Terrorizing Professors

An astonishing 300-1000 university professors - most in the humanities -
have been killed in targetted assassinations since the Iraq invasion.

Here are a range of voices on the matter ranging from newest to oldest.
The last one, written by Robert Fiske, is a nice first hand account.

Guardian
CS Monitor
Al Jazeera
New Statesman
USA Today
Robert Fiske

In Iraq it is a mystery who is perpetrating what seems to be a campaign
of terror directed at shutting down free expression in colleges.  Up to
1000 have been killed.  All are scared.  And 3000 of them have fled the
country resulting in a "brain drain."  The Al-Jazeera article notes that
a occupation-supporting newspaper printed that a famous professor had
been killed when it turned out he was alive.  This led some to speculate
whether the killings and resultant stories are instruments of intimidation.
Other accounts suggest that this may be part of a "de-Baathification"
strategy that has been in effect since the invasion.  Still others chalk
it up to angry former students exacting revenge or religious
fundamentalists clearing out the free thinkers.

This is particularly distressing when we stop to consider that Iraq,
before 1991 especially, had one of the most learned societies in the
Middle East.  As bad as things were under Saddam, and as devastating
as the Iran-Iraq war was, Iraq had an extremely advanced civilian
infrastructure: schools and health care, in particular, were up to first
world standards.  Iraq had a reputation for some of the brightest minds
in the ME.  I remember reading stories about the 1990s, when Iraq was
under some of the harshest sanctions of the modern era.  Books were in
short supply due to the sanctions, so the Iraqis would have these famous
book bazaars, what amounted to the learned sector trading their private
book collections with one another.  Books for blocks and blocks.

This issue of targetting professors resonates with the apparent targetting
of journalists not affiliated with the U.S. military - mostly during the
initial invasion. Some have argued that the targetting may be a media
control strategy.  Reporters Without Borders monitors the issue.  So far,
79 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a number that far exceeds the
number killed in 10 or so years of the Vietnam conflict.

Al Jazeera had been bombed twice by U.S. forces, once in Afghanistan
and once at a headquarters in Basra during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In another notable case, the Palestine Hotel, the main base for about
150 unilateral (non-embedded) journalists, was fired upon by a U.S.
tank, killing two journalists and wounding many others.

In early 2005, CNN chief Eason Jordan commented at
the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that coalition forces were
intentionally targetting journalists.  To avoid tarnishing CNN's
image, Jordan resigned.  It's strange whose image gets "tarnished"
when tanks kill civilian reporters.