The unbiased academic
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Carl Ernst flew to Tehran on Tuesday night to accept an award from Iranian Thug-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even though Ernst reportedly "cringes" at some of Ahmadinejad's "policies," UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp decided that this was an "academic honor," not a political one, and so had no objection to Ernst's trip. Ernst himself explained, "...it would have looked strange if I declined an academic award."
Thorp and Ernst seem anxious to stress that this is an academic, non-political award -- as if Tehran these days were crawling with disinterested academics who are in no way co-opted by the regime. Are Thorp and Ernst hopelessly naive, or do they believe that we are? In any case, they have little cause to worry that anyone will get upset about this in Chapel Hill, where the academic Left holds comfortable sway -- you know, the kind of people who thought it would be a great idea for Ahmadinejad to give an address at Columbia University and to present a Christmas message on British television. But meanwhile, has it even crossed Carl Ernst's mind that his work is useful to the Iranian regime, whatever the nature of this award, and that his traveling to Tehran to accept it is even more useful to them? Has this not occurred to him even after his trip to Tehran earlier this month, during which he made a "strong plea for improved academic and cultural relations between Iran and the United States"?
And would Carl Ernst really even be able to distinguish an academic award from a political one? After all, a genuine academic evaluates arguments on the basis of evidence. He does not work to predetermined conclusions based on ideological or political considerations. Ernst does not do anything like this. Consider (and I am sorry that I must use a personal example here, because the problem of Carl Ernst and the Middle East Studies establishment in American universities in general is far larger than me, and I have nothing to do with it) how he has dealt with my own work: see his "Notes on the Ideological Patrons of an Islamophobe, Robert Spencer."
Take, in the first place, the characterization "Islamophobe." He offers no evidence for it, much less any definition of this spurious, manipulative, politicized coinage. Nothing from my books, nothing from this website, nothing at all. His use of this word is without substance, designed to propagandize rather than convince, much less to equip one to make one's own judgment.
Note also that in the document, he doesn't offer a single example of anything I say that is inaccurate. Instead, he expects his readers to dismiss my work because Ernst dislikes my publishers -- on political grounds. This is an example of the logical fallacy of appealing to authority: he is suggesting that his own publishers (such as Shambhala) are more prestigious than those of his critics, and that therefore he is to be believed over them. Argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem attacks are two sides of the same worthless coin.
Carl Ernst is no academic. He is a political and politicizing propagandist. Now he is also a willing tool of the vicious Iranian mullahcracy. And in Middle East Studies departments in universities all over the country, he is just one of many.
"Iranians honor UNC scholar: Ahmadinejad will present the award," by Yonat Shimron for the Raleigh News & Observer, December 25 (thanks to Joey Stansbury):
Carl Ernst, a UNC-Chapel Hill religion professor, is no stranger to awards. He has received close to a dozen over the years.
Yes, he is previously the recipient of Egypt's coveted Shaykh Muhammad Salih Bashrahil Prize for Outstanding Cultural Creativity, another prize awarded by a high-minded, non-politicized board of academic to one of their disinterested and deserving peers.
But when he was told he would be the recipient of the Farabi International Award given by the Islamic Republic of Iran, he paused.The Farabi Award, named for a 10th-century Persian philosopher, is awarded to scholars by none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although the Iranian president has no hand in selecting the winners -- they are chosen by a committee within the government ministry of science, research and technology -- he does hand out the plaques.
Ernst is a scholar of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, and has traveled widely in Iran. But he has never met the president and, like most Americans, cringes at some of his policies.
So when he was notified that he was one of three Americans to win the award this year, he felt he needed to clear it with the university's top brass.
"I didn't want anyone to be surprised by this," Ernst said.
UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp understood the dilemma.
"He said, 'This looks like an academic honor. Politics inserts itself into these things, and we understand that,' " Ernst said.
So on Tuesday night, Ernst left for Tehran. It will be his second trip this month.
When he was there at a conference earlier in December, he made a strong plea for improved academic and cultural relations between Iran and the United States.
"There was an incredibly enthusiastic response," Ernst said. "So it would have looked strange if I declined an academic award."
Ernst will be honored for a book he wrote in 1996 on Ruzbihan Baqli, a 12th-century Sufi poet born in what is now Iran. The book, which has been translated twice into Persian, is widely used in university courses there.
Saturday's award banquet is expected to last three hours. Ernst will share the stage with two other U.S. academics, William Chittick, a religion scholar at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Miriam Galston, a lawyer at George Washington University.
More on them soon.
