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Bernard Lewis, Victor Davis Hanson, et al.: Scholars form new Middle East Studies group

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.”...
Laurie A. Brand, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California who heads MESA’s [Middle East Studies Association] academic freedom committee, said she found considerable irony in Lewis and Ajami citing the politicization of the field. “I don’t disagree that there’s been tremendous politicization, but it’s been coming from the folks establishing this new organization,” she said. “I see these people as part of the problem. They can speak from experience about introducing politics to the agenda.”

She noted that Lewis and Ajami “were key advisers to this administration in the Iraq debacle and in cheerleading and justification and so on — it would be hard to think of anything more highly politicized.” Most of those on the new group’s Web site are “at the forefront of the neoconservative support group for the new administration — talk about setting out a political agenda.”...

Read entire article at Inside Higher Ed