Tag: academia

Links for 12-18 December

Automatically posted links for December 12th through December 18th:

When war buffs attack

I recently mentioned Victor David Hanson as one of the founders and board members of the new Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, a wannabe scholarly association that aims to challenge the MESA. The counter-insurgency blog Abu Muqawama points to a recent post at Small Wars Journal (an influential specialist blog on warfare and counter-insurgency) by the former US Ranger and military historian Robert Bateman that rips Hanson’s Carnage and Culture, a book in which he argues that European military supremacy, especially in antiquity and after the Renaissance, is rooted in culture and values.

I know all of these things, and because I am a military historian and believe that your personal technique of torturing the facts until they conform to your thesis is hurting America, and that your personal signal work, Carnage and Culture, is a pile of poorly constructed, deliberately misleading, intellectually dishonest feces. I believe it is my personal obligation to try and correct the record and demonstrate for as many people as possible, why they should not believe you when you try to cite history in support of any of your personal shiny little pet rocks.

He will be writing a multi-part critique of Hanson’s work, and a heated debate has already started with Hanson’s reply.

Lewis, Ajami launch anti-MESA

The inevitable has happened: obviously frustrated that they are still a minority in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, a group of well-connected academics has set up an alternative to the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the respected multi-disciplinary group that gathers the brightest minds in the field. Who better to do this than the usual suspects of Bush-friendly academia, Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis? Thus was created the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. I’ll quote extensively from the Chronice of Higher Education piece about this:

Seeking to change the direction of Middle Eastern and African studies, a new scholarly organization was announced Thursday — with some big name scholars on board and some tough criticism for the discipline. The biggest scholarly names in the new group, Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University, are associated with support for the Bush administration’s view of the Middle East, a decidedly minority opinion within Middle Eastern studies.

The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa aims to have a full range of services — conferences, a journal, newsletters, and so forth. Its council, in addition to Lewis and Ajami, includes Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a veteran of the Johnson and Carter administrations, and George P. Shultz, who was secretary of state under President Reagan.

Materials sent to reporters said that the new group was founded because of “the increasing politicization of these fields, and the certainty that a corrupt understanding of them is a danger to the academy as well as the future of the young people it purports to educate.”

A statement from Lewis said: “Because of various political and financial pressures and inducements, the study of the Middle East and of Africa has been politicized to a degree without precedent. This has affected not only the basic studies of language, literature and history, but also has affected other disciplines, notably economics, politics and social science. Given the importance of these regions, there is an acute need for objective and accurate scholarship and debate, unhampered by entrenched interests and allegiances. Through its annual conference, journal, newsletter, and Web site, ASMEA will provide this.”

While the announcement didn’t mention it by name, the Middle East Studies Association has to date been the scholarly organization for that region. The kinds of criticisms made by Lewis in his statement are similar to those others have made about MESA — charges that scholars in the group feel are an unfair slur on their group and on their work. The new group arrives at a time that Middle Eastern studies has been the subject of intense debate on many campuses, with dueling charges that academic freedom is at risk.

Mark T. Clark, president of the new association, is a professor of political science and director of the National Security Studies Program at California State University at San Bernardino. In a brief interview Thursday, he said that the new group was started “by mutual interest by a bunch of us” who wanted an association “that would be more independent and reflect the academic community more than interest groups.”

He said that his interest in the Middle East is strategic, rather than just historic or cultural, and that he thinks it is good for American scholars to have a strategic view of the region in addition to more traditional approaches.

Asked about MESA, he described it as “kind of a closed circle” of people with similar views. Asked if he had ever participated in that association’s activities, he said he had not. Asked why he didn’t try to add his perspective to the existing group, he said that would be, “for lack of a better word, apartheid,” in which his views would be separated off from the rest. “We’re going to have a greater mix of perspectives than MESA ever had,” he said.

While some of the scholars involved in the new group are known for similar political views, Clark said that “it’s not neoconservative at all” and that scholars of a range of views are welcome to join.

The goal of the association is to be supported entirely by members’ dues, to preserve its independence. To get off the ground, the association also has received some “private donations.” Clark declined to say who had given the funds.

