The Decline of Middle East Studies—Then and Now

In the summer of 1979, Bernard Lewis, then the preeminent scholar of the Muslim world, offered up a hardheaded critique of his own field. Martin Kramer evaluates what remains true of that critique, what improvements have occurred, and what new problems have arisen as the field has been subject to various post-colonialist and post-modern intellectual influences. Most notable, and resonant, are Lewis’s complaints of politicization, informal censorship, and—perhaps worst of all in his mind—self-censorship. (Video, 34 minutes.)