Guilford College exists in an Orwellian alternative universe where facts and allegations are edited and selectively spun to create what I found was the single most bigoted campus I have visited in the past half century. The Guilford I discovered last November is in desperate need of self-reassessment and reform if it is continue as a respected and viable institution.

At universities across America, the main engine of Guilford-style Orwellian doublethink is largely driven by various chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other Palestinian activists. The hallmarks are evident at campus after campus where SJP and other activists organize disruptive walkouts, stage protests to afflict ordinary Israeli presence, proliferate fake history, and increasingly perpetrate violence.

Numerous chapters of SJP and their cohorts in analogous organizations are now openly identified and described by the mainstream as hate merchants disguised as human rights champions. Their pyrotechnics are not staged for themselves, since they need no self-reinforcement about their entrenched hateful beliefs that claim Jews and Arabs are not entitled to the same equal self-determination as set in motion under international law decades ago. Their anti-Israel views are already cemented and impermeable. Rather, their actions are designed to sway the minds of young, impressionable, under-informed students at various schools who are in the dark about the true history of the Middle East and Jewish Palestine and to prevent those who would enlighten any on the true documented history. In other words, the real target of their efforts is everyone else on campus.

Not infrequently, we see leading Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) figures spending 10 years on and off at one or two campuses not so much as students but as long-term seeded activists determined to target and influence unaware students who are soon to assume their leadership role in general society.

FIVE WORDS TO LISTEN FOR

Anyone can easily discern the hallmarks of this Orwellian practice when they hear any of several highly recognizable trigger words, heard at campus after campus, including Guilford.

First word: Islamaphobe. Anyone who renders history, perspective, or fact in context in a way that does not suit their narrative is quickly branded and libeled as an “Islamaphobe.”

Second word: racist. Those who speak on topics Palestinian activists do not approve are labelled “racist.” Even award-winning humanitarians and human rights champions can be labelled racist, if it is handy.

Third word: unsafe. Suddenly, when a historian or analyst comes to campus with a balanced academic view or presents a message Palestinian agitators want to censor, organizational activists rise to say they have been made to “feel unsafe.” Complaints about feeling “unsafe” can arise because when an academy award nominated movie, such as American Sniper, last year’s highest grossing film, is showing on campus (instead of across the street at the local cinema), or even if a nationally recognized speaker is talking on an academic topic that differs with their Orwellian point of view. Recently, an interesting article appeared in the Washington Post, almost comically entitled, “Where and when did this “makes me feel unsafe” thing start?” Ironically, Jews and Israelis are not supposed to feel unsafe when eviction notices are placed under their doors, so-called apartheid walls are erected on campus, and swastikas are painted on their doors as they were at Stanford some weeks ago.

Fourth word: de-humanizing. Any expression deviating from the Palestinian agitation script is denigrated as “dehumanizing.” Apparently, it is not dehumanizing to disrupt a speaking event with the names of children killed by Hamas tacticians pinned to the back of protestor shirts, or to erect apartheid walls blocking egress on various campuses with blood-dripped Jewish stars as super-graphics, or to slip an eviction notice under a student’s dorm door at various schools, or publicly humiliate others with catcalls, jeers, and threats of violence on campus.

Memo to Guilford students: When you hear Palestinian activists use those four terms Islamaphobe, racist, “makes me feel unsafe”, and the dehumanizing cry, that’s the time to take a deep breath and check out the facts for yourself. You are surely being played.

No college would knowingly invite an Islamaphobe, a racist, or do anything that might make their students feel unsafe. So such well-rehearsed, nationally coordinated protestations are just choreographed victim theater designed to marginalize any message other than their own. However, after being staged so often at so many campuses, the tired script is becoming old and obvious.

Fifth word: narrative. Historians work with facts in context. To seasoned historians and journalists, the term narrative means edited history. That is what Big Brother did in Orwell’s 1984. Stalin did it in Soviet Russia. But academia eschews edited history and devotes itself to discovering the realities of what happened and why. There is only one history — the chronicle of what actually happened. There are many facets and interpretations. But the provable facts should be immutable.

Indeed, when I appeared at Professor Jeske’s class, the lecture was entitled Journalism in the Misinformation Age. Medieval Europe had contagious rumor mills to falsely claim the Jews poisoned the wells. Henry Ford used mass-produced and distributed booklets to falsely claim Jews started World War I and danced around tombstones at midnight in Prague while planning it. Today, realities are destroyed and reconstructed–not based upon revealed verifiable fact, but on who can blast the loudest and longest in social media snippets. Even in 1919, they understood the new world when the phrase emerged: a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. We should all be mindful of the mantra practiced by Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels: If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. It is the journalists and historians who struggle to separate fact from fiction.

