Below is the letter to the Boston Globe as submitted. Please also note the 60 signatories to this letter were only those collected during a 24 hour window prior to the letter being sent. We thought it best to get the letter in at that point and many more signatories came in afterwards. Of course we mentioned the total number of academics (over 450 to date) and total number of signatories (over 4,500) to the letter to the HELP Committee, but this and much of the other substantive content was edited out by the Boston Globe.
			To the Editor: As signatories to a letter delivered last week to the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) urging it to reject the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the US Institute for Peace (USIP) or else hold full public hearings so his extremist views can be fully exposed to the American people, we were particularly disturbed by Jeff Jacoby’s misleading and partisan “Pipes’s effective route to peace” (6/21/03). If the issue were not so serious the title of Jacoby’s article itself, like the news of Pipes’s nomination when people first heard it, might be considered a joke since Pipes’s views on conflict resolution which favor force and fear in direct contradiction to the mission statement of the USIP are well-known. This would be sufficient enough to disqualify him as a nominee, but it hardly stops there. Pipes, as Jacoby’s piece implies, is widely held to be a virulent racist and one of our country’s leading “Muslim bashers”. Jacoby would like to try and dispel this using Pipes’s own talking points to imply that only extremists or “Islamists” would believe such a thing about Pipes. But James Zogby, whom Jacoby attacks for comparing Pipes to David Duke, is a well-known and widely respected moderate. The groundswell of opposition to the Pipes nomination is not from any fringe or marginal group from within the Muslim or Arab-American community. He is vehemently opposed by every major mainstream Muslim and Arab-American group in the country. In addition, it should be heavily underscored that this itself hardly exhausts the opposition. The majority of us (as well as the majority of the over 400 academics from colleges and universities across the country along with over 4,000 co-signatories who have signed the letter to the US Senate Committee asking it to reject Pipes nomination) are not even Muslims or Arab-Americans at all (and certainly not “Islamists”). This kind of labeling, direct or by implication, is not just false, it is pernicious. In fact it is just this kind of distortion used in an attempt to silence free speech or opposing thought that is a hallmark of Pipes’s career. His “Campus Watch” website and surveillance network launched last year, and the harassment and intimidation associated with it, are seen by many in our most prestigious universities as a direct attempt to actively revive the tactics of McCarthyism to silence those who oppose the extremist right-wing views he espouses. These activities, and Pipes’s extremist undemocratic views in general, any one of which would be sufficient to disqualify him as a member of the USIP, when taken as a whole, speak overwhelmingly for the unequivocal rejection of this nomination. As the letter that we and thousands of others have signed says: “We stand with people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, and religious persuasions who, in the interest of the most cherished principles of our democracy, condemn this nomination,” and call on the Senate HELP Committee to reject it loudly (full letter can be seen at http://www.say-no-to-pipes.org). Signed, Prof. Samer Alatout, Ph.D. Professor of Geography and Government, Dartmouth College Lyme, NH Prof. Bonnie Anderson, Ph.D Professor of History, Brooklyn College Brooklyn, NY Prof. Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, Ph.D Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies, Purchase College, SUNY Purchase, NY Prof. Diana C. Archibold, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Lowell Lowell, MA Prof. Charles Bazerman, Ph.D Department Chair and Professor, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California,Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA Prof. Joel Beinin, Ph.D. Professor Middle East History, Stanford University Stanford, CA Prof. Michael Bibby, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English, Shippensburg University Shippensburg, PA Prof. Wendy Brown, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science. University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Ph.D. Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA Prof. Jack Block, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA Dr. Judith Butler, Ph.D Professor of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley Berkely, CA Prof. Scott Crass, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Mathematics, California State University, Long Beach Long Beach, CA Prof. Michael Dietler, Ph.D Associate Professor of Anthroplogy, University of Chicago Chicago, IL Prof. Michael J. Donahue, Ph.D. Director of Research Department of Graduate Psychology, Azusa Pacific University Azusa, CA Prof. Margaret Duncombe, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology, Colorado College Colorado Springs, CO Prof. Robert Elias, Ph.D Department Chair and Professor of Politics, University of San Fransciso San Francisco, CA Prof. Kate Ellis, Ph.D. Professor of English, Rutgers University Newark, NJ Prof. Matthew A. Evangelista, Ph.D. Professor of Government, Director Peace Studies Program, Cornell University Ithaca, NY Prof. V.P. Gagnon, Jr., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Politics, Ithaca College Ithaca, NY Prof. Irene Gendzier, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science, Boston University Boston, MA Prof. Glenda Gilmore, Ph.D. Professor of History and African American Studies, Yale University New Haven, CT Prof. Abbott Gleason, Ph.D Professor of History, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University Providence, RI Prof. Karen B. Graubart, Ph.D. Professor of History, Cornell University Ithaca, NY Prof. Hugh Gusterson, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science Studies, MIT Cambridge, MA Prof. Stephen Harmon, Ph.D. Professor and Director of International Studies, Pittsburgh State University Pittsburgh, PA Prof. Jonathan Holloway, Ph. D Associate Professor African American Studies and History, Yale University New Haven, CT Prof. Miriam Cherkes-Julkowski, Ph.D. Retired Professer Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut Storrs, CT Prof. Tomis Kapitan, Ph.D Professor of Philosophy, Norther Illinois University DeKalb, IL Prof. Noor-Aiman Khan, Ph.D. Professor of History, Colgate University Hamilton, NY Prof. Evelyn Fox Keller, Ph.D. Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, MIT Cambridge, MA Prof. Walter LaFeber, Ph.D. Professor of American History, Cornell University Ithaca, NY Prof. Roy Licklider, Ph.D Professor, Rutgers University Newark, NJ Prof. Robin Lorentzen, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, Albertson College Caldwell, ID Prof. Craig Lucas, BFA/MA Associate Professor, Graduate Director School of Art, Kent State University Kent, OH Prof. Maxine L. Margolis, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida Gainesville, FL Prof. Martin Melkonian, Ph.D Professor of Economics and Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hoffstra University Hempstead, NY Prof. Dawne Moon, Ph.D Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley Berkeley CA Prof. Jim Monsonis, Ph.D. Professor Social Sciences, Simon’s Rock College Great Barrington, MA Prof. Farouk Mustafa, Ph.D. Professor of Arabic, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago Chicago, IL Prof. Sadu Nanjundiah, Ph.D Professor of Physics, Central Connecticut State University New Britain, CT Prof. J.B. Neilands, Ph.D. Professor of Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA Prof. Mary Nolan, Ph.D Professor of History New York University, New York, NY Prof. Astrid O’Brian, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University New York, NY Prof. James. G. Pope, Ph.D. Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law Newark, NJ Prof. Marguerite Rosenthal, Ph.D. Professor School of Social Work, Salem State College Salem, MA Prof. George Rosso, Ph.D. Professor of English, Southern Connecticut State University New Haven, CT Prof. Mark Rupert, Ph.D. Professor of Political Science. Syracuse University Syracuse, NY Prof. Gregory Starrett, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC Prof. Elizabeth Sanders, Ph.D. Professor of Government, Cornell University Ithaca, NY Prof. Omid Safi, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Colgate University Hamilton, NY Prof. Cathy Schneider, Ph.D. Professor School of International Service, American University Washington, DC Prof. Joan Scott, Ph.D Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ Prof. John Sniegocki, Ph.D. Professor of Theology, Honors Faculty, Xavier College Cincinnati, OH Prof. Janan A. Smither, Ph.D. Department Chair and Professor, Psychology Department, University of Central Florida Orlando, FL Prof. Joel Stillerman, Ph.D Assistant Professor of Sociology, Grand Valley State University Allendale, MI Prof. Judith Surkis, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of History, Harvard University Boston, MA Prof. Ted Swedenburg, Ph.D. Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas Fayetteville, AR Rod Swenson, MFA Planetery Evolution and Global Order Study Group Storrs, CT Prof. Gerard Toal, Ph.D Professor of Government and International Affairs, Virginia Tech University Alexandria, VA Prof. John Womack, Jr Ph.D Professor of History, Center for International Development Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 Prof. Rebecca Young, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Women’s Studies, Barnard University New York, NY Prof. Gail Zucker, Ph.D Department Chair, Associate Professor of Psychology,Wheaton College Norton, MA