David Tell, opinion editor
|
|
JUST FOR FUN, fellow students of journalism, let's count up all the mistakes New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas D. Kristof has recently made about Sami Al-Arian, that University of South Florida computer engineering professor The Weekly Standard has been following on and off these past few months. First, though, let's warm up on those few facts Kristof has somehow managed not to bungle.
Back in September, Sami Al-Arian had a career-threatening accident on the Fox News Channel's "O'Reilly Factor." Interviewed by Bill O'Reilly before a national television audience still raw from the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the previously obscure Al-Arian spent several uncomfortable minutes attempting to deodorize some of his past public remarks: "Death to Israel," "Jihad is our path," that sort of thing. An uproar immediately ensued at the University of South Florida. Alumni called to cancel their bequests, incredulous that the school had granted tenure to such a man. Several other people phoned in death threats against the professor. And a few months of such controversy later, citing an ongoing disruption of its core activities, the university informed Al-Arian that it intended to fire him. Which decision prompted a second uproar, this time involving would-be defenders of academic freedom, all of whom complain that the professor is being punished merely for holding unpopular views.
That's how Nicholas D. Kristof sees it, too. "The point," he writes in his March 1 column, "is not whether one agrees with Professor Al-Arian," whom Kristof
describes as a "rumpled academic with a salt-and-pepper beard" who, though not too keen on Israel, nevertheless "denounces terrorism" and "promotes inter-faith services with Jews and Christians." The point, instead, "is that a university, even a country, becomes sterile when people are too intimidated to say things out of the mainstream." And only what Al-Arian has said is at issue, Kristof reports: "Three exhaustive studies of his conduct have found no evidence of wrongdoing. Most recently, an immigration judge, Kevin McHugh, issued a 56-page report in October 2000 concluding that 'there is no evidence before the court that demonstrates that' two Muslim organizations run by Mr. Al-Arian were fronts for Palestinian terrorists."
Okay, now let's start counting Kristof's errors, from least to most egregious.
1) Immigration Judge R. Kevin McHugh did not issue a "56-page report" or any other kind of "exhaustive study" about Sami Al-Arian in October 2000. McHugh did issue a 56-page decision in connection with a bond redetermination hearing for Sami Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, who had been arrested and detained on suspicion of terrorist connections. Calling McHugh's ruling a "report" on Al-Arian is rather like calling the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade a "report" on the abortion experiences of Jane Roe's sister-in-law--assuming she had one. Indeed, so weird is Kristof's choice of words here as to suggest that he hasn't actually read the very document he is quoting. Which suspicion might tend to be confirmed by the fact that Kristof has thoroughly mischaracterized the substance and significance of Judge McHugh's findings in the Al-Najjar case. But we'll come back to that in a moment; the truth is too deliciously embarrassing to be revealed just yet.
|
