The Hollow Cry of 'McCarthyism'

Clemens Heni, director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), has observed of Rhodes College history professor Jonathan Judaken that "he is not at all upset, worried or scared about Islamist anti-Semitism, although he knows that it exists."  Instead, Heni writes, Judaken fears critics of Islamism, critics of left-wing anti-Zionism, and critics of mainstream anti-Israel propaganda. Perhaps these fears explain Judaken's recent attack on me, published here at Inside Higher Ed. 

Judaken wrote in response to my report on a lecture he gave at the University of Rochester on March 23, 2015. My essay's title "Are Muslims the New Jews?" came from a flyer advertising his lecture, titled "Judeophobia and Islamophobia." Like his lecture, Judaken's attack downplays the legacy of Islamic anti-Semitism with evasive rhetoric and sentences like, "the real harm is the way anti-anti-Semitic hit men like Caschetta feed hate speech." Judaken portrays himself as a victim of "the new red scare" -- a wide-ranging, conservative conspiracy to which I am allegedly a party. In addition to labeling me a McCarthyite, his article contains a number of factual errors that require correction.

First, Inside Higher Ed gave his essay an inaccurate title, "Essay on being accused of being an anti-Israel professor." My essay makes no such accusation. In fact, the word "Israel" does not even appear in my 1052-word essay.

Second, Judaken erroneously attributes my article to Campus Watch and calls me "an appointed watchdog for Campus Watch." In fact, the article appeared on Robert Spencer's website Jihad Watch, and had nothing to do with Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, a separate organization.

Third, Judaken writes that I disparaged him in a "pastiche of falsehoods, innuendos and quotes out of context," but he offers no evidence for this claim (ironically similar to Senator McCarthy's preferred tactic), instead devoting a great deal of attention to repeating parts of the lecture I did not write about. In the 18 paragraphs of his attack, nearly half (paragraphs 7-14) make no reference whatsoever to what I wrote. What falsehoods? What innuendos? What quotations out of context? I challenge him to produce evidence for these claims.

What I did write about: Judaken's use of Jacques Derrida's deconstruction technique to dismantle logical readings in favor of fanciful ones. I suggested that the theories and practices of post-modernist literary criticism are increasingly appearing in Middle East Studies. I called attention to the equivocation in Judaken's lecture, in particular where he downplayed and misrepresented both historical and current Islamic models of anti-Semitism and focused instead on exaggerated historical Christian models. For instance, the great weight he puts in the Catholic Church's 4th Lateran Council (1215) as the origin of Jews being treated as second-class citizens ignores much earlier examples of Islamic institutional anti-Semitism, such as the 7th-century Pact of Umar, which required Jews to wear clothing indicating their status and live in areas reserved for non-Muslims.

I also quoted Judaken's belief that the anti-Semitic content of Islamic tradition, especially the Koran and the Hadith, is "not that important" -- his words.

In both his lecture and his attack on me Judaken ignores the fact that legions of Islamists have quoted the Quran and Hadith to buttress their anti-Semitism. Instead he inexplicably transfers this outlook to me, claiming that I believe that anti-Semitic passages in the Koran "meant the same thing in the 8th century as they have come to mean in the new millennium." I make no such claim. Rather I point out that virtually every important Islamist thinker insists that Islamic texts are immutable, Muhammad's example is perfect and they are carrying out God's will by killing, converting or reducing to dhimmi status the Jews of the world -- something Judaken dismisses as "not important."

One staple of Islamist anti-Semitic rhetoric is the story of Mohammed's description of the end of times. According to various Hadiths, on judgment day the unrepentant (because unconverted) Jews will hide from Islamic justice, but the stones and trees will speak in order to expose them. Not only are variants of this story frequently quoted by Islamists, but polls reveal that it has  widespread acceptance in Palestinian society. Indeed Article 7 of the Hamas Charter quotes this story, derived from the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim collections.  Judaken's unwillingness to acknowledge anti-Semitic Islamist rhetoric is unacceptable, and especially for a scholar who purportedly studies anti-Semitism.

Judaken likens my thinking to Stalinism and Nazism, (guilty, as per his Hannah Arendt reference, of "the reduction of history to ironclad laws"), then concludes by what I read as painting me as a persecutor of Jews: "So what do I tell the members of my synagogue, fellow parents at the Jewish school my kids attend, my colleagues in Jewish Studies associations in America and Europe about why I ended up on Jihad Watch?"

Professor Judaken's friends and colleagues likely understand what seems to elude him: that he is an intellectual involved in a public debate; that those involved in this debate disseminate their ideas in a variety of publications; that having one's ideas challenged comes with the territory; and that he will not be subpoenaed and marched before the United States Senate to answer for his ideas, no matter how wrong they may be nor how petulantly they are expressed.

But instead he will play the victim, as his final sentence claims, and "tell them that the new McCarthyism has arrived." Sadly this tenuous grasp of the very term "McCarthyism"is common among many academics who hurl it at those daring to disagree with them, but it is particularly egregious in a professor of history.

Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) was chair of the Government Operations Committee from 1950 until 1954. In his brief reign, which earned him the eponymous neologism,he wielded the mighty heft of the federal government to cudgel his perceived enemies, ruining careers and reputations through accusations without ever presenting any real evidence. Decades later, the terms "McCarthyism" and "McCarthyite" have been appropriated and changed. No longer denoting undocumented accusations that damage careers because they come from a powerful governmental source, the terms have become the heavy artillery of a new kind of ad hominem attack, meant to be of the same magnitude as "bigot" and "racist." According to one of the foremost authorities on the subject, Harvey Klehr, professor of politics and history at Emory University, "the charge of McCarthyism is the last refuge of academics who are losing an argument."

My accuser resorts to the pejorative epithet in complete disregard of the facts. The federal government was not involved. There were no Congressional hearings. There was no chilling effect. My claims are illustrated with evidence while Judaken's are not. And finally I exert no authority over the funding of the Spence L. Wilson Chair in the Humanities held by Jonathan Judaken, professor of history at Rhodes College.

Judaken avoids these facts, preferring instead the hollow cry of oppression where none exists. Further, by parading his Jewishness in the conclusion he seeks protection from criticism of his views in an unfair way and slurs me by innuendo -- one of the hallmarks of genuine McCarthyism. Perhaps a new McCarthyism really has arrived.