Isim – Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies in the United States after September 11
Academic Freedom and Middle East Studies in the United States after September 11
Public lecture by
Professor Beshara Doumani
Thursday 30 March 2006, 15.00 to 17.00 hrs
University of Amsterdam
Academic freedom in the United States is facing its most serious threat since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, both government agencies and private advocacy groups have been subjecting institutions of higher learning to a sophisticated infrastructure of surveillance, intervention, and control with particular focus on Islamic and Middle East studies. This comes at a time when the academy is in the midst of an institutional transformation driven by the increasing commercialization of knowledge. Buffeted between the conflicting but intimately related forces of anti-liberal coercion and neo-liberal privatization, colleges and universities are more vulnerable than ever to the ways in which outside political and economic forces are reshaping the landscape of intellectual production. How must we rethink the concept of academic freedom and our role as intellectuals in order to protect the free pursuit of knowledge and to keep the mission of higher education focused on service to the public good?
Beshara Doumani is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Rediscovering Palestine (1995), and editor of two volumes: Family History in the Middle East (2003); and Academic Freedom after September 11 (2006). He received his Ph.D. from Georgetown University (1990) and was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1997-1998) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2001-2002).