Martin Kramer has collected his writings on Obama’s friend Rashin Khalidi. Some interesting stuff. I personally liked this complete nonsense in a Khalidi speech:

It’s a campaign that’s based on an utterly spurious argument that the universities are strongholds of radical and liberal ideas. Would that they were strongholds of radical and liberal ideas. (Applause.) Would that the medical schools and the pharmaceutical schools were challenging the stranglehold of industrial medicine, of the industrial pharmaceutical industry. (Applause.) Would that agriculture schools–would that agriculture schools or business schools were challenging the reigning orthodoxies. Would that economics departments, would that engineering schools, would that schools of international affairs were vigorously challenging the reigning orthodoxies in their fields. Would–I could go on and on and on.

Kramer makes all the right points. Kramer:

It’s an astonishing statement. People in these branches of the academy challenge the reigning orthodoxies all the time–when they have the evidence to do it. After all, they can be proven wrong. Reputations are impaired when a medical treatment or drug fails a test, a structure collapses, a crop disappoints, a business model loses money, or an economic policy kills growth. Yet each innovation in these areas is the result of people boldly deciding to “challenge the reigning orthodoxies in their fields.”