ARABIC-L: LIT: The AUC Controversy: Summing Up
Dilworth B. Parkinson
Dilworth_Parkinson at byu.edu
Wed Mar 17 17:27:48 UTC 1999
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Arabic-L: Wed 17 Mar 1999
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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[Modorator's Note: This is the final posting of the AUC & academic
freedom controversy. This message contains a statement by AUC, two
articles from the Middle East Times, and a response from Dr. Abbas
Al-Tonsi.]
-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------
1) Subject: AUC official statement on al-Khubz al-Hafi
2) Subject: Middle East Times, February 28
3) Subject: Middle East Times, March 7
4) Subject: Dr. Abbas Al-Tonsi
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: 17 Mar 1999
From: [By way of Magda Al-Nowaihi <ma181 at columbia.edu>]
Subject: AUC official statement on al-Khubz al-Hafi
The American University in Cairo
March 3, 1999
Statement on Al Khubz Al Hafi
The American Univeristy in Cairo confirms the statement of the Minister
of Higher Education, the Honorable Moufid Shehab, that the issue of the
use of a Moroccan novel, Al-Khubz Al-Hafi, is being dealt with within
the University. The novel in question has been sold in English, French
and Arabic versions in Egypt since it was first published in 1971.
Decisions regarding the curriculum are the prerogative of the faculty.
The University relies on the individual and collective wisdom of its
faculty to select and assign works that they believe are appropriate to
the subject matter and that respect the culture and values of the
society in which we work. Following complaints by students and parents
about the book, the Department of Arabic Studies decided not to use it
in the required introductory Arabic literature course. The faculty is
also engaged in a serious and responsible effort to produce an agreed
list of readings for core courses. No action will be taken against the
professor, who is a tenured member of the Arabic Studies Department.
The purpose of tenure is to protect faculty members form threats of
intimidation and to ensure stability and continuity without which a
university cannot operate. Egypt has a tradition of tolerance and
scholarship that accounts for its intellectual leadership in the Arab
world and AUC will continue to operate within that context.
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2)
Date: 17 Mar 1999
From: [By way of Magda Al-Nowaihi <ma181 at columbia.edu>]
Subject: Al-Khubz al-Hafi
Middle East Times, February 28
Book controversy strikes at AUC
Paul Schemm Middle East Times Staff
The December 17 summons of Professor Samia Mehrez by the
American University in Cairo (AUC) administration to explain
her choice of a book containing "obscene" passages has
mushroomed into something far bigger than anyone originally
involved expected.
What began as complaints by a few parents over the use of a
book in class that was "destroying the morals of our children"
and was an act of "sexual harassment" has turned into an issue
involving not only the faculty and administration of AUC, but
also newspapers, parliament, and Arabic literature professors
all over the world.
At the heart of the argument is the disturbing issue of what
constitutes a liberal education and how that can be carried out
by an "American" institution located in Egypt. AUC once again
finds itself as a lightening rod for criticism, a position it has
never been comfortable with.
LITERARY HARASSMENT
Professor Mehrez was called out of her class in December to
meet with AUC President John Gerhart as well as the dean, the
provost, and the AUC doctor, Ikram Seif Eddin, who was
representing the complaints of the parents. Parts of the book, Al
Khubz Al Hafi by Muhammad Choukri (For Bread Alone)
contain passages of an explicitly sexual nature which offended
two students in the 35-member Modern Arabic Literature class
(ARBS 208). The parents felt that the students' morals were
being corrupted and they claimed sexual harassment. By some
reports, Dr. Ikram then lectured Mehrez on the nature of
Egyptian values.
Mehrez defended the book as an important classic of Arab
literature widely taught in universities, including AUC.
"It is a very moving and candid tale of an illiterate Moroccan
child of the underclass who accedes to literacy, at age 20, and
is able to weave the appalling conditions of his life history into
a mesmerizing text," she wrote in a memo to AUC faculty.
Mehrez took her case to the AUC faculty as well as the wider
world of academia when she became concerned that the
principles of academic freedom and reading choices of
professors might be under attack.
Her description of the meeting ended up on a e-mail list
service that prompted some 150 responses, led by professors
Muhammad Siddiq of Berkeley University and Magda Al
Nowaihi of Columbia University, expressing concern to
Gerhart.
Gerhart responded to AUC faculty and Mehrez by assuring
them that he remained true to the ethos of the liberal arts
education.
The fate of the book itself remains in question, however.
According to her statements, Mehrez has reserved the right to
teach the book again, but Gerhart says that it will not be
appearing again in the basic ARBS 208 course.
