Anti-dhimmitude at Brandeis. “My problem is not the anti-Zionism or even that many of them are anti-American, but that they are third-rate.” Such that they hide behind their degrees in order to avoid unpleasant debate on the facts, eh, Omid?
“A lesson in academic politics,” from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to JS:
When the controversy at Columbia University erupted last fall over charges of anti-Israel bias in courses on the Middle East, many American Jews saw the brouhaha as another alarming sign that pro-Arab academics had gained the upper hand in university Middle East studies departments.
Mideast studies had become polemicized, and American Jews sought to ameliorate matters by pushing for the creation of Israel studies chairs and ensuring that courses on the Arab-Israeli conflict were taught by professors sympathetic to Israel.
But where many American Jews saw political bias, Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz saw something else: academic mediocrity.
The controversy underscored for Reinharz what had become an endemic problem in the field: Politics had superseded scholarship as a test of who was fit to teach the Middle East, with the result that political indoctrination had replaced research-driven academic inquiry.
“My problem is not the anti-Zionism or even that many of them are anti-American, but that they are third-rate,” Reinharz said in a recent interview with the Jerusalem Post at his Brandeis office, referring to university Middle East studies departments. “The quality of the people [in Mideast studies] is unlike any of the qualities we expect in any other field.”
Reinharz has set out to change that by creating a new center for Middle East studies at Brandeis, which he hopes will set a much-needed example of academic rigor in the field.
“We need a first-rate center for Middle East studies that is not pro or con anything,” Reinharz said.
Amen! And if it were really politically neutral and academically honest, it would have room for an Institute of Dhimmitude Studies and a Center for the Study of Jihad. And more.