Author: Martin Kramer

A policy toward Shiism?

On By Martin Kramer

Back in October, I made a presentation at the annual fall conference of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, on a panel entitled “Shiites and U.S. Policy: Between Allies and Adversaries.” I’ve been sent the proofs of my remarks for publication, and they look clean, so I’m posting them here. My main argument: two discourses are competing for Shiite allegiance, democracy and resistance. Read on.

If you want more basic information on the location of Shiites in the Middle East, consult this interactive map. And I admire this article by Vali Nasr, on regional implications of the Shiite revival in Iraq.

Why Harvard isn’t Columbia

On By Martin Kramer

Today’s Harvard Crimson runs an article on the crisis at Columbia. There isn’t much new there, except at the end, where the reporter asks a Harvard professor of Middle Eastern history, Roger Owen, why Harvard isn’t plagued with a similiar problem. Owen’s reply: “Columbia, being in New York, gets invaded by the ideologies of the city itself. The Arab-Israeli dispute, which is hot in New York, tends to be represented on campus in a much more direct way than it would be on the Harvard campus.”

Owen has the order of things wrong. Columbia was invaded not by the “ideologies of the city” (to my ear, a suspect phrase). It was invaded, conquered, and occupied by the ideologies of radical third worldism and Arab-Palestinian nationalism, sometimes borne directly to it from the Middle East. The reason Harvard doesn’t have a comparable problem (at least not yet) is because the administration has pretty much blocked the development of the modern Middle Eastern field. Why? Perhaps it doesn’t particularly trust Owen and his colleagues to bring in the right people.

Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversity, which it marked by publishing a slick 200-page celebration of the Center’s history and ideas for its future. Many of the contributors to the volume complained that the university has avoided authorizing appointments. (“The primary weakness in the study of Middle East politics at Harvard,” wrote one contributor, is “the failure to make senior appointments in Middle East politics.”) But Harvard doesn’t need a Columbia-style train wreck, and if the Columbia disaster hasn’t resonated at Harvard, it means that prudence has paid off. Until Owen and friends acknowledge that the field has an internal problem, and propose a strategy to circumvent it they’ve done neither there’s no reason for the university to change course. Roger, over and out.

Sorry, Joel Beinin. You lose

On By Martin Kramer

The National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI) is a program designed to promote the study of difficult languages among recruits to U.S. national security agencies. The government provides funds for intensive language programs at select universities, and gives scholarships to students enrolled in those programs, in return for a service obligation. It’s part of the National Security Education Program, which operates under the auspices of the Defense Department.

When the program was first launched as a pilot, in 2002, the board of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) passed a militant resolution against it. A radical leftist, Stanford’s Joel Beinin (pictured), presided over the association at the time, and led MESA’s campaign against the program. The board expressed itself “uneasy” about “the direct link that [the NFLI] envisions between academic programs and government employment.” It was “apprehensive” that the program would link all language students “by association” with the Defense Department. And MESA feared that the program “may foster the already widespread impression that academic researchers from the United States are directly involved in government activities.” Last line: “We recommend that MESA members and institutions not seek or accept funding for the NFLI as presently defined, constituted, and administered.”

I was the first critic to turn a spotlight on this outrageous resolution, in an article entitled “MESA Culpa” (scroll down to “Boycott!”). The Chronicle of Higher Education later ran an article and a colloquy on the subject, where Beinin and I both weighed in. There I wrote:

The universities are not being asked to do classified research, plan military operations, or dabble in counter-insurgency social science. They are simply being asked to do what they already do teach Arabic to people who are committed to serving their country. It is, quite literally, the very least they can do, post-9/11.

As a result of this wave of criticism, a group of concerned MESAns persuaded the board to delete the last line urging MESA members not to take NFLI funds. But that took almost a year, and the rest of the resolution still stands.

I’m now pleased to report that this chapter is closed, and that the Beininite boycott is completely dead. How do we know? Because Georgetown University has just been announced as home to the first NFLI-funded intensive language program for Arabic, called the Center for Advanced Proficiency in Arabic (CAPA).

CAPA will offer up to five hours a day of intensive advanced Arabic during the academic year, with a high student-teacher ratio and lots of diagnostic testing. The idea is to produce truly proficient Arabists. As CAPA points out, “Qualified students may be eligible for federal funding in the form of tuition scholarships and stipends. This funding is for students who are highly committed to work for the federal government.” The NFLI website makes it explicit: scholarships are for those who make a “commitment to federal service in the national security community.”

Sorry, Professor Beinin. You lose this one. Application deadline for the new program is April 20.