Tag: Title VI

USA Today, Duped by Michigan Profs!

On By Martin Kramer

USA Today runs an editorial this morning against the advisory board provision of H.R. 3077, the International Studies in Higher Education Act. The editorial opens by presenting the University of Michigan’s faculty as scholars with their shoulders to the wheel:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the University of Michigan has tried to help the U.S. government understand anti-U.S. terrorism in the Arab world and deal with the threat. It has increased the enrollment of students studying Arabic tenfold, helped military leaders learn about the culture of Islamic countries and led seminars for State Department officials on waging public diplomacy.

Michigan and dozens of other universities have expanded their Middle Eastern studies using a $90 million-a-year federal grant program designed to increase the number of Arabic translators and analysts the government can hire. But some squeamish members of Congress who don’t trust what university professors teach about Middle East politics jeopardize the efforts.

Now who are those distrustful Congressmen to get in the way of the good Arabic professors at the University of Michigan, who are helping us beat back the terrorists by teaching Arabic to future government officials?

Dear readers, USA Today has been completely and utterly duped. The University of Michigan is famous for its Arabic instruction. It’s also infamous for its consistent refusal, before 9/11 and since, to cooperate with the federal government in training Arabists for government service.

The Title VI program—that $90 million-a-year-program—isn’t designed to increase the number of Arabic translators. It’s a subsidy that largely goes to minting new Ph.D.’s., who want jobs in universities. That’s why Washington, a few years back, came up with the idea of government-funded language academies on American campuses. The government would fund some teaching positions and student fellowships. The grads would incur a service obligation. It’s now called the National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI)—a part of the National Security Education Program—and Washington wanted to implement it for Arabic at the University of Michigan.

In October 2001, The Michigan Daily reported that the university’s Arabic department had been offered funds by the NFLI pilot program, and was considering accepting them. But the department was “currently debating the pros and cons.” In particular, some of the faculty were “worried about whether the program goals, for students to learn Arabic and then use the language for work in the Federal Bureau of Investigation or other governmental agencies, clashes with the mission of the department.”

In the end, Michigan turned Washington down. “We didn’t want our students to be known as spies in training,” puffed Carol Bardenstein, an assistant professor of Arabic literature and culture. “By intertwining intelligence and academics, we’d essentially be recruiting Arabs to later inform on members of their own community.” Time ran the story under the headline: “No Spooks, Please. We’re Academics.”

Michigan wasn’t alone. When the board of the Middle East Studies Association ( MESA) met the following spring, it issued a resolution calling on MESA members and institutions not to accept NFLI funding. MESA 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.” The board has yet to rescind that decision. (But the University of Washington took the funds for Arabic anyway.)

And the University of Michigan? Oh, they came out just fine. They turned down the NFLI, but they came up winners in the next Title VI cycle. So they’re swimming in fellowship money to produce more academics. And their Arabic professors won’t have to soil their reputations by teaching those “spies in training.” You see, Title VI is a wonderful no-strings-attached subsidy, an entitlement, the great fellowship slush fund by which academics clone themselves. Remember Professor Bardenstein, quoted above? She spent three years on a Title VI fellowship, doing a thesis on an obscure nineteenth-century Egyptian translator of French literature. Why did the United States pay for such extravagance? On the assumption that somehow, some way, her knowing Arabic might serve the national interest. Now do you believe that?

In response to H.R. 3077, the academics are mounting a massive campaign of deception and disinformation. I’m impressed: some prof or public relations official at Michigan duped the editors at USA Today into presenting the professors at Ann Arbor as team-players in the war on terror, when in fact they’ve refused to play ball. These profs aren’t part of the solution to the shortage of Arabic-competent people in government service. They’re part of the problem, and they’re why, after forty-five years of Title VI, we still don’t have enough of the right people in the right places.

Title VI will cost you and me half a billion dollars over the next five years. It’s received a massive increase in funding since 9/11. It’s time for Congress to cut through all the half-truths and falsehoods churned out by professors and education lobbyists. We need to know if Title VI meets some national need, and if not, how it should be improved. That’s why Title VI needs an advisory board.

Stanley Kurtz, also in USA Today, makes the case for just such a board.

Clarification. MESA’s board has never rescinded its anti-NFLI resolution. A full year after its passage, and in response to continued criticism, the board deleted the paragraph urging MESA member institutions not to take NFLI funds. However, another resolution against accepting funding from the National Security Education Program, the NFLI’s parent program, still stands, and figures prominently on MESA’s website.

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.

