Academic

Cross-posted from www.NewMajority.com (first published July 31, 2009)

The Middle East dispute may seem interminable, but its shadow conflict ? the one being waged on university campuses ? appears every bit as complex and insoluble.

The latest round in Canada involves Hassan Diab, an Ottawa-based lecturer who for a number of years has had a part time appointment teaching Introduction to Sociology at Carleton University?s summer program. French authorities have asked for his extradition from Canada, accusing him of being the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist that blew up a Paris synagogue in 1980. Four people died in the bombing on Rue Copernic, and the incident signaled a wave of attacks against Jewish targets that brought the ongoing Israeli-Arab fight home to European Jews in a startlingly new way.

In November 2007, French authorities, acting on information supplied by German intelligence and gleaned from the files of the old East German Stasi, put out a warrant for the arrest of a Lebanese-born PFLP operative named Hassan Diab. In October 2008, the fugitive was identified as the Ottawa academic and he has been fighting against extradition in the Canadian courts ever since.

Dr. Diab?s defense is, quite simply, that Hassan Diab is a common Lebanese name and that they?ve got the wrong man. French police have supplied some dated witness statements and, possibly some supporting forensic evidence, but as of now it is not clear how the case will come out. The fact that the primary information comes from East German secret police files ? not a favored source for most western courts ? lends an element of uncertainty to the entire legal proceeding.

Meanwhile, Carleton University announced that Diab would be teaching Soc. 101 this summer. He has offered the course before, the university argues, and there has never been an incident or complaint. The hiring of Diab for the summer course, in turn, prompted a predictable outcry from B?nai Brith Canada, who accused the university administration of poisoning young minds with the teachings of a terrorist. The university then relented, replacing Diab with a full time faculty member.

What a university should do with an accused terrorist on its staff is not an easy question.

Diab?s defenders, of course, point out that the professor is innocent until proven guilty and should be treated as such by his employer. Jewish student websites, on the other hand, have warned prospective enrollees away from yet one more venture into the landmine infested area of anti-Israel academia.

The National Post, Canada?s most conservative newspaper, has reported that there is no indication that Diab has been a political activist since starting his Canadian teaching career, or that he has been particularly engaged with the Palestinian cause. Indeed, in one of its funnier observations, a Post editorial points out that this might make Diab the only sociology teacher on a Canadian campus not to be obsessed with the Palestinians.

All of this comes during summer session, the one season in which Canadian university life usually takes a break from the Middle East campus battles. But with campuses now in a permanent state of occupation and intifada, even the summer hudna is now at an end.