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April 24, 2006

Juan Cole: a disgrace to scholarship

Like many academics, University of Michigan professor Juan Cole is a well-known habitue of the political blogosphere. Most academics, mindful of their professional reputations, make their points with dignity and careful application of their expertise. Cole, however, comes out swinging at anyone who represents his favorite targets (Israel, neocons, US foreign policy), and repeatedly exhibits a reckless disregard for facts that would be dismaying in anyone, much less a college professor.

Kesher Talk has been following the bloggish career of Juan Cole, since one of our specialities is academic antisemitism. Now that Cole is being considered for appointment by Yale University, let's review:

Cole uses guilt by association to accuse the brothers who write Iraq the Model being CIA agents, because they are supported by Americans who support the war. As the Fadhil brothers, sponsored by Spirit of America, travel around the US to meet their supporters, Cole and his blogosphere buddies stir up conspiracy theories about their motives, to the extent that Spirit of America feels it necessary to issue a disclaimer.

These smears are then uncritically used as part of a story by a NYTimes reporter to further cast doubts on the Fadhils.

Cole accuses MEMRI of getting under-the-table financing. Steven I Weiss challenges Cole's numbers, demonstrating that Cole has no idea how the real world works.

Cole speculates on the personal life of reporter Steven Vincent not a week after his death, earning him a stinging email rebuke by Vincent's widow.

This guy keeps turning up like a bad penny, even on this one medium-sized blog. More dissections of Cole by:
Martin Kramer.
Tony Badran.
Callimachus.
Mary Madigan, who characterized Cole as the Anna Nicole Smith of the blogosphere, with yet more examples of his kooky accusations.
Jeff Jarvis, who called him Professor Pondscum.

[ Alcibiades adds: David Frum has the goods on his crude and counter-factual attempt to smear MEMRI, which was started by someone, oh horror!, close to the Likud party and which he asserts, laughably, is funded annually with a budget of $60 million a year, as opposed to the true figure, which is a touch less than $1.75 million. His math is even worse than that of the NYTimes. But Jews are all rich, right, so his estimation probably felt "truer" to him.

BTW, aren't these kind of "mistakes" what the Left refers to as Lies. ]

Judith | 04/24/06 at 08:51 PM | Categories: - Wackademia

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Tracked on April 24, 2006 08:58 PM

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Robert Schwartz | April 24, 2006 10:31 PM

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