In a perfect world, Lewis would be able to review his student's review .... Is Beeman saying that all of a sudden Lewis doesn't know what he is talking about because he is ....oh, shudder...."older".... (if that were the case, we'd certainly have to let folks in the Senate like Byrd go....)
Or have the times changed?
Did Lewis actually change his mind from years of work, OR did Beeman just think Lewis did....?
Or has something happened to change Beeman's mind and veer to the left?
Bernard Lewis was one of my gurus as a graduate student.
As one of the editors of the venerable Cambridge History of Islam, the classic books, The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey and dozens of other essential works, he was an icon as a Middle Eastern historian.
He held sway for many years at Princeton as the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies.
Contemporary times and retirement have changed him.
The sober, even-handed professor of my youth has been transformed in his recent work to a neoconservative toady, almost eager to corrupt his own considerable knowledge for ideological purposes.
In this, and his earlier book, What went wrong? : Western Iimpact and Middle Eastern Response he now spouts invective and misinformation about the Islamic world that is pleasing to his new best friends—Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle—but which will be deeply misleading to a public desperate for accurate information about Islamic civilization and history. |
