The International Studies in Higher Education Act (H.R. 3077) would create an advisory board for Title VI, the federal subsidy program for area (and Middle Eastern) studies in universities. As I’ve argued before, such a board is the very least Congress can do to assure some return on the taxpayers’ investment in these programs. I spoke in defense of the bill on a panel in Washington on November 20, and I post my remarks here. In my address, I dispel some of the way-out notions about the legislation now being propagated on campuses.
Now the issue has cropped up in the national press, in the form of an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by one Paula R. Newberg, identified as an “independent consultant.” The piece is a slick and evasive advertisement for Title VI, the sort that is regularly churned out by the higher education lobby and Saudi ARAMCO. Its bottom line: a board would “seriously diminish” the “capacity of the U.S. to be a responsible world actor.” To make that argument, you have to misrepresent Title VI and H.R. 3077. Our “independent consultant” does this with a lobbyist’s panache for half-truths, falsehoods, and omissions.
So after you’ve read the op-ed, here are the four grievous sins committed by its author.
1. Newberg opens by noting that “for two years, Congress has rightly insisted that the United States needs better foreign intelligence.” True. “One way to obtain it is to train more experts in foreign languages.” True. H.R. 3077, she writes, is “an assault on the very programs that produce these professionals.”
False, because these programs do not produce those professionals. The great bulk of the money goes to fellowships for doctoral students. When The Chronicle of Higher Education spoke to a dozen job-hunting Ph.D.s in Middle Eastern studies in the spring of 2002, not one expressed any interest in government employment. “Academics just aren’t biting,” said one job candidate, as quoted by the Chronicle. “I don’t think running around chasing terrorists is the solution to this problem. Academics have a belief in the power of education to effect change.” The real intelligence professionals—the few men and women who solve problems when the “power of education” fails—are produced elsewhere.
Title VI programs have also shifted their emphasis away from languages. A government-contracted report on Title VI, published in 2000, admitted as much: “Over the years, the original focus on language has been replaced with a much broader mandate for area, international, and international business studies. … functional linguistic competence in the graduates of the nation’s colleges and universities has tended to diminish.” Title VI is failing at precisely the mission Newberg thinks it should fulfill, a fact concealed from the public precisely because there is no board to measure the program against the intent of Congress.
2. Newberg writes that Title VI has produced international knowledge, although “these centers have endured funding cuts.”
False again. As far as I can recall, funding for Title VI over the past decade has never been cut even once. The appropriation has grown every year. More to the point, Title VI received a massive post-9/11 windfall on January 10, 2002, when President George W. Bush approved Congress’s authorization of a 26 percent increase (over $20 million a year) for the program, to meet an “urgent need.” Since 2000, federal funding for area studies centers at universities has ballooned by fifty percent, and funding for fellowships has doubled. The universities are now flush with taxpayers’ money, appropriated on a renewed promise that this will enhance national security. There are more federally-subsidized Middle East centers right now that at any time in America’s history. Is it too much money? Too little? Just the right amount? Maybe that money should go to another higher education program? We’ll never know, unless we have a board with appointees well-positioned to define U.S. needs, and determine whether the program is meeting them.
3. Newberg then casts H.R. 3077 as an attempt by interested parties to foist their Middle East views on academics. For this reason, a board “is utterly impractical, given the polarization of Middle East politics...[N]o politically appointed advisory board is likely to bridge these differences any more than the U.S. has reconciled competing visions of Middle East peace.”
Once more, false. Far from being “utterly impractical,” boards supervise every other comparable federal program. The sister program of Title VI, the Fulbright program, is the mainstay of foreign research for U.S. academics. It has a 12-member board, all of them presidential appointees. The U.S. Institute of Peace has a board of presidential appointees, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has one too. These boards are supervisory, not advisory—they have more powers than the proposed Title VI board. All three support advanced research in international affairs, including the Middle East. Yet they somehow manage to “bridge differences.” The real question is why Title VI, of all these programs, should be exempt from having a board. Of course, you would never know that from Newberg, who forgets to tell you just what an administrative anomaly Title VI has become.
4. Newberg praises Title VI for having introduced thousands of Americans to foreign societies and cultures. If she has a reservation, it is that “some scholars have used this platform to underscore distinctively, occasionally parochial, American views.”
Is this a misprint? It seems to me this should read: “Some scholars have used this platform to underscore distinctively, occasionally parochial, anti-American views.” There is no more systematic abuse of Title VI than the exploitation of taxpayers’ money by professorial activists to fund propagandistic “outreach” activities. All of the instances known to me involve totally one-sided teachers’ seminars and study kits that rail against U.S. policy. Do you think your tax dollars should fund a “critical reader” on 9/11 for K-12 teachers, in which every single reading bashes the United States? Do you think federal subsidies should fund a seminar on the Iraq war for K-12 teachers, addressed by five “anti-war” activists, and not a single supporter of U.S. policy? Professors are sovereign in the classroom, but “outreach” is a federally-mandated activity to reach non-students. As part of the contract, universities undertake to spread knowledge, not propaganda. What is absolutely clear, given that these abuses have continued even as Title VI has come under fire, is that only a board can stop “outreach” outrages.
In sum, the Los Angeles Times has run an op-ed completely detached from reality on campus, which is not surprising, since its author-consultant has no connection to campus. You would think that with 120 subsidized area centers across the country, each one with a director and faculty, a Title VI beneficiary could be found to argue the case against H.R. 3077. But I suppose any one of them would be embarrassed to make the arguments Newberg makes, in the way she makes them—because they are false. But that’s what consultants are for, isn’t it?
L.A. Times Follow-up. Robert Satloff, who was quoted out of context in Newberg’s piece, wrote a letter to the paper, and it has been published. Satloff, after taking the op-ed to task for distorting the bill, adds this:
Well put.
