Middle Eastern Studies Centers Will Soon Be Irrelevant

During the Cold War, Kremlinology was a thriving field designed to train Western experts in the esoteric intricacies of politics in the Soviet Union. At graduate school orientation, political science professors told the warning story of doctoral candidates in 1991 who became experts in Soviet industrial policy only to become unemployed historians. Outliving a field of study and becoming irrelevant is an existential crisis for any academic; and yet, today’s Middle Eastern Studies Centers (MESCs) are facing this same crisis due to the winds of change in the Middle East and their own ideological echo chamber. 

Two years ago, the National Association of Scholars described how MESCs emerged out of a push by the United States government to develop “area studies” devoted to studying critical regions of the world and to help win the Cold War. The goal of these centers was to shift scholarly focus away from history and focus on the modern geopolitics of the Middle East, while training students in policy-relevant topics and honing language skills for contemporary diplomacy and intelligence work. Many of the founders of modern MESCs were either veterans of the World War II Office of Strategic Services or connected to the Central Intelligence Agency.

When United States government interests commandeered academic inquiry, the state naturally focused on the Ivy League. Princeton University reshaped its old focus on “Oriental Studies” into a modern MESC that became a model for others. The seed money for these centers came from foundations that are household names, such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the Carnegie Corporation. In 1958, the passing of the National Defense in Education Act allowed the government to form National Resource Centers committed to building Middle East Studies as a field. After 9/11, the number of active MESCs reached a peak of 19 around the country. 

Like much of academia, MESCs were politicized by the leftward shift of colleges and universities in the 1960s and 1970s. Scholars of the “New Left” steeped in theories of “intersectionality,” in which the world is divided into hierarchies of “oppressed” and “oppressor,” ultimately took over much of the field of Middle East Studies. The takeover of the discipline by leftwing ideology could not have had better timing with events in the region. The decolonization of French Algeria in 1962, the Six-Day War in 1967, and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 coincided with the American civil rights movement and growing antipathy to the war in Vietnam. By the late 1970s, Edward Said’s Orientalism added theoretical depth to what was quickly becoming a largely anti-Western academic field. Blind ideological criticism of American foreign policy, portraying Israel as an illegitimate colonial project, and placing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of an academic enterprise driven by current events and crisis, swept the nation. 

Scholarship based on current events and hatred is never a good idea if it is to stay relevant and serious. Hyperfocus on attacking Israel and the West ultimately leaves research with a narrow audience. Building theory on current events risks making research quickly outdated and obsolete. Thanks to ideological myopia and an obsession with delegitimizing Israel, the new and emerging Middle East threatens to leave MESCs behind. 

A recent report by Open the Books found that the United States Department of Education funneled over $22 million to Middle East Studies programs from 2020-2024. Alarmingly, but not surprisingly, Open the Books found that each university that received grant funding touted anti-Israel professors in their grant applications. Columbia University highlighted professor Joseph Massad, who had called the October 7 Hamas attack a “stunning victory of Palestinian resistance,” as a selling point on its application for funding. Indiana University did the same with professor Abdulkader Sinno, who served as “advisor for the Palestinian Solidarity Committee.” Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service similarly highlighted its own faculty member, Fida Adely, who serves on the Faculty for Justice in Palestine. While Open the Books rightly raises concern about the lack of federal oversight into who receives Middle East Studies funding and why, the changes on the ground in the Middle East itself threaten to render most of the field obsolete. 

The Middle East of today is not the one portrayed by anti-Israel academic activists. The Abraham Accords that opened peace and commerce between Jerusalem, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco are quickly eroding the premise of an “Arab-Israeli” conflict. Hamas, the terrorist group whose attack Massad called “resistance” and who labeled civilians “colonists” is nearly extinct. Yahya Sinwar, the “architect” of the October 7 terrorist attack, is dead. As of June, half of Hamas has been eliminated. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is faring little better. Last month, Israel neutralized 3,000 Hezbollah fighters with a single operation targeting their electronic devices. The Israeli Defense Forces have made fast work of Hezbollah’s leadership by killing enough of its commanders to leave the organization headless.

Farther afield, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have fired missiles at Israel over the past year. Saudi Arabia has quietly helped the Jewish state by shooting some of them down. The Kingdom of Jordan acted similarly by intercepting missiles shot at Israel by Iran. For its part, the Shia theocracy in Iran looks shakier than ever. Iran’s missile barrages have done such little damage due to Israel’s Iron Dome and help from Arab neighbors and Western allies that Tehran looks inept and isolated. With its proxies increasingly neutered, Iran is vulnerable. The son of the last shah, Reza Pahlavi, recently outlined a vision of Iran at peace with Israel in a prosperous Middle East. A month before the October 7 attack, India, the Gulf States, Israel, Europe, and the United States issued a Memo of Understanding outlining an integrated economic system linking the subcontinent through the Middle East to the West. This is not the Middle East of postmodern MESCs, but one that is quickly undoing the constraints of terrorism and postcolonial rage. 

For now, MESCs seem safe thanks to government largesse. How long the field remains relevant is another story. Academic papers branding Palestinian terrorists as “democracy activists” are quickly becoming as irrelevant as they are anti-Semitic. Anti-Western theories of intersectionality focused on imperialism and Arabs portrayed as oppressed are becoming ever more disconnected from a reality in which Israel, Arab states, and the West are not only increasingly cooperating but geopolitically aligning of their own free will and accord. One can hope that the Middle East Studies of today goes the way of Sovietology. 

Ian Oxnevad is Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies at the National Association of Scholars.