Posted on 11/16/2001 1:15:31 PM PST by TroutStalker
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:45:41 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
By Martin Kramer. Mr. Kramer is editor of the Middle East Quarterly and author of "Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America" (Washington Institute for Near East Policy).
The Middle East Studies Association of North America convenes Saturday in San Francisco. Its membership includes 2,600 "experts" on the Middle East, most of them based in universities. On Sept. 21, MESA's board issued a statement on the terror attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It encapsulates all the ills of this very sick discipline -- one that did nothing to prepare America for the encounter with Muslim extremism, and that can't contribute anything to America's defense.
(Excerpt) Read more at interactive.wsj.com ...
Yet once again I'm forced to ask, why does any one listen to these clowns? Just how many times have they been right about anything in the last...oh say 40yrs? I'm sure they must have been sometime(even a blind squirrel finds a acorn sometimes)but I'm having trouble thinking of one.
Leftists dominate and flourish in these fields, and continue to receive attention (Ehrlich, Galbraith, and others come to mind) because, like artists, they trade in ideas, not reality. And the only criteria for remaining in those positions is that those colleagues immediately around you simply like what you say. Being "correct" is simply irrelevant to them, especially so when the underlying postmodern / relativist philosophies they subscribe to preclude such "simplistic" notions. No leftist academic ever put food on his table by agreeing with the common-sense observations of the common man. He simply needs something to do, after all. And the primary skills to ensure a leftist academic remains employed are the abilities to articulate misery, self-loathing, and "aha!" instances of self-blame. Not much else is truly useful to them.
This is a very important story. But it is also a very dry story. The only angle that would make it of interest to our audience is the fact that their air-headed professors are, in large part, paid for by the "grateful taxpapers," both state and federal. That is true, and that should steam a few people's clams.
Congressman Billybob
This is pretty much the key to bad government, pork spending and other ills of the kind, isn't it? Since it's not about airplanes flying into buildings, no one is paying attention (close to home: just watch the fate of this very thread.) This is how, I believe pessimistically, these scoundrels will continue to be funded by the taxpayers.
Another observation I have to make is that these are the university departments that produce the "experts" in the State Departments we have been hearing about lately, the infamous girly boy "Arabists".
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