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Taking Stock, Looking Forward
Michael C. Hudson
Published in 2005
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Summary:
Letter from the Director
My friend and distinguished colleague John Ruedy, Professor Emeritus of History, burst into my officetheotherdaywavinga letterhehadjustreceivedfroma Brigadier-General in the US Marine Corps. “The United States military is in need of your service,” it said, “Now is the time to put your unique language skills to the test as a member of the United States Marine Corps. Your command of the Arabic language will be invaluable among the elite few—where you’ll play a pivotal role in communicating with people from Arabic-speaking countries.” It went on: “As a Marine, the training you’ll receive is second to none. We’ll push your physical and mental limits beyond anything you’ve ever known….” Jack Ruedy jogs several miles every day and he is fit for his age, but he is, after all, 78. Then, it turned out that another ofmy esteemed colleagues at the Center, Dr. Barbara Stowasser, had also received the letter; and I too found one in my mailbox. We suppose that every Arabic-speaking academic in the country, regardless of age, may have received one.
If this recruitment letter gave rise to a few chuckles around the CCAS water cooler, it also got us to reflecting about how America got bogged down in Iraq and why the Bush Administration was so ignorant of the region that it has chosen for regime changes and democratic transformations. Virtually any professor here at the Center or among Middle East specialists in universities around the country could have anticipated the pitfalls of invading and occupying Iraq, the perils of ignoring an active, evenhanded approach to the Palestine problem, and the dangers of pursuing a war on “Islamist terrorism” that would be perceived by Muslims around the world as a war against Islam itself. We did not try to hide such expertise as we may have under a barrel. The Center organized a lengthy series of briefings, lectures, panel discussions and even a two-day symposium on the big issues of the post 9/11 period, and we developed a well-attended undergraduate course called “The US, the Middle East and the War on Terrorism.” And certainly some of our graduates (including military officers) became involved in Iraq and elsewhere, contributing what they could. (Indeed,one of them—Rick Hooper—sacrificed his life in the destruction of the UN compound in Baghdad.) I think that some of our intellectual output may have filtered into the middle levels of the Executive Branch, Congress, and the foreign affairs think-tank and media communities, but to my knowledge the academic community, here and elsewhere, was not brought into the policy debates at the higher levels. The Marine recruiters may have cast their net a bit too widely, but they at least recognize that the Middle East studies academy might help strengthen America’s eyes, ears, mouth and even brains as it tries to deal with this area, and that’s no joke.
Could we have done more to help guide American policy in a more positive direction? Some of the harshest critics of academic Middle East studies not only have condemned the content of our work but—adding insult to injury—have also accused the academics of shirking their public responsibilities by failing to play an important part in the Middle East policy debates. We do not like to hear these voices, and it is difficult not to suspect they are driven to some extent by ideological passions; but we take them seriously. That is why we have invited some of these critics to speak at the Center. We dispute the charges that we missed the boat on political Islam and that we served as apologists for authoritarian regimes, but I think we might reluctantly have to agree that we have not been particularly effective so far in the public debates on terrorism, Palestine-Israel, andIraq. What should we be doing about this that is consistent with our primary obligations of university teaching and academic research? At the end of August, the Center’s faculty and staff and the chairman of our Board of Advisors, Ambassador Roscoe Suddarth, held a two-day retreat in West Virginia to discuss the future development of CCAS. We will continue these discussions at the end of September when our Board of Advisors holds its annual meeting. I think that we reached a consensus that there is both a need and an opportunity to expand the Center’s activities, including the development of a more effective presence in the Washington policy debates. A louder voice, however, is of little use if you don’t have important things to say. A sound development strategy, therefore, requires more than just holding more events and publishing more research papers. It should also include enhancing the Center’s understanding of and connections with the Arab world. Should CCAS have a branch in an Arab country? How can it strengthen its interactions, both at the faculty and student levels, with academic counterparts and public intellectuals from Casablanca to Muscat, from Damascus to Khartoum? How can it further enhance its existing comparative advantage as a place where critical thinking about Arab world issues and US-Arab relations takes place, despite various well-known obstacles? I welcome comments and suggestions from our many friends on campus, in Washington, in the Arab countries, and around the world.
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