Thursday, January 18, 2007
At Campus Watch: Can Middle East Studies Regain Credibility? [on MESA, Rashid Khalidi, Joseph Massad, et al.]
Among those recognizing the new reality are Laura Bier, who teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In April 2006, she penned pseudonymous essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education lamenting an article written by a Tech student that criticized Bier's talk at a pro-Palestinian event on campus. Eschewing such a dramatic gesture this round, Bier's name appears as one of the co-authors of the handbook. For good measure, the document is endorsed by such MES luminaries as Rashid Khalidi of Columbia and Zachary Lockman of New York University.
If one emotion pervades the handbook, it is alarm: The field is presented as embattled, in crisis, and on the run. Professors who a few years ago were confident enough to wear their politics on their sleeves by bullying students (as Joseph Massad did at Columbia) or assuming that activism could substitute for scholarly accomplishment in their climb up the academic ladder (as Juan Cole tried at Yale) have discovered to their chagrin that their actions are now deemed newsworthy.
Indeed, a more accurate subtitle might have been, "How Do We Fix this Mess?"...
Embedded links and the rest are here.
I spoke to someone who attended MESA's recent convention in Boston and he told me the event was even worse than he had imagined it would be with regard to politics and agenda-driven (whipped!) academics.
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