Bias in America’s Colleges Produced Modern Anti-Zionism

 By Henry Srebrnik, Jewish Post, Winnipeg

Jon A. Shields, Yuval Avnur, and Stephanie Muravchik, professors at the Claremont Colleges in California, have just completed a study, “Closed Classrooms? An Analysis of College Syllabi on Contentious Issues,” published July 10, 2025, that draws on a database of millions of college syllabi to explore how professors teach three of the most contentious topics: racial bias in the criminal justice system, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ethics of abortion.

They used a unique database of college syllabi collected by the “Open Syllabus Project” (OSP). The OSP has amassed millions of syllabi from around the world primarily by scraping them from university websites. They date as far back as 2008, though a majority are from the last ten years. Most of the data comes from universities in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia.

“Since all these issues sharply divide scholars, we wanted to know whether students were expected to read a wide or narrow range of perspectives on them. We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy. Not well, as it turns out.”

In the summary of their findings, “Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach,” they report that they found a total lack of ideological diversity. “Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.”

Teaching of Israel and Palestine is, perhaps no surprise, totally lopsided, and we’ve seen the consequences since October 7, 2023. Staunchly anti-Zionist texts -- those that question the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state -- are commonly assigned. Rashid Khalidi, the retired professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, is the most popular author on this topic in the database. A Palestinian American and adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation in the 1990s, Khalidi places the blame on Israel for failing to resolve the conflict and sees the country’s existence as a consequence of  settler-colonialism.

The problem is not the teaching of Khalidi itself, as some on the American right might insist. To the contrary, it is important for students to encounter voices like Khalidi’s. The problem is who he is usually taught with. Generally, Khalidi is taught with other critics of Israel, such as Charles D. Smith, Ilan Pappé, and James Gelvin.

Not only is Khalidi’s work rarely assigned alongside prominent critics, those critics seem to hardly get taught at all. They include Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis, a professor at Shalem College in Israel. Gordis’s book appears only 22 times in the syllabus database. Another example is the work of Efraim Karsh, a prominent historian. His widely cited classic, Fabricating Israeli History, appears just 24 times.

For most students, though, any exposure to the conflict begins and ends with Edward Said’s Orientalism, first published in 1978. Said is the intellectual godfather of so many of today’s scholars of the Middle East, thanks in no small part to this classic book. Said was a Palestinian-American academic, literary critic, and political activist from a prominent Christian family. Educated at Princeton and Harvard Universities, two of America’s most distinguished centres of higher learning, he taught at Columbia University, another Ivy League institution, until his death in 2003.

Said was no crude antisemite. His writings were aimed at academic and intellectuals and he has, in my opinion, done more damage to the Jewish people than anyone else after 1945. Said claimed to be the first scholar to “culturally and politically” identify “wholeheartedly with the Arabs.” But he was also a political activist for the Palestinian movement opposing the existence of Israel.

Said warned PLO leader Yasir Arafat that if the conflict remained local, they’d lose. Join “the universal political struggle against colonialism and imperialism,” with the Palestinians as freedom fighters paralleling “Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and black Africa,” he advised.

(In this he was not the first, though. Fayez Sayegh, a Syrian intellectual who departed for the United States and completed his Ph.D. at Georgetown University in 1949, preceded him. Also an academic, his 1965 monograph Zionist Colonialism in Palestine stands as the first intellectual articulation of Zionism as a settler colonial enterprise, arguing that the analytical frameworks applied to Vietnam and Algeria apply equally to Palestine. The treatise situated Zionism within European colonialism while presenting it as uniquely pernicious.)

Israel’s post–Six-Day War territorial expansion helped Said frame Israel as “an occupying power” in a 1979 manifesto titled The Question of Palestine. Alleging racial discrimination as the key motive was a means of transforming the “Zionist settler in Palestine” into an analogue of “white settlers in Africa.” That charge gained traction in a post-Sixties universe of civil rights, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and Western self-abnegation. The work sought to turn the tables on the prevailing American understanding of Israel: It is not, in fact, an outpost of liberal democracy or refuge from antisemitism, but an instrument of white supremacy.

Orientalism popularized a framework through which today’s advocates on behalf of Palestinians understand their struggle against the state of Israel and the West generally. Said casts the Western world as the villains of history and peoples of the East as its noble victims.

The essence of the book, Said concluded, is the “ineradicable distinction between Western superiority and Oriental inferiority.” It falsely affirms “an absolute and systematic difference between the West, which is rational, developed, humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior.”

So it was impossible to take Zionism seriously as one among the myriad nationalist movements that emerged in the nineteenth century, much less to see Israel itself as a land of refugees or the ancestral homeland of Jews. And, indeed, Said’s Orientalism singles out Israel for special rebuke, suggesting that the state could be justified only if one accepted the xenophobic ideology at the core of Western civilization. Israel’s defenders, particularly those who lament the lack of democracy in the Middle East and fault Arabs for their militancy, represent the “culmination of Orientalism.”

