How Harvard Remembered 9/11.Hint: their Middle East program is funded by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.

(PajamasMedia), with thanks to Will at The Other News:

While most of the nation was commemorating the fallen of 9/11 with sadness and resolve to understand the ongoing threat of Islamic extremism, arguably the nation’s foremost institution of higher learning approached the tenth anniversary from a very different perspective. 

At Harvard, the theme was — you guessed it — “Islamophobia.” From Harvard’s introductory declaration for its “campus-wide panel”:Today marks the anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001.  

As Americans reflect and mourn the loss of nearly 3000 people, Muslim Americans not only share their grief, but also express their own challenges amidst stereotyping, discrimination, racial profiling and hate crimes.Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the event’s producer, declined to invite a single representative from any victims’ groups.

There were no speakers from the September 11th Families Association, 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, Uniformed Firefighters of Greater New York, or Tuesday’s Children (a support group for those who lost relatives on that day).

Thanks in great measure to Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s Islamic Studies Program, there were — in abundance — plenty of academics obviously recruited to remind students of their take on the real tragedy surrounding 9/11: the racism, bigotry, and, of course, Islamophobia inherent in American society.It was the deep-pocketed prince whose $10 million “donation” to the Twin Towers Fund was summarily refused by then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Having been rebuffed, the prince quickly dropped $20 million into the laps of Harvard and Georgetown shortly thereafter — no refusals there.

And what a bounty those riyals have yielded. The prince knew precisely where to monetize Saudi influence at the two most prestigious academic factories supplying the State Department.

At Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the prince’s suggestion that the United States “re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinians” has produced results.  

For a decade, Harvard has presented a wildly skewed lineup of jihadist apologists and anti-Israel academics, from discredited charlatans like Ilan Pappe to spokesmen like Mustafa Abu Sway — who likes to remind us that “terror is the weapon of the weak.”

The session’s components were designed not to commemorate the dead and to discover the role played by al-Qaeda and its jihadist antecedents, but to examine the ingrained bigotry of non-Muslim white Americans. The CMES sought to reduce the murders to a PC lesson plan for high school teachers:

What role do you think Muslim artists and authors might play in dispelling stereotypes about Islam?In keeping with banishing the victims to the shadows, educational gobbledygook reigned supreme, again highlighting the nastiness of America and its fundamental bias against Muslims:How do the notions of uniforms and the flags inform our idea of identity? Of “other?”Is there/who is the implied “other” in both of these images? 

Other PowerPoint slides revealed a distinct absence of attention to human suffering, focusing more on the mechanics of destruction:

The Facade Falls: The latticework facing of the south tower came tumbling to earth upon impact of the hijacked plane.Were the authors cleverly trying to insinuate their views of America’s “facade” of tolerance?

Overseeing the apologist gala was Professor Jocelyne Cesari, the French Algerian-born political scientist, recently of — where else? — Columbia University, and director of Harvard’s “Islam in the West” and “Islamopedia” programs. Among other brilliant observations, Professor Cesari has dubbed the misogynistic, Jew-hating, homophobic (to the point of extermination) Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi “not a radical.”

Other faculty advisers included Duncan Kennedy, Carter professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School, whose attention for many years has been focused less on general jurisprudence and more on the delegitimization of Israel.

Following Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Kennedy convened a discussion/tribunal declaring Israel guilty of violating basic tenets of international humanitarian law. They barely mentioned Hamas.The historical reality of the theory and practice of jihad was not a welcome concept at this event. The word was virtually unutterable.  

In a brief glossary, however — apparently provided by another happy recipient of Prince bin Talal’s largesse, John Esposito of Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding — jihad is described this way:Jihad may refer to a defensive military action undertaken to protect a Muslim community from an armed aggressor, generally understood to be non-Muslim

Aggressive jihad, it would seem, does not exist and has never existed. Were the 19 terrorists performing a “defensive military action” on 9/11?Hmmmmm......The Institution who 'produced' Barack HUSSEIN Obama.

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