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PARC’s Anti-Israel Polemics

U.S. taxpayers fund grants for “Palestinian studies.”

By Jonathan Schanzer

National Review

July 11, 2008

For more than a decade, the allocation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. funded doctoral and post-doctoral grants on Palestinian issues has been decided by a group of Middle Eastern-studies professors that includes some of the most polarizing and radical figures in the field.

The Bethesda, Maryland–based Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), a registered nonprofit, receives controversial Title VI funding from the U.S. State Department and Department of Education for “Palestinian studies.” Yet, the organization perpetuates the failures of Middle Eastern studies in America — namely, the admixture of polemics and academia.

The list of PARC members includes Stanford’s Joel Beinin, who denounces American “imperialism” on al-Jazeera television; Columbia’s Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) spokesman; NYU’s Zachary Lockman, supporter of a proposed academic boycott of Israel; Penn’s Ian Lustick, who blames the U.S. for the war on terror, rather than those who carry out violence in the name of Islam; and Boston University’s Augustus Norton, an apologist for the Lebanese terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

While PARC no longer enjoys the shelter of a university, it was hosted in recent years at Villanova University (under the directorship of Professor Ann Lesch), and Randolph-Macon College (under the directorship of Professor Michael Fischbach). Today, at least 15 U.S. colleges and universities are included among PARC’s institutional supporters, including Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, and other venerated schools.

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