Author: Martin Kramer

H.R. 3077: The Dean’s Deception

On By Martin Kramer

Congress is back to business in Washington. That business includes H.R.3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act, which the House of Representatives passed unanimously last autumn. Now the bill is in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican. The bill, it will be recalled, would establish an International Advisory Board for the Title VI program, which subsidizes foreign area studies in U.S. universities. The board would advise the Department of Education and the Congress on how Title VI might best meet national needs.

I’ve written a great deal at Sandstorm in support of this legislation, as has Stanley Kurtz over at National Review Online. Recently, other knowledgeable people have come forward to put the the legislation in proper context. Diane Jones, director of the government affairs office at Princeton, has written a piece in the Yale Daily News, calling the reaction of some academics to the bill a “panic.” Her conclusion: “The roles and responsibilities of the International Advisory Board, as outlined in the final version of the House bill, are in alignment with those of other federal advisory boards.” Kenneth D. Whitehead, a former Department of Education assistant secretary, has published a strong endorsement of the bill and the proposed board. Whitehead: “As the federal official who administered and supervised Title VI from 1982 through 1989, I know the program inside and out—and I know that it needs an advisory board.” The message sent by Jones and Whitehead is clear: H.R.3077 falls entirely within the range of sound and responsible legislation.

The creation of some sort of a board now seems inevitable. That has left academic opponents of H.R.3077 with one remaining gambit: revising the composition of the board itself. The House version of the bill envisions a seven-member board. Two members would be appointed by the President pro-tem of the Senate, and two by the Speaker of the House, in both instances on recommendation of the majority and minority leaders. Three members would be appointed by the Secretary of Education, two of whom would represent agencies with national security responsibilities. (In an earlier posting, I explained what that means.)

Whitehead, in his endorsement, called this composition “a perfect formula.” But some academics disagree. They want to rob Congress of any say in appointments, and they want to keep out representatives of any agency that has a role in national security. So they are proposing a different kind of advisory board, comprised of…themselves. Yes, the academics want to be the ones to advise Washington on how to meet national needs.

The champion of this alternative is Professor Lisa Anderson, dean of international affairs at Columbia University. A journalist who spoke to her paraphrased her position in these words: Why an advisory council composed of political appointees? Why not turn supervision over to an august body like the National Research Council? Why not represent nongovernmental organizations or educational institutions themselves, all of which have a stake in the work of international-studies research?

Anderson’s position has been adopted by Columbia itself. The university’s director of government relations, Ellen Smith, has been quoted as saying: “We feel that an advisory board with goals set by an independent body such as the National Academy of Sciences would make most sense.” This proposal apparently has been conveyed to Senator Hillary Clinton, the New York Democrat who also sits on the HELP Committee.

Let me not put too fine a point on it: the Anderson/Columbia proposal would effectively gut H.R.3077. If any variation of it were to creep into the Senate version of the bill, I and others who have supported the legislation would turn against it with a vengeance. Why? It’s a ploy to keep Congress, government departments, and experienced non-academics completely out of the Title VI advisory process.

To understand how it’s a ploy, you have to know something about the National Academy of Sciences and its instrument, the National Research Council. These are august bodies, but they also have absolutely no connection to area studies. They deal exclusively with real science. Look at the governing board of the National Research Council. It’s chaired by a biochemist, vice-chaired by an engineer, and presided over by a physician. Every member of the governing board comes from the hard sciences or engineering.

Professor Anderson knows this perfectly well. She also knows that such a body would come straight to her and the university-based mandarins for “expertise.” The resulting board would be a rubber-stamp for the beneficiaries of Title VI subsidies, instead of a tool for critical scrutiny by independent observers. In the twisted vision behind this proposal, the stakeholders of Title VI are the professors themselves, not the U.S. government or the American people. Whitehead has put it best:

The alternative proposals for a board now floating around academe would all effectively mandate the academic beneficiaries of Title VI to monitor and advise themselves. I know from past experience that such a board would be worse than useless. You cannot set national priorities by peer review. The vast majority of academics have neither the knowledge of nor, apparently, any great concern about the needs of government. The Department of Education doesn’t need more advice from academics; it needs more advice from other government departments and experts with international experience. Only they can tell whether Title VI is pulling its weight.

Senators: the present composition of the board, itself the product of a compromise, strikes just the right balance among competing interests. Don’t be deceived. You have it within your power to launch a new era of area studies in the United States, one of genuine partnership between government and academe—provided the bill passes just as it is.

Addendum: Some Advice for Georgetown. The Washington Post ran an inept article on Middle Eastern studies last week, mixing up everything: Campus Watch, Daniel Pipes, H.R.3077, you name it. The issues were beyond the grasp of the journalist. But there’s a remarkable quote there, from Professor Michael Hudson, director of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS). Hudson is reacting to the idea of an advisory board for Title VI:

We are very sensitive to having strings attached to what we do. If an Arab government came to us and said, “We will give you money, but we will have an advisory body check up on what you do with it,” I don’t think we would take the money.

