The Price of Ignorance
Zachary Lockman, New York University; MESA President, 2007
(appeared in the MESA Newsletter, February 2007, Vol. 29 No. 1)

As I write these lines, in the first days of 2007, the situation in much of the region on which we as MESA members focus is very grim, and at the moment there seems little prospect that things will turn for the better any time soon. The results of last November’s congressional elections indicate that a great many Americans have come to believe that something has gone very wrong with the course the U.S. government has pursued in Iraq over the past three and a half years. But beyond a growing desire to extricate the United States from the worst consequences of the catastrophe it has helped to create there, there are as yet few signs of any broader understanding that a thorough rethinking of this country’s policies in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world is urgently needed.

Sadly, it is also clear that despite the time and effort that many of us have devoted to sharing our expertise with the public through a variety of means, including books, articles, op-ed essays, public lectures and forums, blogs, teacher-training workshops and so on, too many Americans – including not a few of those directly involved in shaping and implementing this country’s Middle East policy – remain profoundly ignorant (or grossly misinformed) about the histories, beliefs, lives and aspirations of the peoples at the receiving end of American power in that region.

This was recently driven home once again when Jeff Stein, national security editor at the Congressional Quarterly, asked a number of senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials, and members of Congress, if they could explain the difference between Sunnis and Shi‘is. After all, Stein asked in an op-ed piece published in The New York Times on October 17, 2006, “wouldn’t British counterterrorism officials responsible for Northern Ireland know the difference between Catholics and Protestants?” Despite the deepening sectarian conflict in Iraq and the salience of Sunni-Shi‘i relations elsewhere, however, most of those Stein queried could not provide anything resembling an accurate response.
How might one best explain the deeply distressing fact that such people have not felt it essential to learn all they could about the Middle East and Islam? Answers might include willful ignorance, an ideologically-driven rejection of “reality-based” knowledge, the severe case of historical amnesia from which our society suffers, and the blindness to what is actually going on that overweening power can generate in those who possess it – at least until things go disastrously wrong, as they now unmistakably have. At the same time, as others have pointed out, the attacks that we have witnessed in recent years on scholars of the Middle East and Islam, as well as on academic organizations like MESA and on institutions of higher education, can be understood as attacks on expertise, on research-based knowledge and on the free and open exchange of ideas which fosters such knowledge. The ultimate goal of these attacks is, of course, to further a specific political agenda and intimidate (and if possible silence) those who might, on the basis of their knowledge and experience, speak out against it.

Though recent U.S. policy failures in the Middle East may have made such assaults somewhat less frequent and virulent in recent months, it is clear that academic freedom and civil liberties remain under threat in this country. That is why MESA has recently reorganized its academic freedom work – to my mind, probably our organization’s most important public activity, and one in which all members should take considerable pride. Henceforth, one subcommittee of the (renamed) Committee on Academic Freedom will continue MESA’s longstanding commitment to defending academic freedom in the Middle East and North Africa, while a separate subcommittee will focus on threats to academic freedom in the United States and Canada. MESA’s work in this latter domain is supported by the newly-launched Academic Freedom Fund, to which tax-deductible donations are most welcome.

Threats to, and assaults on, academic freedom and civil liberties affect all of us, as scholars and teachers and as citizens or residents of the United States. My colleagues and I at New York University have felt this acutely, since one of our graduate students, Mohamed Yousry, was targeted for prosecution after September 11th in a case that raises some very disturbing issues.

Mohamed came to the United States from Egypt some 25 years ago and eventually became an American citizen. When I first met him, in 1995, he was already a graduate student at NYU, paying his fees and supporting his family by driving a taxi and by working as a translator for journalists and lawyers. One of the lawyers who hired Mohamed to translate was Lynne Stewart, among whose clients was Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, the former spiritual guide of Egypt’s Gama‘a Islamiyya who in 1996 was sentenced to life in federal prison for involvement in a conspiracy to blow up New York City institutions and landmarks.
When Mohamed began to discuss possible doctoral dissertation topics with me and my colleagues in the late 1990s, we encouraged him to work on a political biography of ‘Abd al-Rahman, partly because his employment as a translator for Stewart gave him unique access to the imprisoned cleric and to valuable source materials. Though a lifelong secularist and democrat who rejects ‘Abd al-Rahman’s extremist understanding of Islam, Mohamed started gathering material on ‘Abd al-Rahman for his dissertation, and even interviewed him about his ideas and political career during government-authorized prison visits with Stewart.
Mohamed’s diligence as a translator and as a researcher would cost him dearly. In April 2002 Mohamed was arrested, along with Stewart and one of her paralegals, and the three were accused of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. The government claimed that by making public a statement from ‘Abd al-Rahman back in 2000, Stewart had not only violated government regulations denying certain prisoners access to the media but had also abetted terrorism – though no act of violence ever resulted from ‘Abd al-Rahman’s statement.

In any case, whatever Stewart may have done, it is hard to see why Mohamed should be held responsible for her actions: as a government-approved translator he was never even asked to sign the regulations Stewart was accused of violating, and he had no reason to question the lawfulness of his employer’s instructions. During the trial prosecutors made contradictory arguments: they insinuated that Mohamed had knowingly broken the law in order to further his scholarly research, and even that he was an acolyte of ‘Abd al-Rahman, but they also acknowledged that Mohamed had never advocated violence or Islamist extremism. My guess is that the real reason they went after Mohamed was to get Stewart: she knew no Arabic and ‘Abd al-Rahman knew little English, so without including Mohamed in the alleged conspiracy they wouldn’t have had much of a case. Whatever the explanation, it seems clear that both Stewart and Mohamed are victims of the kind of excessive prosecutorial zeal we have seen all too much of since September 11, 2001.

