NEWS ARTICLES & OPINION PIECES

• Washington Post: Scholars' Visas Revoked (5 August 2008).
  These visas were for 3 Gazan scholars who Israel did not change its mind about. One other was under another program, and 4 others got through and were allowed to leave.

• Washington Post: Teaching Arabic and Propaganda, by Joel B. Pollak (5 July 2008).
  This op-ed describes the standard instructional materials for teaching Arabic which is in use in universities across the nation. The author describes numerous examples of political propaganda in it. The author proposes that the political propaganda in this educational material be reviewed, inferring that it probably should be removed so that the text is more politically neutral. The author contends that the material is morose and therefore presents an depressed view of Arabic society. He does not consider whether it is an accurate expression of Arabic culture as it actually is - not morose but truly upset by some things that are going on in the world.

• Washington Post: Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost) by Saree Makdisi (8 June 2008).
  Washington Post: Politics, Prose and a Promise, by (8 June 2008).
  These two simultaneous op-eds in the Washington Post document an important example of censorship of critics of Israel. In this case, the censorship was done by the ownership of a local Washington DC liberal political bookstore who canceled a speaking engagement by Professor Saree Makdisi. Luckily, reflecting those liberal democratic values, the cancellation was quickly reversed once the public protested.

• *New Yorker Magazine: "The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a tenure battle at Barnard" (14 April 2008
  This article covers the serious case of academic censorship of Professor Nadia Abu el-Haj at Barnard College who published research on the influence of Zionist politics on the integrity of anthropological research in Israel.

NEWS WIRE SERVICE ARTICLES

• Washington Post
  U.S. revokes Palestinian scholarship students' visas, by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters (5 August 2008).