The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is soliciting funding “to protect academic freedom.” The MESA committee on academic freedom may want to question its former president Juan Cole who wrote and never retracted that “The FBI should investigate how [Walid] Phares…became the ‘terrorism analyst’ at MSNBC.” By imposing a political litmus test on academic freedom—and by remaining silent when its officer for reasons of political disagreement or professional jealousy calls for criminalization of speech—MESA makes a mockery of the academic freedom it claims to support.