I first heard about this story last night. I'm not sure if I'm refusing to believe that it happened, or wrestling with a gnawing feeling that I shouldn't be surprised at all.
I have a hard time believing it because, as this Atlantic online piece suggestions, Professor Juan Cole was never a serious threat to the Bush Administration. Now, let me admit that his book Engaging the Middle East is a favorite of mine, and I don't read his blog, Informed Comment, nearly enough. But public intellectuals and professors haven't had a serious impact on political life in the United States in far too long. Which is precisely the problem with our culture today.
People like Juan Cole, or before him Howard Zinn (as just one example), are largely marginalized. I do remember on the eve of the Iraq War watching Professor Zinn deplore the idea of invading Iraq, the very night Baghdad was first being attacked. I had the sense that, while this debate was on PBS, and he was being allowed to say what he wanted, that in the end it really didn't matter. The war was already starting.
When was the last time you saw someone like Noam Chomsky on television? A conservative voice like Andrew Bacevich gets on every once in a while, but not nearly enough. Our culture is too tied to "liberal" and "conservative" ideas that make sense in Washington, that require only minuscule understanding so that they make easy, ready to dispense talking points. The Bush Administration, worried about a professor? Why, when being a public intellectual today is so easily dismissed?
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