Reports yesterday revealed that a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding was detained this week by the U.S. government with the aim of deportation. The arrest came in the wake of a concerted campaign orchestrated by the Middle East Forum (MEF)—who published a press release taking credit for the incident. MEF might require some introduction for the uninitiated. The think tank is the brainchild of one Daniel Pipes, son of the Sovietologist and Cold Warrior Richard Pipes. For Pipes, a Harvard trained orientalist, American imperialism is the order of the day, Israel and Zionism are friends, and Arabs and Islam are enemies. As a producer of propaganda, MEF directly serves the Israeli state. Middle East Forum, and similar outlets, like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP, home to Bernard Lewis acolyte, Martin Kramer), are cognates to better known, general interest outfits like the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. They also share patrons. For scholars working on the Middle East, MEF, Pipes and Karmer, attacks on academic freedom, intimidation, slander, the withdrawal of federal funding, censorship, arrest, and deportation, are familiar territory. Before Canary Mission and AI, we had Campus Watch and Operation Boulder.
Perhaps as one small effort to work against the collective amnesia of the Bush II regime—to say nothing of the conditions of American imperialism and compulsory Zionism in general—I offer below a select bibliography of some writing, primarily with regard to Middle East Studies, but with some attention to both general questions of academic freedom and the travails of related fields. The works below focus primarily on the U.S. imperialism’s historic role in university affairs and the challenges of doing work critical of U.S. foreign policy generally, and Israel and Zionism in particular. Some related work is also referenced for its quality and importance. The excellent essays and articles published on the subject over the last year and half are not included, for now.
Given the frenzy around “gender ideology," we may also note that attacks on Middle East Studies—or mere mention of Palestinian history and solidarity with the Palestinian people—and attacks on Women and Gender Studies have been historically linked, as the experience of Sondra Hale, the feminist anthropologist of Sudan, attests. In 1982, Hale was unceremoniously removed from her position as the director of the Women’s Studies Program at Cal State Long Beach at the outset of the infamous and protracted fight against women’s studies there led by local conservative groups and their allies in Sacramento. After 9/11, Hale, now at UCLA, was one of the founders of California Scholars for Academic Freedom, a group which was and remains relentless in its defense of Palestinian educational institutions and its condemnation of the those efforts, still proliferating to stifle any critique of Israel and Zionism and demonize any mention of BDS.
Finally, it bears repeating, that in every instance, the conditions of scholars in North America, no matter their identity or location, pales in comparison to the genocide being faced now by the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, our colleagues and kin.
****
History
Diamond, Sigmund. Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945-1955. New York: Oxford University Press. 1992.
Fischbach, Michael R. The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Joseph, Suad. “Cooking in the Cauldron: Middle East Studies 1966–2020.” Arab Studies Journal Online 15 February, 2015.
Khalil, Osamah F. America's Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State. Cambrdige, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
Lanza, Fabio. The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017.
Lockman, Zachary. Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.
Mitchell, Timothy. “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science.” In The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, edited by David Szanton, 74-118. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.
Price, David. Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
Schrecker, Ellen. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Sinclair, Upton. The Goose-step: A Study of American Education. Pasadena: the Author, 1923.
Veblen, Thorstein. The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men. New York: B. W. Huebsch. 1918.
Lineages of the Present
Abdel-Malek, Anour. “Orientalism in Crisis.” Diogenes 11:4 (1963): 103-140.
Aruri, Naseer. “Israel’s Strategy for the American Campus: A Threat to Academic Freedom?” The Search: Journal for Arab and Islamic Studies 6 (1985): 102–39.
Barlow, Tani. “Colonialism's Career in Postwar China Studies." positions 1:1 (1993): 224–267.
Cumings, Bruce. “Boundary Displacement: Area studies and International Studies During and After the Cold War,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29 (1997): 6-26.
Gendzier, Irene. Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the Third World. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985.
Harlow, Barbara. “The Intellectuals and the War: An Interview with Edward Said." Middle East Report 171 (1991): 15-18, 20.
Johnson, Peter and Judith Tucker. “Middle East Studies Network in the United States.” Middle East Report 38 (1975): 3-20, 26.
Rafael, Vicente L. “The Cultures of Area Studies in the United States.” Social Text 41 (1994): 91-111.
