Will Brandeis "Save" Middle East Studies in the U.S.?

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / Fields of battle: "Yes, Feldman has missed all that. But the president of Brandeis, Jehuda Reinharz, has ensured that Feldman will land in the thick of the controversy. He has boldly announced that his university would create a center that is ''not pro- or anti-anything,'' as he put it in a recent interview. Of the other centers in the United States-including those at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Berkeley-Reinharz told the Jerusalem Post recently: ''My problem is not the anti-Zionism or even that many of them are anti-American, but that they are third-rate.''
Such comments won't make things easy for Feldman to build bridges with his American colleagues. According to Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan and president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association, Reinharz is ''talking out of both sides of his mouth,'' leveling ideological attacks on other centers while claiming to be above ideology.
Ali Banuazizi, current president of the association and co-director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program at Boston College, is similarly unimpressed. ''What does it mean for a new center to start out by being so derisive toward the other centers? Why is that necessary?'' asks Banuazizi. ''Let them come and put down their suitcase and start their work-and hopefully they will achieve the highest standards of scholarship.''"