Fear and Trembling at the Annual MESA Meeting

My colleague Cinnamon Stillwell has a new blog post at Campus Watch on the gloomy atmosphere at the recent annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Montreal.

Fear and Trembling at the Annual MESA Meeting

At the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in Montreal earlier this month, fear and trembling were the order of the day.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Mideast Scholars, Meeting in Montreal, Worry About a Splinter Group and Academic Freedom," the leading lights of Middle East studies are feeling both "besieged" and "blessed" by the post-9/11 increase in attention to their field. Being forced to contend with the twin horrors of outside criticism and competition from groups such as the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) must indeed be taking their toll on the delicate sensibilities of these poor, beleaguered academics.

MESA's "Committee on Academic Freedom" is aflutter with cases where the "freedom of scholars" is threatened. Among these, members cite "travel restrictions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, speech crackdowns in Turkey, and blasphemy lawsuits against professors in Kuwait" in the same breath as "concerns over the American reception of John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." Who needs foreign government suppression when the encroachments of free speech are at hand?

To read the rest of Cinnamon's post, click here.