It's bad enough that we cannot trust all our professors to be objective. Now we cannot even trust our librarians.
Case in point: Last month two members of the Duke Conservative Union noticed that the University Libraries Website-- www.lib.duke.edu--had a new link labeled "Palestine Internet Resources." They clicked on it and were immediately greeted with a curious image: a map of Israel labeled "Palestine." A quick perusal of the website revealed the rest of its content to be equally biased and even anti-Semitic.
Since I don't have enough space to explain all of the problems with the site, I'll list the top three:
1. A section labeled "News" included links to 14 sources. 13 of them were left-leaning (all but the Jerusalem Post), including six Arabic and two French.
2. Hamas, which the State Department (and now the European Union) calls a "terrorist organization," was listed under the title "Government Agencies & Political Groups."
3. The "History, Arts & Culture" portion of the website included a link called "Baha Boukhari Cartoon." One of this Arab site's main graphics was a Star of David fashioned out of barbed wire.
This "Palestine Internet Resources" page listed the name of its webmaster, also the Library's "Resource Specialist for the Middle East." The students wrote to him and offered the names of various sources that could, if added, diminish the site's blatant bias (Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Commentarymagazine.com). They also explained in detail their 16 biggest complaints with the site's content, including the three listed above and the "Palestine" map.
The webmaster said that he would add the suggested links and temporarily took down the site. He immediately replaced it, however, with another titled "Iraq Internet Resources." It was no less slanted:
1. The "News" section contained 14 sources. All 14 were left-leaning.
2. A "Peace Organizations/NGOs" category had links to six radically liberal sites. There was not, however, a category for pro-interventionist, or even anti-Saddam Hussein, ones.
3. There was a link to "SAFE: Saving Antiquities for Everyone." The site claimed that the Baghdad Museum was looted in April and that "18,000 irreplaceable artifacts of early civilization were damaged" and that "more than 15,000 are still missing." The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post all reported in June, though, that this tale was false and only 33 treasures had been lost.
The students submitted these and three other complaints about the Iraqi site to several administrators. Library officials soon thereafter took it down. A month passed with neither site in operation. Finally, on Sept. 8, the students were notified that "two new and improved websites will go live along with a comment board for each site for members of the Duke Community to provide feedback on the content of the sites."
I urge everyone to visit these "new and improved" websites and judge whether the Library has in fact provided students with the objective tools necessary for sound educational research.
I'll admit that they are better than the old ones. The title "Palestine Internet Resources" has been changed to "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Internet Resources," the map of Israel has been renamed "Israel Palestine," and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal have been added to the "News" section.
But there are still four major problems with the sites, all of which have been voiced in detail to Library officials and several other administrators:
1. The Iraqi site still contains no conservative "News" sources, even though students have continually suggested that the Library staff add the Washington Times, Daily Telegraph or even memri.org, a renowned website that translates anti-Semitic passages found in Arab newspapers.
2. On the Israeli-Palestinian site, the murderous Hamas group is listed under "Palestinian political groups & parties."
3. The Iraqi site still offers a link to SAFE, which continues to inaccurately claim that 18,000 artifacts were damaged at the Baghdad Museum.
4. The Israeli-Palestinian page still features a link to a cartoon Arab website with pictures of the Star of David fashioned out of barbed wire. "Let me spell this out for you," a student wrote to an administrator last week, "barbed wire can reasonably be viewed as a symbol of Nazi concentration camps. Given that numerous Arab dailies have lauded Hitler, this is no minor quibbling, and cannot be equated with the addition (reluctantly) of foxnews.com to the library's website."
At this point Library administrators have no more excuses. They have been told repeatedly that students find the "resource pages on Middle East issues" both biased and anti-Semitic. Yet they has left them both online, barbed wire and all.
Maybe the students who originally complained should count as their biggest victory the addition of the comment boards.
At least there is now an easy way to tell officials that the library is not the place for political cheerleading.
Nathan Carleton is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Tuesday.
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