A Major Mistake?
Haaretz reports on the growing trend of establishing Israel studies programs in American universities. Now, writing as someone who co-founded an Israel studies journal three years ago, it is definitely nice to see some attention and resources being devoted to an important and neglected area of scholarship. Nevertheless, I am worried about the way Israel studies programs will be implemented in the curriculum, especially insofar as Israel studies is considered the new "answer" to the problem of Middle East studies departments that are biased against Israel.
Do we really want the antagonisms of the Arab-Israeli conflict to be endlessly replicated in the structure of the American university? At a school where Middle East studies is biased against Israel, adding Israel studies scholars might provide some degree of balance. It also might not: At UC-Berkeley, an alumna disturbed by anti-Israel sentiments and hoping to improve Israel's image at the school gave $5 million to establish a chair in Israel studies. However, the university filled the chair with Oren Yiftachel, a professor from Ben Gurion University who is outspoken in his criticism of Israel, which he considers to be an "ethnocracy." Not exactly what she had in mind.
The whole idea of appointing professors to support a specific side in a political debate is unseemly in the first place, and can quickly devolve into a contest over who appoints more professors, or whose endowments are bigger, or who gets to teach what. Universities should be focused on scholarship, not politics. The best approach, in my opinion, is to scrap our current conception of area studies departments altogether. Middle East or Near Eastern studies faculties should concentrate purely on languages and classical cultures. Courses and faculty dealing with the modern Middle East should be categorized and appointed based on academic discipline--history, political science, sociology, etc. Compartmentalizing scholarship into hostile, opposing camps based on the region or society a scholar focuses on--usually the same region or society the scholar is from--is at odds with the academic mission of the university.
UPDATE: For a more detailed argument focusing on proposed changes to the Middle East studies curriculum at Yale, check out this article I wrote for the Yale Herald a couple months back.
Do we really want the antagonisms of the Arab-Israeli conflict to be endlessly replicated in the structure of the American university? At a school where Middle East studies is biased against Israel, adding Israel studies scholars might provide some degree of balance. It also might not: At UC-Berkeley, an alumna disturbed by anti-Israel sentiments and hoping to improve Israel's image at the school gave $5 million to establish a chair in Israel studies. However, the university filled the chair with Oren Yiftachel, a professor from Ben Gurion University who is outspoken in his criticism of Israel, which he considers to be an "ethnocracy." Not exactly what she had in mind.
The whole idea of appointing professors to support a specific side in a political debate is unseemly in the first place, and can quickly devolve into a contest over who appoints more professors, or whose endowments are bigger, or who gets to teach what. Universities should be focused on scholarship, not politics. The best approach, in my opinion, is to scrap our current conception of area studies departments altogether. Middle East or Near Eastern studies faculties should concentrate purely on languages and classical cultures. Courses and faculty dealing with the modern Middle East should be categorized and appointed based on academic discipline--history, political science, sociology, etc. Compartmentalizing scholarship into hostile, opposing camps based on the region or society a scholar focuses on--usually the same region or society the scholar is from--is at odds with the academic mission of the university.
UPDATE: For a more detailed argument focusing on proposed changes to the Middle East studies curriculum at Yale, check out this article I wrote for the Yale Herald a couple months back.
posted by Josh
at 10:58 AM
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