I’m late for the neocon bus! Last week the Washington Post ran an Op-Ed by a Harvard Law student calling for an investigation of the National Endowment for the Humanities for its funding of Arabic instruction materials. The student, who is taking Arabic at Harvard, chiefly objects to the tone of the materials as “an indoctrination into misery.” Though of course Joel B. Pollak, clearly a landsman (that’s Yiddish for my coreligionist) also objected to having to see Nasser praised in a film. “To study Arabic in America today is to be inducted into a world of longing, abandonment and regret.” The piece has a condescending, all-knowing tone. For instance, Pollak says we only know about the 12th century Islamic philosopher Averroes because Jews translated his work. OK, let’s just have Israelis teach Arabic. They’re good at it.
Orientalism in the media, it feels so yesterday. Why is the Post making room for this stuff?
Another Harvard student promptly defenestrated two of Pollak’s claims, in a letter to the Post. “Mr. Pollak claimed that the maps in ‘Al-Kitaab’ do not include Israel.
There are three maps in the book: On Page 13, Israel is represented
without the West Bank and Gaza. On Page 389, two historical maps (from
the Ottoman era to World War I) predate Israel’s existence.”
