fromBlog :: AcademicBias.com:
"Like many 17-year-olds, Ahmad Al-Qloushi is adjusting to life on campus. As an Arab Muslim, the Foothill College freshman is undoubtedly a minority. He's also finding that his status as a minority brings with it a unique set of challenges. But it isn't Ahmad's ethnicity or his religion that are the source of tension on campus, it's his views about the United States. You see, Ahmad is a Kuwaiti. And although he was only three years old when the U.S. liberated his country from the claws of Saddam Hussein, his admiration for our country is something he inherited from his parents' generation:
My parents still remember what it was like for us during the invasion. Waiting for long hours in line for a few pieces of bread. We had darkness 24 hours a day from the burning oil wells. My two uncles are still traumatized from being kidnapped and tortured in Iraqi prisons. Most of all we remember our one-week-old baby cousin who died while the Iraqi invaders were stealing incubators from hospitals to sell them for profit. The Americans by contrast came in to liberate us and asked for nothing in return. I love this country for the freedom it provides and for rescuing Kuwait's liberty in the first Gulf War.
It is his love for our country that's the source of Ahmad's troubles at Foothill College. Since the late 1960s, admiration for the United States has fallen out of fashion on American campuses. Foothill is no different:
Week after week, I encountered a lack of intellectual and political diversity that I would have more commonly expected to have heard on the streets of pre-liberation Iraq. In this particular class I heard only one consistent refrain: America is bad.
When Ahmad disagreed with that prevailing sentiment, political science professor Joseph Woolcock suggested that Ahmad needed psychological help:
[Professor Woolcock] told me, 'Your views are irrational.' He called me naive for believing in the greatness of this country, and told me "America is not God's gift to the world." Then he upped the stakes and said "You need regular psychotherapy." Apparently, if you are an Arab Muslim who loves America you must be deranged. Professor Woolcock went as far as to threaten me by stating that he would visit the Dean of International Admissions (who has the power to take away student visas) to make sure I received regular psychological treatment.
This is what passes for an education these days.
Posted by Evan on 11 Jan 2005 at 10:06pm
LINK:Psychotherapy for Pro-US Muslim Student?
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