Institutions and individuals are leaving MESA in droves.
Tag: Middle East Studies Association
To boycott or not to boycott?
How can MESA members dissent from its boycott madness?
The (sad) state of Middle Eastern studies
Aside from double standards, politicization, boycotts, and foreign money, Mideast studies are just fine.
Israel boycotters convene in Denver
MESA, now a boycott-Israel association, pretends to be academic.
The incredible shrinking MESA
MESA has left behind scholarship for boycott politics.
MESA, Bernard Lewis, MLK, and antisemitism (social media round-up)
A few of Martin Kramer's pointers from spring 2018, on MESA, Bernard Lewis, antisemitism, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
The decline of Palestine studies
The numbers don't lie: Palestinian studies aren't what they used to be, and that's a good thing.
Radicals strap suicide belt on MESA
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) takes a step toward boycotting Israel. What an opportunity!
Boycott fever at MESA
If MESA boycotts Israel, here's a plan: counter-boycott.
Hero’s Welcome for Hater of Israel at MESA
MESA greets an Israel-hater with a standing ovation.
Me and My MESA
Martin Kramer attends MESA. Why does he bother?
A smoke screen for Palestine-pushers
Government funding for area studies is controversial. The president of MESA wants you to think it isn't.
Boycott me. Please.
The academic boycotters want to force Martin Kramer to express views that aren't his. Won't happen.
MESA: The Academic Intifada
Every three years, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) brings its annual conference to Washington, presumably to impress upon lawmakers the relevance of Middle Eastern studies. The conference is meeting in a Washington hotel right now. So it's an appropriate moment to consider how the field's priorities have shifted since 9/11 and the Iraq war. …
MESA madness
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is meeting at this very moment in Washington. Over at Sandstorm, I do some counting, which reveals the herd instinct at work: MESAns just love to do papers on Palestine and the Palestinians. Read the column to find out why. And here's a pop question: what's the least-studied Arab …
Sandbox calls MESA elections!
Elections for president of the Middle East Studies Association ended last Friday. The results won't be announced until the association holds its annual conference in another month. But I've closed my own straw poll, and on its basis, I'm going to project a winner: Zachary Lockman (NYU) will beat Mark Tessler (Michigan). Now you may …
MESA chooses, and you can too
Members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) are electing their president, an annual ritual that has symbolic value. The outcome usually moves between radicalism and sobriety in alternate years. Consider the most recent choices, in reverse chronological order: incoming president Juan Cole (radical), Ali Banuazizi (sober), Laurie Brand (radical), Lisa Anderson (sober), Joel Beinin …
MESA jumps in Massad’s trench
You remember Joseph Massad (how could you not?), the assistant professor who's been at the heart of Columbia's Middle Eastern studies scandal. Last spring, a university panel investigated allegations that he intimidated a student over her politics. Massad denied it, but the panel found the student credible, and a cloud hangs over his tenure prospects. …
Gullible MESAn Walked the “Arab Street”
This evening, the participants in the annual Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference in San Francisco will assemble in plenary session, to hear an address by MESA's president, Laurie Brand. The title: "Scholarship in the Shadow of Empire." (Presumably that's the American empire, not the Abbasid.) When Brand delivers her address, she'll be preaching to …
Bernard Lewis and MESA’s Shame
The president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has just published a letter to members of the association. So I have exercised my prerogative as the anti-MESA, to write my own letter to the members. Check back soon: letters to MESA could become a habit. Dear MESA members, We last met in Chicago in …
Glasnost in MESA
Lisa Anderson, dean of international affairs at Columbia and president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), has sent a letter to members in the current MESA Newsletter. It contains a remarkably frank indictment of the performance of Middle Eastern studies over the past decade. Anderson describes how the Middle East stagnated in the 1990s, …
Profs Duped by Sami Al-Arian
In recent years, Sami Al-Arian has been a celebrity among Arab-Americans and American apologists for Islamism. Yes, Al-Arian, a Palestinian professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida (USF), was suspected of close ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group specializing in suicide attacks against civilians in Israel. But the smooth-talking, …
The Incredible Shrinking MESA
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) will convene next weekend in Washington, for its annual conference. An article in the current issue of The Nation reports that "at its upcoming annual conference, MESA is expected to pass a resolution condemning Campus Watch, similar to the one it unanimously endorsed 18 years ago censuring the efforts …
MESA: Nothing Learned, Nothing Forgotten
A Washington friend has rushed ahead of me, reading through the program of the next annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). That conference will meet at the end of November in Washington. (Every third year, the meeting takes place in the nation's capital, in order to demonstrate the health of Middle Eastern …
Terrorism? What terrorism?!
This op-ed by Martin Kramer appeared in the Wall Street Journal on November 15, 2001. Posted retroactively at Sandbox. The Middle East Studies Association of North America convenes Saturday in San Francisco. Its membership includes 2,600 "experts" on the Middle East, most of them based in universities. On Sept. 21, MESA's board issued a statement …
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