U. of California’s Deans Don’t Quite Get It

On By Martin Kramer

This morning’s San Francisco Chronicle runs an op-ed on H.R. 3077 by two heavy-hitters in the University of California system: Geoffrey Garrett, vice provost and dean of the UCLA International Institute, and David Leonard, dean of International and Area Studies at Berkeley. It’s the most intelligent thing that academics have produced so far in response to the bill. They don’t make the absurd claim that the Title VI advisory board would interfere in curriculum, and they accept the idea of a board in principle. But they do propose a change in the board’s composition. Unfortunately, this proposal rests on yet another misreading of the bill.

This is what they write:

The legislation dictates that the [seven-member] advisory board include two members from national security agencies, such as the CIA and the Department of Defense….Why should the national security agencies be singled out above other organizations concerned with international studies and foreign language education?

If any federal agency should be given privileged representation on the board, it is the Department of State. With decades of experience in educational and cultural exchange such as the Fulbright program, the State Department is best suited to help promote international higher education—particularly given the importance of fostering mutual understanding in the post-Sept. 11 world.

How have Professors Garrett and Leonard misread the bill? The two advisory board members who would represent government (and who would be appointed by the Secretary of Education) would not be appointed “from national security agencies.” Rather, they would be appointed from “agencies with national security responsibilities”—that’s the exact language of the bill.

What is an agency with national security responsibilities? Look at the definition used for the purposes of another government-supported program, the National Security Education Program (NSEP), which funds scholarships for students who commit themselves to work in just these agencies. That definition includes these executive departments: the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury—and, yes, the Department of State. All of these departments are deemed to have “national security responsibilities.”

I agree with Professors Garrett and Leonard that there are no grounds to privilege the Department of Defense and the CIA over the Department of State, and the bill doesn’t do that. I hope they would agree that there is also no reason to exclude defense and intelligence agencies in appointments to the board, or to marginalize one department by privileging another. After all, these departments are part of one government, and all of them have needs in the field of international relations.

Congress must be wary lest it lend its hand to an academic boycott of the country’s intelligence and defense agencies, by excluding their representatives from the board. In the present bill, the Secretary of Education is given full discretion to make these two appointments, from whichever agency he or she sees fit. There is no credible reason to limit that discretion. The language of the bill on this point is perfect just as it is.

Professors Garrett and Leonard have one more complaint:

We are further concerned by the proposal that the board be given unusually broad powers to investigate grantee activities, by drawing on the full information available in all government agencies—including intelligence agencies. Because the activities of the Title VI programs are public, why should it be necessary to consult intelligence files to determine the range of the views they present?

This is a reference to a boiler-plate provision of the bill, which gives the advisory board the authority to secure from anywhere in government the information it needs to make its recommendations. That authority is essential, and it has nothing to do with investigating anyone’s views.

For example, one of the nagging questions about the Title VI program is how many of its beneficiaries go into government service. In April of last year, the president of the American Council on Education, David Ward, testified in support of Title VI before Congress, and made this claim:

Many of the graduates who benefited from these programs have gone on to serve in key U.S. government positions… Anecdotal (because the data are classified) evidence suggests that most career security foreign language and area specialists in agencies such as CIA and DIA were trained at institutions with Title VI centers. A local newspaper, for example, recently printed a picture of an intelligence officer in Afghanistan who had received language training at a Title VI center.

When Dr. Ward made this claim, I myself contested aspects of it, again on the basis of anecdotal evidence. But why should a government advisory board, presumably including two government officials, be limited to anecdotal evidence? Only agencies of government can tell the advisory board whether they benefit from the program in the way Dr. Ward claims they do.

So it’s perfectly proper that the law require those agencies to cooperate with the board in its work. The board’s recommendations on the effectiveness of Title VI—which spends $100 million of taxpayers’ money a year—should be grounded in fact and not anecdotes, especially when some of the facts are just waiting to be harvested in Washington.

Thanks to Professors Garrett and Leonard, the debate about H.R. 3077 in academe has moved forward. Yet they still don’t adequately grasp all aspects of the bill’s language and intent. It’s odd that Washington should have to educate the academy in the precise reading of a text. Call it an education.

Berkeley addendum. Over at Berkeley, the head of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Professor Nezar AlSayyad, has called H.R. 3077 “an attempt to silence those who criticize the government.” He has also announced that his center, which now receives a hefty Title VI subsidy, will not apply for funding if the bill is passed. This, from a man whose main claim to administrative fame is the establishment of an Arab studies program named after the Saudi defense minister Prince Sultan, pumped up with $5 million from the Prince Sultan Charity Foundation. One wonders how much criticism of the Saudi government emerges from Berkeley’s center.

I’m going to hold Professor AlSayyad to his word. Let Berkeley’s Middle East center not apply. It will be one less application that has to be read and processed in Washington.