Mohamed was convicted along with Stewart in February 2005, and the government asked that he be sent to prison for 20 years. Last October, however, in a clear rebuke to the Justice Department, the judge sentenced Mohamed to 20 months in prison (Stewart got 28 months, instead of the 30 years the prosecution had sought) and allowed the two to remain free pending appeals. Naturally, Mohamed continues to hope that he will eventually be vindicated and that the ordeal he and his family have been put through will finally come to an end.

Many lawyers have rallied to Stewart’s defense, because they believe the government targeted her in order to deter other lawyers from zealously defending clients accused of terrorism, and because they feel that her case raises serious constitutional issues. Mohamed’s prosecution raises somewhat different, though equally troubling, questions. Should a translator be sent to prison for following his employer’s instructions, especially when the prosecution failed to prove that he intended to break any law? Can a graduate student’s dissertation research reasonably be construed as contributing to a conspiracy to help terrorists? If Mohamed’s conviction is allowed to stand, we may well see other translators prosecuted for doing their jobs, and other scholars facing jail terms for conducting research on controversial issues. That would turn a travesty of justice into a very dangerous precedent and undermine some of the core values we profess to cherish, including academic freedom. It would also weaken our ability to understand and effectively deal with the very movements and ideologies the U.S. government claims to be combating by trying to send Mohamed Yousry to prison.

The lesson I draw from Mohamed’s case is that for all of us in MESA, both as individuals and as stakeholders in a wide range of institutions, our ability to pursue our vocations as scholars and educators today crucially depends on the vigorous defense of rights and freedoms that most of us long assumed that we could take for granted. That in turn means (and here I merely repeat what several of my predecessors have said much more eloquently) that we all need to find more effective ways of helping those outside academia acquire a better understanding not only of the part of the world with which we are so deeply engaged, but also of why academic freedom is so vital to democratic life.

The Importance of Being Heard
Juan Cole, University of Michigan; MESA President, 2006
(appeared in the MESA Newsletter, February 2006, Vol. 28 No. 1)

An ongoing set of global crises has beset the area of the world in which we specialize, interlinking it powerfully with the United States and Canada. The small cohort of Middle East specialists in North America finds itself working in an increasingly politicized environment, in which we must compete, as intellectuals conveying our insights on the Middle East to the public, with politicians, talk show hosts, televangelists, Washington lobbyists and paid-for talking heads.

The information environment has been polluted by the intersection of political power and big media. While money, power and journalism have all along been intertwined in modern history, we only recently have witnessed the rise of a cable television news network that is explicitly a mouthpiece for an American political party, the editors of which dictate a political line in morning memoranda to their journalists. The Big Lie has become a common technique of persuasion on the part of top politicians. Among the prime things about which the Big Lies are now told is the Middle East, its history, culture and peoples. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld commented on the charge that then President Clinton had lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, saying, “Lying about sex? Everyone lies about sex! Without lies there would not be any sex!” It might equally well be said that without lies, there would not be any wars.

This political turbulence, and the often distressing news from the region, should not distract us from our central mission, which is conducting primary research and subjecting it to a reasoned analysis that will push forward the academic understanding of this part of the world. All of us are in this field because that sort of research and attaining that sort of understanding, deeply gratify us. The joys of such subjects as early modern historiography, Sufi metaphysics, contemporary Arabic literature, Persian miniatures, or Cold War diplomacy, drive most of our members most of the time. Most of us were already incredibly busy with our research, writing, and, well, lives, before the crisis hit, and have little time to spare serious thought for the day’s headlines.

Yet without wishing to add to anyone’s burdens, I fear I must draw our attention to a growing responsibility that calls out to MESA members, of writing about contemporary affairs for the public. Most MESA academics speak to audiences in their towns and cities about the Middle East. Many have devoted a great deal of time to outreach, both on campus and among high school and other teachers, religious congregations, and associations of the retired. Such talks are an extremely important contribution to civil society, and in the aggregate have a significant impact. The American public has an enormous thirst for knowledge about the region we study, and our members have been self-sacrificing about giving of their weekends and leisure time to meet that need.

Nevertheless, it is important to write it down, and to publish it as an opinion piece or op-ed. It is important to publish such items on an ongoing basis. A search of Lexis Nexis will reveal that relatively few MESA members regularly weigh in with opinion on current affairs in the nation’s newspapers and magazines. Not all of our members will feel comfortable doing so. Specialists in the Ottoman Empire may question whether their background entitles them to address contemporary events. Literature specialists or those in art history may entertain similar sentiments. I am not arguing that the obligation is an individual one. It is a collective duty, to be discharged by the membership as a whole.

For those tempted to pursue this path, it is worth pointing out that if they do not write generally for the public about the region, others will, who are far less qualified. Major newspapers routinely publish ruminations on Iraq or Afghanistan by persons who know no Middle Eastern languages and have only a shaky grasp of the history of the region. At a time when the president of the United States has a view on Muslim theories of the caliphate in history, an Ottomanist is far ahead of the game.

