After interviewing four candidates for the newly founded Edward Said chair in Middle Eastern Studies, California State University at Fresno abruptly deferred the search for a year due to “critical procedural errors.” Vida Samiian, the professor directing the search, responded by resigning from the university, alleging that the administration had given in to “vicious and discriminatory attacks launched by Israel-advocacy groups,” who objected to the fact that the four finalists for the job were “of Middle Eastern ethnicity.” Jonathan Marks comments:
Samiian, [in her resignation letter], presented virtually no evidence of outside pressure [and] no evidence at all for the charge of racism. Nonetheless, people who describe themselves as intellectuals and academics were off to the races. The U.S. Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel decried the “bullying by Zionists” that had taken place at Fresno and agreed that the cancellation constituted “discrimination against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” Jewish Voice for Peace sponsored a “faculty letter” [repeating Samiian’s accusations, which] hundreds of faculty members, supposedly accustomed to disciplining themselves to follow the evidence, signed.
But more egregious, and revealing, were the claims of Joe Parks, another faculty member who joined Samiian’s accusations:
Parks, unschooled in the nuances of covert anti-Semitism, forgot to speak of “Zionists” and said outright that the search was derailed by “the Jewish faculty.” . . . Parks conceded that he could not materially support his claim. . . . His explosive allegation that “Jews on the faculty and community members of the Jewish community” contacted search-committee members to complain that the finalists for the position were “of Middle Eastern ethnicity” was unsubstantiated and unlikely to be true. Even if some faculty or community members were inclined to make such a complaint, it seems implausible that they would be as open about their anti-Arab prejudice as Parks is about his fixation on Jews.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/faculty-say-yes-anti-zionist-conspiracy-theories-anti-semitism/