And finally, an announcement: I hereby award Carl Ernst the Jihad Watch Afshin Award, named after the ninth century Persian general Khaydhar ibn Kawus, a.k.a. Afshin, who won great victories for Islamic forces although he himself fought for them only for his own material advantage, and not out of conviction -- he was in fact a proud Persian who had contempt for the Arabs and the religion they had imposed upon Persia. (In awarding this prize I in no way mean to imply that Carl Ernst has any contempt for Arabs or Muslims, or that he fights for them only for his own material advantage.)
Thought experiment: would Ernst and Holden Thorp be as understanding about accepting an award from Jihad Watch, even though Ernst doubtless "cringes" at some of my "policies," as they are about Ernst's accepting an award from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Or are Ahmadinejad's positions, thirst for genocide, Holocaust denial, open Jew-hatred and all, more acceptable to Ernst than those of someone who wants to defend the West against Islamic supremacism and its denial of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, and institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims?
Robert, very nice commentary. But I have just three words:
Passport
Revoke
Now
Along with that ex-peanut farmer who's now collaborating with our enemies over in Lebanon.
Mr Spencer,
Your academic standing vis-a-vis Carl Ernst's would be greatly enhanced should you earn a condemnatory fatwa from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei--have you ever considered a sideline as a novelist, rattling Islamic skeletons and skewering sacred cows?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first candidate for next year's American Dhimmi of the Year Award.
Let me get this straight. He thinks it is problematic that Robert Spencer experiences "patronage" from certain book publishers, but he has no problem personally accepting an "academic honor" from the world's foremost genocidal anti-semite and homocidal homophobe.
This should be a joke.
I can say that I wish the day quickly arrives, and it surely will, when his acceptance of this award will be a cause for great shame to him and his employers.
Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe Ernst thinks it is problematic for the book publishers to be affiliated with Spencer, but has no problem being personally affiliated with the world's foremost genocidal anti-semite and homocidal homophobe.
Either way, it still should be a joke. People like Ernst give regular whores a bad name.
After seeing Arafat win a Nobel Peace Prize, nothing surprises me anymore.
Let's see...
"The publications of Spencer belong to the class of Islamophobic extremism that is promoted and supported by right-wing organizations, who are perpetuating a type of bigotry similar to anti-Semitism and racial prejudice."
If this is what he truly believes, the rest of his "notes" are non sequitur.
What slovenly academia to manipulate readers into thinking historical facts and current statistics - real scholarship - are extremist, and then try to incite fear by himself espousing his own phobias about the "right wing". Let's give this a name. I suppose we may call Mr. Ernst a Conservaphobe. His own bigotry has obviously blinded him from being rational.
Pure theater of the absurd but this is the state of things in higher education today. May the time come when this present Age of Nonsense is ridiculed, parodied, excoriated and dismissed as the silliest period in man's history. And it would be fitting if the very name "Carl Ernst" would become a synonym for an overeducated fool, much as the name "Benedict Arnold" is a synonym for traitor. As in, that guy's such a dupe he's a Carl Ernst.
Prof. Ernst seems all upset by the fact that Robert's publisher gets funding from the Bradley Foundation, which he calls the largest and most influential right-wing foundation in the U.S. Well, Prof. Ernst, the Bradley Foundation granted a total of ca. $37 million in 2007. That's pretty small beer compared to the grants of the large leftist foundations like the Ford with grants of $450 million/year, or the MacArthur at $230 million/year, or the Annenberg at $185 million/year, to name a few.
I wonder how much funding UNC receives each year from foundations with ideological or political axes to grind.
Is it already nearly 3 years since that fierce, brave shahid Mohammed Reva Taheriazar waged his own personal jihad of opportunity in Chapel Hill against the infidel dogs and pigs feeding at their haram infidel troughs? Isn't it astonishingly ironic that the good Teacher and Example to be followed blindly is in the country of his parents' origin receiving an award, while the brave soldier of Allah is rotting in prison? Should not Amnesty International have a rock concert in the shahid's behalf? With t shirt sales, and die-ins?
"The publications of Spencer belong to the class of Islamophobic extremism that is promoted and supported by right-wing organizations, who are perpetuating a type of bigotry similar to anti-Semitism and racial prejudice."
I remember when the book, The Bell Curve was published, listening to black intellectuals on the radio debate and destroy the authors of the book by citing evidence that underminded the Bell Curve's thesis. They didn't sit on their laurels and simply cry racism. Similarly when Jimmy Carter published, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid", several Jews offered to debate him. Carter refused each and every invitation with lame excuses. If the blacks and Jews are willing to debate the claims of their opponents I expect no less of Muslims and their Western lackeys.
