By Robert Spencer
Three American academics flew to Tehran last week to accept awards from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In Tehran, Carl Ernst, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was honored along with William Chittick, a scholar of Islamic mysticism and a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Miriam Galston, a lawyer at George Washington University who made significant contributions to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Thorp and Ernst seemed anxious to stress that this was an academic, non-political award -- as if Tehran these days were crawling with disinterested academics who are in no way co-opted by the regime. Even though Ernst reportedly “cringes” at some of Ahmadinejad’s “policies,” UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp decided that this was an “academic honor,” not a political one, and so had no objection to Ernst’s trip. Ernst himself explained, “it would have looked strange if I declined an academic award.”
Are Thorp and Ernst hopelessly naive, or do they believe that we are? In any case, they have little cause to worry that anyone will get upset about this in Chapel Hill, where the academic Left holds comfortable sway -- you know, the kind of people who thought it would be a great idea for Ahmadinejad to give an address at Columbia University and to present a Christmas message on British television. But meanwhile, has it even crossed Carl Ernst’s mind that his work is useful to the Iranian regime, whatever the nature of this award, and that his traveling to Tehran to accept it is even more useful to them? Has this not occurred to him even after his trip to Tehran earlier this month, during which he made a “strong plea for improved academic and cultural relations between Iran and the United States”? Read more ...
Three American academics flew to Tehran last week to accept awards from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In Tehran, Carl Ernst, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was honored along with William Chittick, a scholar of Islamic mysticism and a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Miriam Galston, a lawyer at George Washington University who made significant contributions to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Thorp and Ernst seemed anxious to stress that this was an academic, non-political award -- as if Tehran these days were crawling with disinterested academics who are in no way co-opted by the regime. Even though Ernst reportedly “cringes” at some of Ahmadinejad’s “policies,” UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp decided that this was an “academic honor,” not a political one, and so had no objection to Ernst’s trip. Ernst himself explained, “it would have looked strange if I declined an academic award.”
Are Thorp and Ernst hopelessly naive, or do they believe that we are? In any case, they have little cause to worry that anyone will get upset about this in Chapel Hill, where the academic Left holds comfortable sway -- you know, the kind of people who thought it would be a great idea for Ahmadinejad to give an address at Columbia University and to present a Christmas message on British television. But meanwhile, has it even crossed Carl Ernst’s mind that his work is useful to the Iranian regime, whatever the nature of this award, and that his traveling to Tehran to accept it is even more useful to them? Has this not occurred to him even after his trip to Tehran earlier this month, during which he made a “strong plea for improved academic and cultural relations between Iran and the United States”? Read more ...
Source: FrontPage Magazine
William Chittick
Miriam Galston
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