When knowledge is critical: brief reflections on Middle East studies

National Review, Oct 20, 2008 by Jay Nordlinger

THE Cold War stretched from 1945 to 1991, and somehow the West ended up on top: Soviet Communism gave up. Then we had our "holiday from history": ten years of almost no concerns. Sure, there was a Khobar Towers here, a U.S.S. Cole there. But Muslim terrorists were always acting up, weren't they? They were something to put up with, like the weather. And then came 9/11, and a new cold war.

During the original cold war, America and the West built up many institutions, aimed at countering Communism, understanding the Eastern bloc, and communicating with people under the lash. Have we done the same in the War on Terror? Not even close, as George Shultz emphasized in an interview with me last January. It is a failing of these recent years--and we should get busy.

Professors of Middle East studies would be very helpful right about now. But they are, unfortunately, among the worst of the lot: among the worst in the American professoriate. A range of departments, of course, is the province of radicals and ideologues, rather than genuine scholars. But departments of Middle East studies may take the cake. If you'd like to read chapter and verse, see Martin Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand.

In the old days, "Sovietologists" tended to sympathize with the Kremlin (to put it crudely, and perhaps McCarthyitely, but not untruthfully). Middle East studies men are apt to sympathize with the PLO and worse. And the China people, a number of them, are just as frightful. Recently, I met with Jian--li Yang, the great dissident and scholar. He has one Ph.D. from Berkeley (in math) and another from Harvard (in political economy). He lives in the Harvard community. I asked whether he ever had contact with Sinologists there. Oh, no, he said: They are impossible, because they simply toe the PRC line. "They're as bad as professors in Beijing University," he said. "No, worse!"

Many Sinologists are children of John K. Fairbank and Edgar Snow, men who are responsible for great harm. The children--like their fathers--exist not so much to study and explain Communist China as to defend and justify it. And they are corrupt, said Yang: awash in PRC money. Yes, I replied, but they'd do it for free, believing in what they do. He conceded that this was so.

Whether China scholars have more money from Beijing or Middle East scholars have more money from Arab rulers is an open question--but the safe betting is on the Middle East men. Some critics regard this money as absolutely corrupting. Others say, "No, they'd do it for free"--which is my view, and also that of Daniel Pipes, a Middle East scholar who is decidedly not the type to win an emir's favor. (That would have to be one enlightened emir.)

On this, most everybody can agree: Money must play some sort of role, if only at the margins; at the same time, you don't have to be bought to be wrong.

There was never much money in "Sovietology," according to Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel and the eminent historian of Russia. He remembered this crowd in a recent conversation: "They resented you if you criticized the Soviet Union, the Communist party, and I was regarded as really way out, because I was so critical." Why were others so uncritical?

Well, "for one reason, they simply identified with the Soviet Union. For another, they liked to go there"--and Moscow wasn't real good about letting you in if you were critical (or letting you out if you were critical and a Soviet citizen).

One day, Pipes testified before Senator Jackson's committee about SALT. He took a hard, and realistic, line. Opposing him was an Ivy League Sovietologist who took the soft and unrealistic. As they were leaving, the Sovietologist said to Pipes, "I really agree with you, but if I talked as you do, I wouldn't be able to go to the Soviet Union. They wouldn't give me a visa."

Pipes says that, on balance, the Sovietologists did more harm than good--misleading the public, getting their subject "utterly wrong." And when the USSR fell, they simply glided on. Some of them are now attending conferences hosted by Putin.

Daniel Pipes has paid a price for being out of step on the Middle East--for speaking bluntly about dictatorships, Islamism, and related matters. He would not be welcome in most faculty lounges. Also, he has received his share of threats, and not of the light kind, either. But he has found his outlets, forged ahead, and done considerable good. Incidentally, his college roommate was Arthur Waldron-- a China scholar who can be counted on for seeing that country clear. That was an amazingly bold and independent--minded room.

There is an organization for orthodox scholars of the Middle East--that is, for leftist and politically charged ones. It's called the Middle East Studies Association, or MESA. It is led by such men as Rashid Khalidi, an FOB (Friend of Barack) and the holder of Columbia University's Edward Said chair.

The late Said is the father of this MESA crowd, or at least an influential big brother. So much has been written about him, I will not add a word here. But I'll give Paul Johnson one. In September 2006, he was contemplating a book to be called "Monsters." And he wrote that he would include Said, "this malevolent liar and propagandist, who has been responsible for more harm than any other intellectual of his generation."