Said is widely acknowledged as the godfather of the emerging field of postcolonial studies, and his views have profoundly shaped the study of the Middle East. Said also inspired – and in some cases directly mentored – a generation of anti-Zionist U.S. scholars whose dominance in the academic study of the area is unquestionable today.

The political left that emerged trained itself to read every conflict as the aftershock of colonialism. The ideological narrative of oppression and resistance allowed even the jihadist to become a post-colonial rebel.

It’s hard to overstate the academic influence of Orientalism.  The authors note that “As of this writing, it has been cited nearly 90 thousand times. It is also the 16th most assigned text in the OSP database, appearing in nearly 16 thousand courses.” Orientalism is among the most popular books assigned in the United States, showing up in nearly 4,000 courses in the syllabus database. Said’s work appears in 6,732 courses in U.S. colleges and universities.

But although it was a major source of controversy, both then and now, it is rarely assigned with any of the critics Said sparred with, like Bernard Lewis, Ian Buruma, or Samuel Huntington. Instead, it’s most often taught with books by fellow luminaries of the postmodern left, such as Frantz Fanon and Judith Butler.

All these ideas are now embedded into diversity, equity, and inclusion identity politics, and “humanitarian” outrage over supposed Israeli “settler-colonialism,” “genocide,” and “apartheid.”

The ground for the massive pro-Hamas college and university encampments, and attacks on Jewish students, was prepared decades ago. The long march of progressives through American institutions over the past decades has taken its toll on society.

 

Two Major African Countries Have Become Bloodlands

 By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Daily Gleaner

Two of Africa’s largest and heterogenous states, Nigeria and Sudan, are experience massive internal violence.

Nigeria’s population of 220 million is split almost equally between Christians and Muslims. Since 2009, Islamist extremists in northern Nigeria have destroyed more than 18,000 churches and killed over 50,000 Christians nationwide. And another five million have been displaced within the country.

Who is doing this? The country has long faced insecurity from the Boko Haram extremist group, which seeks to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law and has also targeted Muslims it deems not devout enough. They have killed tens of thousands of people since being founded in 2002.

Though Western media coverage of the persecution of Nigerian Christians has been sparse, that may be changing. U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 1 ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria as he stepped up his criticism that the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” Trump posted on social media.

The warning came after Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had earlier pushed back after Trump announced that he was designating Nigeria “a country of particular concern” for allegedly failing to rein in the persecution of Christians.

Tinubu insisted that the characterization of Nigeria as a religiously intolerant country does not reflect the national reality. “Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so,” he stated. “Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”

But U.S. defence secretary Pete Hegseth Nov. 21 called on the government to “take both urgent and enduring action to stop violence against Christians, during talks with the Nigerian national security adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.

Faith-based organizations are amplifying claims of a Christian “genocide.” They point to the wave of attacks on churches and Chrisitan communities across the central and northern parts of the country -- though others assert that the violence cuts across faiths and that it is driven as much by land disputes, climate change, poverty and weak governance as by religion itself. 

Security, especially in the predominantly Muslim north, has been deteriorating for years. About 10,000 people have been killed and hundreds abducted since Tinubu became president in mid-2023. More than 7,000 Nigerian Christians have been slaughtered by Islamists so far in 2025. The violence has pushed as many as three million people out of their homes.

Meanwhile, of all the wars raging across the world right now, Sudan’s is the deadliest. More than 150,000 people are dead. Twelve million have been displaced. Women have been raped and children are conscripted as soldiers. Mass graves line Khartoum’s streets. Of the population of 51 million, around 14 million have been displaced. Famine is widespread, as is cholera and other diseases.

The conflict involves the government-controlled Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as “Hemedti,” who leads the broader Janjaweed coalition, notorious due to the Darfur genocide earlier in the 21^st century.

The RSF are allegedly supported by arms deliveries from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) through neighbouring Chad. The UAE denies the allegations, though evidence in the form of UAE-produced arms indicate the opposite. The SAF, on the other hand, is backed by Egypt and Qatar.

The Janjaweed militia became known for its extreme violence in Darfur between 2003 and 2005. At the time, the Arab-origin militia of then-president Omar al-Bashir killed around 300,000 civilians, whom they considered not Arab but African. The UN and many states determined that genocidal acts were committed in early 2003.

After recently seizing the city of El Fasher, the RSF’s territorial control now covers Darfur and parts of the south, whereas the SAF controls the country's capital, Khartoum, and the country’s north and centre. International organizations have demanded that the RSF establish humanitarian corridors for the approximately 177,000 people who have been unable to leave El Fasher.

In March, the RSF and other armed groups formed the Sudan Founding Alliance (TASIS). It has been tasked with establishing a “Government of Peace and Unity” " for Darfur and parts of the south where the RSF holds sway.

