To the Editor:
Steve Hochstadt, professor of history at Illinois College, wrote in an article on December 10 at HNN, "The Return of Antisemitism":
Ann Coulter and Daniel Pipes, one antisemitic and the other accusing everyone who does not support the most aggressive Israeli policies of being antisemitic, mention each other approvingly in their writings.
I wrote you that same day with two questions about this sentence.
1. I do not remember calling anyone antisemitic for not supporting what Mr. Hochstadt calls "the most aggressive Israeli policies." Could he document this statement?
2. Nor do I remember mentioning Ann Coulter approvingly. A search of my website finds I have mentioned her in passing twice, without comment, once in a quote and once in a list. Could Mr. Hochstadt also document this statement?
To which Mr. Hochstadt replied on December 11:
I will point out that the following quotation appears on his website in an article about Lee Harvey Oswald: "And whence comes the liberal rage that conservatives like Ann Coulter, Jeff Jacoby, Michelle Malkin, and the Media Research Center have extensively documented?" I don't think that Ann Coulter has done anything like document liberal rage, whatever that might be, but Pipes does, and that counts as mentioning her and her work approvingly. When you call up that article, or many other articles on Pipes' website, a large ad for Ann Coulter's articles appears on the left: "sign up to get Ann Coulter's articles delivered free."
Two points in reply: (1) Mr. Hochstadt may not think Coulter "has done anything like document liberal rage," but if he goes to the source of this quote on my website at "Lee Harvey Oswald's Malign Legacy," he will find a link from Ann Coulter's name that goes to chapter one, "Liberals Unhinged," of her book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right.
What Mr. Hochstadt "thinks" is less important, it seems to me, than that what Ms Coulter has actually published. And I also wonder how including her name in a list constitutes mentioning her favorably.
(2) If an ad for Ms Coulter's articles has appeared on my website, it results from one of those automatic processes that keys words on my website. I do not control such ads – and indeed, some are not to my liking.
Then, when I asked for Mr. Hochstadt's reply to the "antisemitic" challenge, you informed that he does not "have a specific answer about that other question."
Research is supposed to be a hallmark of the scholar. I fail to understand how a professional historian can make such rudimentary mistakes as these – winging it with wild statements without so much as checking the facts.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