If ya don't like that which is published, but are unable to attack what is published...attack the publisher. Wow. There's some twisted logic for ya.
Carl...You're association with this waste of time and space only serves to in your case, ever so slightly, legitimize a brutal and vicious regime, bent on the destruction of something you might care about. Freedom. These folks want you to submit or die.
The words you hear come from the talking head that is the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Can you fathom this?
Apparently not or you would not associate with one who wishes to hasten the coming of the 12th Imam. Any clue as to what that involves? It starts with Armageddon. Get it?
Maybe I can put it in simpler terms...
If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
And you been lyin' with some nasty damn dogs there Carl. Off the chart nasty.
Islam is a lie and truth is killing it.
Whores and pimps are drawn inexorably together.
Lickspittles curry favor with despotic maniacs.
Ernst is like those squalid, immoral "intellectuals" in the 1930's who found Hitler's policies inspiring.
I can only hope his award is radioactive.
Literally and socially.
Sarcastic congratulations to Carl Ernst, William Chittick and Miriam Galston who join the illustrious group of James Mooney, Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, recipients in 1938, along with Benito Mussolini, of "The Grand Cross of the Silver Eagle [and similar medals], the highest award available to foreigners, to reward invaluable service to the Third Reich".
-page 198
Germany and the Americas, edited by Thomas Adam. ABC-CLIO, 2005 (on books.google.com)
Ford received it from the German consul in Cleveland, OH, Lindbergh from Hermann Goering, Mooney apparently from the German consul in New York.
And yes, the analogy of Ahmadinejad to Goering, and of the Iranian regime to the Nazi regime, is entirely appropriate, and would be to Mike Godwin.
Ernst is the one who pushed on unwitting colleagues the notion that incoming freshmen to Chapel Hill should be forced to read that comically bowdlerized version of the Qur'an, Michael Sells' "Approaching the Qur'an: The Lyrical Suras." Ernst is the one who schemed to have Omid Safi (who was turned down, when Leila Ahmed, ably aided by Diana Eck and William Graham, who could not receive tenure himself in the ordinary fashion, were foiled by the other faculty, more alert than most, when they attempted to have him hired at Harvard Divinity School) hired at Chapel Hill, and Omid Safi is there now, smilingly working among the young and naive his defender-of-the-faith apologetics, and there are those who will be taken in by a little carefully ostentatious "concern" for them, as shown by invitations to share a meal -- what a swell guy, what a genuine good guy, what a contrast to all those other professors who are so aloof and standoffishness -- of chicken-and-pita, or one of the other MESA-Nostra bag of tricks for winning the allegiance of students who will have no idea whether what they are being taught makes sense, or is studiously and hideously misleadnig, because that professor is that "swell guy" who, gosh darn it, "really cares about his students."
There are plenty of people on the faculty at Chapel Hill who are no fools, and while some of them have avoided looking too closely at the likes of Carl Ernst -- faculty autonomy, and a hesitancy to judge outside their own field -- some have no doubt seen right through him, and not a few others no doubt could, if they chose to look into the matter.
Some of the previous posters pointed out some of the inherent absurdities of Carl Ernst and his academic jihad against R. Spencer. Most striking is the chain of thought that spencer is tainted by association with publishing houses that are conservative, while apparantly Ernst is blind to accepting an award presented by the leader of a nation that hangs homosexuals, and stones women who have been raped as being adulteresses.
But in the little linked piece Ernsts own logic is that he publishes through a peer reviewed publisher, while spencers publishers are linked to think tanks.
A few comments about that line of Ernsts, first as academics have disavowed diversity of thought, going so far as to pretend that only their leftist negative ideology is correct and intellectually honest, that stranglehold on the education industry has necessitated the emergence of conservative think tanks.
Unlike Soviet Russia where authors not officially recognized engaged in a form of self publishing and underground distribution called samizdat, in america it is still possible for authors not part of the writers soviets to be published. It would be better if universities were not captive to "progressive" ideologues, but since they are captive to those forces that have been engaging in a war against traditional culture, writers who are not a part of the destruction of native culture still have oppurtunities to disseminate their ideas.
Another comment about Ernsts peer reviewed publishers, is that over the last few years some outright fraudulent work has been published by peer reviewed publishers associated with the university and whose only criteria seems to be approval of a sort of dogmatic progressive orthodoxy which has been festerring in the universities for a few decades now. In other words the peer review seems to be more to ensure political correctness rather than to ensure adherence to facts.
