Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend who happened to be from Turkey. Somewhere in the middle of our discussion of legacy of Ataturk, the founder and first President of the republic of Turkey, my friend snapped: “…sorry, but you will not understand Us anyway.”
“Why not? I spent five years closely interacting with you guys…” I exclaimed amazed by his harsh words.
“Five years are nothing…Come to Turkey, spend there fifteen years among ordinary Turks, and maybe, maybe you will understand us better” he answered not showing any emotions.

I tried to start our debate a few more times which has always resulted in him saying that I could not possibly understand his stubbornness over some issues. However, he never explained his reasons.
Time has passed and I forgot about our conversation. Unexpectedly, these words got some resonance when once, on my way home, I stopped by a newspaper stand to pick up a copy of “Foreign Affairs” magazine.

I was not looking for any particular article; I rather looked for some general information written by experts on various foreign policy topics. So there I was, on a train platform, flipping pages with a smart look and wandering mind, until the moment I saw a featured essay: “Iraq: Learning the Lesson of Vietnam”, written by Melvin R. Laird, a former Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973.

While his topic was concentrated around Iraqi war, there were few phrases that caught my attention. These words and phrases were: “nation building”, “legitimate government”, “to implant democracy side by side with Islam” and a paragraph where the author said “…intelligence lapses were born of our failure to understand what motivated Ho Chi Minh in the 1950’s. Had we understood the depth of his nationalism…” (Melvin R.Laird, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005)

Had we understood… and maybe, thousands of lives could have been saved. I pulled all these words out of context, molded them together and asked myself: Do we really understand the Middle East and everything what is going there?

After all, maybe, my friend was right, maybe theoretical knowledge derived from books as well as limited interactions with people from different regions is not enough. Maybe, it is important to consider different sources and facts, especially when we talk about such project as “nation building with legitimate government and implanted western democracy, side by side with presumably ‘well-studied’ Islam”.

And to understand it better…

We might look inside of academia to see how professors of “International Studies” shape U.S. foreign policy and how they train future policymakers. The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes said once: “Madman in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

According to “Foreign Policy” magazine, 25 per cent of “academic scribblers” serving as consultants to the U.S. government and indeed have a chance to influence the way government conducts its foreign policy. They are not only having a chance, they indeed shape the thinking of current administration. For example, in a featured article “Inside of Ivory Tower”, authors state that political philosophers from University of Chicago are credited with creating of “neo-conservative” thinking at the top of administration. (Foreign Policy, November-December 2005).

While we witness some experts influencing the U.S. policy, some of us realize that not all of the academia people appear to be true experts. According to the magazine, there are about 44 percent of professors who spend significant time discussing Middle East in the introductory classes, and only 7 percent of them have expertise in that region. Now, what is a chance of getting in the class taught by 7 percent of professors? We may argue that these are the “101” courses and therefore, somebody truly interested in the Middle East will take more concentrated classes. True, however, ‘101” classes laid down a foundation that is not easy to rebuild. On a top of it, professors in international relations field tend to use material written exclusively by American authors. The above-mentioned article states: “The subject maybe international relationships but the readings are overwhelmingly American”.

According to this article, most professors assign 10 or less percent to foreign authors in their introductory classes while 10 percent of professors do not use non-American material at all. They argue that Americans authored most of the books in the field and nine out of ten research journals are published in the USA. It is true, since America dominates in many if not most worlds’ political issues; it makes sense to stress American material. However, the quantity does not necessarily translate into quality. And the fact that we have access to sophisticated materials does not mean that the public will be more and better informed regarding the important issues.

I would like to make it clear that I talk about a depth, not lack of knowledge in American intellectual circles. By incorporating more different ideas and views, there is a good chance to improve the depth of a subject since people’s opinions might be based on their direct knowledge of the subject. Obviously, the situation has changed since 1970’s and more opinions were offered regarding the situation in the Middle East.
The times when Edward Said, a famous Palestinian dissident, argued that the West tends to treat Arabs as children who are unable to speak for themselves and often portrait them as simple, pastoral and underdeveloped people, are fading away.

The Western public is offered much more detailed and diverse opinions and perspectives on some critical issues. Back in 1976, Edward Said satirically summarized Edward Sheehan, the Middle East expert journalist and a fellow at the center for international Studies at Harvard and his book “Kingdom of Illusion” in one sentence: “These Arabs are kind of wonderful, starry-eyed, dumb creatures, romantic, making love in ruins and so on.” (New Outlook: Middle East monthly, Jan 1976) He had all reasons to be very critical of this fictional work because Miles Copeland, a CIA man in Egypt, cited Sheehan’s novel in an appendix of his own book, “The game of Nations”, much more serious and politically oriented work as the best for understanding the Middle East.

Nowadays, in 2005, we find bookstores that offer profound research works by Edward Said, Mahmood Mamdani, and John Esposito to name the few. These authors offer the public deeper and much more detailed account of events and what underlies them. More professors offer such books for their students in order to provide them with a different perspective. This trend slowly continues to grow bringing a hope that in the future we will have less “…had we understood” memories.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2005 at 12:34 pm and is filed under The Pressroom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.