WHY ATTACKING ISRAEL IS ATTACKING JEWS

For those who think afflicting Jews and afflicting Israel are separable afflictions, just remember that more than half of all Jews worldwide live in Israel and some 70 percent of Jews have close ties to or relatives in Israel. Jews get it. Israel, the national expression of the Jewish people, is attacked as a political target first. Then Jews are attacked as individuals, identified solely by their faith, as they were earlier this year in South Africa, where BDS agitators demanded all Jews be expelled from their university, and a few months ago in Los Angeles, where a UCLA student body challenged and rejected an applicant for a juridical post solely because she was Jewish, a decision they later reversed. If this sounds like Nazi Germany, the similitude is undeniable.

In fact, campus BDS, the hallmark of SJP chapters from coast to coast, traces its roots directly to Nazi Germany.

Sporadic outbreaks of anti-Jewish economic punishments, arising from simple outgroup animus, can be traced back to medieval times.

Boycott, as an identified and organized financial weapon, only appeared on the world stage in 1880, when Irish farm tenants from County Mayo, Ireland came together to economically isolate their oppressive landlord, Charles Boycott. The anti-Boycott movement became an international cause célèbre, covered extensively by such media giants as The New York Times and The Times of London, both which acknowledged that the successful campaign against landlord Charles Boycott had spawned a new noun and verb.

In the last years of the 19th Century, economic pressure tactics were broadly employed by anti-Semitic groups across Europe, many now actually using the term boycott. Ottoman Empire administrative restrictions against existing Jews in Palestine escalated into tough new laws in 1892, several years before the advent of Theodor Herzl and modern Zionism. After WWI, when international law and the 1922 Mandate designated Palestine for Jewish and Arab self-determination, an expanding Jewish presence in Palestine generated a vibrant Zionist economy. A prospering Jewish community in Palestine roiled Arab leaders, led by the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini. From the moment the Mandate began in 1922, the Mufti’s ad hoc boycott became more entrenched throughout British Palestine.

On April 1, 1933, when the Hitler regime formalized its pre-existing sporadic boycott against Jewish-owned businesses as enforced German national policy, the Mufti and his followers saluted and then adopted the Nazi tactic of anti-Jewish boycott, both in name and spirit. Indeed, Hitler became a hero to the Arab community in Palestine and the wider Arab world. After Mohammad, “Hitler” and “Adolf” became the second most popular Arab baby names during the war. Even now, we see Arab world generals named Hitler, such as former Egyptian military leader Hitler Tantawi. Here is an ordinary economic report in Cairo’s Al-Ahram, routinely referring to Hitler Tantawi.

Ultimately, in the 1940s, the Mufti and his Arab followers joined forces with Hitler, creating three Nazi-flagged divisions of Waffen SS to fight in central Europe. During WWII, the anti-Jewish boycott was coordinated throughout the Islamic world, from India to Iraq, managed by the Mufti’s “Arab Higher Committee.”

After 1948, when Israel became an independent nation, the Arab Higher Committee and the Mufti transferred their anti-Jewish and anti-Israel boycott to the Arab League’s Central Boycott Office, headquartered in Damascus. This so-called “Arab Boycott” continued its global reach, even requiring American companies wishing to do business in the Mideast and North Africa to certify compliance.

The official Arab Boycott, proscribed under U.S. law, continues to this day. Several years ago, the unlawful Arab Boycott spawned a campus iteration to continue the economic battle. It is the same boycott, practiced in the same way, albeit with much better logos and t-shirts.

Before My Last Visit to Guilford

When I visited Guilford in 2014 and spoke to Prof. Jeske’s journalism class about professional duties, I cautioned all, “If your grandmother says she loves you, check it out.” That goes triple for Palestinian activists and agitators. From my point of view, Palestinian activists have distorted so much fact and history, if they said it was Tuesday, I would check the calendar. If they said, it was now high noon, I would glance at my watch.

