Pres. Bush fails to renominate Pipes to Institute of Peace
By E.J. Kessler Haaretz 19 January 2005
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/528405.html

In an apparent victory for radical Muslims and the left wing of the American
foreign policy establishment, President Bush has failed to take any action
to renominate Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes to the board of the United
States Institute of Peace.

Bush appointed Pipes, a conservative Middle East analyst and syndicated
columnist who has drawn the ire of some Muslims, to the publicly funded
institution on August 23, 2003, after a Senate hearing on the matter ended
without the presence of a quorum necessary for a confirmation vote. The
controversial recess appointment ended in early December with the closing of
the previous Congress. The institute has removed Pipes's name from the list
of board of directors posted on its Web site.

Pipes told the Forward that he has not asked to be renominated by the
president and that he had not queried the White House about its intentions.

"My time there is finished," he said of the institute.

The White House had nothing to add on the matter.

"When there's an announcement, we'll go ahead and make one," spokeswoman
Maria Tamburri said.

Pipes said that he "tried to be helpful to the USIP," but he acknowledged
that "at certain times I was frustrated."

The nomination of Pipes, who has made a career out of identifying and
denouncing what he sees as radical Muslim penetration of American
institutions, was opposed by senators Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and
Christopher Dodd, all Democrats; Arab and Muslim groups, including the
Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee; and Middle East analysts Judith Kipper of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies and William Quandt of the
University of Virginia.

Many conservative-leaning newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the
New York Post and The New York Sun, supported it. Several Jewish communal
agencies, including the American Jewish Committee and the Zionist
Organization of America, supported Pipes.

David Harris, executive director of AJCommittee, said he still holds out
hope that Bush will renominate Pipes. "We're looking into it," Harris said.
"We're eager to see him remain."

Pipes did not have a peaceful tenure at the institute, which was created by
Congress "to support the development, transmission, and use of knowledge to
promote peace and curb violent international conflict," according to USIP's
mission statement.

Last March Pipes clashed with the organization, lambasting it in his column
for hosting a conference with a group, the Center for the Study of Islam and
Democracy, that Pipes charged employs personnel who are Muslim "radicals."

The institute's director of congressional and public affairs, Kay King,
responded to the criticism in a letter that Pipes posted to his Web site,
danielpipes.org.

"The Institute was aware of and took seriously the accusations made against
CSID and some of the speakers at the event," King wrote. "These allegations
were investigated carefully with credible private individuals and U.S.
government agencies and found to be without merit. The public criticism of
CSID and the speakers was found to be based on quotes taken out of context,
guilt by association, errors of fact, and innuendo."

King told the Forward that the institute "has no role to play in the
nominating or confirmation process" and "no insight into what the White
House is planning."

Pipes, a Harvard-educated historian who has published four books on militant
Islam, is director of the Middle East Forum, a nonprofit institute he
founded in 1994. The Middle East Forum sponsors Campus Watch, a project
critiquing alleged pro-Arab bias in academic Middle East studies.