Las Vegan on list of ‘unpatriotic’ Americans

Stacy J. Willis

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2001 | 9:41 a.m.

Wasima Alikhan had just gotten home from her shift at a Las Vegas Wal-Mart when she found out.

A national political group apparently is worried about her influence on the American ethos.

"What?" she asked. "I'm just now taking off my shoes. I know nothing about this. Who?"

An organization founded by the U.S. vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., is bothered by something Alikhan said after Sept. 11: "Ignorance breeds hate."

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is so bothered, in fact, that it included Alikhan's statement as No. 49 on a list of 117 "morally ambivalent" quotes in a report that questions the patriotism of America's university professors.

Never mind that Alikhan is not affiliated with any university. She is a sales associate in the jewelry department at America's largest retail store.

On the list of people with suspicious opinions, she is in the company of a Pomona College religious studies professor who said, "We have to learn to use courage for peace instead of war" and a coalition of University of California-Berkeley professors who called the war "unacceptable."

The report, "Defending Civilizations: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It," was compiled in October. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a conservative, Washington-based nonprofit organization whose purpose is to encourage curricula based on "the great works of Western civilization."

The listed statements are cited as evidence that professors are jeopardizing the future of American civilization by responding to the Sept. 11 attacks with something less than patriotic fervor. Although names were not published, footnotes indicated the source of the quotes.

The report charges that "Some (faculty) refused to make judgments. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself."

The council would have preferred that the campus representatives respond to the attacks with "anger, patriotism, and support of military intervention. "

Jerry Martin, president of the Council, said that the list wasn't meant to invoke a tenor of McCarthyism, but to "encourage thought."

"I don't think any one quote alone says that much. The point was to give an array (of quotes) that shows that campus responses showed moral ambivalence," Martin said.

Worse than moral ambivalence, the report says, is that many universities rushed to add courses on Islamic and Asian cultures after Sept. 11.

"To say that it is more important now (to study Islam) implies that the events of Sept. 11 were our fault, that it was our failure ... that led to so many deaths and so much destruction," Cheney, who now serves as chairman emeriti of the council, is quoted as saying in the report.

UNLV Professor Ted Jelen, chairman of the political science department, said he is eager to add more courses on Mideast politics.

"That was my first response, to offer more. Is that unpatriotic? If by patriotism you mean uncritical support of the government, then yes, many faculty would qualify as unpatriotic," Jelen said. "I think our role is to present a setting in which thoughtful dissent can occur."

"But this list, this report, doesn't surprise me. This group's agenda is typically the restoration of the canon, the dead white males," Jelen said. "They'd like to convince us that this is a major problem."

Martin, Cheney and at least two other leaders of the council are former representatives -- refugees of sorts -- from the somewhat more liberal National Endowment for the Humanities.

Lieberman, former vice presidential candidate, co-founded the council and serves on its governing board. His spokesman said the senator "unfortunately is not familiar with it (the report.)"

Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's director of communications, said the senator "serves more in an honorary capacity ... He's done maybe two or three things with them."

"They (the council) have done some work that has ruffled some feathers, but they are usually pretty fair and accurate," Gerstein said.

Alikhan, a Muslim and the only Las Vegan to make the list, uttered her suspect statement while in a discussion at Jami Mosque's open house in September.

"Yes, I said that," she said. "Ignorance does breed hate. I do believe that.

"But actually, I don't know much about politics. I just wanted to say that we should try to know each other ...

"A couple of people said they appreciated my comments."

The council pulled Alikhan's quote from an Oct. 4 column in Canada's National Post that names Alikhan and erroneously identifies her as "of the Las Vegas Islamic Academy."

The Post column mentioned her quote in a paragraph about the sudden prevalence of the word "breed" in armchair philosopher's phrases, as in, "instability breeds resentment" and "resentment breeds ignorance."

Her statement originally was quoted by the Associated Press.

Martin said he did not know Alikhan was not affiliated with a university.

"I guess we found it (Alikhan's quote) in some context that indicated it was in a higher education setting," he said.

After her quote was printed in the report, the New York Times ran Alikhan's name and quote in the lead paragraph of a Saturday, Nov. 24, story.

All of this is disturbing to Alikhan, who describes herself as a "private person," but agreed to be quoted in this article.

"I am not involved in anything. I just go to work and come home. I am a private person," she said. "Just one in the crowd."

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