During the past year, write Eitan Fischberger and Yosef Kuperwasser, both Tehran and Ankara have expanded their efforts to bring their views of the world to U.S. audiences—and these views tend to be anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic, anti-American, and deeply influenced by Islamism:
On June 18, the Center for Islam & Global Affairs (CIGA), housed at Turkey’s Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, launched its second international conference on Palestine. This hate-filled extravaganza lasted for five days and featured lectures by Western professors and anti-Israel activists from around the world. . . . The host of the event was Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida who pleaded guilty in 2006 to assisting the U.S.-designated terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He was subsequently deported to Turkey.
Perhaps most worrying, however, is that eleven American professors spoke at the conference, nine of whom teach at public universities. . . . Some of these professors are highly influential among students, such as Lubna Qutami of UCLA, who founded the terror-supporting student organization Palestinian Youth Movement, and Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, who attempted to host the convicted airplane hijacker Leila Khaled at an event for students.
If there is one takeaway from all this, it’s that there is a contingent of supposed peace activists, academics, and student groups that serve as an ideological backdoor for radical Middle Eastern extremism into the United States. . . . Iran, which has essentially adopted “Death to America” as its unofficial slogan since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, is all too eager to capitalize on this trend—as is Turkey, whose relationship with the U.S. has become increasingly adversarial over the last decade.
Read more on National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/radical-exchange-how-turkey-and-iran-infiltrate-young-american-minds/