The departmental advisory committee, Gerhart said, has
decided to no longer use the book in the course "in view of the
widely differing appraisals of the usefulness of this book in the
course."
"They even said this is not the banning of the book," said
Gerhart, just a recognition that the book does not belong in a
lower level course. "One doesn't normally teach [James
Joyce's] Ulysses in freshman English," he added.
A number of faculty members in the department, however, say
that this recommendation was taken without their knowledge
and were not pleased.
There is now talk of drawing up a list of some 40 books
teachers of this course would draw from. Gerhart backs the
measure, but other faculty members remain vehemently
opposed.
In general the situation has caused a great deal of disquiet
among faculty, with divisions appearing between those
counseling avoiding raising public ire over curricula and those
fearing self-censorship.
"People are against the way the whole thing was being
treated," said one staff member. "I think this is the source of
most of the resentment of the faculty."
Some members feel that the administration has not been
sufficiently supportive of their rights to choose readings and
are too ready to acquiesce to outside demands, an allegation
that Gerhart dismisses.
"Then where is Didier?" asked one faculty member in
annoyance, referring to the professor whose contract was not
renewed following the controversy over Maxine Rodinson's
Muhammad last spring.
That particular controversy unfolded in a similar manner, with
outraged parents (this time on religious grounds) going to the
newspapers and starting an aggressive public campaign that
resulted in the government banning the book and much turmoil
at AUC. Many faculty see ominous comparisons between the
two book incidents.
OUTSIDE INTEREST
The specter of the government removing books is one that
hangs heavy over AUC. Since the Rodinson affair, there has
been a vast increase of books requested by the censor for
review (see box). According to Gerhart, in the past 11 months,
40 books have been censored, including four that were being
used for classes.
While For Bread Alone has not been banned, and in fact sold
like crazy during the book fair, there have been rumblings. In
response to the press campaign against the book and AUC that
began in January when the parents went to the press, Minister
of Higher Education Hussein Kamal Baha Eddin said he would
look into the matter. The issue is also supposedly to be brought
before parliament soon.
Gerhart said he sent a letter assuring the minister that the issue
had been taken care of and that the book would not be taught in
the course again.
Some faculty, however, see this pattern of apology for teaching
controversial books as a dangerous one. There is a fear that
faculty will avoid teaching controversial books for fear of
coming under attack in the press and then not being defended by
the university.
Gerhart, finds this possibility extremely remote.
"One would have thought that last year [after the Rodinson
controversy] people would have scurried around and removed
books from their reading lists, which didn't happen," he said,
adding that "there is no evidence that a domino theory is taking
place."
One interesting incident that did take place immediately after
Mehrez was called into account is that the director of the core
curriculum removed Tayib Saleh's Arabic classic Season of
Migration to the North from the reading list. It was only after
core curriculum professors returned from the winter break that
there was a unanimous vote to restore the book to the reading
list.
While Mehrez was obviously not intimidated by the fallout
from the Rodinson book or the For Bread Alone case, it is
noteworthy that she is tenured faculty. Whether non-tenured
junior faculty would be willing to brave the ire of the Egyptian
press or AUC administration is less clear.
Currently the focus among the faculty and the administration
has been to come up with defined guidelines and procedures
for dealing with complaints about courses. Gerhart emphasizes
the need to be responsive to the concerns of parents and
students.
WHAT ABOUT NEXT TIME?
Professor Dan Tschirgi of the Political Science department
says that the issue has strengthened the commitment to the
principles of a liberal arts education among the faculty, but
also shown everyone what more needed to be done.
"It has sensitized [the administration] to the need to fill a gap ‚
a need that has been neglected ‚ the need to explain more
clearly to everyone that asks, parents, public, what exactly is a
liberal education," he said.
The indications are that Egypt's increasingly conservative
environment may require that explanation again and again.
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3)
Date: 17 Mar 1999
From: [By way of Muhammad Deeb <mdeeb at gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>]
Subject: Another Episode in the AUC Controversy
Another Episode in the AUC Controversy
NB:
The proper noun "Maetouh" Salwa Bakr uses in her tale
for the one of the monkeys, has its lexical
denotations and connotations of "ma at tuuh,"
which would mean, among other things,
lunatic; crazy; idiot.
--
MD
* * *
Animals and the AUC book affair
Paul Schemm Middle East Times Staff
Middle East Times - Egypt Edition 7 March 1999
Everyone at some point in their life has to decide whether
they are going to be a monkey or a goat.
Professor Samia Mehrez, who has been accused by some American
University in Cairo students and the Egyptian press of
teaching obscene material, decided not only to be a monkey,
but a defiant one that would go on teaching.
