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Did a historian who said he’s a victim of McCarthyism get the story wrong?

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-Semitismwith 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 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. ...

Read entire article at Inside Higher ED