Admittedly, many bespectacled scholars, historians, analysts, and other speakers, reading from prepared notes at a lectern, are easily intimidated by planned disruptive walk-outs, lines of unruly protestors, provocative posters, shouted insults, online assault, and social media bullying. But if you hail from the typewriter-tied generation of enterprising street-toughened, battlefield-muddied investigative reporters who, for example, has stared down a .357 magnum held to the forehead during a Chicago taxi cab investigation … outrun a pick-up truck of Ku Klux Klan members in Cairo, Illinois … flown undercover into a remote Asian island slave state to challenge a self-proclaimed king and seen the slaves liberated … faced off against pistol-brandishing gang members brutalizing the homeless in Washington D.C. … gone toe-to-toe with lawless gangsters running insurance scams from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean and stood in court to see them sentenced to long jail terms … walked into active riots at midnight here and abroad where the rocks and Molotov cocktails were flying … zigged in South Lebanon when it might be death by sniper if you had zagged … and stood up the world’s most powerful corporations hiding the stain of genocide on their balance sheets, such as IBM, Ford, GM, Carnegie Institution, and Rockefeller Foundation – and all their high-priced lawyers … well then, a group of college protestors armed with Twitter and Facebook accounts don’t exactly intimidate one from delivering the truth.

Telling truth to power is a mandate that tower overs any hashtag. Journalism and history require more than 140 characters in a tweet. They require genuine character by a few valiant men and women, nowadays counted on one hand, willing to invest and often risk their lives to chronicle history and our times.

Now let’s look more closely at my own visit to Guilford last November in 2014. I volunteered to speak, primarily to address Prof. Jeske’s class and one event of the university’s choosing. The occasion was my human rights lecture tour through North Carolina. During this one-week period, I would make 14 volunteer presentations in the area to human rights and social justice groups on and off campus, both in Greensboro and Winston-Salem.

The Guilford Administration asked not for one or two events, but four. All other colleges and groups asked for just a single event, 40 minutes of lecture and the standard 20-minutes of Q-A to follow. I agreed to Guilford’s request, including staying for two days instead of one, delivering one main event and then the three additional requested appearances in a single day. That’s a lot for a volunteer who drove in from Washington D.C. but I was convinced that Guilford students were worth it.

I speak at hundreds of events each year and at campuses around the world; and in the last half-century, there has never been a single disruption. So I was surprised when, before I ever reached campus, a student I never knew before emailed me four screen captures that this student labelled Defamation 1, Defamation 2, Defamation 3, and Defamation 4. These were postings warning that Palestinian activists were planning to protest my presentation. The postings included exchanges by Friends Center director Max Carter and Prof. Diya Abdo, identified by their official Guilford email accounts. Prof. Abdo signed her post with an official academic identification as chair and associate professor of English. Carter’s email to the group explained how to go about the protest: “Try to disarm his likely response to the walkout by educating folks as they go in – or in the statement made announcing the walk-out. Otherwise, he will turn it to his advantage.” Later, in another session at Guilford, Carter confirmed to me in person that he wrote those exact words.

I was advised by the administration to have security accompany me everywhere on campus. I agreed. This was my first such security requirement in a half century, and has never been repeated. How ironic, that it occurred at a Quaker-legacy college.

The Four Events at Guilford

During my first evening event, one student in the room made a small speech about feeling “unsafe” on campus. Here was the well-recognized “unsafe” hallmark. I was the one with security accompanying me every step on campus, even walking from building to building, but she was protesting that my presence somehow made students feel “unsafe.”

The next day, three more events were scheduled– at 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m., a tiring schedule. But in this process, I learned of how uncomfortable some other students were with the atmosphere at Guilford.

One student emailed this question to me for public answering in my final session: “How can you educate people who don’t want to get educated?” Another student indicated there was a climate of fear hanging over Guilford. This student wanted more information but was afraid to have their real name utilized. At no other campus would I expect a student to ask, “How can you educate people who don’t want to get educated?” or another to be afraid to identify himself/herself by name. Only Guilford sustains this climate of fear. I have witnessed this nowhere else.

In the events and student interactions that followed, I discovered a shocking ignorance about the Mideast and Israel — this, for a school that has deluded itself as being astute about Israel and the Palestinian territory.

None of the students at Guilford had ever heard of the Ottoman Land Registration Act, which made most land in Palestine sovereign Turkish land going back to the mid-nineteenth century.

None of the Guilford students had ever heard of the 1920 Convention of San Remo, including Articles 4 and 6, establishing Jewish self-determination, which was endorsed worldwide and adopted by the League of Nations as part of the official Palestine Mandate.

