I recently defended Juan Cole (whom I have never met, btw) against an attack by John Fund of the WSJ regarding the possibility that Yale might hire Cole.
Today, however, I am going to jump in, comment and criticize Cole on the public fight that has emerged between Cole and Christopher Hitchens over a piece Hitch wrote in Slate.
Forget the content of the piece, but the part that requires comment is Cole’s vitriolic response, the type of which one should not expect from a scholar, especially since it would have been quite easy to respond to Hitchens in a far less shrill way.
Cole is not, however, comporting himself well in this debate, such as it is. To go on the attack in full blown ad hominem mode makes no sense and does not cast Cole in a positive, or for that matter particularly academic, light. For example:
Well, I don’t think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.
My guess is that the “ruin” in question has more to do with Hitchens’ ideological evolution than anything else, which is unfortunate, as it means that Cole is equating “ruin” with Hitchens’ not being in accord with Cole’s views.
On this topic, I think Michael Young at Hit and run gets it right when he called Cole’s response “the stuff of self-immolation.” Indeed, Young’s whole post is on point, as is one by Andrew Sullivan on the same topic.
I understand Cole’s ire over the private e-mail list, but the response is in no way proportionate, and doesn’t really get to the substance of the matter.
