Cole Case Files

David White, writing  at the National Review Online has a bit of a scoop posted at the moment. While everyone, I suspect, has heard about Juan Cole's rejection by Yale and the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed it, it seems there was another position that Cole interviewed for at Duke University.

He was not selected. With no fanfare, no vast conspiracy against him as his fans charge, no publicity at all. He was not selected on his very own lack of merit.

In November 2005, Duke announced the creation of an Islamic Studies Center complete with a chaired professorship in Islamic studies, with religious-studies professor Bruce Lawrence as the Center’s inaugural director. Shortly afterward, Duke began its search for a professor of modern Islamic studies, and Cole was selected as one of the four finalists. The search stretched across disciplines, and the four finalists consisted of two historians and two political scientists. Members of both departments at the university were encouraged to attend the job presentations of the finalists.

As the first finalist to visit, according to school officials, Cole’s presentation was well attended. Most professors had high hopes for the lecture, which focused on Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Shiite democratic tradition. After all, as Malachi Hacohen, an associate professor of history, religion, and political science at Duke who attended Cole’s lecture, explained, “Cole’s earlier work was solid.”

But according to several professors familiar with the proceedings, Cole’s presentation was unimpressive. According to Hacohen, “It was one of the worst job talks I have heard in my life,” “[it was] logically faulty,” and “the talk seemed as if it were directed more to CNN viewers than to an academic audience.” Michael Munger, chair of Duke’s department of political science, explained that Cole’s lecture “was just not at a level we were expecting…it was more like an undergraduate lecture.”

It seems the folks at Duke reached the conclusion that Cole was more interested in being a "public intellectual" than in serious academic work. Read the whole thing. It is not at all flattering to one of the heroes of the left.