None of the Guilford students were aware that to fast-track an independent Arab state, Jordan had been created out of the Palestine Mandate by Winston Churchill in 1921, just before the League of Nations Mandate was adopted. This was to ensure that almost 80 percent of the Turkish colonial territory established as a Jewish National Home became an Arab national home before day one of the Mandate. The Jews were left with 20 percent.

None of the Guilford students were aware that the validity of the San Remo Convention and the League of Nations Mandate was re-confirmed and written into the U.N. Charter in Article 80.

None of the Guilford students could identify the first thing about international law and the Mideast — this included the international studies students.

None of the Guilford students understood that the much-criticized civilian settlements in Israel, in fact, exist on disputed, former Turkish colonial land, unambiguously set aside for Jewish and Arab national self-determination under international law after World War I, and reaffirmed after World War II with the establishment of the United Nations. Due to endless Arab-Israeli wars since nonbinding U.N. Resolution 181 initiated a binational partition of the land into two states, the lines between the parties have never been mutually agreed upon or delineated. Israel claims the land under international law, while the international community mainly rejects the claim. But, in fact, the disputed former Turkish lands fall into a unique sovereignty vacuum, one deliberately created by decades of war, strife, and the inability to co-exist.

None of the Guilford students understood that during the first half of the twentieth century, the term “Palestinian” referred to Jewish Zionists–not Arabs. Hence, we see the Jewish Agency for Palestine, The Palestine Post and voluminous newspaper articles and international documents referring to Jewish Palestinians. During the Mandate, the term Palestinian was generally used by Arabs and Muslims as an adjective to connote territory – not as a noun identifying ethnicity. Mandate-era Arabs called themselves “Palestinian Arabs,” that is, referring to themselves as Arabs in the area of Palestine … or just “Arabs,” and just as often “Muslims” … and they insisted that their region was geopolitically part of Syria. They resented the very mention of “Palestine” as an independent territory distinct from Syria since that notion acknowledged the Zionist national concept and contradicted pan-Arab Nationalism centered in Syria.

The main Arab organizations were known as the Arab Executive or Arab Higher Committee. There were seven main Palestine Arab conferences during the Mandate era – and all of them were entitled “Palestine Arab Conference.” When rioting Arabs incessantly chanted “Falastin Bladna, al-Yahud Klabna” – that is, “Palestine is Our Land and the Jew is Our Dog,” they carried giant posters of Faisal, who they demanded be made King of Syria, as promised by the Allies in the run-up to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The Mufti of Jerusalem did not form the “Supreme Palestinian Council,” but rather the “Supreme Muslim Council.” Later, it was called the “Arab Higher Committee.”

The three leading political agitation groups of the day were the Arab Club, the Literary Club, and the Muslim-Christian Association. The Mufti led pan-Arabists at the leading international Islamic congresses and conferences, and he typically demanded that Palestine did not exist except as part of Syria. For example, the very first resolution adopted by the First Palestine Congress, convened by the Mufti in 1919 in Jerusalem, averred “we consider Palestine nothing but part of Arab Syria and it has never been separated from it at any stage.”

Typical was the assertion enunciated by Awni Abd al-Hadi, a leading Arab figure of the Mandate period. Hadi testified to the Peel Commission, “There is no such country [as Palestine] … Palestine is a term the Zionists invented … Our country was for centuries part of Syria.” A second typical argument was pronounced by Ahmed Shuqeiri, before the UN Security Council prior to partition, when he declared, “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” Shuqeiri went on to become a leader of the PLO.

Things changed in the 1960s, with the “First Palestinian National Council,” convening in 1964, and the Palestinian National Charter in 1968. Now, we begin see the word Palestinian to denote not a territory but a group within Arab people. The re-invention is much more recent than most students understood.

Knowing the history promotes problem solving and understanding. This is why even a dispassionate rendering of history, and the proposition that all people in the area are entitled to identical human rights, such as I provided, yields facts and context that depart from the rigid campus Palestinian script and, therefore, threatened the one-sided doctrine. Nowhere else in America or overseas have I encountered hostility to settled history. Even at a vehemently anti-Israel Turkish campus, the students listening to the very same presentation were eager to learn how their country was pivotal to the creation of Israel. I keep on my front room table their class gift to me of a majestic oversized book on Gallipoli.

