Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (46373)	9/23/2002 12:20:25 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

September 23, 2002 9:00 a.m. Balancing the Academy The West stakes a claim on campus. Yep, we disagree. Profoundly. Please don't let that stop you from posting this stuff, though. This one is hysteria incarnate. The title is just for starters. "The West." It's typical Lynn Cheney, William Bennett style. Why didn't he just drop the cover and say something like "The Truth" or "Freedom" or "The American Way"? And the frequent use of "Anti-American bias" to characterize the academics they don't like; the use of public watch lists; etc. As for the claim that all these folk have lost their voices because of Said's widespread influence, it just won't go. Lewis is very happily, I assume, settled as a retired old fart at Princeton who gets to appear on TV regularly; Gellner and Kedourie are dead, so far as I know, at least if I have in mind the same folk as does Kurtz; as for the remainder of his list, "Walter Laqueur, Connor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz...and of course, Daniel Pipes himself," the last time I checked they are all quite, apparently, happily situated as public intellectuals of one sort or another. As for the accusation that Said named names in his academic work and thus Kurz, Pipes and their friends are entitled to publish anti-American charges, that's a genuine misstatement. Of course, Said named names. That's what's done in the academy when you disagree with someone else or with a body of work. Footnotes, responsible scholarship, etc. Was some of that pretty harsh. I don't know that literature well but would not be surprised if it were. That happens in the academy. But this attack by Kurtz and Pipes is of a different sort. It's not an attack on the arguments of Said and others; it's a claim they are Anti-American and conspiratorially work to eliminate their academic foes. In this climate, that's incendiary. But, of course, Kurtz and Pipes do that in this climate for that very reason. The genuinely responsible thing for K and P to do would be to publish their arguments against Said and folk without all the "anti-American" charges, without all the whining about conspiracies to drive out "good American scholarship," without all the whining about how K and P do work supported by the great majority of Americans, while Said and his followers are not. Pipes does some pretty interesting work. I've now read a little of it. I find it less nuanced than Kepel, for instance, but that's grounds for my learning more about Islamism, not grounds for concluding that Kepel, Pipes, or Said, for that matter, are more patriotic, less patriotic, or not patriotic at all. Please, don't let the strength of my views on this issue keep you from posting these sorts of things. And I won't let the strength of your views keep me from posting replies. However, I see two dangers. First, that we let these differences define all of our talk. I don't see that happening. And, second, that we take up too much thread time on these issues. I agree they are relevant, just don't see any reason for a great deal of back and forth.