It’s somewhat appropriate that ASMEA’s new president is someone from the field of security studies, a field whose very purpose is to provide consulting services to governments and tends to be of the same mindset as policymakers (not always of course). This has been one of the key arguments by the people behind Campus Watch, who are unhappy about the fact that the top experts on the region tend to be rather negative about current US policies or about the extraordinary (and misguided) amount of support for Israel that America provides. That is naturally a rubbish argument, because policymakers should be listening to experts who tell them what they need to know, not what they want to hear.

One of the great ironies behind ASMEA is, of course, that it claims to want to fight the “politicization” of the field. Ironic, then, that its entire board appears to be composed of people who focus on politics, whereas MESA has plenty of academics who do nothing even remotely political.

Ironic, then, that its founders are people with a reputation for fierce partisanship (Victor David Hanson is up there) — in fact they appear almost exclusively to be conservatives who wear their politics on their sleeve. Also all supporters of Israel, including the non-Americans on the board like Cevik Bir, a former Turkish general who played a key role in building the Turkish-Israel alliance and was decorated by Israel. Others include Kenneth Stein, the former Carter advisor who made a big hullabaloo about rejecting his book on Israeli apartheid.

Ironic, then, that its vice-chairman Fouad Ajami is a well-known public defender of the Bush administration who told Dick Cheney that “the streets will erupt in joy” if the US invades Iraq. (See Adam Shatz’s classic profile of Ajami.)

Ironic, then, that its chairman Bernard Lewis is increasingly seen a kook because of his predictions last summer that eschatological concerns drive Iranian policy. I would say merely leaving it at that is not enough — Bernard Lewis, perhaps once a serious scholar (his work on Ottomans is appreciated by experts in the field), has turned into a racist apologist for imperialist policies. I don’t use the word “racist” lightly, but I think it’s warranted. Take for instance a recent column he penned for the Atlantic Monthly — I don’t have a link and am copying from the November 2007 magazine’s page 23, where Lewis was asked to write about the “American idea”:

The better part of my life was dominated by two great struggles– the first against Nazism, the second against Bolshevism. In both of these, after long and bitter conflict, we were victorious. Both were a curse to their own peoples, as well as a threat to the world, and for those peoples, defeat was a liberation.

Today we confront a third totalitarian perversion, this time of Islam — a challenge in some ways similar, i
n some different.

Note that he doesn’t say “Islamism” or “political Islam” or “Islamic extremism” — just Islam. This is hardly a constructive, nuanced approach to take, although perhaps not a surprising one from a cheerleader for the Crusades. There are more examples of his strange politics here.

In other words, while there would be nothing wrong with starting another (or many others) alternatives to MESA, or more specialized scholarly associations, ASMEA appears from the get-go to have been founded with a very political purpose: to denounced as “politicized” academics who do not agree with their views. The involvement of people who are no doubt embittered by their estrangement from mainstream academia (i.e. the general consensus of a majority of experts in their field) speaks volumes about their intentions. In other words, this is the next step up from Campus Watch.

Desmond Tutu, anti-Semite

A Minnesotan university decides to ban a Desmond Tutu appearance because of anti-Israel comments he made — Banning Desmond Tutu:

Tutu’s appearance—slated for the spring of ’08—was made possible by the university’s partnership with PeaceJam International, a youth-centered project that taps Nobel Laureates to teach young adults about peace and justice. For four straight years, the Catholic university’s St. Paul campus had played host to PeaceJam festivities featuring Nobel Peace Prize winners such as Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Shirin Ebadi.

But in a move that still has faculty members shaking their heads in disbelief, St. Thomas administrators—concerned that Tutu’s appearance might offend local Jews—told organizers that a visit from the archbishop was out of the question.

“We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,” says Doug Hennes, St. Thomas’s vice president for university and government relations. “We’re not saying he’s anti-Semitic. But he’s compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.”

St. Thomas officials made this inference after Hennes talked to Julie Swiler, a spokeswoman for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas.

“I told him that I’d run across some statements that were of concern to me,” says Swiler. “In a 2002 speech in Boston, he made some comments that were especially hurtful.”

During that speech, titled “Occupation Is Oppression,” Tutu lambasted the Israeli government for its treatment of Palestinians in occupied territories. While a transcription clearly suggests his criticism was aimed at the Israeli government (“We don’t criticize the Jewish people,” he said during the speech. “We criticize, we will criticize when they need to be criticized, the government of Israel”), pro-Israeli organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America went on the offensive and protested campus appearances by Tutu, accusing him of anti-Semitism.