Understanding that debunking the fractured Palestinian narrative with authenticated, documented history, backed up by easily accessible facts was not a welcomed happening at Guilford, I was careful to emphasize the equality of human rights for all peoples in the region. I buttressed the known points of international law with common Internet archival sites and asked students to read from the documents out loud. I reminded all that 1.2 million Arabs already live in Israel as citizens, and more than 30,000 West Bank Arabs work daily under equal conditions and equal pay alongside their Israeli counterparts. I did as I always do, offered facts, knowledge, and context in a non-polarizing fashion to promote better understanding and dialog. Nothing was different.

When students were asked what they gained from the lecture, several stated they did not know that convicted Palestinian terrorists were rewarded with generous monthly salaries. Others asked why they had never been told by their professors about the historical benchmarks of Israel’s creation and international law, or terrorist salaries.

Their question is a reasonable one. Guilford faculty visit Israel on a regular basis and steep themselves in the history. Why do Guilford students know so little? How are students kept Guilford Gullible? The answer seemed ever-present during my next three events the second day.

Guilford’s Atmosphere of Tension and Unequal Respect

Creating an atmosphere that sometimes does not equally respect all individuals seems to be an accepted core principle at Guilford. In fact, the Guilford website states under its Core Values, Mission and Strategic Plan: “Our goal of creating independent thinkers and change agents necessarily pulls against the needs of community, and our great diversity of backgrounds sometimes works against our professed acceptance and equal respect for all individuals.”

I checked this bizarre formulation with a diverse list of credentialed educators and campus commentators, and none recall any campus that openly admitted as a core principle that people will not be treated with equal respect. Several Guilford staffers doubted this phrase actually existed, and were astonished when they discovered it. Later, when a Guilford spokesman was asked to explain the phrase, he quipped, “I didn’t write it and I would rather not explain it.” Asked if simply read, Guilford admitted, as a core value, that not all people on campus would be equally respected, he answered, “I can understand how people might read it that way.”

Embracing an atmosphere of less-than-equal respect conflicts with the message Guilford is passing to potential donors. In a draft document outlining a 2011-2016 Strategic Plan, Guilford administrators refer to equal respect without qualification or limitation. On p.11, in a typical passage, sub-headed “Quaker Heritage,” the plan assures “Guilford is known for its diverse community … Its values-rich education explores the ethical dimension of knowledge and promotes honesty, compassion, integrity, courage, spirituality, and respect for each person.” The essence of equal treatment is repeated over and over again. On p.23, a typical passage commits the campus to “communication with respect for a person’s race, religion, national origin.”

National origin includes Israelis — whether they are visiting professors, soldiers, students, or diplomats. Religious precepts for Jewish people stress a love of Israel and even mandate “Next year in Jerusalem,” uttered by Jews at the end of each Passover and Yom Kippur.

The commitment to less-than-equal respect was finally addressed in an official written statement to me by the Guilford administration in a November 20, 2015 letter. The letter read in part: “The statement attempts to capture the inevitable tension between community and the individual. Community is one of our core values, but so is diversity. We deliberately bring people to Guilford who have different and sometimes diametrically opposed views. We encourage all students to explore themselves as individuals and to speak their own truth and to take stands that are even outside established views. Thus, creating a community is hard work, and work that is never finished. New people are always joining the community and adding anew to the tension.”

Embracing the concept of tension and unequal respect understandably creates a climate that students and visiting speakers could describe as hostile.

Getting it Wrong at The Guilfordian

After I drove away from Guilford, The Guilfordian ran several articles, including one a few days ago which led finally to this writing. The newspaper did a mixed job of trying hard, displaying good faith, and lots of misreporting.

On November 14, Amol Garg and Valeria Sosa, opened their post-event coverage with this phrase. “On Nov. 4, Edwin Black, an award-winning but controversial investigative reporter came to campus to deliver a presentation titled “Financing the Flames,’’  from his book of the same name, which explores the use of American taxpayer money to fund incarcerated Palestinians who have been imprisoned for anti-Israeli activities.” The phrase “anti-Israel activities,” sounds like legitimate protest such as marching and leafletting. That is not why they were jailed or funded with salaries. They were all convicted terrorists, who had murdered innocent children, planted bus bombs, shot or knifed civilians in the middle of the street and so on. Readers on campus got the wrong impression, while the rest of the world read it right. See the British Guardian, the Times of Israel, and the Daily Caller in the U.S.

