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Rep. Engel "Disappointed" by Ford Forum for Mearsheimer

[New York Sun] Annie Karni - The Ford Foundation, which came under congressional scrutiny in 2003 for supporting groups committed to destroying Israel, is again drawing censure, this time for funding a panel at Columbia University highlighting a professor who blames Israel and its American supporters for the Iraq War and for al-Qaeda terrorism against America. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, is scheduled to speak at Columbia's Heyman Center for the Humanities next month on the issue of free speech in academia. The October 30 panel, titled "Freedom and the University," is funded with a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. "It's disappointing that the Ford Foundation would make Mearsheimer one of the highlights of what they're funding," said Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat of the Bronx. "If the Ford Foundation is going to say they've changed their attitudes, doing something like this only calls into question whether they've got the message and changed." The executive director of the NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, said that by funding a panel where Mearsheimer is scheduled to speak, the Ford Foundation risks reneging on that promise by underwriting at Columbia the kind of falsehoods it was funding at Durban. "He [Mearsheimer] won't debate the assertions and the things they say," said Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "They never engaged anyone from the 'lobby.' They hide behind the guise of academic freedom when they're the ones denying us free speech. It seems a little out of place for them to speak on academic freedom."
2007-09-10 01:00:00
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