Yes, that Desmond Tutu.

Update: See the “offensive” Tutu quote in the comments (thanks, Jose), and Juan Cole reminds us that:

Ann Coulter once said of Muslims, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

Coulter can speak at UST. But not Desmond Tutu.

Packer: Ajami is Shia supremacist

From George Packer’s blog in The New Yorker, an odd theory about why Professor Fouad Ajami is so upbeat about Iraq:

It would be wrong to see in Ajami’s version of Iraq the same delusional thinking as in George W. Bush’s. The difference between them is the difference between a strategy and a fantasy. The President’s speech to the nation last Thursday, following the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, was perhaps the worst of his Presidency, misleading or outright false from beginning to end. But, as always with Bush, one felt that he believed every word of it: Iraq is a brave little country lighting the way to freedom in the Middle East, and freedom-loving people everywhere should rally to its side.

With Ajami, something else is at work. Of Lebanese Shiite origin, he has a deep knowledge of Middle Eastern politics (see his very good book “The Dream Palace of the Arabs”). According to Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial,” before the war Ajami was part of a group recruited on behalf of Paul Wolfowitz that provided an intellectual framework for the overthrow of Saddam. The group’s memo, which influenced the top figures in the Administration, declared that a transformation of the stagnant and malign Middle East should begin with war in Iraq—by now a familiar neoconservative idea but in 2001 quite audacious, even radical. Ajami repeated the argument in an article in Foreign Affairs just before the invasion, and nothing that has happened since has undermined his confidence in it. From the heights of his historical vision, a few hundred thousand corpses and a few million refugees barely register.

This isn’t a case of the normal heartlessness of abstract thought. The Journal piece, along with his recent work in The New Republic, make it clear that Ajami has taken sides in Iraq, and that his pleasure comes from his sense that his side is winning. His prewar writings and advice might have led the President to believe that the transformation of the Middle East would be a democratic one—and perhaps, a generation or two from now, it will be. But Ajami is already declaring victory, because it turns out that he has a different idea altogether: Shiite Arab power.

Finkelstein barred from teaching

Normal Finkelstein is barred from teaching, despite from having one year left on his teaching contract at DePaul University:

The required reading was at the bookstore, the students had the course syllabus, and space in Political Science 235, “Equality in Social Justice,” was standing-room only when DePaul University pulled the plug Friday on what was to have been Norman Finkelstein’s final year at the school.

A controversial scholar—accused by critics of fomenting anti-Semitism and lauded by supporters as a forthright critic of Israel—Finkelstein attracted wide attention across the academic world when he was denied tenure in the spring.

By Monday, the books for his course had been pulled from the DePaul bookstore’s shelves, while his case was restarting a firestorm of protest. The American Association of University Professors was preparing a letter to the university, protesting Finkelstein’s treatment as a serious violation of academic ethics.

Finkelstein vowed not to take the rebuff lying down—or, perhaps more correctly, to do something just like that. In addition to canceling his course, the university informed him that his office was no longer his.

“I intend to go to my office on the first day of classes and, if my way is barred, to engage in civil disobedience,” Finkelstein, 53, said in a telephone interview. “If arrested, I’ll go on a hunger strike. If released, I’ll do it all over again. I’ll fast in jail for as long as it takes.”

More on Finkelstein’s site.

Keeping Alms for Jihad in US libraries

I have read about the Alms for Jihad affairs in Britain — and I would fully support the Association of Librarians of America in keeping the book available in the US, regardless of the quality of the book (which I have no idea about).

OIF is hearing from librarians who are wondering if they must comply with a request from British publisher Cambridge University Press to remove the book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World from the shelves of their libraries.

Alms for Jihad is the subject of a British libel lawsuit brought by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, who has filed several similar lawsuits to contest claims that the Saudi government has used Islamic charities to fund terrorism. Cambridge University Press chose to settle the suit rather than risk a large damage award at trial. Under the settlement, Cambridge University Press has agreed to pulp unsold copies and to ask libraries to return the book to the publisher or destroy the book. (See “Cambridge U. Press Agrees to Destroy Book on Terrorism in Response to Libel Claim” from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Critics claim that Mahfouz is attempting to silence critics by using British libel law. Unlike U.S. libel law, which recognizes First Amendment freedoms, and requires plaintiffs to prove statements about them are false, British law places the burden of proof on defendants, who must demonstrate the truth of their claims.