I do not mean to minimize the difficulties of breaking in to this sort of writing. Newspaper and magazine opinion pieces are often as hard to publish as fiction. Pieces submitted “blind” or “over the transom” go into what is called the “slush pile,” often to be read by junior editorial assistants. Only if the piece catches their eyes will the pass it up to an editor who might decide to publish it. One heartbreak of attempting this sort of publication is the discovery that our academic credentials mean nothing in the journalistic world. Indeed, enough editors and journalists seem to have been scarred by exposure as undergraduates to particularly abstruse lectures by some of their professors that there is often an assumption that academics are incapable of writing clearly and concisely.

Writing opinion pieces, moreover, is a learned skill rather than being intuitive. It is hard to remember that one may only make one key point in an essay. It is difficult to get complex concepts across in only 700 words (the optimum length for a newspaper op-ed). It is no easy task to make complicated social or religious ideas and customs clear to often insular American audiences. It is hard to remember that specialized academic technical terms should be avoided or clearly explained. Writing clearly and concisely is much harder than writing complexly about one’s specialization at some length.

The only way to overcome these obstacles, however, is to commit to regularly producing opinion pieces, and regularly submitting them. The internet has opened many venues for such writing. For historians within MESA, the History News Network is a welcoming place to publish historically-grounded opinion pieces, and it is widely read. There are many internet public affairs journals eager for contributions, from Alternet to Truthout. Some authors maintain weblogs powered by software such as blogger.com or typepad.com, where they can regularly post op-eds. These are at least good practice and assured of publication, even if getting a substantial audience is not easy. Your local newspaper, and the nearest metropolitan newspaper, are also good markets to try. National newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor and USA Today are often looking for experts. It may not be possible to start out in the Washington Post or the New York Times, but it is certainly possible to lay the ground for a debut in such a prominent editorial page.

It may be daunting to think of making time for this endeavor. But 700 words can be written in a relatively short period of time, and committing to one such essay a week or every other week is not overly onerous. The American public is being assiduously misinformed about the Middle East, about Islam, and about Muslim culture. Some media personalities are deliberately smearing Middle Easterners. Others are misinformed and nursing a grudge from September 11. The advances we make in our understanding of the region are not having their full impact if they are locked up in academic journals or reported only in forbidding academic prose. A key principle of political liberalism (in the classic sense) is that information maximization is always a good thing. But this maxim implies that the information itself is real information, and solidly grounded, not prevarication and propaganda. If we do not seek a public voice, and we hear only the latter in our media, we cannot complain.

www.juancole.com

In These Times…
Ali Banuazizi, Boston College; MESA President, 2005
(appeared in the MESA Newsletter, May 2005, Vol. 27 No. 2)

A deep paradox besets the field of Middle Eastern studies and the pre-eminent association that represents it in North America these days. On the one hand, there is a wide recognition of the critical need for expert knowledge and deeper understanding of the Middle East and the Muslim world as the United States faces its most vexing, intractable, and high-stake challenges in this vast region, especially at a time when America’s relations with the people of the region are fraught with misperceptions, distrust, and hostility. Whether it is in the arena of human rights, democratization, political reform, religious extremism, international terrorism, nuclear proliferation; in coping with the consequences of an ill-conceived war; or helping the Palestinians and Israelis achieve a durable peace, the Middle East continues to be at center-stage of the U.S. foreign policy concerns. At the level of the public, too, one sees a surge of interest in the Middle East, particularly since the tragic events of September 11th, reflected in the much wider readership of books about the region, in the extensive mass-media coverage, and in the remarkable popularity of courses on Middle Eastern languages, cultures, and politics on our college campuses.
On the other hand, precisely at such a time of national need and public interest, the field of Middle Eastern studies and many of its practitioners are facing a barrage of criticisms, accusations of ideological bias and distortion of the truth, mediocrity, and irrelevance to the nation’s foreign policy goals. There have been even accusations that scholars in the field failed to foretell threats to the nation’s security by religious extremists—confusing the function of scholarship with that of intelligence gathering and analysis. Skeptical about the academy’s own ability to conduct its business of teaching and research with the requisite objectivity and independence, there have been several legislative initiatives at the state and federal levels to establish monitoring mechanisms to ensure “balance and fairness” at publicly funded programs of Middle Eastern studies and presumably similar programs focused on other world regions. Others in this crusade, less patient, and more zealous in their cause, have seen fit to encourage academic vigilantism on campuses to watch, report, and if necessary to intimidate scholars who present “biased,” “anti-American,” “pro-Islamic,” or “pro-Palestinian” views in their class lectures, in public statements outside their institutions, or in their writings. Often, these charges, as well as any criticism of current Israeli policies, are described as being anti-Israel and therefore, until proven otherwise, ipso facto “anti-Semitic.” Not surprisingly, such smear tactics and confrontations have begun to threaten the rights of free speech and inquiry and, if not contained, could potentially undermine the integrity of our academic institutions.

Insofar as the substantive criticisms came from those who see serious flaws and biases in the dominant paradigms or the prevailing political sentiments in our field, they can do no harm and may indeed stimulate critical debates, which in the long run could be highly beneficial. Many of our members will remember that, a generation ago, our association was criticized for being too supportive of the status quo in the Middle East, unresponsive to gender issues, and oblivious to the economic inequalities and the political oppression that characterized many Middle Eastern societies. A decade later, MESA, like other area-studies associations, was faulted for marginalizing the study of the Middle East and thus making it less susceptible to the intellectual and methodological rigors of discipline-based inquiry. Both of these critiques seem to have given way in recent years to other concerns. The key difference between our field’s former critics and those who proudly declare themselves to be MESA’s nemesis today is the latter’s willingness to stoop to the level of ad hominem attacks, defamation, and intimidation.

