Eqbal Ahmad

Ahmad says that as a critic of Israeli policies and a supporter of the rights of the Palestinians, ha has been ostracized by the academic community:

It is not only the material punishments that the people encoutner, but the extraordinary environment of conformity that is imposed upon you and the price in isolation that individuals have to pay for not conforming on this issue.

Ahmad joined the faculty of Cornell university in 1965. "I was a young assistant professor, generally liked by my colleagues," recalss Ahmad. "And they continued to be very warm and civil to medespite the fact that many of them were conservative people and I had already become fairly prominent in the anti-Vietnam war movement".

After the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, Ahmad made a speech at Cornell criticizing Israel's conquest and the retention of Arab territory and also signed petitions supporting the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. throughout his remaining two years at Cornell, says Ahmad, no more than four of the entire faculty spoke to him... Ahmad says that of the four who remained his friends, three were Jewis...

In 1983, Ahmad's name appeared in the B'nai B'rith publication Pro Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices. "This they are doing to somebody who has not to date received any form of support from and Arab government or an Arab organization", says Ahmad. Ahmad says that about a quarter of his income comes from speaking engagements, mainly university endowed lectures. Since the publication of the B'Nai B'rith "enemies list", his speaking invitations have dropped by about 50 percent. "These invitations come from my reputation as an objective, independent scholar", says Ahmad. "By putting me under the rubric of propagandist they have put into question my position as an objective scholar".

Since Ahmad left Cornell in 1969 he has not been able to obtain a regular teaching appointment. He has been a visiting professor at one college or another every year. towards the end of his 1982-3 term at Rutgers University college in Newark, New Jersey, he was considered for a regular appointment, but at the last minute it fell through. Says Ahmad:

I have been told privately that it was because Zionist professors objected to my appointmnet. the dean was told I would not get the vote of the faculty because accusations had been made that I was anti-Semitic and had created an anti-Semitic atmosphere on the campus while I was teaching there. All this was told to me in private; I have nothing in writing

S C Whitaker, former chairman of the Political Science Department at Rutgers University and the man who originally hired Ahmad as a visiting professor, was away when the question of a full professorship for Ahmad came up. "When I got back", said Whitaker, "I was told that he'd been a great smash as a teacher and that his enrollments were terrific. but when the proposal to have him stay on permanently came up, it was shot down, and it seemed to be politics".

Publications

• Eqbal Ahmad, "The Theory and Fallacies of Counter-insurgency", The Nation (New York), 2 August 1972, p. 73. Also published in Taking State Power: The Sources and Consequences of Political Challenge JC Leggett (ed) - 1973 - Joanna Cotler Books
• Genesis of international terrorism By Eqbal Ahmad, October 1998, reprinted in DAWN, Friday 5 October 2001, 17 Rajab 1422.
• Terrorism: Theirs and Ours By Eqbal Ahmad, David Barsamian Format Paperback ISBN-10 1-58322-490-4 ISBN-13 978-1-58322-490-8 Publication Date 2002

Resources

• Hampshire College Archives Eqbal Ahmad Papers, 1956-1999 Finding Aid Manuscript Group 5 Prepared by Susan A. Dayall 2001
• Eqbal Ahmad (1933 or 34 - 1999), accessed 8 January 2008.