Someone should leak an electronic version of the book onto the internet.

Another tenure denial campaign by Israel activists?

Update: Sign the counter-petition, which has already been endorsed by a number of A-list academics.

Alumni Group Seeks to Deny Tenure to Middle Eastern Scholar at Barnard College:

Controversial research on Israel and the Palestinian territories has become the basis of yet another campaign to prevent a professor from winning tenure. A group of Barnard College alumni has drafted an online petition asking their alma mater to deny tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology whose scholarship, they say, is flawed and skewed against Israel.

The group’s criticisms of Ms. Abu El-Haj focus on her book Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (University of Chicago Press, 2001), which argues that Israeli archaeologists have produced biased research that bolsters the “origin myth” of the Jewish state.

The petition, which has drawn just over 1,000 signatures, accuses Ms. Abu El-Haj of ignoring or mischaracterizing large parts of the archaeological record, of not being able to speak Hebrew, and of treating Israeli archaeologists unfairly in her work. Ms. Abu El-Haj declined to comment today.

The petition comes on the heels of a high-profile campaign — led by Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor — to persuade DePaul University to deny tenure to Norman G. Finkelstein, a professor known for his criticisms of Israel and what he calls the “Holocaust Industry.” Mr. Finkelstein was denied tenure.

Do read the petition and look up its early signatories. For instance signatory #1, Paula Stern, whose website shows she is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel (indeed she is Israeli) and campaigns on various issues in defense of Israel, including against Nadia Abu al-Haj.

One things that strikes me about all this is that if Nadia Abu al-Haj’s book, Facts on the Ground, was published by the Chicago University Press, not exactly an amateur outfit, and that the matter of whether she will be given tenure at an elite university will surely be the decision of fellow academics who will judge her professional qualities. I doubt that she would even be at Barnard if her academic skills were not solid. So it’s hard not to dismiss this petition as yet another smear campaign against an academic who is critical of Israel, or in this case its foundational myths. After Norman Finkelstein’s case, is barring academics critical of Israel going to become routine? Let’s hope not.

On a related note, a Harvard study shows growing fears inside academia that academic freedom is decreasing:

Gross, who has done surveys of public opinion on attitudes about academic freedom, said that one cause for the difficulties faced by academics today is the “disjuncture” between public and academic attitudes about academic freedom. He noted that a survey of the public for the American Association of University Professors last year found that solid majorities support tenure, but that many also believe that in some cases, colleges should be able to fire professors for political views such as belonging to the Communist Party or defending the rights of Islamic militants. Clearly, he said, the public doesn’t understand academic freedom the way professors do.

Other speakers saw other reasons for concern about the state of academic freedom, which the sociology association recently created a committee to study. Lisa Anderson, a professor of international relations at Columbia University, said that she likes to think of herself as an optimistic person, but finds herself worried that attacks on academic freedom are getting worse and are likely to continue along those lines. Anderson just finished 10 years as dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and the last few years of her tenure found her among the Middle Eastern studies scholars who were regularly criticized by some pro-Israel groups for alleged anti-Israel or anti-American bias. The attacks have “deeply damaged the research community,” Anderson said.

Anderson said that young scholars of Middle Eastern literature or history (she stressed that she wasn’t talking about those who study policy or the current political climate) are finding themselves “grilled” about their political views in job interviews, and in some cases losing job offers as a result of their answers.

As we’ve seen in some of the recent controversies over tenure — or indeed the Brooklyn Arabic-language school affairs, or the establishment of Campus Watch — pro-Israel campaigners are at the center of this attack on academic freedom.

On a related note, here’s the NYT’s coverage of the Walt-Mearsheimer book on the “lobby”:

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is not even in bookstores, but already anxieties have surfaced about the backlash it is stirring, with several institutions backing away from holding events with the authors.

It also appears Abraham Foxman of the ADL has already published a book to counter the Walt & Mearsheimer book — even though it’s not out yet.