Academic careerists exploiting war conditions count as native informers, paid collaborators do not.

Evidence

By “native informers” I do not refer to those translators in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Palestine—collaborators paid for their incorporation into the massive military-intelligence machinery that facilitates the daily operation of the occupation. I even exempt those professors of Arabic or Persian who are offered inviting salaries (plus green cards for the entire family, in one case I know of) for leaving their university posts to teach these “security languages” (as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu are called) in military academies. But I do include such people as Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Abbas Milani, who use the muddy waters of war to advance their careers by abandoning academic life to join military and/or intelligence outlets, or to become spin doctors on current affairs. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 108

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the book’s operative definition: careerist opportunism, not paid collaboration, marks the native informer.