Aside from the problem of tactics, what many of MESA’s current detractors have managed to do, unwittingly or deliberately, is to locate the association’s mission and scholarly concerns within the very narrow confines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contemporary Middle Eastern politics, and, more recently, the U.S.-led war on Islamic extremism and terrorism. While all these concerns are certainly important in their own right, they do not represent the professional or scholarly interests of many—perhaps even the majority—of our members. Indeed, any attempt to place our association in one or another ideological straitjacket is clearly a misrepresentation of the facts. Simply put, MESA has never spoken with a single voice on the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the war on terrorism, on the invasion of Iraq, or any other major American foreign policy issue. And hopefully it never will.

What MESA does, with enviable distinction and effectiveness, is to promote scholarship on the Middle East and Islam through its publication of a flagship journal and bulletin, by holding annual meetings that are attended by thousands of young and well-established scholars and students, and by recognizing genuine scholarly achievement through its various award programs. It performs a watchdog function on ethical issues. And, finally, it has steadfastly stood for and defended freedom of expression and inquiry for scholars and public intellectuals in the region and, of recent, in the United States.

As a well-established association that will be celebrating its 40th anniversary next year, we have the esprit de corps, the intellectual resources, and the organizational capacity to absorb and take to heart constructive criticisms of our ways and our scholarship, and, when needed, to rebut ill-intended accusations. Our real strength as a mature professional association, I believe, is demonstrated by our ability to welcome and accommodate colleagues with diverse perspectives on the critical issues that we face. These are goals that MESA and those of us privileged to serve it as directors and staff members will continue to pursue—not because we have been prompted to do so by our detractors, but out of our own sense of professionalism and commitment to an open and vibrant association for all those in the field of Middle Eastern studies.

Laurie Brand, University of Southern California; MESA President, 2004
(appeared in the MESA Newsletter, February, 2004, Vol. 26 No. 1)

I was on sabbatical in Beirut when I learned that I had been elected to serve as MESA’s president for 2004. In an atmosphere still clearly marked by the implications for our field of September 11, 2001 and with the clouds of the coming war in Iraq clearly gathering, I was aware of the tremendous responsibility that serving MESA at this juncture represented.

As an organization, we currently confront a number of key issues. Academic freedom, and the threat to it posed by the “international higher education advisory board” as proposed by HR 3077 and discussed by Amy Newhall in the last newsletter is one. On that front, I am encouraged by the growing number of universities that have begun to mobilize against this provision. For those of you in the academy who have not contacted the relevant office in your college or university, I strongly urge you to make your voices heard clearly, effectively and soon on this issue. You might also directly convey your opinion to your own senators and to members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (health.senate.gov/committee_members.html).

Another issue relates to the situation in Iraq. Many of our members have, in their individual capacities, been active participants in the public discussion of the war and the current occupation. In terms of MESA’s activities, last April, the board drafted a statement expressing concern regarding the terrible damage and losses suffered by Iraqi libraries and archives. On another front, CAFMENA members are currently involved in a discussion regarding a possible expansion or development of its role in examining and defending academic freedom in the context of the rebuilding of the Iraqi university system. The means by which we can best support our Iraqi colleagues as they struggle to adjust to the new realities is an important topic that deserves further, considered exploration by the MESA board and by our members.
Both MESA’s response to threats to academic freedom and to the unfolding situation in Iraq are driven by our sense of mission. There is no more serious or basic issue than examining and perhaps rethinking who we are and what we do. It is therefore quite appropriate that an initiative that has been in process for sometime–a reconsideration of the mission statement–is coming to fruition during this period of major challenges. On behalf of the secretariat and the board, I would like to thank the large number of you who took the time to respond to the proposed new statement, which was first presented at the meeting in Anchorage. While we cannot gauge the feelings of those from whom we have not heard, we have assumed that those who have responded have done so out of strong conviction, one way or another. Most of the responses have been supportive of the draft, with many suggesting minor language changes or additions. Others have expressed concern with one or more issue that they felt the new statement clouded, ignored or misrepresented. We have now in effect tabulated the suggestions and concerns, reworked the mission statement, and included it in this newsletter (February 2004) on page 4.
As president of this community of students, scholars, and practitioners, I am concerned that our mission statement reflect both the range of MESA’s activities as well as the broad base of our membership. That said, a mission statement is intended to be a short, concise expression of identity and purpose; it should “translate the organization’s purpose into action.”

The secretariat has prepared a descriptive paragraph to precede the mission statement that will respond to a number of the concerns raised by the membership that could not be accommodated in the statement itself. We ask you all to look at the new, slightly altered language carefully, and then cast your vote along with your choices for the 2004 Nominating Committee.

Here, I would like to address briefly several issues raised by the responses you have forwarded. The first concerns the backdrop to the reconsideration of the original statement. It was not, as some messages have suggested, triggered by the events of 9/11 or their aftermath in the US. The origins of this move may be found in thinking which began at the secretariat in response to two factors. The first was a set of statistics indicating that membership numbers had begun to decline. The second was the approach of the 40th anniversary of MESA’s founding. The initial mission statement was drafted in 1966 and has not been altered since, despite the fact that in the interim, much has changed, in the academy itself, in its relationship to other educational and governmental institutions, in the various parts of the region we all study, as well as in the activities undertaken by our association. There was a feeling therefore that developments in MESA and among its members had moved beyond the existing statement which, as a number of you have commented, was somewhat inward-looking. While not sacrificing the basic and primary commitment to scholarship, greater emphasis needed to be placed on the diverse professional backgrounds of MESA’s membership, and on the expansion of functions and services provided by the organization and its members. We believe that the new statement better captures the inclusion that has in fact been a hallmark of what has long seemed to me an amazing community of dedicated and talented colleagues.

