Americas Intelligentsia: How Prejudice Often Trumps Intelligence

Published: May 21, 2016, 2:29 a.m.

b'Title: \\u201cAmerica\\u2019s Intelligentsia: How Prejudice Often Trumps Intelligence\\u201d\\n\\nDate: November 14, 2013\\n\\nSpeaker: Michael Widlanski\\n\\nAffiliation: Schusterman Visiting Professor, University California Irvine; Lecturer, Bar Ilan University\\n\\nLocation: Fordham University\\n\\nConvener: Dr. Charles Asher Small, Founder and Executive Director, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP)\\n\\nDoron Ben-Atar, Professor, Department of History, Fordham University\\n\\nDescription: Michael Widlanski maintains that intelligence and terror are inter-connected and that terrorists seek to capture the minds of the public. Widlanski questions how the West, Western intellectuals and intelligence agencies are so often wrong about the Middle East. He says this phenomenon is the result of a number of prejudices, including Arabism, or Islamophilia, and antisemtism. He goes on to note the influence of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky on the academy and how they were the two living sources most cited on American college courses and syllabi. He notes the absurdity that Chomsky, a linguistics professor, and Said, a comparative literature professor, were given credibility regarding the Israel and Middle East and telling the world what to think regarding the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict.'