More than two years ago I wrote a "Tribute to Carl Ernst." In the antepenultimate paragraph of that tribute I nominated Carl Ernst for the King Faisal Prize, in the category for which he might fittingly win: Services to Islam. I wrote the tribute in 2006, and so was nominating Ernst for the 2007 prize. But 2007 came and went, and there was no King Faisal Prize for Professor Carl Ernst. And 2008 came and went, and there still was no King Faisal Prize for Professor Carl Ernst. And now I'm afraid his acceptance of a prize from Shi'a Iran, archenemy of Saudi Arabia, may queer what would otherwise no doubt be his excellent chances to win the King Faisal Prize. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps someone like Ernst, who is an apologist for Islam, but in the eyes of the Al-Saud and their tame clerics possibly not sufficiently Sunni in his orientation, just isn't precisely the right kind of apologist. If so, then I apologize to Professor Carl Ernst and to his supporters, for nominating him when he had so little chance to win. It was not intentionally cruel. I simply miscalculated. As, come to think of it, may have he, in agreeing to accept this award from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and thereby queering his chances for even more money from the Al-Saud.
Anyway, here's that little tribute, which does not date:
"I suspect that Carl Ernst’s "Following Muhammad" would not be recognized by Snouck Hurgronje, or St. Clair Tisdall, or Sir William Muir, or Tor Andrae, or Maxime Rodinson, or David Margoliouth, or Joseph Schacht, or Ignaz Goldziher, as presenting a recognizable view of Muhammad. On the other hand, the straightforward presentation of Muhammad's life as set down by the most authoritative Muslim biographers, which is what Robert Spencer has given us in his forthcoming (October 9) biography of Muhammad will no doubt be dismissed as "polemical" and "unscholarly" by Ernst and three-quarters of the membership of MESA Nostra. The remaining ¼, however, will be secretly delighted with Spencer's book, even if they will not be so brave as to assign it(though they may list it among "Other Reading" on their syllabi, giving the students a hint). They will only wish that they had dared to produce something similar, but they had too much, departmentally, to lose. It required an intelligent outsider to do the necessary job, and Spencer came along and did it.
Carl Ernst's book on Muhammad leaves out all the unsettling and disturbing and indelicate parts. Instead, it gives us something as if viewed through Karen Armstrong's vie-en-rose tinted glasses,
Carl Ernst is too modest. He is a prize-winning author, recognized for his services to the better worldwide appreciation of Muhammad with his book. Following Muhammad is a masterpiece of haute vulgarization -- what Robert Spencer only pretends to be able to do -- and might as well hold the haute. That book, or rather that series of essays, is by authorial intention devoid of the usual apparatus criticus of scholarly books. Apparently Carl Ernst wished to put off, off, those scholarly lendings, and to let down his hair, and deliberately present an "unscholarly text" (no doubt contributors to the Encyclopedia of Islam will sniff, but let them -- what do they know?), easy on the footnotes, in order to find and please that wider audience that perhaps had eluded him with his previous scholarly contribution, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism.
I am informed, given Ernst’s contempt, documented here at Jihad Watch, for non-scholarly presses, that that was a book that Clarendon Press would dearly like to have published, if Shambhala Publishing hadn't gotten there first. And as for the reaction to that book in the Departments of Islamic Studies at Leiden, Aix-en-Province, and Cambridge at the news, later on, that the author of The Shambhala Guide to Sufism had received tenure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- well, I don't have to tell you.
Last year I offered a write-in nomination for Karen Armstrong to be awarded the King Faisal Prize, in the category of Services to Islam. But apparently Armstrong did not make the Saudi grade. Perhaps her bizarre flitting from this to that (what is it this week from the fingers and mind of Karen Armstrong? A treatise on Buddhism? How to Bring World Peace? The Search for Bridey Murphy?) offended them, or perhaps there was something in her favorite forms of recreation that might have offended those dour and judgmental Saudi judges. She didn't win, and I suspect now that she won't. She's become, in the Western world, too well-known and too much a figurine of fun.
But I have another candidate waiting in the wings, not quite so obviously silly as Karen Armstrong. True, there is that little matter of all those Shambhala shambolic sham books on Sufism, which Saudis would hardly find to their liking but there is one way to free those judges of their doubtful minds and warm their cold cold hearts. And that way is to point not only to the hagiographical Following Muhammad but far more important, to take note of the tireless toiling in the vineyard of the Lor-- no, make that toiling or perhaps lolling in the conquered oases of Muhammad. Let us point to Ernst’s ongoing effort -- really, beyond the call of dhimmi duty -- in inveigling or forcing non-Muslim students, right in the heart of what Saudis no doubt think of as hopelessly Christian evangelical country (unaware as they must be of the special case of Chapel Hill, and even of North Carolina, the state that in the last century produced, inter alia, Ava Gardner and Walter Clay Lowdermilk, and is hardly part of the Deep South), to read not only Sells's Approaching the Qur'an but also large doses of both Esposito and Armstrong.
