Of course it is.

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_co...x_article=2161

According to The Tab, a Boston-area newspaper, Newton resident Tony Pagliuso was shocked when he examined a reading selection on the treatment of women in the Middle East his daughter brought home from her history class at Newton South High School. The article, from a controversial textbook called The Arab World Studies Notebook, falsely accused Israeli soldiers of murdering Arab women. Pagliuso was incensed to discover such defamatory material disseminated in his daughter's school and raised the issue with school officials.

The incident prompts two critical questions that school systems need to address as they introduce the study of the modern Middle East to students: How do they identify reputable sources on such a contentious topic and what procedures do school systems need to put in place to evaluate curricular material supplied to them. Regrettably, some of the most prominent academic institutions educators turn to for training and curricula offer dubious scholarship tainted by partisan ideological agendas.

Boston-area educators seeking guidance have logically turned to Harvard, one of the world's great universities. Teachers from Newton, Brookline, Canton, Harvard, Sudbury and Hingham public schools and Brimmer May and Beaver Country Day private schools have attended workshops by the Outreach Center of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. In fact, the Outreach Center's director presented a seminar on Israel/Palestine to Newton South High School in April, 2011. The Center defines its mission as promoting "a critical understanding of the diversity of the Middle East region for educators and the general public."

What unsuspecting teachers, parents and students do not realize is that, in reality, the Center espouses the Palestinian cause, providing a narrow partisan perspective, instead of objective, balanced information.

A History of Bias
The Outreach Center serves as the link between Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and surrounding middle and secondary schools. A decade ago, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies received state funding to set up a teacher training seminar on Islamic history. Then too, it displayed a pronounced pro-Islamic, pro-Arab tilt; Massachusetts education officials were shocked by the program the Center presented and denounced it as an attempt to foist a "manipulative" and "distorted" political agenda on unsuspecting teachers.

The Center pushed the controversial text book, The Arab World Studies Notebook, which state officials described as "propaganda" and "practically proselytizing." The Notebook included such bizarre assertions as the claim Muslims discovered America before Columbus and Iroquois Indian chiefs had Muslim names. Later editions of The Notebook removed some of the absurd claims, but its fundamental flaws remain.

However, the criticism from wary Massachusetts education officials did not deter the Center for Middle Eastern Studies from pursuing its partisan agenda. The Outreach Center plays a crucial role. Although its programs deal with many aspects of the Middle East and has recently focused on the unrest in Egypt, its handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stands out as an example of political bias tainting educational training.

Anti-Israel Activities of Its Director
 Each year the Center runs several multi-day workshops drawing in teachers and students from regional school systems. Its director, Paul Beran, also conducts seminars at both secondary and middle schools. The workshops and seminars provide attendees with recommended reading lists, films and curricular materials. Its association with Harvard University gives the Center the imprimatur of reputable scholarship. In reality, the Center staff and its associates are not distinguished as scholars but some have burnished their credentials as anti-Israel scribes and activists.
For instance, Director Beran promotes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

At a Teach-In and Organizing Conference on Dec. 11, 2005 at Harvard, Beran discussed the success of BDS within the Presbyterian Church - PC (USA) - and offered his vision of the BDS movement. Beran advocated "constructing long-term networks of broad based support for action." He boasted of successfully forming a coalition with the radical anti-Israel group, Jewish Voice for Peace. In this way, Beran stated, "it helped the PC (USA) to deal more forcefully with the criticism it has and continues to receive from Zionist groups and their ilk."

After the BDS movement failed to gain passage of a divestment resolution in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Beran published a letter in Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper and on a blog called Presbyterians for Justice on Feb. 6, 2006 accusing Israel's supporters of using threats and influence peddling. Charging that "the town mayor, the pension-fund manager and even elected state representatives were all recruited by pro-Israel groups to urge the council to vote ‘no,'" Beran opined, "until now, those who acted as if Israel is always right enjoyed a near monopoly over U.S. attitudes." He concluded by asserting, "The first step for divestment campaigns is to have a broad base of cross-community support on which to fall back when the Zionist backlash against the campaigns commences."

In a letter, still available on the internet, to then acting Harvard President Derek Bok protesting the enrollment of former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz into a Harvard Business School course in 2007, Beran leveled defamatory accusations. He wrote, "Mr. Halutz is a noted war criminal, responsible for the deaths of over 1000 Lebanese civilians during the Lebanon-Israel War of the Summer of 2006." In fact, Halutz has not been tried or found guilty of any war crimes. This is the rhetoric of an extreme detractor, not the measured words of an objective educator.

Also indicative of Beran's extreme views was a speech to parishioners at the Clarendon Presbyterian Church in Somerville. He compared "the military occupation of Israel over the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem ... to the Roman occupation of Jews nearly 2000 years ago," and asked "How would Joseph and Mary get to Bethlehem with the now 25 foot high Separation Wall in their way?"

Beran has also appeared with his wife Hilary Rantisi, who serves as director of the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Rantisi has been active with Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, a radical Palestinian Christian group that uses religious imagery to demonize Jews and sponsors gatherings of anti-Israel figures, some of whom compare Israelis to Nazis. At an event sponsored by Friends of Sabeel at the First Church in Salem on May 7, 2005, Beran described the suffering of Palestinian Arab refugees. When queried about Jewish refugees from Arab lands, he incorrectly explained, "Yes, there were Jewish refugees, but they weren't on the same scale." Yet the number of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim states exceeded the number of Palestinian refugees.