Well, Paglia is one academic among thousands, and Bill Maher is a blowhard comedian… I agree they probably have much in common. I really haven’t heard her speak on Islam, so I don’t know what she’s said about the topic. I’m sure it’s not much I agree with, given her views of gender roles. But she’s hardly representative of the American academy - I can’t think of anyone who would be, frankly.
There are plenty of academics who employ the works of Edward Said to critically discuss how the US and the West more generally view the Islamic world and Asia in deeply problematic ways in order to justify colonialism and wars of aggression (orientalism is the name of his work). Plus there are some great scholars who have been writing great works on the region, such as the Abu-Lughod family, Laura Deeb, or any number of great writers.
There is also academics who have lost positions for being too “antisemetic”, when really, they’re just anti-zionist or just supportive of the Palestinian people (Norman Finkelstein). There are also lots of academics who are pretty anti-Arab or Islamophobic, and too often they have the ear of policy makers (Deshowitz for example or one could argue Bernard Lewis). There really isn’t one way that academics think about the Islamic world.
And yes, race relations in America are not black and white, but there is something especially caustic about black and white race relations, which is uniquely American in some ways.