"I watched people around me be docile monkeys, and for one
month, wrestled with my monkey trainer and I wondered, was I
going to become a goat?" she said.
In one of her first public statements since the controversy
surrounding the book Al Khubz Al Hafi (For Bread Alone),
Mehrez gave a talk on March 3 at AUC that used a short story
by Salwa Bakr to tell her tale.
In the story, three monkeys are caught and placed in a cage,
where a trainer has decided to teach them tricks. Instead of
teaching the monkeys directly he brings in a goat and every
day, in front of the monkeys, tells the goat to perform a
trick. When it doesn't, the trainer beats the goat into
unconsciousness.
This continues until the goat dies. At which point the three
monkeys have a conference. The first two suggest learning the
tricks being taught by the trainer so they don't suffer the
fate of the goat. The last monkey, Maetouh, suggests that they
use their claws and fangs to overcome the trainer and win
their freedom. He is ignored.
When the trainer returns the first two monkeys perform his
tricks, but when it is Maetouh's turn, the young monkey leaps
on the trainer and savages him. The trainer is carted away to
the hospital and Maetouh is sent to a zoo, where he spends the
rest of his days teaching young monkeys born in captivity
about the freedom and beauty of their native forests.
"The image of Maetouh surrounded by young monkeys was
important to me," she said, adding, "that's my mission."
The lecture filled the classroom and drew a crowd of some 70
students and professors who went on to discuss the issue of
academic censorship at the university. A number of students
complained about censorship within the institution itself.
"Should we all be Maetouh or should we be like the goat?"
asked one student. "Because if we are all Maetouh, the
administration is going to suffer."
Mehrez, obviously eager to avoid being seen as inciting
students to march on the administration building, counseled
the students to be responsible for their actions, but to
choose which animal they feel most suited to.
At least two students at the lecture, however, did not see
censorship as necessarily all wrong, but instead felt that it
was necessary in some cases.
"We are against censorship if it is against our freedom, but
if censorship is to protect us, I think it is a good thing,"
one of them said.
Another student brought up the negative press that AUC
received during the controversy, when papers like Al Wafd
accused Mehrez of attempting to corrupt young Egyptians'
morals by teaching the book.
"We have like a campaign against AUC from the press and from
the outside society," he said, adding that he felt it had
gotten much worse in the past few years. He also said that the
administration's response was inadequate.
"I think we're going the wrong way about it, giving in every
time," he said.
Mehrez herself expressed reservations about how the affair,
which played out in January and February, was handled. She
said that she herself could not have responded to some of the
virulent press attacks on her.
"I think it should have been an institutional response, it did
not come and it is too late now," she said, expressing the
hope that in the future the administration's response would be
stronger.
There have been reports that some feel the administration
gives in too easily to the censor and the government's
demands.
On March 2 Egyptian newspapers reported that Minister of
Higher Education Mufid Shehab told parliament that the AUC
Arabic Studies department had decided that the book should not
be studied. He added that a committee would be formed to
review the books for study in the department to ensure they
comply with the morals and traditions of the country.
In press release issued on the following day, AUC confirmed
the minister's statement saying that the university would rely
on the faculty to select and assign its works in the manner
that they see fit, adding that the book would no longer be
studied in the introductory course and that "a serious and
responsible effort [is underway] to produce an agreed list of
reading for core courses."
Faculty in the department, however, have reserved the right to
continue to teaching the book and a number are opposed to any
efforts to come up with a list of agreed upon titles for
introductory courses.
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4)
Date: 17 Mar 1999
From: Abbas Al-Tonsi <tons at acs.auc.eun.eg>
Subject: AUC&Academic Freedom
Having read the responses of Drs. Al-Nowaihi and Siddiq, I hesitated to
answer. After all, it was I who started and thus have no reason to get
upset with Dr. Siddiq either when he generously upgrades me from a
reactionary to a supporter of censorship or when he sloppily deconstructs
my text. Indeed his answer is full of self-contradictions, e.g. his
exclusion of the social context in defining persecution, all the while
ignoring the fact that such persecution was not limited to the parameters
of Islamic/Arabic civilization. As for Dr. Siddiq's gullible portrayal of
his student labeling Darwish an infidel, such a student is not he only
stereotype of a Muslim, or does Dr. Siddiq exclude as terrorists Hamas and
the Hizbu-laah freedom fighters?
