When the author and his colleague Marsha Pripstein Posusney of Bryant College organized a workshop, entitled "The Study of the Middle East and Islam: Challenges after 9-11," at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, he naively assumed it would come off without friction. After all, he thought, they were not even talking about the Middle East--instead, they were addressing the academic context of Middle East studies in this country. As they were to learn, however, not everyone at Brown University shared their opinion. In this article, the author describes the workshop and the controversy that Brown Students for Israel and Rabbi Serena Eisenberg attempted to create around it.