Let’s leave aside the obvious fallacy: the U.S. government is not on par with an Arab government, because it’s our government, and it’s accountable. It has a legal obligation to check up on what is done with taxpayer dollars.

But there’s another fallacy here, Professor Hudson. Your CCAS already has a board of advisors. Its members include Prince Turki Al-Faisal bin Abd Al-Aziz Al-Saud, former head of Saudi intelligence and now Saudi ambassador to London; and Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Saud Al-Thani, former ambassador of Qatar to Washington and a high official in the Emir of Qatar’s protocol office. That establishes what CCAS is prepared to do for a riyal. It’s just a question of the price.

Dr. Rashid and Mr. Khalidi

On By Martin Kramer

On December 11, Al-Jazeera’s program “From Washington” held a discussion on Middle Eastern studies in the United States. Chief guest: Professor Rashid Khalidi, the newly-seated incumbent of the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of that university’s (government-subsidized) Middle East Institute. He said little that was original or surprising—until the end, when he blew a gasket and uttered the sort of thing he would only dare to say in Arabic.

It happened like this. At one point in the discussion, Khalidi criticized think tanks “that don’t want true dialogue with people whose views differ from their own, but who want to force their opinions on American citizens and the world.” He mentioned, by way of example, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which he labelled “the fiercest of the enemies of the Arabs and the Muslims.”

The moderator, Hafiz al-Mirazi, played devil’s advocate. Hadn’t the Institute often hosted Arabs and others holding diverse views? It had provided a podium for Nabil Amr, Palestinian information minister, as well as Egyptian presidential adviser Osama al-Baz. Just recently, Washington Institute mainstay David Makovsky had written a joint op-ed with an Egyptian writer from Al-Ahram (the reference was to Dr. Hala Mustafa, a visiting fellow), on democracy promotion in the Arab world.

At this point, Khalidi boiled over:

By God, I say that the participation of the sons or daughters of the Arabs in the plans and affairs of this institute is a huge error, this Israeli institute in Washington, an institute founded by AIPAC, the Zionist lobby, and that hosts tens of Israelis every year. The presence of an Arab or two each year can’t disguise the nature of this institute as the most important center of Zionist interests in Washington for at least a decade. I very much regret the participation of Arab officials and non-officials and academics in the activities of this institute, because in fact if you look at the output of this institute, it’s directed against the Palestinians, against the Arabs, and against the Muslims in general. Its products describe the Palestinians as terrorists, and in fact its basic function is to spread lies and falsehoods about the Arab world, of course under an academic, scholarly veneer. Basically, this is the most important Zionist propaganda tool in the United States.

This is the intimidating language of Arab boycott, aimed against an institution with entirely American credentials. The Washington Institute is directed by Ambassador Dennis Ross, who was the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He has always been a model of balance (unlike Khalidi, whose forays into politics have always been to advise Yasir Arafat). The Washington Institute is run by Americans, and accepts funds only from American sources. (Contrast with the donors of Khalidi’s chair, whose precise identities Columbia still refuses to reveal.)

And it is outrageous for Khalidi to denounce the Arabs who have come to The Washington Institute as blundering dupes. I was there in the fall, when the Institute brought to Washington a group of Palestinian Fatah activists associated with the Tanzim (an invitation for which Ross took a lot of flak). While in Washington, these Palestinians said things that could hardly be squared with “Zionist propaganda.” Who is Khalidi to tell them they made a “huge error”? For its annual fall conference, the Institute flew in three members of Iraq’s Governing Council, whose country would still be under Saddam’s iron rule if Khalidi had had his way. Who is he to tell them they made a “huge error”? The year before last, my stay coincided with that of Ali Salem, the Egyptian playwright who has faced down Egypt’s entire literary establishment, and who once was detained for his collaboration with democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. Who in the world is Khalidi to tell him that he made a “huge error”? I doubt these steel-belted Arabs would ever allow themselves to be intimidated by a pampered prof enjoying the full Columbia treatment.

I note that Khalidi has never made a comparable statement in English, probably for this reason: it would damage his reputation as a bridge-building moderate. To maintain that image, he’s even shared podiums with members of The Washington Institute (to wit, David Makovsky). But Khalidi in Arabic, on Al-Jazeera, is someone else altogether. There he is the bridge-burner, the zealot who would warn other Arabs away from The Washington Institute because it is “Israeli,” and a “Zionist propaganda tool.” Behold, Arab-style McCarthyism.

