[Peace-discuss] HR 3077 and Middle East studies

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There has been at least one similar incident around here.  Bear this in
mind when you hear the common talk about "the growth of anti-Semitism."
During the Vietnam war, people involved in Asian studies in American
universities often courageously told the truth, in contrast to what the
administrations (Republican and Democrat) of that time were saying. The
people Sara Roy describes here are determined that what happened in regard
to SE Asia a generation ago not be allowed to happen in regard to SW Asia
today. --CGE]

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n07/roy_01_.html
Short Cuts
Sara Roy

Recently, at Harvard University where I am based, a Jewish student, using
an assumed (gentile) name, began posting anti-semitic statements on the
weblog of the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice, an anti-war,
pro-Palestinian group on campus. The student, it turned out, is the
secretary of Harvard Students for Israel - which dissociated itself from
the incident - and had previously accused the HIPJ of being too tolerant
of anti-semitism. He now went undercover as part of a self-appointed
effort to monitor anti-semitism on campus. In one posting, for example, he
referred to Israel as the 'AshkeNAZI state'. Incidents of this kind, which
are becoming commonplace on American campuses, reflect a wider
determination to monitor, report, defame and punish those individuals and
institutions within academia whose views the right finds objectionable.
The campaign is directed at area studies generally but the most virulent
attacks are reserved for those of us in Middle Eastern studies whose ideas
are considered anti-Israel, anti-semitic or anti-American.

The relationship between Israel's hardline supporters and the 'Arab
professoriat', as we have been called, has been tense for a long time.
After 11 September, the right accused Middle East academics in particular
of extremist scholarship and intellectual treason. Defending Civilisation:
How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done about It, a
report published in November 2001 by the American Council of Trustees and
Alumni, a non-profit organisation founded by Lynne Cheney, wife of the
vice-president, and Senator Joseph Lieberman, effectively accused the
academy of being unpatriotic and anti-American, a fifth column providing
intellectual support for global terrorism. In evidence it cited over a
hundred statements by academics (and others) calling for a more critical
examination of the causes of the events of 11 September and the role US
foreign policy may have played.

Another indictment of Middle East studies appeared in Martin Kramer's
Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America,
published in October 2001 by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. Kramer, who teaches Arab history and politics at Tel Aviv
University, claims that Middle East studies in the US are dominated -
indeed, crippled - by pro-Arab and anti-American sentiment. The academy,
he believes, failed to anticipate and may even have concealed the growing
Islamist threat that resulted in the attack on the World Trade Center.
Middle East studies, he claims, have devoted too much attention to
historical and cultural subjects that are of no use to the state and its
national security imperatives, and may even harm them. What is needed, he
says, is a new approach to the study of the Middle East that has at its
core 'the idea that the United States plays an essentially beneficent role
in the world'.

There is no let-up. September 2002 saw the establishment of Campus Watch,
a website whose primary purpose is to monitor Middle Eastern studies
faculty in departments across the US for signs of anti-American and
anti-Israel bias. Campus Watch is the invention of Daniel Pipes, a
colleague of Kramer's, and director of the Middle East Forum, a think-tank
devoted to promoting American interests in the Middle East.

'I want Noam Chomsky to be taught at universities about as much as I want
Hitler's writing or Stalin's writing,' Pipes said to an interviewer.
'These are wild and extremist ideas that I believe have no place in a
university.' Not only does Campus Watch monitor universities for signs of
'sedition', i.e. views on US foreign policy, Islam, Israeli policy and
Palestinian rights that Pipes considers unacceptable; it encourages
students to inform on professors whose ideas they find offensive.
Recently, Bush appointed Pipes to the board of directors of the US
Institute of Peace, 'an independent, non-partisan federal institution
created by Congress to promote the prevention, management, and peaceful
resolution of international conflicts'. [What a joke. --CGE]

Given that the political climate here is in good part determined by an
alliance of right-wing supporters of Israel and members of the
neo-conservative establishment, it isn't surprising that the attack on
area studies may soon be enshrined in law. On 21 October last year, the
House of Representatives passed the International Studies in Higher
Education Act, HR 3077. The bill is part of the Higher Education Act
reauthorisation known as Title VI, which dates back to 1959 and mandates
federal funding of international studies and foreign languages. Title VI
renews international education and language-training programmes and has
made several important improvements, but it also contains provisions that
would impinge on curricula, faculty hiring and course materials in
institutions that accept federal funding.

A key figure behind HR 3077 is Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the
Hoover Institution and an associate of Kramer and Pipes. Testifying before
the House on 19 June 2003, Kurtz accused scholars of the Middle East and
other areas of abusing Title VI support with their 'extreme and one-sided
criticisms of American foreign policy'. He believes that the basic premise
of post-colonial theory is that 'it is immoral for a scholar to put his
knowledge of foreign languages and cultures at the service of American
power' and cites Edward Said's work in this area as the most pernicious.
Kurtz's testimony was accepted by Congress without debate and many of his
recommendations for 'repairing' the damage were adopted by the House.

Potentially the most onerous of these recommendations is the establishment
of an international higher education advisory board to ensure that
government-funded programmes 'reflect diverse perspectives and the full
range of views on world regions, foreign languages and international
affairs'. The board would have seven members: three appointed by the
secretary of education, of whom two will 'represent federal agencies that
have national security responsibilities'; two appointed by the speaker of
the House of Representatives; and two by the president pro tempore of the
Senate. One of the board's functions will be to recommend ways 'to improve
programmes . . . to better reflect the national needs related to homeland
security'.

The board's recommendations will not be subject to review or approval by
any officer of the federal government, including the secretary of
education. And, although the bill states that the board is not authorised
to 'mandate, direct or control an institution of higher education's
specific instructional content, curriculum or programme of instruction',
it is authorised 'to study, monitor, apprise and evaluate' a sample of
activities supported under Title VI. Which amounts to the same thing:
unprecedented federally mandated intrusion into the content and conduct of
university-based area studies programmes.

There is a great deal at stake for American higher education and academic
freedom. If HR 3077 becomes law - the Senate will review the bill next -
it will create a board that monitors how closely universities reflect
government policy. Since the legislation assumes that any flaw lies 'with
the experts, not the policy', the government could be given the power to
introduce politically sympathetic voices into the academic mainstream and
to reshape the boundaries of academic inquiry. Institutional resistance
would presumably be punished by the withdrawal of funds, which would be
extremely damaging to Middle East centres especially.

HR 3077 contains other provisions that are equally outrageous. For
example, it requires Title VI institutions to provide government
recruiters with access to students and student recruiting information. The
bill even directs the secretary of education and the advisory board to
study - i.e. spy on - communities of US citizens who speak a foreign
language, 'particularly such communities that include speakers of
languages that are critical to the national security of the United
States'.

What all this boils down to is an attempt to silence criticism of US
policy, and put an end to disagreement with the neo-conservative agenda.
It is not diversity that is being sought but conformity.

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