In the 1930s, the universities were the first German institutions to capitulate to Adolf Hitler. Martin Heidegger, Germany’s greatest 20th century philosopher and the intellectual idol of American academics hailed the advent of the Third Reich from the rectorship of Freiburg University. Fascism was an idea so messianic in its conception, so elitist in its attitudes and so anti-capitalist in its social philosophy that intellectuals found it irresistible.

            In England in the 1930s, while Germany rearmed and began annexing territory in the heart of Europe, the Oxford Union resolved “not to defend King and country” against the growing fascist threat. The pacificism of the progressive left and the Tory right added up to an appeasement of Hitler that protected him when he was still weak and testing the limits of Western resolve. The consequence was World War II and 70 million deaths before he was stopped.

            The lessons of history are not readily learned and the past, as a result, is slated for an endless revival. Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose. The seeds of the contemporary opposition to the War on Terror were sown in the 1960s in the movement to oppose the Communist aggression in Vietnam. Once again the universities and the intellectual culture provided the most dependable support in the West for the totalitarian agendas of the Communist bloc. The withdrawal of American aid to the anti-Communist forces in Cambodia and Vietnam in 1975 (long after American forces had been removed) resulted in the slaughter of two and a half million peasants in Indo-China at the hands of the Communist victors. The blood of these innocents would not have been shed without the aid the Communists received from their supporters and appeasers in the anti-Vietnam movement in the West.

            Now we are engaged in a new war with a totalitarian enemy. Radcial Islam despises capitalism and its democracies in the West. And once again, totalitarianism finds its most dependable allies on college faculties. This time, the enemy does not offer lofty visions of utopia nor rallying cries of “self-determination,” nor a promise to revenge past national grievances. The jihadists of Radical Islam simply offer unmitigated hatred of the “Great Satan,” United States. For the academic left, that is enough. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a sufficient logic to cement the alliance.

                On university campuses across the country, tenured radicals teach their students that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” and that America is “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” The Middle Eastern Studies Association and more than 200 “Peace Studies” programs share the view that our terrorist enemies, however regrettable their public relations sense are in fact the voice of the world’s “oppressed” and that by challenging the United States they are advancing the cause of “social justice.”[1] ([1] For the views of one influential radical professor see Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Anti-Chomsky Reader, Encounter Books 2004) Nor is the activity of these faculty radicals confined to academic theory. On every major American campus, radical professors are busily organizing anti-American “teach-ins” and demonstrations against the war, and providing their students with academic credit for joining the radical cause.

                September 11, 2001, is burned into the nation’s memory as a day of infamy and terror. Yet within weeks of this horror, protests were organized on more than 150 American college campuses opposing an American military response in advance. Columbia University Marxist Eric Foner, a past president of both the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, declared, “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.” As President Bush vowed to depose the totalitarian theocracy that had given al-Qaeda a military base of operations and bring the terrorists to justice, professors denounced America as “the greatest terrorist state;” lecturers at the City University of New York condemned “American imperialism” as the root cause of the attack; and Brown University academics chanted, “one, two, three, four, we don’t want a racist war!”[2] (For these citations see David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, Regnery 2004) Thus, before the final death count had been tallied in the worst act of terrorism in American history, the campus Left had already launched a pre-emptive strike against America’s effort to defend itself.

            A year and a half later, American forces entered Iraq to enforce UN resolution 1441 against Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship, a sponsor of terror, a deployer of chemical weapons, an aggressor in two recent wars, and an outlaw regime in open defiance of 16 previous UN resolutions and international law. Demonstrations were organized on nearly 1,000 campuses to prevent America and Britain from taking down Saddam’s regime.  At one “antiwar” teach-in at Columbia University, conducted by 30 faculty and attended by 3,000 students, Professor Nicholas De Genova declared: “Peace is subversive, because peace anticipates a very different world than the one in which we live – a world where the U.S. would have no place. The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.”[3] (Cited in Horowitz, op. cit. p. 34)

            This was a reference to the site in Somalia where an al-Qaeda warlord ambushed and killed 18 American troops, then dragged their bodies through the streets. According to reports, the crowd “applauded loudly” when De Genova continued, “If we really [believe] that this war is criminal...then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine.” The “Iraqi people” the Columbia teach-in cheered to victory are the same terrorist forces that carried out the torture and rape of Saddam’s political opponents and their families as a matter of course, and have since killed more than 1,000 U.S. servicemen. 

            This speech was a moment of truth  for the campus antiwar Left, revealing how a significant segment of academia had formed an unholy alliance with terrorists and their enablers. From sponsoring pro-terrorist symposia, to funding and defending pro-terrorist campus organizations, to teaching students that America is an imperialistic oppressor and the terrorists are no threat, America’s universities are playing a sinister and dangerous role in the war on the terror. It is a role that deserves more attention than it has been given, and the present booklet, Campus Support for Terrorism, is an attempt to remedy the deficiency.

