The act of studying the Middle East is more critical than it ever has been. As Middle East Studies programs across the U.S. are increasingly in danger, with top universities such as Columbia and Harvard feeling government scrutiny, I want to quickly remind the students of our campus what it means to study the Middle East, why it matters and why you should take a course with one of the fantastic professors. For the purposes of this article, I am defining the Middle East as majority Arabic speaking countries and geographically North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf and what might be more broadly referred to as West Asia.
During my junior year of high school, I was blessed enough to receive a scholarship to attend a semester-long international politics program. It was there I first learned about politics, philosophy and Israel-Palestine along with its implications for the Western body politic. There, I lived with politically, and perhaps more importantly, philosophically-engaged students, many of whom came from Jewish or Arab backgrounds, who testified to their own experiences as a result of the conflict. Through their voices, I heard a symphony of attestations to the importance of Middle East and Arabic Studies.
When I entered Carleton, I began the Arabic track with an eager mind. The task, however, was truly one in which you had to commit to being transformed. Many enter the track, few make it to the end. Those who make it, though, came out with a stronger understanding of the world, as Allan Bloom puts it, a “house of being” beyond themselves.
Supplemented with the track, I took Political Philosophy and the War on Terror. Although seemingly unrelated, I quickly discovered that there is an intimate relationship between the world of Political Philosophy and Middle East Studies, both modern and historical, which is best seen through the impact of the neo-conservative movement. For example, any quick search reveals the role of former political philosophers, such as Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz, in the construction of the Iraq war. These theorists posit, then, the Middle East as the antithesis to American democracy.
On the other hand, the support for Middle East Studies has since become our litmus test for democracy. If the real test of democracy is how we treat each other, then how can this state, in which our students can no longer speak on Israel-Palestine without fear of retribution, be our ultimate end? Orientalism has since extended beyond the external and finds itself embedded inside, where our immigrant students now find themselves vulnerable to deportation. The internal parasite of fear does not stop, until it becomes the body. We must ask ourselves, then, what democracy truly means to us.
My point, ultimately, is that the Middle East is the most relevant place to our political being, as the US has defined it as the “orient” or “other” and taken on the project of dominance in the Middle East. And, it is best said in Edward Said’s “Orientalism” that, “a serious interest in the problems of Islamic society and Islamic people is very likely to develop not among Middle East experts, or media people who have a purported specialty in modern Islam, but … those with a genuinely engaged and sympathetic — as opposed to a narrowly political hostile — attitude to the Islamic world.” Through Orientalism, or the construct of the East and West in which the West speaks for the East, we have constructed a dichotomy of us versus them, which reveals more about us than it does the subject. Through Orientalism, the construct of the Middle East is accepted as fact rather than arbitrary, western-drawn borders.
In summary, studying Middle East Studies is how we can understand the end of our democratic ideals, and more importantly, ourselves, in a holistic context as our decisions define us. Thus, I argue that Middle East Studies is fundamental to the soul of this very campus and our very nation, because it is the cumulative test of democracy’s end. If you have the chance, you should take a course in the department if not for the theoretical importance, for the kind people.