The second issue is that of the concern raised by those who responded to the removal of the phrase “private, non-profit, and non-political organization.” In the version initially presented to you, this was excised for reasons of economy of language, although we intended to include it in the descriptive paragraph about MESA. Given your thoughtful responses, it seems not only appropriate but quite important that language about MESA’s non-political purpose be reintroduced in the mission statement. For those of you who expressed concern, let me assure you that while each of us certainly has our own political preferences which we should feel free to express in the various institutions and activities in which we engage, there is no desire on the part of the board to turn MESA into a political organization. MESA will continue to advocate for academic freedom both here and abroad through CAFMENA. In addition, in the future as in the past, issues of major political/social/economic/cultural import will arise about which we may organize panels and roundtables at the annual meeting. This is quite proper and a natural extension of our desire to contribute to scholarly debate. Some of our members will also engage in public exchanges or in discussions in other fora on issues of the day: again, it is perfectly befitting of students, scholars and practitioners in an open society to contribute their expertise when they find it appropriate. But none of this implies that as an organization we will seek to endorse political positions or play a political role. This, quite simply, is not part of MESA’s mission.

Finally, the issue of geographic scope. Numerous comments came in response to the change in the new language from “the study of the Middle East, North Africa and the Islamic World,” to “the Middle East and its peoples.” Again, I would stress that the primary, indeed the sole, motive here concerns producing a concise statement. As someone who works on North Africa, let me assure the members who wrote expressing concern that the removal of an explicit reference to that part of the region was not meant to imply a narrowing of geographic focus. I was actually surprised that no one expressed dismay at the lack of mention of “the Gulf.” And as for those who wanted explicit reference to the Islamic world, I must say it is a term I have never liked–although as president I do not hold veto power–but it also strikes me as partially redundant. Are the Middle East and North Africa not part of this same “Islamic world”? And if one mentions by name one subregion, why not all of them? If one insists upon naming North Africa, then others have just as reasonable a case for insisting upon Central Asia, the Balkans, al-Andalus and so on. My point is simply that the term “Middle East” serves as a convenient, if imperfect, short hand for the area(s) we study, the boundaries of which we all understand to be far-ranging and flexible.

I want to thank all of you who have participated in this process. It is a testament, I believe, to how important this organization is to us that people have taken the reconsideration of the mission statement so seriously. This is not just an “academic” exercise, but rather one of rethinking and reframing identity and purpose. It is a pleasure for me to have this opportunity to serve as president and contribute to MESA’s continuing growth and development.

Lisa Anderson, Columbia University; MESA President 2003
(The following article by Lisa Anderson appeared in the MESA Newsletter, February, 2003)

On December 24, 2002, my hometown newspaper, The New York Times, observed in an editorial on the Middle East that they could not recall “a more dispiriting time.”

Indeed. As the year of the first anniversary of September 11th drew to a close, there was much to be dispirited about in the Middle East and, for students of the Middle East, in the United States as well. Despite considerable discussion of “road maps” out of the bloody Israeli-Palestinian impasse, the Bush Administration had revealed its intention to rewrite the map of the entire area, beginning with a long-anticipated attack on Iraq. The assault on the region itself was accompanied by an offensive against the associated US area studies community, represented in the university-based Title VI National Resource Centers on the Middle East and by the Middle East Studies Association.

Both within the region and within the area studies scholarship, there was in fact much to criticize. In the region itself, decades of despotism, once fed by Cold War imperatives, had been continued as if by inertia while most of the rest of the world embraced, or at least reluctantly acceded to, recognition of human rights and associated political and economic institutions. After brief flirtations with liberalized politics and economies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of the regimes of the region cynically, and more or less openly, traded acquiescence in internationally-sanctioned agreements for promises of international support and a free hand at home. The 1990s were not a time of much development in the Middle East; indeed, apart from AIDS-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East recorded the lowest growth rate in the world--and the total tally for growth in the twenty-five years ending in 2000 appears to have been negative. The impact of these developments on cultural life in the region was corrosive, as decades of overbearing censorship and underfunded universities and research institutions depleted and fragmented the region’s intellectual landscape.

 This was an ugly picture and, to be candid, few American scholars of the Middle East did much to advertise it. Thousands of individually rational decisions, as my political science colleagues might observe, contributed to a collective abdication of responsibility. In the social sciences, graduate students who wanted jobs and junior faculty who wanted tenure mimicked their colleagues in other areas and looked for flickers of electoral politics and glimmers of economic privatization--the currency of post-Cold War social science--and neglected the stubborn durability of the authoritarian regimes and a corresponding growth of popular alienation and despair. More senior scholars, pained by the demoralization in the region and its neglect in their disciplines, suspended active research agendas in favor of administrative assignments in their universities. (I know whereof I speak.) In the humanities, many scholars who sustained engagement with colleagues in their disciplines and in the region were reluctant to jeopardize access to visas and research authorizations; in their excessive caution, they failed to speak out about the often appalling circumstances of their friends and colleagues there. And finally, of course, we all wanted to protect and preserve what little space those very colleagues in the region enjoyed to conduct research and publish their scholarship, and we avoided saying things that might endanger them. Over my more than decade-long association with Human Rights Watch, I have been astonished by the number of my colleagues who expressed private admiration for the organization’s work but refused to lend their name to it, worried that by associating themselves with an organization that might be critical of local governments, they would compromise their research access, or those of their friends and colleagues.  