The French author Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has reported from the country, on Nov. 5 warned that Sudan’s war could destabilize the entire region into a geopolitical crisis stretching from the Red Sea to Libya. “In this region of the planet where great civilizations intersect and where, today, the empires of death make common cause, Sudan holds a distinct and essential geopolitical place. To refuse to hear what is happening there would be not only a disgrace, but also a mistake.”

 Prime minister Mark Carney brought up the issue of UAE arms sales to the RSP forces while on a visit there in November, though groups like the Montreal-based Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights question Ottawa’s friendly relations with the UAE. Control over gold-mining operations and trade has become a central driver of the civil war, the report said, with 50 to 80 per cent of the 70-million tonnes produced annually smuggled abroad, principally to the UAE.

 

Argentina’s Milei Wins Big in Midterm Elections

 By Henry Srebrnik, Moncton Times & Transcript

Javier Milei, the libertarian economist who is the current president of Argentina, won a decisive victory in the Oct. 27 midterm elections, significantly outperforming his polling numbers and dealing a crushing defeat to what remains of the country’s left-wing Peronist establishment.

The result solidifies Milei’s grip on power and ensures his ability to push forward his market-reform agenda, locking in his “chainsaw revolution” against big government waste. It also vindicates the Trump administration’s public bet on Milei, whom it has identified as one of its key allies in the Western hemisphere. 

After defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms, Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41 per cent of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house Chamber of Deputies seats that were contested. His gains will make it easier for Milei to slash state spending and deregulate the economy.

The elections were the first national test of President Milei’s popularity since he took office in 2023, pledging to shrink state spending by taking a metaphorical “chainsaw” to it. He brandished a real one during his campaign rallies. He has since cut budgets for education, pensions, health, infrastructure, and subsidies, and laid off tens of thousands of public sector workers.

Milei told cheering supporters that “We must consolidate the path of reform we have embarked upon to turn Argentina’s history around once and for all” and “make Argentina great again.”

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated Milei on social media. “He’s making us all look good,” Trump remarked. Before the vote, Trump had made it clear that a $40 billion lifeline for Argentina by Washington would depend on Milei keeping political momentum. “If he wins, we’re staying with him. If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Trump had threatened.

The Trump administration has identified Milei as a key ally in a region where anti-Americanism has long been a powerful political force. As with the Bolivian election earlier this year, which ended nearly 20 years of socialist rule, the result is a victory not only for Milei but also for pro-American forces throughout the region. 

Specifically, Washington sees Argentina as a testing ground for its efforts to roll back Chinese influence in the Western hemisphere, going so far as to condition some U.S. aid to Argentina on Milei’s willingness to switch from Chinese to U.S. telecom providers.

To shore up American support, a framework agreement between the two countries signed Nov. 13 will see Argentina expand market access for a swath of U.S. products, including medicine, chemicals, machinery, and agricultural products. Washington will eliminate reciprocal tariffs for “certain unavailable natural resources” as well as non-patented materials used for pharmaceutical production. Imports from Argentina currently face a baseline 10 per cent tariff rate.

Prior to the elections Milei’s party had just seven Senate seats and 37 seats in the lower house. That meant his program of spending cuts and reforms faced various political obstacles. His vetoes of bills to boost funding for state universities, people with disabilities and children’s healthcare were all overturned by opposition lawmakers.

Milei needed to win at least one-third of the seats in Congress’ lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, or its upper house, the Senate, to prevent his decrees from being blocked by a two-thirds vote.

“This is the problem he was having in the last few months,” Daniel Di Martino, an economist at the Manhattan Institute of Policy Research in New York, told The Scroll website. “The leftists were proposing bills to raise government spending on popular things, like bonuses to pensioners or university students. Milei would veto, and then they would override his veto, and he would have to cut spending elsewhere. Their goal was to create a budget deficit so that markets would freak out and Milei would lose the election.”

That didn’t work. “He’s veto proof now, which is what the markets really needed to understand,” Di Martino said. “The deficit is never coming back, and now the expectation that he will be re-elected is much higher.” The uncertainty was always about whether the opposition would let Milei go through with his reforms. Because Milei is so much more popular now, Di Martino pointed out, “even the moderates now have a big incentive to say, Hey, if we don’t negotiate with this guy, we’re also going to lose our seats in two years.”

While supporters, including Trump, hail Milei for taming inflation, which hit triple figures annually before he took office, by cutting the deficit, and restoring investor confidence, his critics argue that the price has been job losses, a decline in manufacturing, crumbling public services, a fall in people’s purchasing power and an imminent recession.

“You see a lot of poverty,” one opponent reported. “It’s very hard for retirees, for people with children with disabilities, for young people. There’s a lot of unemployment. Many factories have closed.”

The election turnout was 67.9 per cent, the lowest in a national election in decades, representing widespread apathy with politicians of all stripes. Still, “It’s a great victory for the coalition of pro-freedom parties in the Americas who are trying to stop the narco-socialists, which is this alliance of criminals which was started by Cuba and Venezuela,” Di Martino contended.