Beinin isn’t a “Supporter of Terrorism”
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According to conservative publisher David Horowitz, Stanford Professor of Middle East History Joel Beinin supports terrorism. Horowitz has even gone so far as to use a photo of Professor Beinin on the cover of an upcoming book entitled “Campus Support for Terrorism.” (In response, Beinin has sued to prevent the use of his photo, claiming the accusation is untrue) Is Horowtiz’s provocative accusation that Professor Beinin “supports terrorism” true? I am in no way qualified to fully assess the question; I, for instance, am not familiar with much of Professor Beinin’s research and scholarly writings. I can, however, offer a perspective based on my experiences as a student of Professor Beinin.
For the past quarter and a half, I have been in Professor Beinin’s IHUM class, “Worlds of Islam.” He has given a fair number of lectures that have ranged in topic from the early days of Islam to the Balfour Declaration. Throughout all these lectures, many of which dealt with controversial issues, Professor Beinin never came across as overtly biased, and never even once indicated support for terrorism. Instead, his lectures were rational, fact-oriented, and large. He never seemed to be espousing a particular ideology (other than the occasional anti-conservative joke), and actually made a concerted effort—probably due to an awareness of possible controversies—to keep history neutral.
Early in the course, for instance, a student raised his hand to ask a question. Soon the “question” had turned into a statement about how non-Muslims “need to understand” certain positive qualities of Islam. Before the student could finish, however, Professor Beinin stopped him and declared that, “You’re preaching. Nobody ‘needs’ to understand anything about your opinion of Islam.” This exchange set the tone for the rest of the course as academic and non-political.
The title of David Horowitz’s upcoming book, “Campus Support for Terrorism” and inclusion of Beinin’s photo on the cover imply that Beinin is actively and publicly supporting terrorism here at Stanford. Yet I witnessed him pass-up opportunity after opportunity to indoctrinate hundreds of (mostly) attentive and copious freshmen. If Professor Beinin was as great a threat to American academia as Horowitz suggests, he most likely would have taken advantage of our impressionable minds to plant radical ideas. Instead he planted in our minds dates, statistics, and names. Professor Beinin’s restraint in the classroom indicates to me that Horowitz is not being entirely fair.
In the past, conservatives and The Stanford Review itself have criticized Beinin’s biases. Perhaps conservatives have a legitimate argument against the work of Professor Beinin. Accusing somebody of supporting terrorism, however, should not be done lightly, and should not be done simply because somebody disagrees with you. The most basic goal of The Review is to open up our campus to different points of view—to create intellectual discourse not dominated by a single ideology. Extreme inferences that merely serve to inflame rather than engage—like the cover of David Horowitz’s new book—are probably not valuable parts of this discourse.