            Perhaps the most notorious example of a professor’s active role in the terrorist jihad is that of Osama “Sami” al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor who before his arrest was the North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an organization that has murdered more than 100 people in suicide bombings in the Middle East, including two young Americans.

            Al-Arian operated his terrorist network using the University of South Florida as a base of operations. Under university auspices, he created two “think tanks,” the World Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE) and the Islamic Committee for Palestine, from which he leveraged campus authorities to invite, sponsor, and employ his fellow terrorists. WISE board member Tarik Hamdi delivered a satellite phone to Osama bin Laden in May 1998. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah also worked at WISE, and al-Arian proposed USF hire him as a professor before Shallah became Secretary-General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (replacing the assassinated brother of another WISE board member). Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was one of al-Arian’s invited speakers.

            Al-Arian is also a pioneer in organizing a national “civil liberties” lobby against the Patriot Act. In 1997 he founded the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom whose goal was to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty act of 1996 a precursor of the Patriot Act. The bill declared “material support” for terrorism a crime and allowed investigators to use secret evidence in trials against terrorists. Federal authorities had arrested al-Arian’s brother-in-law and cohort in Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Mazen al-Najjar, for providing material support to terrorists under its terms. He was subsequently deported.

            Al-Arian’s “civil liberties” movement drew a toxic mixture of terrorists and leftwing activists into its ranks. Among its member groups were:

•  The Committee for Imad Hamad and the Committee for Justice for the “L.A. Eight,” both of which sought to free convicted

terrorist members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian Marxist terror organization;

• The American Muslim Council, headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi. Authorities arrested Alamoudi, a former Clinton administration adviser on Islamic affairs, for acting as a conduit for Mohammar Qaddafi. Alamoudi stands accused of smuggling Libyan money to terrorist groups including al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

•  The Center for Constitutional Rights, founded by William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy for the purpose of, in Kunstler’s words, “keeping people on the street who will forever alter the character of this society: the revolutionaries.”

            Although authorities hold Sami al-Arian under tight surveillance, the National Coalition for the Protection of Political Freedom keeps his work alive. His replacement as head of the coalition is Kit Gates, longtime executive with the National Lawyers Guild, a radical organization prominent in every law school in the United States.

            Al-Arian has solicited donations for Palestinian “martyrs” and publicly lauded violent acts of barbarism. He told one crowd, “We assemble today to pay respects to the march of the martyrs and to the river of blood that gushes forth and does not extinguish, from butchery to butchery, and from martyrdom to martyrdom, from jihad to jihad.” In a letter he wrote in the 1990s, al-Arian pleaded, “I call upon you to try to extend true support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue.”[4] (Unholy Alliance, op. cit. pp. 188-192. Thomas Ryan, "Lobby for Terror," FrontPage Magazine, April 28, 2004)

            Although al-Arian’s terrorist agendas were exposed by the Miami-Herald and others in 1994, the president of the University of South Florida, Betty Castor, steadfastly refused to fire al-Arian. Al-Arian subsequently appeared  on an episode of The O’Reilly Factor in 2002, which produced an embarrassing flood of protesting emails and phone calls to his university. As a result, President Castor suspended al-Arian, with pay, while he was under FBI investigation, then reinstated him to the USF faculty when the American Association of University Professors and other leftist organizations protested on his account. When Castor stepped down from the USF presidency, the new USF President, Judy Genshaft, fired al-Arian, but not for engaging in terrorist activity. He was fired because his presence on campus had become disruptive.[5] (Ronald Radosh, “The Case of Sami al-Arian”)

            Throughout these events, al-Arian and his leftwing supporters claimed that he was a political victim of prejudice. “I’m a minority. I’m an Arab. I’m a Palestinian. I’m a Muslim. That’s not a popular thing to be these days. Do I have rights, or don’t I have rights?” Al-Arian’s professional colleagues immediately sprang to his defense. USF professor Dr. Roy Weatherford filed a grievance on his behalf. The American Association of University Professors “condemned” USF in 2002 and filed a report the following year in its monthly magazine, Academe, stating al-Arian had not acted improperly.[6] (David Tell, "Professors for Sami," Weekly Standard, June 17, 2003.  Nathan Giller, "American Association of University Professors: Lobby for the Left") Other academic heavyweights testified to al-Arian’s impeccable character.