Sharabi, Hisham ed., Theory, Politics and the Arab World. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.
Said, Edward. “American Intellectuals and Middle East Politics: An Interview with Edward W. Said,” Social Text 19:20 (1988): 37-53.
Said, Edward and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1984
“The MESA Debate: The Scholars, the Media, and the Middle East,” Journal of Palestine Studies 16:2 (1987): 85-10.
The Second Intifada, the Second Bush, and After
"Academic Freedom Under Attack." Special Issue, ACAS Bulletin 69 (2004).
Allen, Lori A., Lara Z. Deeb, and Jessica Winegar, “Academics and the Government in the New American Century: An Interview with Rashid Khalidi.” Radical History Review 93 (2005): 240-259.
Anidjar, Gil. "Campus Watch, Israel Studies, and the Demise of Dissent at Columbia." Tikkun 20:4 (2005): 27-29.
Beinin, Joel. "The Israelization of American Middle East Policy Discourse." Social Text 21: 2 (2003): 125-139.
Brand, Laurie. “Scholarship in the Shadow of Empire.” Review of Middle East Studies 39:1 (2005): 3-18.
Butler, Judith. “Israel/Palestine and the Paradoxes of Academic Freedom.” Radical Philosophy 135 (2006): 8-17.
Carvalho, Edward J. and David B. Downing, eds. Academic Freedom in the Post-9/11 Era. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Dajani, Omar, ed. "Israel, Palestine, and the First Amendment." Special Issue, University of the Pacific Law Review 54:4 (2022-2023).
Davidson, Lawrence. “The Attack on Middle East Studies: A Historical Perspective.” 15:1 (2008): 149-
Dawson, Ashley. “The Crisis at Columbia Academic Freedom, Area Studies and Contingent Labor in the Contemporary Academy.” Social Text 90:25 (2007): 63-84.
Deeb, Lara and Jessica Winegar, Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.
Doumani, Beshara, ed. Academic Freedom After September 11. New York: Zone Books, 2006.
Finkelstein, Norman G. “Civility and Academic Life.” South Atlantic Quarterly 108:4 (2009(: 723–740.
Giroux, Henry A. “The Politics of Higher Education and the Militirization of the Academy after 9/11.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 29 2009: 104-126.
Goldberg, David Theo and Saree Makdisi. “The Trial of Israel’s Campus Critics.” Tikkun 24:5 (2009): 39–41.
Hagopian, Elaine. Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims. Chicago and London: Haymarket and Pluto Press, 2004.
Hermez, Sami and Mayssoun Soukarieh. "Boycotts against Israel and the Question of Academic Freedom in American Universities in the Arab World." Journal of Academic Freedom 4 (2013): 1-10.
Knopf-Newman, Marcy Jane. “The Fallacy of Academic Freedom and the Academic Boycott of Israel,” CR: The New Centennial Review 8.2 (2008): 87–110.
Landy, David, Ronit Lentin, Conor McCarthy, eds. Enforcing Silence: Academic Freedom, Palestine and the Criticism of Israel. London: Zed, 2020.
Lockman, Zachary. “Critique from the Right: The Neo-conservative Assault on Middle East Studies.” CR: The New Centennial Review 5:1 (2005): 63-110.
Lubin, Alex. “American Studies, the Middle East, and the Question of Palestine.” American Quarterly 68:1 (2016): 1-21.
Makdisi, Saree. "The Israel Divestment Campaign and the Question of Palestine in America." South Atlantic Quarterly 102:4 (2003): 877-894.
Mearsheimer, John and Stephen Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Salaita, Steven. Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom. Chicago: Haymarket, 2015.
Scott, Joan W. et al. "Higher Education and Middle Eastern Studies following September 11, 2001: Four Presidents Speak out for Academic Freedom." Academe 88:6 (2002): 50-54.
Shami, Seteney Khalid and Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge. New York: New York University Press, 2016.
Sheehi, Stephen. Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2011.
Robbins, Bruce. “Outside Pressures.” Works and Days 51/52, 53/54 (2008–9): 339-345.
Robinson, William I. and Maryam S. Griffin. We Will Not Be Silenced: The Academic Repression of Israel's Critics. Chico: AK Press, 2017.
Roy, Sara. “Strategizing Control of the Academy.” NEA Higher Education Journal. (2005): 147-162.