If such an achievement, which required ignoring criticism by parents and students, does not merit recognition as a Service to Islam, and beyond that, a well-endowed (va-va-va-voom) prize, offered in recognition of that recognition, then one hardly knows what would.
And thus it is for me both a rare privilege, and an honor, to nominate at this very posting, at this most relevant website, Professor Carl Ernst, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to be the 2007 recipient of the King Faisal Prize.
I am sure a great many people, some of them no doubt Professor Ernst's faculty colleagues, will be happy to second that nomination.
Please note, students of prizes, that in the categories of science and medicine, the King Faisal awards go to recipients who are genuinely and entirely worthy. The results are skewed only by one thing -- no one identifiably Jewish has ever won the King Faisal Prize. That does narrow the number of potentially worthy candidates. The Infidels who have won the prize in the category "Services to Islam" deserve to be treated as the object of a separate study. For all you intrepid undergraduates casting about for a thesis topic, here's the ungainly title you are free to use: "Paying the Scholarly Jizyah: Winners of the King Faisal Prize for Services to Islam." Make it a prosopographic analysis, year by year, Infidel winner by Infidel winner. Make Sir Lewis Namier proud."
Nimatullahi Sufis with their strong following among professionals in pre-revolutionary Iran, their westernized clothing, equality of men with women and fundamental respect for all faiths - were tortured, jailed and killed in Iran after Khomeini, most of them are exiles now and Carl Ernst should bring up this large and venerable (14th century) group of sufis when he meets the Great A-hole.
Stickman said:
Unlike Soviet Russia where authors not officially recognized engaged in a form of self publishing and underground distribution called samizdat, in america it is still possible for authors not part of the writers soviets to be published. It would be better if universities were not captive to "progressive" ideologues, but since they are captive to those forces that have been engaging in a war against traditional culture, writers who are not a part of the destruction of native culture still have oppurtunities to disseminate their ideas.
So true. This reminds me of the movie Lives of Others...German with subtitles and powerful.
Thomas Paine wasn't peer reviewed before anonymously publishing "Common Sense" - oh, wait...that's because he has some! :)
Are there any UNC alumni out there who could write to Holden Thorp and explain to him why your usual donation won't be coming in this year?
If this was 1933, Ernst would be accepting an award from Hitler.
Robert and fellow Jihadwatchistas,
I agree with your assessment of Ernst, but I have a question: is any academic who travels to Iran, in your opinion, a mindless dhimmi? I hope not, because I went there this past August for the Mahdism Conference--basically under the philosphy of "know thine enemy." (Of course, I didn't get an award, either.)
Tim
No, of course not. It isn't just that Ernst made the trip to Iran. It was that it was Ernst who made the trip. Your making it was an entirely different case.
It is the difference between Sardar writing about the Qur'an and me writing about the Qur'an.
Yours
Robert
Thanks! I'd hate to get lumped in with guys like him.
By the way: I've been invited back next year, but I'm not sure I'll go....
Tim,
Well, of course I don't know your situation, but I would certainly go if I could. You can watch the proceedings up close.
Best
Robert
Gentlemen,
I think that to accept Iranian hospitality is to enter the lair of a dangerous beast--take care! Sojourners in Iran have been known to disappear. And others have had their stay there lengthened involuntarily.
John,
Thanks for you advice. I'm well aware of that, but I was treated well this past August in Tehran and Qom and since I not Iranian-American, I'm not really worried about traveling to Iran. It would be supremely stupid of the IRI authorities to invite American academics to conferences there, then nab them. And the ayatollahs are NOT stupid.
And the ayatollahs are NOT stupid.
Posted by: Tim at December 26, 2008 5:24 PM
Excuse me, but I think they ARE stupid.
Anyone who buys into Islam and "allah" is stupid. What you're talking about is being politically savvy. If the "ayatollahs" could "nab" the American academics with no worldwide repercussions, they WOULD. No doubt about it. But, they have to control themselves due to the worldwide condemnation that would result.
Oh, they're stupid allright! Head-Bangers 5 times a day to a sandstone pagan idol of pre-Islamic lore that doesn't exist! I can't think of anything more stupid.
As far as pulling passports, lets do it when they
are out of the(our) country so they cannot come
back!!
Darcy,
Your points are well-taken. Of course I primarily meant politically savvy.
Savvy, Tim--and dangerously unpredictable--they know how to keep the Great Satan off-balance. Let's hope that there is no sudden change of political winds, should you venture to return.