Phil Orenstein attended and describes here a recent forum on alleged Islamophobia at the City University of New York and other campuses. According to him the event:

was a closed forum dedicated to a veiled radical agenda, riddled by hysterical paranoia, name-calling, slanderous accusations against prominent scholars and city officials, and strategies for their ouster, where the panelists professed that “attacks” against Arabs and professors are a coordinated right wing smear campaign launched by Daniel Pipes, CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and their ilk, which they dubbed the “New McCarthyism.”

Here are excerpts from Orenstein’s comments on the panelists’ background:

  • Deborah Almontaser, founder and former principle of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA), resigned as the school’s principal after she stirred up controversy over her misleading explanation of the term “intifada” as “shaking off of oppression” in response to a reporter’s question about the inflammatory “Intifada NYC” slogan on T-shirts circulatied by the Arab Women Active in Arts and Media. …
  • Mona Eldahry … is active in the pro-Palestinian group, al-Awda. According to the Anti-Defamation League, al-Awda, whose T-shirt slogan is “Intifada! Palestine Will Be Free From the River to the Sea,” actively supports the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, opposes Israel’s right to exist , and openly demonstrates to promote boycott, divestment, and the destruction of Israel.
  • Susan O’Malley, a former CUNY faculty union official, has filed an ongoing $2 million defamation lawsuit against Professor Emeritus Sharad Karkhanis, for his audacity in stating that it would not have been appropriate to place convicted terrorists, Mohamed Yousry and Susan Rosenberg, on the CUNY payroll (actions which O’Malley had defended).

Orenstein proceeds to record in full how these three “paragons of diversity and multiculturalism demonize their critics in order to bully them into silence, while posturing as hapless victims of a hateful ‘vigilant squad’ of anti-Muslim ‘attacks.’” He justly concludes that no one who assumes a leadership role is immune from scrutiny.