Re: House Bill on Middle Eastern Studies

[andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen@xxxxxxxxx>]

My letter to the Senators:

                                                                        18 November 2003
U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald
555 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510


Dear Senator Fitzgerald,

        I am writing to oppose the recent amendment to Title
VI of the Higher Education Act passed by the United
States House of Representatives. This bill seeks to
politicize Middle Eastern Studies by establishing an
oversight board to enforce a "pro-American" attitude,
and tying Title VI funds to ideological conformity. I
am not a  professor, but I am a voting constituent, an
attorney concerned with freedom of speech, and a
citizen worried about the government and the public
having honest and accurate information on which to
decide policy.

        The  amendment  is an unwarranted interference in
academic freedom reminds me more of the policies of
Other Countries that we decry for dictating the
results of scholarly inquiry to conform to the wishes
of the government. The essence of scholarship is
suppose to be disinterested inquiry, not cheerleading
for government policy.

        In addition to compromising academic freedom and
betraying the values of free speech and unfettered
research, the idea of having politicians police Middle
Eastern Studies for Un-American Ideas is dumb.
Haven't we gotten in enough trouble in the Middle East
lately by insisting on things that powerful interests
wanted to hear rather than in the truth?

        The government has shown, by its misuse of CIA
reports, that it cannot refrain from politicizing its
own analyses. Now it wants to make sure that no views
from the outside can disturb its warped perceptions.
This is very comfortable, but the end result is that
young men and women from working class communities in
Decatur and Pilsen and Rockford get blown to bits or
maimed for life on dusty roads in foreign countries in
pursuit of half-baked policies sold to the public by
lies based on false data.

        Vote against the amendment to Title VI.. It is
Un-American. It is unwise. It is not the sort of thing
that reflects what we want or need.

                                                                        Sincerely,

                                                                        Justin Schwartz

--- Michael Hoover <HooverM@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/06/middle_east/index_np.html
>
> Osama University?
> Neoconservative critics have long charged Middle
> Eastern studies
> departments with anti-American bias. Now they've
> enlisted Congress in
> their crusade.
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Michelle Goldberg
> Nov. 6, 2003
>
> On Oct. 21, the House of Representatives unanimously
> passed a bill that could require university
> international studies
> departments to show more support for American
> foreign policy or risk
> their
> federal funding. Its approval followed hearings this
> summer in which
> members of Congress listened to testimony about the
> pernicious
> influence
> of the late Edward Said in Middle Eastern studies
> departments,
> described
> as enclaves of debased anti-Americanism. Stanley
> Kurtz, a research
> fellow
> at the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think tank,
> testified, "Title
> VI-funded programs in Middle Eastern Studies (and
> other area studies)
> tend
> to purvey extreme and one-sided criticisms of
> American foreign
> policy."
> Evidently, the House agreed and decided to
> intervene.
>
> Emboldened by its dominance of Washington, the right
> is trying to
> enlist
> government on its side in the campus culture wars.
> "Since they are the
> mainstream in Washington think tanks and the
> right-wing corridors of
> Congress, they figure, 'Let's translate that
> political capital to
> education,'" says Rashid Khalidi, who was recently
> appointed to the
> Edward
> Said Chair of Arab studies at Columbia University.
>
> It's not surprising that they started with Middle
> Eastern studies.
> There's
> a particular enmity between hard-line supporters of
> Israel -- who,
> with
> the extraordinary ascension of neoconservatives in
> the Bush
> administration, now dominate the American right --
> and academics who
> specialize in studying the Arab and Muslim world.
> That enmity burst
> into
> open conflict after Sept. 11, when conservatives saw
> an opportunity to
> accuse Middle East academics not just of biased
> scholarship but of
> representing a kind of intellectual fifth column.
> Soon after the World
> Trade Center fell, the American Council of Trustees
> and Alumni, a
> Washington-based group co-founded by Lynne Cheney,
> wife of the vice
> president, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.,
> published a report called
> "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are
> Failing America and
> What
> Can Be Done About It," which listed examples of
> insufficiently
> patriotic
> behavior of the part of the professoriate and called
> universities the
> "weak link" in the war on terror.


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