The Garg and Sosa article went on to explain: “Black had come in 2011 to give a presentation based on his book “The Farhud–Roots of The Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust.” Some members of the Guilford community at that time construed his presentation as Islamaphobic and disrespectful to the Palestinian community on campus.”

Examine the Guilfordian’s coverage in 2011, which emphasized, “Black left a lasting impression on quite a few minds.” The report added, “Black’s tour stop on Guilford’s campus was well received, with intellectual stimulation and discourse throughout the day, even on controversial topics.” Sophomore Lars Henke was typically quoted saying, “I feel that I have been really effected by Black’s presentation.”

Max Carter was quoted in that 2011 article, “It is good for the college to bring speakers to campus who don’t reflect a particular Quaker take on things because we have to understand a variety of perspectives.” In fact, Carter was a key driving force that brought me to Guilford in 2011. For that visit, any topic could have been selected, especially since I was touring the state on eugenics. But one school official suggested in a group email, “I perceive that the topic of eugenics is an important one and is clearly an immediate interest for North Carolinians, but the Holocaust and the Arab connections might be of greater interest to our particular community, given the roles played by some members of the Society of Friends in rescuing victims of Nazi crimes and in promoting peace in the Middle East between Arabs and Israelis.” A C-Span video sample of my presentation of The Farhud presentation was provided. Carter, on August 10, 2011, dispatched a reply to the administration email, “Sounds like an interesting topic and speaker. I’m for it.”

That original 2011 Guilfordian coverage ended with this paragraph: “Edwin Black is a historian and presented the facts from years of research,” said Assistant Academic Dean for Advising and Academic Support Barbara Boyette. “He did not offer an opinion nor supposition nor comment on current day practices. He recounted the past as had been researched from documents, not from narratives passed down and altered over time. I thought he was an excellent speaker and very informative.”

Indeed, the compassionate success of that 2011 event was the reason Guilford invited me to return in 2014. This is one example of how the alternative universe functions at Guilford. What is requested and praised one year is re-invented as an Islamaphobic event the next time around. That’s how history is re-spun at Guilford. More to the point, this is how the word “narrative” would come into play.

The Garg and Sosa article stated, “On Wednesday afternoon, after speaking to a journalism class, Black held a Q&A session to allow the community to respond to his previous night’s presentation. However, Black did not accept any “live” questions; rather, he picked questions that had been emailed to him, causing frustration among those present.” In fact, I answered live questions the night before, keeping the time frame to the 30 minutes suggested by program slot. A second round of open questions were taken at the open breakfast. I invited a third round of live questions at Mr. Jeske’s journalism briefing. In the final event, to make sure those afraid to speak for fear of retaliation and/or those who could not attend were also allowed a question, I took both live and emailed questions. As the article correctly states, “Among the questions that Black read were three from Max Carter, director of the Friends Center and adjunct professor of religious studies.” That’s more question time at one school than the next 10 events put together.

One item The Guilfordian reported correctly stated the references to my concern that I had been libeled. Every journalist takes libel seriously. It is a topic we live with every hour, and which I addressed in Prof. Jeske’s class. I personally take libel very seriously. I maintain a page of highly visible retractions seen here. The outcome of the libel and defamation issue will probably be reported in a future article. The gravity of the libel at Guilford explains why the school telephoned and asked me to find it “in my heart” to forgive the school. To that, I know how sincere and decent the school administrators are. That recognition is active.

In a second Guilfordian publishing, a November 14, 2014 letter, Diya Abdo, Chair, Associate Professor of English wrote, “Black’s talk, from beginning to end, was a performance. This makes sense as it was actually part of a promotional tour for his new book and hence a free lecture offered to the College.”

Wrong again, Prof. Abdo. My visit was not a promotional tour for Financing the Flames, easily checked from the public record and announced in detail before I spoke at Guilford. The lecture was part a diverse human rights tour, and each institution chose its own topics for its own reasons from my lifelong body of work. On November 3, 2014, the night before, at another campus a few minutes away, the topic requested was Shia Muslim and Yazidi victimization by ISIS in Syria. On November 4, 2014, at my first event the morning before Guilford, the requested topic for a historically Black college project was on oil addiction and energy independence. My second event of that morning, for an African-American social justice agency, was on minority voting rights and the rough election rhetoric in North Election among other topics. My lunch event that day, for the health school of another Historically Black College, was on health consequences and dynamics across the Middle East.

Guilford was the only school that requested Financing the Flames, and that was only for one event. The other three were open Q-A for international affairs students, a journalism ethics class, and then finally an open forum where I invited questions from across campus via email and took questions in the room.

