Trump Upsets the Academic Foreign Policy Establishment

Nathan Brown

Why are leaders of the Middle East studies/foreign policy establishment upset over the new administration’s rhetoric and actions regarding policy toward the Middle East? Andrew Harrod, who writes frequently for Campus Watch, reports at Jihad Watch on a recent talk by former MESA president and George Washington U. professor Nathan Brown and U. of Maryland professor ShibleyTelhami at the anti-Israel Jerusalem Fund.

“Previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, very sharply resisted” the Middle East foreign policy outlook of America’s new president, Donald Trump. So argued George Washington University Middle East studies professor Nathan Brown during the February 7 presentation “Trump’s Foreign Policy Positions on Palestine and the Middle East” at Washington, DC’s anti-Israel Jerusalem Fund. The hackneyed views of the panelists and, presumably, the largely leftist audience of about fifty, including two women in Code Pink attire and “pussy hats,” strengthened the case for Trump’s anti-establishment approach.

Brown skeptically referenced Trump’s “conviction that the United States is in a civilizational battle.” Trump considers the “necessity to eliminate radical Islamic terrorism” a “very, very core theme,” thereby raising a “suspicion on some people’s parts that ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ is really a synonym for Islam.” As an example, Brown cited Trump’s references to global Muslim support for executing apostates, a factual observation of Islam’s political pathologies.

To read the rest of this report, please click here.

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University of Maryland George Washington University

Winfield Myers

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.