Beinin: US needs a more Arabic-proficient pool of experts
The increasing clash of civilizations rhetoric comes at a time, perhaps, when just the right person is here to help bridge such gap. He is not an Arab defending himself to the West, but rather was raised in New Jersey, leading a leftist Zionist club in his youth, which he has since renounced. Yet he has already done more for Arabs and Palestinians than most local activists or scholars.
Dr. Joel Beinin was named Middle East studies director at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Oct. 1 after 23 years at Stanford, a Middle East Studies Association presidency, and an education from Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Michigan.
His reach, however, will go beyond ivory towers. I ve always tried to be a public intellectual, to write and speak to audiences beyond academia. [Scholars] should give something back to society.
Beinin aims to raise the quality and reputation of the master s degree program at AUC to rival the best worldwide by increasing the sense of intellectual and social community, faculty-student interaction, and participation in scholarly exchanges, conferences, and journals. He says AUC already has the biggest concentration of [Middle East] experts after the American University of Beirut.
Sixty-five percent of the program s students are American and 80 percent Western , so Beinin says the program should increase its pool of experts in the US. Toward that end, he is increasing the Arabic proficiency required for the master s degree. There are too many people running around the US thinking they re Middle East experts who can t read newspapers and access the culture.
Beinin s long history with Egypt began incidentally. He first arrived in 1969 to study Arabic at AUC. He lived above a floor of Palestinians who he says had a distinct nationalism and identity, a fact often vehemently denied by Zionists. They took him to a PLO office, from which he returned thinking, We don t have an answer to this problem.
When proclaiming his graduate thesis topic on the subject however, Beinin s advisor told him, If you write about Israel and Palestine you won t get a job. Why don t you write about Egypt?
So began a breadth of studies on Egypt, spanning over 25 years, focusing on the working classes.
Later, Beinin returned to his initial interest and wrote and edited books such as Was the Red Flag Flying There and Intifada are both critical of Israel and highlighting Palestinian needs and rights.
His dissent did not go unnoticed, however, and in March he sued David Horowitz for placing his picture on the cover of a Campus Support for Terrorism booklet. While the lawsuit is pending, Beinin says, It brings attention to what he’s [Horowitz’s] trying to do. “It’s always better to fight back rather than to accept things like this.
Beinin was also featured in The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, and Campus Watch, projects devoted to intimidating critics of Israel. Even students accused him of being a self-hating Jew.
Infuriated, Beinin says, It s ridiculous. Who gives [anyone] the right to say if you don t believe in A, B, or C, you re self-hating? Beinin terms as neo-McCarthyism such campaigns to de-legitimize critical thought, and shut [people] up, raise campaigns in public against them, discredit them by calling them terrorist sympathizers.
While he admits that these tactics may be working against younger, untenured staff, he still believes that academia is the best place for debate, and claims that the number of university scholars critical of Israel is much greater than before 67. As an undergraduate at Princeton, he had exactly one lecture on the Arab-Israeli conflict and no visiting lectures.
Beinin’s views on current affairs are just as complex as his background. He comments, Scholarship is more than taking a partisan stance . scholarship by its nature likes nuance. While claiming he is here only as “an observer and analyst, he did share his opinion on some current affairs.
Of America, Beinin says their goals “have not been fundamentally different since WWII, and those goals are “oil, the defense of Israel, and preventing the region from falling into the hands of hostile powers. He says the Bush administration varies greatly from past administrations however, in its “disregard for international norms, diplomacy, their eagerness to use force, not willingness, all of which have led to “catastrophic military adventures.
When asked if Hezbollah was justified in their actions, he suggests that it was “not a question of justification. While he does not consider the kidnappings as acts of terror, and does believe Hezbollah won in many ways, he says that often “it is more important to ask the question: was it useful, which Nasrallah himself has answered in the negative.
While Beinin does fear Iran s nuclear developments, he suggests the focus should be on what needs to happen so the Middle East is a nuclear-free zone. Due to Israel s approximately 200 nuclear weapons and failure to sign on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Beinin says If I were the Iranian government, I would be developing nuclear weapons, adding that there must be guarantees that Iran won’t be attacked if it does not develop weaponry, contrary to precedent.
He believes that EU, UN, and Arab League troops should start replacing US troops in Iraq to aid the government in warding off complete civil war.
And then to the Palestinian question. While respecting Hamas right to rule, he does not think they are best suited to achieve Palestinian interests. His severest criticism he reserved for the US and Israel though, saying their stance toward Arabs has been: Do what we want or we kill them.
He says the 2000 peace efforts fell apart because Arafat dared to say it s not good enough. Not we ll throw you into the sea, not let s not negotiate any more, pointing to other flaws in the offer itself, which was actually never committed to paper. He also believes the refugee question must be addressed in any negotiation.
While Beinin is not optimistic about Egypt s progress, he does say that it is much easier to speak freely about sensitive issues than it was when he first arrived under Nasser, suggesting that the floodgates were opened to critical outlets with the 2004 presidential elections, and he commends increased political participation and awareness, as well as gender issue awareness.
Ironically, Beinin’s greatest hope for the region lies not in improvements but in increasing difficulties that he thinks and hopes will lead to inevitable confrontation. “The contradictions are becoming sharper, he says, referring to the increasing gaps in the past 30 years between the rich and poor, between democratic rhetoric and undemocratic reality, and between a liberal market economy and a significant public sector.
Such contradictions are bound to clash and erupt. Some resolution will become apparent.