So, it was hardly a promotional tour for one book, especially since almost no books were sold at Guilford.

Space precludes a point-by-point explication of where Prof. Abdo went wrong. But, it started with portraying my visit inaccurately. Additionally, she used permutations of the word “dehumanize” nine times in her letter, perhaps a new record. Apparently, everyone was dehumanized by what I said, including those who never heard me speak. She wrote, “The students who walked out were dehumanized.” It seems, it was not dehumanizing for the few protestors in the room to pin the names of dead Gazan children on their backs; that is, the children knowingly and tragically sacrificed by their own leaders in an unnecessary war, to create a human rights spectacle.

In yet a third article, a November 21, 2014 staff Guilfordian editorial, the paper quotes a SJP statement, that my book, The Farhud, previously praised by newspaper, students and staff, “is rooted in a “revisionist history about ‘Arab’ participation in the Holocaust — which is not only untrue …”

Well, it’s true. Perhaps in Guilford’s detached academic bubble it may not be. But this is open and settled history. Throughout the war years, the Arabs, from Palestine and elsewhere, were shoulder to shoulder battlefield partners with Hitler’s Nazis. The Arabs had oil. Germany wanted it. The Mufti of Jerusalem visited Nazi concentration camps; and in his diary, he called Adolf Eichmann “a very rare diamond” and “The best redeemer for the Arabs.” Read the Eichmann Trial testimony here.

My book The Farhud was among the early excavations. After my book came out, numerous other scholarly books continued the research with identical results. See Islam and Nazi Germany’s War, which The Wall Street Journal reviewed as: “Impeccably researched and clearly written, [his] book will transform our understanding of the Nazi policies that were… some ‘of the most vigorous attempts to politicize and instrumentalize Islam in modern history.’ A second book, Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by meticulous Arab and Turkish culture researcher Wolfgang Schwanitz, was published by Yale University Press, and hailed by World War II Magazine in these words: “The odd-couple marriage between Nazis and Arab nationalists has come under increasingly revealing scrutiny over the last decade. Here, fresh research from previously unexamined archives explicitly ties that frightening nexus to today’s Middle East.”

Indeed there is a whole category of these books at Amazon. Just type “Nazi Islam” in the Amazon search engine, or go here.

Even the US-government operated United States Holocaust Memorial Museum published a very carefully research book entitled “Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine.”

To see for yourself, here is a well-broadcast video of the Palestinian Arab leader the Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Hitler in 1941. It was hardly a secret and was in all the newsreels of the day. Tens of thousands of Arabs served in Waffen SS Divisions across in Europe helping Hitler every hour of the war since about 1941. To view some of the many photographs of fez-bedecked Arab Nazis, just go to Google Images and type the name of one of the Nazi Arab divisions, Handschar, for example, or go here (focus on the historical archive shots not the modern conflation).

The point here is to face the history carefully and honestly in order to better approach and achieve our future. Yet, the Guilfordian misreported the topic as “untrue” and then suggests in the next sentence that Orwellian unlearning occur: “Black’s views on Arab and Muslim people are ones we are taught to examine, discuss, and, where appropriate, unlearn in our classes.”

Anyone can now see why an education at Guilford is profoundly substandard in the realm of Middle East history. This is the very reason I was invited in 2011– to carefully present that history. And when I did, it was lauded. But last year, the reality was inverted.

Only at the upside down, fantasy-land world of Guilford College can a person write an award-winning bestseller, chronicling the tragedy and exploitation of Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, “Banking on Baghdad,” receive a World Affairs Council Book of the Year Award, among others, tour 40 cities to champion Muslim rights, and receive accolades like this one from The Washington Post, “Edwin Black’s Banking on Baghdad underlines Iraq’s long history of exploitation by Western powers and powerful corporations struggling for advantage and domination. His impressive analysis, which included looking at more than 50,000 original documents and hundreds of scholarly books and articles, provides a comprehensive history of Iraq that explains why the West’s record in the region so complicates nation-building there today” … and spend the night before Guilford down the street at another campus championing the cause of Shia Muslims in Syria … be received that morning and afternoon in a nearby city as a fighter for social justice by an three successive African-American venues … and magically become a “notorious racist” and “Islamaphobe” a few hours later

