To Boycott or Not to Boycott?

This article can be found by clicking the following:
https://martinkramer.org/2023/03/15/to-boycott-or-not-to-boycott/

In the fall, I delivered the keynote address at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). The topic: “The State of Middle Eastern Studies, Revisited.” In that address, I assessed the state of Middle Eastern studies according to three parameters first defined by ASMEA co-founder Bernard Lewis: standards, politicization, and funding. In all three areas, the field remains plagued by endemic problems.

A video became available almost immediately; the address has now been published in ASMEA’s journal. It’s open access, so you can read and share it by going to this link.

I can now add a footnote. In my address, I criticized (or more precisely, ridiculed) the academic boycott resolution adopted by the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) last spring. (March 22 will be the first anniversary of that resolution.) I mentioned that one of MESA’s past presidents, the University of Chicago historian Fred Donner, had consistently argued against such a resolution. Donner called it “short-sighted in the extreme” and “utterly irresponsible.” But in the end, I said, “serious scholars like Donner were shunted aside” by the “determined militants [who had] infiltrated MESA’s ranks.”

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