rico: The Impact on the Family and Sexuality”; and June Nash, a neo-Marxist professor at the City University of New York. (It should be noted that Kirsch is not the only member of the Peace Studies faculty to extend invitations to leftwing environmental activists. In January 2005, for instance, the Peace Studies department organized a “Human Rights” conference. Among the attendees was Cynthia Laramore, a representative of the environmentalist group Active Citizens Together Improving Our Neighborhoods.) In the past, Kirsch has also pressed Florida Atlantic graduate students into the service of his cause. In 2002-03, for instance, six graduate students joined him in “research” to fortify Kirsch’s claim that globalization adversely affects Florida’s communities. Given his avidity for what he calls “environmental justice,” it is not surprising that Kirsch also holds a chair at the leftist United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Another devotee of the United Nations is Jeffrey S. Morton, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic. A member of the Peace Studies executive committee, Morton was appointed to head the Peace Studies program in 2003. Morton, who initiated the South Florida chapter of the Model United Nations at FAU, is a proponent of what he describes as the “progressive development of international law,” a school of leftwing legal theory wherein the United Nations is considered the sole arbiter of international law. In keeping with this theory, Morton has long opposed any military campaign lacking the approval of the United Nations. In a 2003 article for the Journal of International and Comparative Law, for instance, he asserted that the 1999 intervention of NATO forces in the former Yugoslavia was illegal. The reason: it lacked the imprimatur of the UN. This argument also forms the basis of a graduate seminar that Morton teaches through the Peace Studies program, called “Peace Through International Law & Organization.”

Classes offered through the FAU Peace Studies program likewise bear the tincture of leftwing orthodoxy. Some courses have no apparent connection to the study of conflict resolution; instead, they take as their subject causes fashionable among leftwing activists. Such is the case with a class called “Minority Issues & Social Work,” offered to undergraduate students enrolled in the Peace Studies program. Meanwhile, the title of a graduate-level course called Moral Perspectives on Peace and Justice is conspicuously misleading. In fact, the only perspective to which students are exposed in the class is the leftist conception of human rights promulgated by organizations like Amnesty International and Doctors without Borders, both of which are held up as paragons of the Peace Studies philosophy.

Peace Studies courses centering on the nature of warfare have similarly fallen victim to leftwing prejudices. These courses are offered on the unobjectionable tenet “that to understand how to keep the peace, we must first understand the conduct of war.” As a review of the courses lays bare, however, the Peace Studies program is selective in its application of this core belief. For instance, a core class called “War and Peace,” which aspires to examine the “long-term trends and short-term events that contribute to the outbreak of hostilities,” is unduly preoccupied with the role of the United States “defense industry.” Fully one-third of the class is devoted to its study. 

As a corollary to the political agenda promulgated through the Peace Studies program, FAU also hosts an annual “Peace Exhibition,” a kind of on-campus festival championing the ideals of the program. For instance, the 2004 exhibition featured screenings of several Peace Studies-approved films, including “Promises,” a documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict produced by a trio of leftwing filmmakers. The exhibition also featured such luminaries of the Peace Studies Left as Harold Gatensby. A member of the Inland Tlingit Nation in the Yukon Territory of North America, Gatensby is a leading proponent of a spiritualist school of conflict management known as “restorative justice.” Gatensby used the occasion to introduce a key component of this school: “peace circles.” The idea behind these circles is basic: In a manner vaguely reminiscent of new-age meditative techniques, participants arrange themselves into circles and concentrate on “spiritual feeling.” Proponents of “Peace Circles” believe them to be an effective mechanism for resolving conflicts. While such techniques may seem more appropriate for a yoga class than a university setting, they find a receptive audience among FAU faculty. For instance, Dr. Mara Schiff, an associate professor of criminal justice at FAU, has long devoted her research to the study of restorative justice.  

While the FAU Peace Studies program is discernibly lacking in ideological balance, it does not want for backers. Numbering among the program’s underwriters is the Robert Lee and Thomas M. Chastain Charitable Foundation, a Florida charity that sponsors a number of leftwing causes in the state.