These were all understandable impulses but, ultimately, they allowed others--from our disciplinary colleagues to newly powerful non-academic think tanks and advocacy organizations--to shape our research agendas and exploit our work for purposes we would not recognize, much less endorse. In helping to resist these temptations, it should be noted, MESA as an institution served its members rather well. It provided a forum in the Annual Meeting at which scholars could discuss issues of import in the region, as opposed to in the disciplines in which most of its members operated. In establishing the Committee on Academic Freedom, MESA both served to publicize some of the abuses of the region’s governments and to express solidarity with our colleagues in the region. What MESA did not do, however, was set research agendas or advocate public policies.

 While few of us would dispute our right to choose individually what we work on and how we deploy our expertise, in the current climate, it is not clear that MESA will adequately serve its members or its academic project if it retains a modest definition of its mission. If we are, as the bylaws say, to “promote high standards of scholarship and instruction, ...facilitate communication among scholars through meetings and publications,... and promote cooperation among persons and organizations concerned with the scholarly study of the Middle East,” we may have to become more assertive as an organization. Let me suggest why.

Among the critiques of the Middle East studies community was that, as the notorious Campus Watch website put it, “Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them.” Claiming that half of MESA’s membership is “of Middle Eastern origin,” the website argues that “though American citizens, many of these scholars actively disassociate themselves from the United States...” This assertion is stunning in the audacity of its bigotry. It is difficult to imagine that any other group could be so characterized: could one say that American citizens of, say, Chinese, or Argentine, or Greek or Ukranian origin who pursue scholarly research about, or even continue care about politics in, the country of their birth are “disassociating themselves from the United States?” Hardly.

The reason this sort of intolerance is even possible is the current political climate in the United States. The “war on terror” launched in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th has provided a permissive environment for other remarkable displays of narrow-mindedness and intolerance as well as an erosion of rights. Christian religious figures with major followings have appeared on network TV programs to announce that the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist and to argue that Islam is an intrinsically violent religion. The Immigration and Naturalization Service requires foreign nationals from a wide variety of Arab and Muslim countries (or even nationals from other countries, like Canada, who may have been born in such Arab or Muslim countries) to report for special fingerprinting, photographing and interrogations. Just this semester, my school at Columbia University failed to enroll a newly admitted student because she, a British national born in Libya, was unable to obtain a visa in time to start the semester.

Whether or not it is true that half of MESA’s members are “of Middle Eastern origin,” we have a special responsibility to ensure that our members, our students and our colleagues are not treated like enemy aliens, their religions maligned and motives impugned.

As important as this attack on individuals on the basis of their religion, national origin, or other personal attributes, however, is the threat to our collective scholarly integrity posed by the critiques of our works from policy advocates who wish to dictate the range of respectable political conclusions. The focus on the personal characteristics of the members of MESA, loathsome as it is, heralds an even more dangerous effort to undermine the standing of the scholarly community as a whole.

We need to be able to acknowledge the failings of our work without embarrassment–remember that no bench scientist is afraid to report negative experimental results–but we must also assertively deploy our unparalleled expertise to provide insight and understanding of the Middle East. As scholars, we must actively uphold rights to freedom of information, association, expression, in the United States and around the world, for our members and our colleagues. Scientific and scholarly exchange should not be impeded and dissemination of ideas must be respected, or all of us, regardless of our “national origin” will be impoverished as scholars and citizens. To do this, we must not only advocate for these rights but we must also exercise them, contributing to the development and dissemination of such ideas and welcoming the debate they engender.

For some of us this may mean testifying before Congress or writing op-ed pieces in the newspapers or appearing on television as “talking heads.” For others, it will be organizing campus debates, community seminars and public demonstrations. Whatever we do, we must recognize that this is not a time to be intimidated or complacent. If we abdicate our responsibilities as citizens, we undermine our standing as scholars and teachers.

If MESA is to accomplish its purposes in this difficult time, we must devise ways to support and defend our members both individually and as a scholarly community, and we must encourage and celebrate participation in vigorous public debates about the policies of governments throughout the region as well as here at home. The only thing more dispiriting than the politics of recent months has been the eerie silence in the very intellectual and policy circles which should be actively and intimately engaged in debates over our future, professional and political, in the United States and in the Middle East.

Joel Beinin, Stanford University; MESA President, 2002
(appeared in the MESA Newsletter, May, 2002)

Our scholarly community has been subjected to multiple pressures since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Some of us have been investigated by agencies of the federal government. Others have been subjected to profiling and special treatment while traveling on normal business. Some of us have feared for the physical safety of our families because of the attacks on “Middle Eastern-looking” people by xenophobic “patriots” in several communities throughout the country. Several university administrations have failed to defend normal standards of academic freedom and free speech and either criticized or taken actions against those who have attempted to engage in a critical debate over the meaning and appropriate response to the events.

Another set of pressures has resulted from the extraordinary demand for the expertise of MESA members–both in the academy and among the general public. Our membership has responded generously, by addressing a wide array of forums–speaking and writing in the mass media, lecturing on university campuses, to K-12 public school teachers, and to the general public. The outreach programs of the Title VI Middle East centers have been heavily utilized.

