The Political Nature of Today’s Middle East Studies

Andrew McCarthy

Modern Middle East studies exist not to advance our understanding of a complex, important region, says Andrew C. McCarthy, in a Middle East Forum/Campus Watch-sponsored essay appearing today at National Review Online. As he explains, it seeks to discredit the very notion of objective scholarship:

From its roots . . . modern Middle East Studies is a political movement aligning leftism and Islamism under the guise of an academic discipline. It is not an objective quest for learning guided by a rich corpus of history and culture; it is a project to impose its pieties as incontestable truth — and to discredit dispassionate analysis in order to achieve that end.

To read the rest of McCarthy’s probing analysis of this problem, please click here.
Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.
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