What I Found on My Trip to a College Campus
by Daniel Pipes
The University of Pennsylvania campus. Photo: wiki commons.
I just attended a two-day academic conference at the University of Pennsylvania — in part out of interest in the topic (“American & Muslim Worlds ca. 1500-1900“), and in part to get a first-hand sense of the discourse in the humanities at a contemporary university.
As the founder of Campus Watch, I wondered if things on campus are as bad as our reports suggest, or whether we focus on outliers.
My first impression was one of intellectual coziness.
A broad consensus of liberal assumptions often crowds out dissenting opinions. And a series of hierarchies exists:
- Modern bests old
- Non-American bests American
- Female bests male
- Dark skin bests white skin
- Muslim bests non-Muslim
The word “Islamophobia” is used as though it’s a normal English-language word, rather than a propagandistic tool to shut down criticism. In once case, a prominent 19th century missionary, Henry Jessup, was anachronistically called a “preeminent Muslim-basher.”
A Canadian professor living in Costa Rica said that the people of the United States “commandeered” the word American, in order to apply it only to themselves. Another speaker praised the conference for having “problematized the centrality of the United States.” A moderator worried so much about “America-centrism” that he asked, “Should we not be doing this topic at all? Is there an inherent arrogance” in Americans studying Muslims? A frisson rippled through the audience at any mention of “Trump”; in contrast, invoking Edward Said won the predictable approval.
My second impression concerns jargon. No person outside academia uses words like “problematize,” “racialize” and “relativize,” much less “historicize the notion of imagination.” (What’s with all this turning nouns into verbs with –ize?)
Use of the word “and” in the conference title spawned considerable debate (does it imply America and the Muslim world are completely different, or does it allow for overlap?) to the point that this came to be known as “the and problem.”
My third and strongest impression concerns triviality, the historian’s tendency to avoid big, meaningful analyses in favor of trifling micro-topics. They answer questions that no one asks. This propensity blazed brightly at the UPenn conference. Papers titled “Byron’s Houris in America: Visual Depictions of Muslim Heroines in the Gallery of Byron Beauties” or “‘Strangers in the Stranger Lands’: The ‘Rebs and Yanks’ in the Khedival Citadel” turned the worthy topic of early US-Muslim connections into a series of obscurities. The prize for oddity, however, went to “Bombo’s America: An Energy-Humanities View of the Early American Oriental Tale.”
In contrast, compelling and useful issues barely surfaced: The role of literate Muslims among African slaves; the impact of the Moro rebellion in the Philippines on US opinion; the legacy of Protestant missionaries to the Middle East; the percentage of Muslims in early Middle Eastern immigration; the way peddlers became dry-goods store owners, and then, disproportionately, liquor store owners; the legacy of the Shriners, officially known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, with its mock Mecca Temples and other Islamic motifs.
The conference was advertised as “free and open to the public but registration is required,” so I signed up, thereby signaling the organizers and speakers of my presence. I can’t be sure, but I suspect that Kambiz GhaneaBassiri’s gratuitous mention of my 1990 article title, “The Muslims are Coming! The Muslims are Coming!” was intended for my benefit. Likewise, the repeated demand that the conference not be recorded on audio or video seemed directed squarely at me. It’s an odd demand from an academic institution, which by its nature should want to reach a wider public. But it’s understandable given how often Campus Watch has exposed Middle East studies excesses by recording events. I doubt that the prohibition is legally enforceable.
I grew up around a university (my father is a professor emeritus), and went on to earn a Ph.D. in medieval history, so I initially expected the college campus to be central in my life. Then, because it radicalized and I did not, my connection to the academy withered. Now, on occasional return visits to it, I invariably feel alienated by the left-wingery, the jargon and the arrogant irrelevance. While I’m glad that I escaped its clutches, I worry about the future of American (that word again) higher education. So, yes, Campus Watch has it right.
The Fox News channel revealed that half of Americans are ready for an alternative media. When will educators figure out the same logic applies to universities?
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2017 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