Many MESA members have long complained, correctly in my opinion, that much of the American public is woefully ignorant about the most basic aspects of Islam and the Middle East. Everyone now agrees that such ignorance is a luxury our society can no longer afford. It is awkward and shameful that sharply increased enrollments in courses with Islamic or Middle Eastern content, new faculty appointments, and broader attention to the areas of concern to MESA members have been prompted by disaster - as though Muslim and Middle Eastern societies and cultures were not otherwise worthy of attention and study. Nonetheless, after 9/11/01, it should be much easier to justify the need for Middle East area studies and in-depth knowledge of Islam, Middle Eastern and Central Asian languages and cultures, and related topics.

This imposes an enormous responsibility on us as individuals and as a scholarly association. MESA represents the largest repository of expertise on the topics relevant to understanding the historical, political, cultural, and religious background to the events of 9/11/01 and the complex of issues in which they are embedded. Of course, we do not share a single understanding of these matters, nor should we. But we should all stretch ourselves to take up the challenges of this exceptional time and play an active role as public intellectuals, offering our expertise and different understandings and contributing to an informed public debate about the issues. One way to do so is to respond to the invitation of the Pacific News Service to submit brief news, analysis, and opinion articles. Information about how to do so click here.
A third set of pressures since 9/11/01 has been the frenzied attack on MESA as a whole and several of our most eminent members in particular. Mean-spirited and ad hominem assertions of nefarious motives and absurd conspiracies have been advanced based on little or no evidence. Politically motivated and highly distorted accounts of what it is that MESA and its members do and why they do it have been used to justify an explicit call on Congress to cut funding for Title VI Middle East centers.

Fortunately, Congress has not only declined to follow this advice, it has actually increased the budget for international education and foreign language studies by record amounts. In FY 2002 Title VI and Fulbright-Hays 102(b)(6) programs will receive $20.5 million in new funding, an increase of 26%. This includes $5.4 million to double the number of Foreign Language Area Studies fellowships (from roughly 215 to 430) to students pursuing advanced training in Arabic, Azeri, Persian/Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Uzbek, Urdu and other languages spoken in Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and Russia/Eastern Europe. A supplemental $3.4 million is allocated to existing National Resource Centers specializing in Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and Russia/Eastern Europe, and to establish four new centers in these areas. In addition, $1 million is budgeted to establish three new language resource centers, specializing in Central Asia, the Middle East, or South Asia. This is excellent news for MESA and for the future of area studies more generally; and there is good reason to hope that this trend will continue.

This infusion of new funds suggests that announcements of the demise of area studies were a bit exaggerated. Several MESA past-presidents have correctly noted that Middle East and other area studies did, and continue to, have a tendency towards narrow description, ghettoization, and even obscurantism. Middle East studies in particular and area studies in general continue to be at risk at some institutions, especially public universities with severe funding constraints. But both the Congressional infusion of new funds and the public demand for reliable information about the context of 9/11/01 demonstrate that there is simply no substitute for detailed and contextualized knowledges of specific regions – including their languages, histories, and cultures. No solid comparative or conceptual understandings of the world–past or present–can be built without this foundation.

The current conjuncture suggests new and exciting research agendas which are both intellectually substantial and of considerable public interest. One of these is the comparative study of regions within the Islamic cultural zone. Such studies would reinforce a point that many MESA members have been making before and after 9/11/01—that the Islamic tradition embraces a great variety of practices and intellectual currents. They would bring attention to regions outside the Middle East where the great majority of the world’s Muslims live today while maintaining the significance of the Middle East as the historic (and in some respects contemporary) heartland of Islam. This is certainly not the only topic with both public relevance and attractiveness to funders. A group of faculty at my own university has recently received a Mellon Foundation grant for a seminar on “Settlement, Race, and Sovereignty in North America, South Africa, and Israel/Palestine.” Other teaching and research agendas that are both innovative and relevant to contemporary concerns can easily be imagined. I encourage MESA members to respond to the unusual circumstances post 9/11/01 with as much energy and creativity as can be mustered.


R. Stephen Humphreys, University of California, Santa Barbara; MESA President, 2001 (appeared in the MESA Newsletter, Volume 23, no. 2 May, 2001)

Many of the problems confronting Middle Eastern studies are specific to that field. One thinks first of all of the persistent territorial, ethnic, and religious conflicts that blight the lives of so many in the region, but even apart from these grave matters of life and death, scholarship in and on the region confronts a host of obstacles: poor libraries, inaccessible archives, tortuous procedures to obtain research permits, etc. Such issues are all too familiar to most of us, and we have become fairly adept in overcoming or at least compensating for them. Obviously we desperately want to see the kinds of structural changes that would ameliorate research conditions, and each of us needs to work, patiently and tactfully, with his or her colleagues in the Middle East to help bring these changes about. Equally obviously, many of these changes cannot begin to happen until the region’s endemic political tensions are resolved or mitigated. In that effort, the great majority of us can expect to play only a very small part, however expert we are and however strongly we feel.

