It would be nice to have academic departments of Middle Eastern studies to turn to for understanding these days, but too many have traded scholarship for anti-Israel politics. No wonder most are now ignored, other than for their role in the self-immolation of U.S. universities since Oct. 7, 2023.
There’s plenty to complain about in academia, but we prefer efforts to build alternatives and have highlighted several across the country. The latest comes from the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy, which is creating a new master’s program in Middle East Policy Studies with the help of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The two-year program, to be announced Wednesday and opened in Washington in the fall, is designed to train future policy makers. Students should “leave our program with the skills and knowledge to be effective players in the world of Middle East policy, but without the radical indoctrination that has become customary,” write Pepperdine public-policy dean Pete Peterson and Washington Institute director Robert Satloff.
They cite Bernard Lewis, the great Princeton scholar of Islam, who identified the problems plaguing Middle Eastern studies as early as 1979. The field had become an arena for “the working of emotion and prejudice,” he wrote, with funding from Arab regimes and low standards for scholarship. The Washington Institute’s Martin Kramer documented many of the field’s failings in his 2001 book “Ivory Towers on Sand.”
The Middle East Studies Association has endorsed an academic boycott of Israel and amended its mission to place advocacy on par with scholarship. Columbia University is a leading example of where this ends up.
Qatar has ramped up its efforts to shape the field, donating more than $2 billion to U.S. universities between 2021 and 2024, according to a study by the Network Contagion Research Institute. The Pepperdine program plans to launch tuition-free and says it will rely solely on donations from U.S. citizens and foundations. That’s as radical as anything at Harvard, but much healthier for the country.
