As Max Blumenthal notes, the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy is "the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era." He explains that the efforts began in the early 2000s, when a coalition of Jewish groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to AIPAC came together to address what they saw as a sudden increase in pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses. The key targets on campuses were Middle East scholars whose work challenged the right-wing narrative of Middle East politics generally and of the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular.

XREF: Connection to ongoing discourse about campus politics, academic freedom, and organized right-wing campaigns against scholars, echoing similarly organized efforts in other fields.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 526