Perhaps I had presumed that both Dr. Siddiq would be understanding of my
position since he claims to defend everybody's freedom of speech and would,
accordingly, defend my right to disagree with them. Perhaps he did not know
that I was not only referring to them but also to a group of lamentors
«here in Cairo who saw it fit to jump on the bandwagon of lamenting
repressing academic freedom. Let me make a few points clear:
1. The principle of the administration dictating the syllabus is
rejected by all.
2. We must always consider careful the balance among the intertwined
relations between the teacher and the department, the teacher and the
students, and the teacher and the environment.
3. The course description is a contractual agreement between all these
parties.
4. The teacher and the student are their own guardians.
5. Freedom is both for you and me.
6. The text of alkhbuz alHafi is unfit to be mandated in an
undergraduate survey course.
7. Season of Migration to the North was taught with no protest (is
quality a variable?).
8. Using sex as a shock instrument is simply counterproductive if not
in bad taste, especially when it is as repulsive as Shukri's.
9. We must acknowledge the reality around us. The bad decision of one
professor led to banning Rodinson's Muhammad; the poor judgment of a second
professor instigated banning another book. Furthermore, All books coming
into the AUC library are checked with a fine tooth comb. Hurrah for the
freedom fighters!
10. Uncalculated heroics narrow the margins of freedom.
11. Dictatorship, whether of a regime or the professor, is rejected. A
la Siddiq: even the Mu øtazla betrayed their original call when they forced
their ideas upon others.
12. Dr. Siddiq's historical anecdotes reflect intolerance of any
variance in opinion, but do not demonstrate the tendency to fight for
freedom. Indeed, do we reject guardianship of the other only to appoint
ourselves as guardians? Was it not the students, whom we stripped of the
ability to have their own mind, who vocally and bravely protested the
American invasion of Iraq and who liberated Arnun with their bare hands
while we, the teachers, were busy taboo bashing?! Was it not these students
that some other pseudo academic freedom advocates called as rich only in
money and ignorance?!
In this debate about a text presumed to belong to Arabic literature,
several issues need to be seriously discussed:
1. Is the integrity of a work of art a function of its language,
citizenship of the author, and/or the issues discussed?
2. English literature in Berkeley aside, what is the canon for Arabic
literature? And do we have the right to exclude Naguib Mahfuz and Yusuf
Idris to accommodate Nawal Al-Sadawi and Alifa Rifat?
3.Can we realize an Arab renaissance following the Islamic model (Muhammad
Abdu's, for example) or must we reach out beyond it? At the risk of being
dubbed as a petro-dollar agent by Dr. Siddiq, I would like to argue that
Islam is an essential ingredient to any such attempt.
The last issue I would like to raise concerns the standpoint of all those
who practice Postcolonial culture studies(PCS) and speak highly of alkhbuz
alHafi.
Thank God I am only a language instructor as Drs. Al-Nowaihi and Siddiq
call me. Accordingly I am not involved in academic politics, nor am I
affiliated with what is known as interdisciplinary studies. A misnomer
which, to my mind, is-in most cases-like TV dinners, or like the old
Egyptian tramway that allows everyone easy access on and off. I do not have
to swim with the current or join the elite of the Avant-garade Academic
PCSists .In my opinion; PCS is a mere recycling of bastardized Marxism
topped with some Lacanian or Bakhtinian dressings. These studies, disguised
under many buzzwords, reproduce Reflection theory which constitutes a
misreading of Marxist dialectics because it focuses on dualism and
presupposes a homogeneous, levelled totality inside each and every
superstructure and the base.
What Strikes me in most of the literary criticism done by the followers of
PCS is their talk about colonial discourse, cultural discourse, gender
discourse, and all kinds of discourses except narrative discourse or
textual analysis. As for them the language of the text, its narrativity or
fictionality are not the point. Instead, they place emphasis on the reality
that the text reflects; Therefor, they are only interested in knowledge and
that every text is worthy of being considered literature (V.Y.Mudimbe: The
Invention of Africa) consequently, these texts are canonized by Them, the
academic elite.
Tom Cohn was right when he says Cultural studies arrives as if at the end
of (critical) history-an occurrence affiliated with a hypothetical
globalization of formal democracy, with the installation of new
transnational or hyper-media, the end of the Cold War. (Tom Cohn: Ideology
and Inscription)
He considers that pcs is a return to mimetic humanism and historicist
method where the epistemological is the political.
I just wonder can we say that postcoloniality is the condition of what we
might ungenerously call a comprador intelligentsia: a relatively small,
Western-style, Western-trained group of writers and thinkers, who mediate
the trade in cultural commodities of word capitalism at the periphery.
Kawme Anthony Appiah (cited: The John Hopkins Guide to literary
Theory&Criticism)
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