If you have been following the tenure debacle surrounding Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, you may recall the name of Johnson's senior colleague, Stuart Schaar. Schaar, a professor of Middle Eastern history, is one of Johnson's most outspoken opponents. Described as an "academic terrorist" by his own chairman, Schaar has proven the justice of that label in his conduct toward Johnson: when Johnson protested the political one-sidedness of a post-9/11 conference Schaar was coordinating, Schaar told a campus reporter that Johnson's complaint was an "attack" on his work. As media coverage of the case has made eminently clear, this episode played a key role in Brooklyn College's decision to deny tenure to Johnson for lack of "collegiality."

Now Schaar's bullying tactics are being aired in another forum: his course on the history of the Middle East during the twentieth century is the subject of NoIndoctrination.org's latest posting. Here is what a student had to say about how Schaar handles the delicate and controversial question of the Middle East:

Despite its seemingly innocuous title and banal course description, this class was replete with examples of ideological cant and bias. In addition to demonizing adherents of a different point of view--especially in lectures having to deal with discussion of the precepts of Islam and the methods in which Muhammed acquired his emprire, the professor also routinely disparaged any student who questioned his baseless assertions on certain subjects. For example, when a young woman deigned to raise the question of how Sadam Hussein treated one of Iraq's smaller minorities (the Chaldeans), he perfunctorily dismissed her question with the bald assertion that: "they don't count." His lectures dealing with the Israeli "occupation" of Judea & Samaria and the Gaza Strip were even more monolithic. He did not even entertain the possibility that these territories could indeed be part of a Jewish state, and often would refer to people who questioned this liberal nostrum, e.g, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, as extremists. Of course, we expect scholars to have a different standard than say, reporters, who are supposed to present a unvarnished account of a given situation without inserting their personal biases. My objection rested primarily on his refusal to entertain opinions that contravened his own. His reading of certain events, e.g. the Six Day War, was very selective in its allocation of the facts. The fact that he relied solely on the arabic perspective in his analysis of this crucial historical event is evidence of his ideological pedigree.

Even though the discussions were not quite as one-dimensional as the lectures, they did provide an opportunity for some of the professor's acolytes to heap scorn on the few students who dissented from his ideological programme vis-a-vis, the modern historiography of the Middle East. In fact, some of his more eager disciples took this opportunity to reiterate the views of the professor in a much less nuanced manner. Some of the numerous examples of bias that were exhibited during these discussions--led by the professor, of course, were the constant verbal attacks on Israeli settlers, the foreign policy of the United States, and a favorite of some of the class's "Palestinian" students-- ad hominem attacks against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The fact that the other students knew that they could ingratiate themselves with him by aping his viewpoint on certain subjects, certainly did not help matters. Overall, I found this portion of the class to be the most annoying, if not quite so intimidating. I can't say that he was particularly hostile. However, there were certain times when his ideological predilections made themselves abundently clear, especially during back-and-forth exchanges he had with a classmate. He also made some snide comments about the relative knowledge (or lack thereof), of the students attending his class. While these may have been warranted, I don't think that they were the most tactful way to begin a class. While I commend the professor for allowing several of us--in fact only two--to express our disagreement, and appreciate the fact that he kept his word not to penalize students for their personal political beliefs, I still think that he could have done a much better job providing a forum for dissenting voices.

NoIndoctrination.org posts rebuttals when professors care to write them. As of this posting, Schaar has not done so.