Beyond such region-specific challenges, however, Middle Eastern studies faces others that are common to every field of scholarship and teaching within the American academy. These include rapid change (not always for the better) in the nature of scholarly publication, fluctuating levels of federal support and degrees of involvement (ranging from indifference to serious interference), the growing number of part-time faculty in many universities, the promise and threat of distance-learning, the increasing sense of consumerism and entitlement among our students. Everyone will produce his own list of worries.
Among all these, I find myself increasingly preoccupied by issues of copyright. Rules that were once clear, or at least seemed well established and little questioned, are now up for grabs. In the humanities and social sciences, the endeavors of most scholars made very little money for anyone. Hence neither authors nor their institutions worried too much about copyright issues. Except for a very few spectacularly successful textbooks, royalties and subsidiary rights were exiguous at best. External grants were carefully keyed to one’s academic salary and so produced little additional income (except for “summer money” and some travel expenses) to the scholars who obtained them. Even the most talented teachers could only reach an audience made up of the students on their own campus. The financial reward for extensive research and publication or (on a far smaller scale) for outstanding teaching was a nice merit raise – an add-on of a few percent to the salary one was already making. The real reward within this system was prestige and the esteem, or perhaps the jealousy, of one’s colleagues.

All this is changing very rapidly. The Internet throws all the traditional understandings of fair use, first purchase, and ownership into confusion. On-line publication is very different from the traditional printed journal or codex; it is paid for differently and accessed differently. What does that mean for the standard publishers’ contracts that we have so mindlessly signed for so many generations, in the sure and certain knowledge that there was really no money in it for anyone. Perhaps a graver matter, some universities have begun to ask whether their faculty are in some sense producing work for hire – that is, whether a university has some claim to the scholarly publications and teaching products (including classroom “performances”) of its faculty. After all, faculty members are hired to teach certain subjects and do research in certain fields of inquiry, and they carry out these tasks in large part with university resources, on university property. Needless to say, the legal issues in all of this are novel, exceedingly ambiguous, and strongly contested. They will become the stuff of our professional lives in a very few years. I cannot begin to deal with them in this letter, but I think it essential to call attention to them, and to ask whether MESA – already active in some many professional arenas – has a useful contribution to make to the debate.

Responding to the Needs of a Diverse Membership
Jere L. Bacharach, University of Washington, MESA President, 2000

One challenge facing your MESA Board of Directors is to reflect the diverse views of an organization of over 2,600 members while giving clear guidelines to an exceptional staff lead by Executive Director Anne Betteridge, currently on leave, and Acting Executive Director Mark Lowder. An example from our recent spring meeting will illustrate my point.

At the 1999 annual meeting a few individuals and exhibitors expressed to me very serious reservations about their ability to attend the 2003 meeting planned for Anchorage.
Although a small majority of members had voted for Anchorage over Minneapolis in 1998 and the MESA membership had been informed of the decision in the August 1998 MESA Newsletter, and even though no one had voiced reservations before we signed a contract, I nevertheless asked the MESA office to revisit the issue.

By the time the Board met, extensive information on comparative costs, travel possibilities, and penalties for breaking the contract were available for all Board members. MESA will spend much less on the Anchorage meeting than one in San Francisco, Minneapolis, or most other U.S. cities: audio-visual rental rates are approximately one-third lower, food & beverage rates about one-half lower, set-up rates for exhibitors one-half or more lower, lodging for MESA staff and board members three-fourths lower, and Anchorage has no sales tax with room rates significantly lower than what we can find for 2003 in the contiguous 48 states.

The negative factors for Anchorage include the cost of flying to Alaska, which appears to be about $100 to $150 more than a flight from the east coast to many western U.S. cities (as long as a Saturday night is included), and the time it takes to get there. Projecting an attendance significantly lower than any non-D.C. meeting, the estimated net profits for MESA before paying a penalty would be within $10,000 of our San Francisco meeting and above a number of others because costs would be so low. In addition, if we negated our commitment to Anchorage, MESA could owe a cancellation fee as high as $35,000.
Given these considerations, the Board unanimously reconfirmed our decision to be in Alaska in 2003 and we hope as many of you as possible will plan to join us.

Recognizing that a better and faster exchange of information is needed, MESA has instituted two e-mail list services. The first includes MESA’s almost 50 institutional members from AUC and AUB to the Universities of Virginia and Washington. Each institution designates one or more individuals as their correspondents on the list. A second list is for over 30 organizations affiliated with MESA, including the Society for Armenian Studies and the Turkish Studies Association. We hope that the institutional members and affiliated organizations will share information circulated on the listserv with their members. For example, we sent out an announcement that the preliminary MESA 2000 program was available on the MESA web site so that we could get appropriate feedback before the final version was printed.

Another issue on which we would like member input involves submission of individual papers versus pre-organized panels for our annual meeting. The problem is that the program committee finds that more and more of its time is spent trying to put together panels from the accepted papers. For the 2000 annual meeting, three hundred papers were in pre-organized panels and, in most cases, the only decision was to accept or reject them. On the other hand, two hundred individual papers or 83% of those proposed for the Orlando meeting had to be put into panels. To deal with this massive organizational issue the MESA Board is seriously considering restricting the submission of individual papers to graduate students while requiring all others to be in pre-organized panels. Before we put this in place, why not share your views on the matter? Please write directly to Mark Lowder or e-mail him at mlowder@u.arizona.edu so that we have your input before our fall meeting.

I find I brag about MESA’s responsiveness to changes in the many disciplines and fields associated with our membership. The annual program and publications—IJMES and MESA Bulletin—serve as a record of these changes. I am particularly proud of the increasing participation of female scholars, specialists resident outside the U.S. and Canada, and individuals whose names reflect Middle Eastern origins. The geographic boundaries of what we include in our studies and programs have expanded into Central Asia, Europe and other regions. In addition, more and more panels and publications reflect interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary approaches to an ever-growing range of issues. To sustain this record and improve upon it, two things are needed from you – your input and your financial support. I hope you will be active on both fronts.