Khalidi’s crude outburst won’t stop the caravan, but it does put yet another question mark alongside his name. I have never called him an apologist for terrorism, and I respect some of his historical scholarship. But I once heard him speak to a predominantly Arab audience, and it alarmed me. This latest statement confirms something I’ve suspected ever since: he isn’t all he appears to be. Caveat emptor—buyer beware. (Too late for Columbia, but not for the rest of us.)

And speaking of Columbia, what has Khalidi done to promote what he calls “true dialogue” since his September enthronement in the Edward Said Chair? Two Israelis—academic post-Zionists—spoke at his institute this past semester. He and they would have nodded in agreement over Israel’s alleged misdeeds. I don’t think that’s good enough, and it leaves me wondering (again) why his institute gets what The Washington Institute doesn’t get: a $400,000-a-year Title VI handout from the American taxpayer. It’s a dubious mechanism that puts such a hefty subsidy at the disposal of an Arab boycotter. It really should be fixed.

Saddam in Court: Who’s on Trial?

On By Martin Kramer

With Saddam in U.S. hands, thoughts turn to his future trial. Various pundits have claimed that it won’t be enough to examine Saddam’s crimes. It will also be necessary to probe U.S. and Western support for his regime, during the decade of the Iran-Iraq war and the lead-up to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The late Elie Kedourie, historian and political theorist at the London School of Economics, put the issue in just the right perspective, in an interview granted in June 1992. (This was less than three weeks before his untimely passing.) Kedourie, it will be recalled, was a native of Baghdad, and an acute observer of Iraq’s troubled history. The interviewer told him that a Paris-based scholar had declared Saddam to be a “creature of the West.” Kedourie’s reply:

I do not understand what he means by that. If he means that it was Western governments that put him in power, then that is not true. If he means that from 1980 to 1990 the American and French governments and German firms did their best to help him, this is perfectly true. But you have to look at what their intentions were….The Americans believed, mistakenly I think, that if they did not do something in order to stop Khomeini, he would sweep over the whole of the Middle East. I think there was little prospect of that, but that is what they believed and therefore they chose to support Saddam. Again, within its own terms it was a rational if mistaken calculation. It was a terrible mistake, which lay at the back of the invasion of Kuwait and the war that followed, which I consider an unnecessary war. It was the result of policies that the Americans had followed vis-à-vis Saddam for ten years and that made him think that he could invade Kuwait with impunity.

A calculation went wrong. But I do not think that there was anything else there. Saddam is not a creature of the West. He is not a creature of anybody.

There are two crucial points here. First, Kedourie knew far too much about Iraq to regard Saddam as the West’s creation. He understood precisely which tectonic forces, by their immense internal pressures, had combined to produce him.

Second, Kedourie did not rail against the United States for its best-guess policies of the 1980s. He regarded the U.S. decision to back Saddam against Iran as a mistake and a miscalculation. But as a thinking historian, who never stopped reading in diplomatic archives, Kedourie thought it perfectly legitimate for states to calculate and act on self-interest. (This was always preferable to action the name of ideology. Ideological states, Kedourie believed, were intrinsically dangerous to their peoples and their neighbors.) Kedourie also knew and expected that states, working in a fog of partial knowledge, were bound to make mistakes in pursuing their interests. He never set himself up in Olympian judgment of policymakers for these sorts of errors.

But while he could understand errors of calculation, he could not pardon failures of will. For Kedourie, support for Saddam before 1990 was an error, but the decision not to remove him in 1991 was a failure. U.S. leaders lacked the will to act in pursuit of the U.S. national interest, and so fell down on their sworn duty. In a May 1991 lecture, Kedourie said this:

The American campaign stopped in its tracks by order of the president. Given this aggression by Iraq, and given that Iraq had to be stopped, one would have thought that it would be quite meaningless simply to liberate Kuwait and leave untouched the structures of the Baathist regime which had organized and committed the aggression. Iraq is a very populous and a rich country. If the regime remains in place, there is no way it can be prevented from reestablishing itself and acquiring new supplies of weapons of all kinds….It may not be possible next time around to organize an expedition of half a million troops and an armada in order to deal with this recurrent situation. So as things look to me now, the aftermath of the Gulf war seems a tremendous failure for the U.S.

As usual, Kedourie shows us the way. Saddam was no one’s creature. It would be an affront to justice to diminish Saddam’s criminal culpability by invoking U.S. policy mistakes, however egregious. Mistakes are not crimes.

The decision that left Saddam in power in 1991 was a monumental failure, and one that history has already judged severely. But at least credit those who did organize an expedition and an armada in 2003, and who did their duty despite the criticism of feckless “allies” and the absence of “international legitimacy.” Some of those who launched this expedition were party to the previous mistake and the earlier failure. By their actions this year, they have balanced the books—and then some.