In a FrontPage Magazine article, Jonathan Schanzer noted the depth of sympathy al-Arian elicited in the academic community: “Georgetown’s John Esposito stressed al-Arian's ‘professional competence and stellar teaching record.’ Anthony Sullivan of the University of Michigan declared that al-Arian ‘is a quintessential political moderate.’ Louis Cantori, professor of political science at the University of Baltimore, insisted that al-Arian is not ‘a political radical…Period.’” McCarthy expert Ellen Schrecker said al-Arian’s was a case of “political repression.” Indeed, just before his arrest, Duke University asked al-Arian to speak at a symposium on “National Security and Civil Liberties.”[7] (Jonathan Schanzer, “Professors for Terrorist Al-Arian,”   Horowitz, Unholy Alliance, p. 191.)

           After USF President Judy Genshaft, who is Jewish, made the decision to let the terrorist al-Arian go, she endured backlash from such national outlets as the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Muslim Council, the National Lawyers Guild, The Nation magazine, the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Times. Former Democratic Michigan Congressman David Bonior also defended al-Arian.[8] (Robert Spencer, “Al-Arian: Terrorist Professor and His Campus Allies”)

            The Justice Department arrested Sami al-Arian in February 2003, issuing a 120-page indictment that charged him with 200 instances of supporting terror. The indictment specified that al-Arian used “the structure, facilities and academic environment of USF to conceal the activities of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

            The threat that embedded terrorist professors and their faculty supporters pose is real. Rachel Corrie, who was recruited into the radical movement as a student is a case in point. A 23-year-old college senior at Evergreen State in Olympia, Washington, Corrie became passionately attached to the political causes championed by her left-wing university. In the spring of 2003, she joined a campus crusade in behalf of terrorists that would lead her to an early death.

            The campus environment of Evergreen has long proven amenable to terrorists. “To gain a sense of Evergreen’s ideological orientation,” wrote FrontPage Magazine columnist Myles Kantor, “its main area is called Red Square and cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has been a commencement speaker” (via audiotape from prison).[9] (Myles B. Kantor, “Terrorist Martyr, American Style.” David Horowitz, “The Tip of a Dangerous Iceberg,” FrontPage Magazine, April 8, 2004  ) At Evergreen, Corrie joined the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, a group formed to oppose President Bush’s military response to the Taliban. Its anti-capitalist, anti-Western views are summed up in one of its trademark slogans: “Corporate Globalization Equals Imperialist Domination.” 

            From there, Rachel moved deeper into the circles of the Left. In early 2003, she joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group of Western “human shields” who operate under the aegis of the Palestine Liberation Organization. ISM’s mission is to obstruct Israeli security officials attempting to protect Israelis and Palestinians from terrorist outrages. Corrie accompanied a contingent of ISM activists to the West Bank and hoped to do her part for “the movement.” After terrorists killed two IDF troops, Corrie wrote, “more Martyrs [sic.] are ready to defend the honor of Palestine.” That February, she donned a burqa, sat amidst a group of Palestinian children, and violently ripped apart a paper American flag she had set ablaze.

            Soon, she and her ISM colleagues got to fulfill their actual agenda. On March 16, 2003, an Israeli bulldozer set to work removing shrubs in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah. These shrubs obscured the tunnels terrorists were using to smuggle weapons from Egypt to the West Bank. As Rachel Corrie knelt in front of the terrorists’ supply lines, the bulldozer’s driver, who could not see her, ran over her. Corrie’s fellow ISM members – whom she considered her closest friends as she sojourned half a world away from her family – snapped propaganda photos of her broken, bleeding body before even attempting to help her. “My back is broken,” she whimpered as she died at the age of 23.

            The terrorists saw Corrie’s death as a propaganda coup. The PLO organized a wake for Corrie attended by members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Corrie has since become a celebrated martyr of the Palestinian cause.[10] (Ibid.)

            The articles collected in this booklet describe several of the key players in this growing collaboration between Islamic terrorists and their supporters on American campuses. David Horowitz dissects a Peace Studies course and textbook at Ball State University in Indiana that is a veritable model of the leftwing attitudes in which students are being indoctrinated on American campuses. Lee Kaplan demonstrates how Duke University has lent its prestige to the International Solidarity Movement, the very organization that shepherded Rachel Corrie to her death. Duke hosted a “Palestine Solidarity Conference” whose purpose was to recruit students on its campus to follow Corrie’s path. Radical attorney Lynne Stewart is an indicted terrorist but also a campus celebrity, as Erick Stakelbeck’s article “Lynne Stewart’s College Tour” amply documents. The Muslim Students Association, as Stakelback reports in a second article, is a Saudi funded support group for Muslim radicals and terrorists that operates on 150 college campuses. The Middle East Studies Association is the primary professional organization of American academics whose expertise is the terrorist heartland and who as Leslie Carbone documents are the chief western apologists for Islamic radicalism.

            It is our hope that these reports will alert others to the dangers this campus juggernaut represents. It is time for the academic world to take its head out of the sand and join the rest of the nation in its efforts to defend itself, or for the rest us to take steps to see that it does.

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