A Response
the editorial board responds to the DoE’s letter to the Duke/UNC CMES.
As Duke and UNC students studying the Middle East, we were shocked when the Department of Education (DoE) publicized its allegations that the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) misused Title VI funds. The DoE claims that the courses, programming, and language instruction by CMES don’t serve US foreign, national, and security interests and that CMES underrepresents Middle Eastern minority groups, including Christians and Jews.
The DoE’s allegations are baseless, a thinly veiled cover for an Islamophobic agenda seeking to restrict the academic freedom of two major research universities that, according to the DoE, overemphasize “the positive aspects of Islam.”
The investigation that led to these allegations was superficial. The DoE did not reach out to ask about our language courses or perceptions of curricular bias. Had they, we would have emphasized that CMES programming reflects a diversity of perspectives in the region, whether through courses such as “Introduction to Israeli Culture” and “Literary Diasporas of the Middle East,” professors whose work focuses on Israeli cinema, or conferences featuring talks about “the Subaltern in the Arab world,” and “the split Arab/Jew figure revisited.”
As Duke and UNC students, we are the privileged recipients of an education that teaches the value of diverse perspectives and the long history of Western bias in Middle Eastern academia. The DoE recognizes the department’s sensitivity to underrepresented perspectives in its letter, noting that CMES provides teacher training to “explore ‘issues of multicultural education and equity to build a culture of respect in the classroom…focused on unconscious bias, safe classrooms for all, using film for global education, why culture matters and working across cultures, serving LGBTIQ youth in schools, culture and the media, diverse books for the classroom and more.’”
This kind of training emphasizes the very diversity of perspectives that the DoE claims that CMES lacks. Yet this good faith effort at inclusivity and awareness is condemned by the DoE as an example of “advance[ing] narrow, particularized views of American social issues.”
The DoE criticizes CMES’ programming as failing to “ensure the security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States.” It suggests that a critical understanding of the region’s cultures and politics cannot benefit US interests. We strongly disagree. An education that humanizes the people and cultures of the Middle East is essential to counteract long-held damaging misconceptions and racisms. For all future professionals and especially public servants, respect, concern, and critique are paramount.
The DoE does not want CMES to teach a diversity of perspectives but rather to reflect the current administration’s shortsighted and Islamophobic position on Middle Eastern culture, religion, and politics. This is a blatant breach of the Title VI imperative that “nothing in Title VI shall be construed to authorize the Secretary to mandate, direct, or control an institution of higher education’s specific instructional content, curriculum, or program of instruction” (20 U.S.C. 1132-2). What is the DoE’s demand that CMES remakes its curriculum to suit the policy of the current administration if not a conspicuous effort to limit academic freedom, control what professors teach, and impoverish what students learn? This censorship of professors of the Middle East and Islam belittles scholarship and perpetuates anti-Muslim sentiment.
As students, we reject the DoE’s attempts to censor our educations and claim our first amendment rights to hear and discuss controversial or dissenting opinions. It is clear that the DoE does not want students to gain complex and nuanced knowledge about the Middle East but rather to harbor a false understanding of the region that is uncritical of the US. These unquestioned views are the ones that have led to mistake after bloody mistake in US policymaking. Because we care about our country at home and abroad, we support our professors’ right to criticize and question common assumptions about the US’ “economic stability” and “national security.”
This interference into academic freedom is a red flag. The DoE is blurring the boundary separating scholarship from policy and propaganda. As Noam Chomsky has said, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” We see the DoE’s order for what it is: an Islamophobic administration’s obstruction of academic freedom in service of its reprobate and opportunistic Middle East policy.