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<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><SPAN class=045461313-13042005>Thanks
to Ed McDermott.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<P><FONT size=2>Frederick H. Jackson, Ph.D.<BR>School of Language
Studies<BR>Foreign Service Institute<BR>George P. Shultz National Foreign
Affairs Training Center<BR>Tel: (703)302-7018<BR>Fax: (703)302-7533</FONT> </P>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma
size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR></FONT></DIV><A
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45302-2005Apr11?language=printer"><FONT
face=Arial
size=2>http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45302-2005Apr11?language=printer</FONT></A><BR><FONT
face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Studying Islam, Strengthening The Nation<BR>By
Peter Berkowitz and Michael McFaul<BR>Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A21 <BR>It
remains painfully true, more than three years after Sept. 11, that even highly
educated Americans know little about the Arab Middle East. And it is
embarrassing how little our universities have changed to educate our nation and
train experts on the wider Middle East.<BR>For believers in a good liberal arts
education, it has long been a source of consternation that faculties in
political science, history, economics and sociology lack scholars who know
Arabic or Persian and understand Islam. Since Sept. 11 it has become clear that
this abdication of responsibility is more than an educational problem: It also
poses a threat to our national security. <BR>The case for bolstering faculty and
curriculum resources devoted to the Muslim Middle East is, of course, obvious
from an educational perspective. The region is vast. Islam represents one of the
world's great religions and provides not only an intellectual feast for
comparative study in the social sciences and humanities but also an
indispensable comparison and contrast for more familiar religions and ways of
life. Particularly in the era of globalization and the information revolution,
there is little excuse for universities' continuing to betray the liberal ideal
of educating students in the ways of all people.<BR>Our national security
interest in this area should also be obvious. As in the Cold War, the war
against Islamic extremism will not be won in months or years but in decades. And
as in the Cold War, the non-military components of the war will play a crucial
role.<BR>To fight the decades-long battle against communism, the United States
invested billions in education and intelligence. The U.S. government sponsored
centers of Soviet studies, provided foreign-language scholarships in Russian and
Eastern European languages, and offered dual-competency grants to enable
graduate students to acquire expertise both in security issues and in Russian
culture.`<BR>In the early days of the Cold War, a mere handful of Soviet experts
dominated scholarship and policy debates. Not coincidentally, this was the time
when we made some of our greatest mistakes, such as treating the communist world
as a monolithic bloc and considering all communist regimes to have the same
degree of internal dissent. By the end of the Cold War, however, the effort to
"know the enemy" had resulted in the training of tens of thousands of
professors, government analysts and policymakers. Every interpretation of Soviet
society or Kremlin behavior triggered an informed and exhaustive
debate.<BR>Today, there is not one tenured professor in the departments of
political science at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago or Yale universities
who specializes in the politics of the wider Middle East. Some scholars do study
Islam and the languages and countries of the people who profess it. Programs in
and outside of universities aimed at comprehending and combating Islamic
extremism also exist, but they are woefully underdeveloped and changing at a
snail's pace. Everyone now recognizes that we lack "human intelligence" --
covert agents, spies and informants -- in the Middle East. But we also suffer
from shortages of NSA linguists, academic scholars, and senior policymakers
trained in the languages, cultures, politics and economics of the wider Middle
East.<BR>It is time to recognize our ignorance and address it. Universities,
working in tandem with government and foundations, should take immediate steps.
And in doing so, they should resist the temptation to simply amend existing
faculties with programs in Middle Eastern studies centers that are not rooted
firmly in the established faculties of the university. Programs set up this way
promote a kind of intellectual ghettoization because of the misguided assumption
from which they and the multitude of special-interest programs that have sprung
up around the university derive: that in each area of human affairs there is a
methodology distinctive to it.<BR>Universities should encourage the study of
Islam from within the various social sciences and humanities, the better to
promote truly interdisciplinary conversation. And they should avoid
concentrating resources on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
disproportionate weight it is often given in Middle East studies programs
reflects the poisonous political proposition that Israel is the root source of
all the ills that beset the Muslim world. Teaching and inquiry in the university
must remain, to the extent possible, nonpolitical.<BR>Universities need to make
a priority of teaching Arabic, Persian and Turkish, and it should be done not by
part-time adjunct faculty but by tenured professors. The study of language opens
doors to culture, history and politics. It disciplines the mind, and allows
people to reach out to foreigners by showing them the respect that inheres in
addressing them in their mother tongue.<BR>It will not be easy to find the
necessary faculty. During the Cold War, universities could draw on a pool of
extraordinary European émigrés. But in educating scholars of the Muslim Middle
East, we must start almost from scratch. We can provide incentives to bring PhD
candidates from the region to study at U.S. universities, but we must understand
that filling the large gaps in our universities is the work of a
generation.<BR>As for government, it should immediately foster a dramatic
expansion of fellowships for graduate students to study Arabic, Persian and
Turkish. And the government ought to provide grants to universities to fund
undergraduate education in Islam. These investments would be a drop in the
bucket of the federal budget and would bring huge rewards.<BR>Major foundations
can play their role, too, by, for example, creating mid-career fellowships for
senior faculty in the social sciences and humanities to obtain new competencies
in the study of the Islamic world. They could also use their financial leverage
to endow new chairs in the study of the wider Middle East.<BR>Dramatically
increasing opportunities for the study of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Islam in
our universities is the right thing to do, to advance the cause of learning and
America's interest in training people who can contribute to the spread of
liberty abroad. We owe it to our universities to demand that they live up to
their responsibility.<BR>Peter Berkowitz teaches at George Mason University
School of Law and is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
Institution. Michael McFaul teaches in the department of political science at
Stanford and is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. </FONT></BODY></HTML>