The false portrayals were all the more surreal in view of the introductory remarks moment before the evening began, spoken by a senior Guilford administrator. She said, “For his human rights and social justice work, Edwin Black has received many accolades, including the “Drum Major for Justice Award” from North Carolina Central University, for his investigations of racism in North Carolina sterilization programs … the “Justice for All Award” in a congressional ceremony from the American Association of Persons with Disabilities for his investigation of attempts to exterminate the disabled …”The International Human Rights Award” from the World Affairs Council for his bestseller Banking on Baghdad and his investigation of genocide against Muslims and exploitation in Iraq …He is a frequent lecturer at the SMU Embrey Human Rights Program in Dallas … His latest book, on which he is appearing today, he received a back-cover endorsement from the former president of Amnesty International USA … Earlier this morning, Black had an open discussion on social justice and racial equality with the Winston-Salem Urban League … He has appeared on human rights violations in the North Carolina Legislature, the European Parliament, the U.S. House of Representatives and the Knesset…He was a major crusader in North Carolina’s campaign to provide sterilization victim compensation… (checks for that compensation just began arriving a few days ago).”

When Palestinian activists speak at Guilford, grab a pen and paper and write it down. Then check it out. But above all, do a reality check.

After Guilford

Now what happened after I drove away from the Quaker-tradition Guilford campus? A few days later, we saw anonymous or pseudonymous negative factual changes in certain online knowledge platforms, including an attempt to undermine my mother’s experience in the Holocaust, and crude defamatory statements. I do not function well in social media and related sites. But the community of vigilant individuals that patrols those sites immediately recognized actions, called out the vandalism, and removed it.

In my continuing investigation of Guilford and this matter, I checked the origin of those anonymous or pseudonymous online attacks. Did they come from Europe or the Middle East? Were the hateful comments posted in Idaho? I and others traced the digital fingerprint to a Time Warner IP 174.98.29.5 located near Friendly Lake not far from the Guilford campus. We’re still working on back tracking the account to see exactly who was responsible. If that IP is blocked for abuse for violating Terms of Use, it will unfortunately snare everyone connected to that server.

Lack of Transparency

Getting information at Guilford College is an uphill battle. Indeed, Guilford is the single least transparent 501(c)(3) I have ever encountered — having investigated scores of them over the years. The school declined to provide basic financial statements, or even to confirm whether Students for Justice in Palestine is a college-funded official organization or who the faculty advisor was. A college spokesman explained in writing, “Guilford is not obligated to make this information public.”

Despite this, the College’s tax records were obtained. These include a copy of the original grant letter for tax exempt status hand-signed by IRS District Director J.H. Wilson May 27, 1976. And I obtained the college’s 990 tax documents for several recent years. The 2010 filing emphasizes the school’s mission of “equality, integrity, peace, and simplicity.” On p.23 the college assures that it has “a policy of civil rights” which it follows “strictly.” In its Schedule E, the tax document refers to funding from the U.S. Department of Education which under Title VI protects all persons regardless of “national origin.”

Title VI involves very complex and multifaceted remedies. But one important explanation issued by the Department of Justice includes this: Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. As President John F. Kennedy said in 1963: Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races [colors, and national origins] contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.

If things do not change at Guilford, it will become more and more difficult for the school to get federal or state funding as challenges under Title VI are becoming more and more common around the country. Guilford could see exposure for a hostile environment. Moreover, it may be harder to renew accreditation at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, which in 2013 was granted with flying colors. But the world and Guilford has changed a great deal in two years. Today, accreditation associations are wary of hostile environments, especially when they see proud assertions of “unlearning,” and “tension” and less than equal respect for individuals. During the next accreditation, if not sooner, these matters may come up since they are so public a matter of the Guilford way.

Ironically, I know the schools administrators well. They are good people, caring educators, and dedicated mentors. That said, if students cannot get a good education, if they cannot shake the sense of tension and unequal respect embraced by school policy, if they cannot achieve the education quality they bargained for, they should simply transfer out.

Until then, any student may provide any information to me about any aspect of the Guilford experience, including any documentation. Send to [email protected]. Your identity and circumstances will be protected as a journalistic confidence as the investigation continues.

No one wants to be known for being “gullible at Guilford.” In the race for ideas, students should never be pavement for calculating ideologues. Always drive your own intellect.

Edwin Black is the New York Times award-winning human rights investigative author of 120 award-winning editions in 14 languages in 65 countries, including IBM and the Holocaust, War Against the Weak, and Financing the Flames. He can be found at www.edwinblack.com