Author: Martin Kramer

Ammar Abdulhamid in senile Syria

On By Martin Kramer

Ammar Abdbulhamid, the Syrian reformer and dissident, is the subject of a profile in this morning’s New York Times. Abdulhamid is a courageous spokesman for progressive change in the Arab world, who’s also drawn attention to the obligation of governments to protect minorities a point on which Arab regimes historically have had an appalling record. Abdulhamid appeared together with me at The Washington Institute last December, and we shared a panel on the theme of what happens “When Minorities Rule.” Here’s a summary of his forthright remarks, devoted largely to Syria. (And here’s a summary and full text of my own presentation.)

Abdulhamid returned to Damascus last month (he had done a stint at the Saban Center), and he started a blog, here. It’s got exactly one entry, in which he reports that his travel has been restricted:

It’s been 20 days since our return to the Senile Country. A cold security reception at the airport set the tone of this homecoming, more or less, and culminated in a travel ban. Still, seeing the kids at the airport was absolutely rejuvenating.

The travel ban is not total, that is, I can still travel if I want, provided that I get a security clearance before I leave and report back upon my return.

Oh, of all the stupid things they could do? Did they really think they can put me on a leash? Did they think that I’d accept, that I’d cooperate? Well, they have another thing coming. I happen to be very much fond of the idea of staying at home at this stage and cutting down on travel time. I have proposals and articles to write, a team to enlarge, conferences to plan and people to hassle. This is going to be a productive year, a very productive year for all of us here.

Sandbox will track his adventures closely.

Update: Abdulhamid has made another blog entry, his second, this Sunday morning. Today he had a meeting with the Military Security Apparatus, and he goes back tomorrow. (The brigadier general was too busy to see him…)

Ivory Towers 101

On By Martin Kramer

I’m keenly interested in the way my book Ivory Towers on Sand is used in university-level courses on the Middle East. Here are two recent examples turned up by a quick search.

This past fall, Professor Rex Brynen, a political scientist at McGill University, assigned the book toward the end of his course on “Middle East Politics.” Brynen, who reviewed my book in the Middle East Journal (he didn’t like it), taught it alongside the 2003 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) presidential address by Lisa Anderson. Rex, I hope you did me justice. Syllabus here.

A fall course at the University of Arizona (headquarters of MESA) dealt with “Middle East Studies: Approaches, Themes and Controversies.” Professor Michael Bonine, a geographer, coordinated the course, which incorporated lectures by an array of faculty members from different departments. The syllabus mentions only one required reading, Ivory Towers, although other readings were to be assigned as the course progressed. The book probably loomed large toward the end of the semester, in two sessions on “Middle East Studies in Crisis?” (Is that really a question?) Syllabus here.

I don’t imagine I got much sympathy from the instructors in either course, but I commend them for making space for a dissenting view. If you assigned the book this past fall, or are using it this spring, send me the link. I might mention your course here, and your syllabus will become famous.

Profs say the darndest things (about Columbia)

On By Martin Kramer

“Columbia has a lot of diversity in the professors teaching about the Middle East, even politically.” That’s Joel Migdal, president of the Association for Israel Studies and a political scientist at the University of Washington. It’s the most inane thing yet retailed about Columbia’s Middle East faculty, and it shows how incredibly fungible the notion of “diversity” is within academe. Migdal’s last name means “tower,” and he seems to inhabit one.

I’d be interested to hear Professor Migdal elaborate on his statement to explain, with his rigorous attention to detail, what distinguishes Joseph Massad’s concept of Israeli racism from Hamid Dabashi’s concept of Israeli racism, or why Massad’s one-state solution is different from Rashid Khalidi’s one-state solution. (To judge from their recent joint appearance, any difference between the two seems to have shrunk appreciably.) And I wonder what he would say to Richard Bulliet, who’s taught Islamic history at Columbia for thirty years, and who now describes the Middle East department as being “locked into a postmodernist, postcolonialist point of view.”

There’s a broader context here. Despite Migdal’s presidential title, he won’t be well-known to you if your sole interest is Israel studies. That’s because he’s best-known as the co-author (with Baruch Kimmerling) of the standard post-Zionist history of the Palestinians. The revised edition is titled The Palestinian People: A History, and it carries the endorsement of Rashid Khalidi (“a dispassionate and balanced analysis”). What all this says about the priorities of Israel studies in America is a subject for another posting.

There was another recent quote that doesn’t contribute to the discussion, this one from Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz in his Columbia speech on Monday. He got the essence of the problem just right: Columbia’s coverage of the Middle East is the most unbalanced of any university in America. But I don’t believe, as Dershowitz is reported to have said, that Edward Said was the “Palestinian Meir Kahane.” Said came to advocate the dissolution of Israel, but he never exalted violence, which is the mark of Kahanism. If Meir Kahane has a parallel, it’s the suicide-cult priests of Hamas (whose “moderation,” of course, is a matter of general consensus among America’s Middle East experts).

In my book Ivory Towers on Sand, I quoted the historian Maxime Rodinson, who said that Said employed a style that was “a bit Stalinist,” and the historian P.J. Vatikiotis, who wrote that “Said introduced McCarthyism into Middle Eastern studies.” Said wasn’t a Palestinian Stalin (there’s another candidate), but a Palestinian McCarthy? Absolutely. What we’ve seen at Columbia among Said’s acolytes is that same underlying McCarthyism, stripped of the veneer of learned respectability that Edward Said gave to everything he touched.