The Old Paradigm For Middle East Studies Is Coming To An End

Academic Middle Eastern studies at American universities for decades have focused mainly on a limited number of topics: the embrace of every academic fashion at the expense of language study, classical literature and history; the vilification of Israel and the U.S. in the name of postcolonial guilt and imperialism, paired not coincidentally in the Iranian fashion as the "Little Satan" and the "Great Satan"; and obsessive attention on "Palestine" as the discipline's central concern, mirroring the approach of Arab nationalists and Islamists.

These old ways are coming to an end. One reason is that the role of Middle Eastern studies in shaping the discourse around Hamas and the Gaza Strip became clear in 2023 and 2024 with justifications of massacres in the name of resisting "settler colonialism," whitewashing Hamas' Muslim fundamentalism, and false accusations of "genocide" and starvation. These culminated in encampments, harassment and intimidation of Jewish students and others, vandalism, and the public implosion of university administrations.

Times are changing, fast. The abrupt defenestration of Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies' leadership is a small sign that the institution understands the threat of a hostile Trump administration and, perhaps, its intellectual failings. The ongoing collapse of humanities enrollments is another sign. Nationally, the number of students majoring in Middle Eastern languages has dropped some 30% since 2019 to fewer than 600.

Students are also voting with their feet, away from toxic brands such as Columbia University and the City University of New York. A broader sign is the collapse of public confidence in universities, which helped bring about the Trump administration and its cuts to higher education. Even administration critics, including The New York Times and Harvard's Lawrence Summers, quietly agree that identity politics and a lack of intellectual diversity have compromised universities' missions and public images.

So, how did we get here?

The problems are partly a function of federal and foreign money. Since the 1950s, the former has generated a progression of "relevant" approaches that trended first toward serving global development frameworks and American foreign policy goals but, by the 21st century, rigidly followed academic orthodoxies regarding race, class and gender. This mapped American terms and concerns onto the world, remaking the world in our image. On the other hand, vast inputs of money from conservative Gulf states such as Qatar have bent American universities and curricula (and K-12 education) toward the concerns of those states, namely the propagation of Islam and the vilification of Jews and Israel.

The problem of Middle Eastern studies also mirrors the academic enterprise. The 1960s generation of scholars made the "long march through the institutions," looking for relevance and power. From the 1970s onward, "authenticity" was perceived as a possession of indigenous peoples and not foreign (read White, colonial, male) interlopers. An earlier passion for prediction gave way to articulations of blame and guilt.

Even a calamity such as 9/11 was insufficient for academic Middle Eastern studies and its facilitators in government to fully confront the field's failures and prejudices. Language instruction declined, and cultural explanations for American culpability expanded. Given the enthusiasm for Hamas and Gaza currently displayed in academia, self-examination seems unlikely. If anything, academia shows signs of digging in its "resistance" to President Trump. Middle Eastern studies types are even less likely if scientists and physicians cannot understand why they have lost public trust.

Yet that is precisely what is needed, there and across the humanities and social sciences. Still, diagnosing problems is easy; proposing solutions is difficult.

So, what's next? Part of the answer lies in university structure and governance. Some of the proposed measures seem far-fetched, but a farsighted institution that wants to not only survive but thrive should advise that the time for change is now.

For one thing, the time has come to end departments and programs that act as fiefdoms of power and patronage. Faculty members in Middle Eastern studies, Jewish studies, women's studies and countless others should be folded back into larger and more meaningful departments such as history, literature and political science. Before there are interdisciplinary studies, there should be disciplinary studies, and faculty members should serve that end.

Internal politics and factionalism will certainly exist, as will the overwhelming liberal faculty bias, as revealed time and again by patterns of political donations. Still, intellectual diversity will not be achieved by leaving disciplines to clone themselves and their prejudices, serving fewer and fewer students thanks to their blatant biases, while higher education as a whole implodes.

There is more of a chance that cold-eyed colleagues outside arcane subspecialties will see through jargon and cant and call out blatant biases and mistreatments of students inside and outside the classroom. This is even more likely if deans and provosts exercise their authority over outrageous claims of academic freedom, which now include canceling classes and leading protests in sympathy with pro-Hamas students.

There is also the question of money. Strict supervision of conferences, research funds and graduate students (of which there are far too many) is equally important. Those controls will be more meaningful if exercised across the board and not aimed at a key offender, such as Middle Eastern studies.

Another approach is to rethink the curriculum of Middle Eastern studies and beyond. At present, it is too easy to go through a degree program without a suitable introduction to the real width and breadth of Middle Eastern history and cultures. Teaching one's specialty is also a surefire way of selecting students who agree with your viewpoint, whether postcolonial or otherwise.

Survey classes, suitably configured to account for the Middle East's social, religious and ethnic diversity, would attract students, particularly if they were part of rebuilt requirements. This is not a call to return to old-style "Western civ" classes but courses introducing the world's real diversity. Such courses are needed for all fields as part of an integrated curriculum.

At a higher level, Middle Eastern studies is a microcosm of academia as a whole, desperately seeking a role to help shape what it perceives as a just and equitable society. This is precisely the problem. Much of Middle Eastern studies, as well as the humanities and social sciences, is irrelevant in yielding direct policy solutions to contemporary problems. Framing education and discourse in those terms does an injustice to the richness of history, literature, social formations and countless other topics. Neglect of real history and literature skews education unfairly toward the contemporary and toward frameworks or tools that purport to be helpful.

The first step is to stop trying to help.

As with the study of history, literature or art, young people need to be encouraged to enter Middle Eastern studies for their self-enlightenment rather than a utilitarian or missionary desire to help. This contradicts the conditioning that schools and society have forced on young people for decades. It panders to their adolescent longings for meaning and to the passive-aggressive tendencies of faculty members who wish to bring about change through their students.

This symbiosis has been immensely destructive to students, faculty, institutions and the very concept of liberal arts education. It is not surprising that this has been evident to many students (and their parents), who now study security and protective services (more than 230,000) or health sciences (more than 1 million).

Restructuring Middle Eastern studies can be a first step toward saving the university as a concept. Promoting the value of Rumi's poetry and Mahfouz's novels within the canon of world literature, understanding the long, branching history of Semitic languages and, yes, situating countless episodes of imperialism and colonialism in the Middle East across 6,000 years of history are important for their own sake.

Learning these things and more for their own sake should be a matter of pride for students, not because they are useful but because they are the complexity of the world, something that, in its own way, is beautiful. Until universities give up their pretenses of utility and once again embrace beauty, Middle Eastern studies and other disciplines will be unable to contribute to their full potential. They may even fade into complete obscurity.

Alex Joffe is director of strategic affairs for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. Asaf Romirowsky is executive director of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.