Comments on: Summer reading 2008 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/07/summer_reading_2008/ Olin Institute :: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:18:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Assaf Moghadam http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/07/summer_reading_2008/#comment-817 Assaf Moghadam Tue, 22 Jul 2008 20:53:57 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/07/summer_reading_2008/#comment-817 As far as summer readings go, my most enjoyable recent read was Benjamin Orbach’s <i><a href="http://astore.amazon.com/harvard-20/detail/0814474276/" rel="nofollow">Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey through the Middle East</a></i> (Amacom, 2007). Orbach spent more than a year in Amman and Cairo studying Arabic, and made excursions to Israel, Morocco, Oman, Syria, and Turkey while in the region. His emails home form the raw material for this elegantly written and often hilarious book. The book’s scope is broad—the author details his day-to-day experiences, from finding an apartment in Amman to providing matchmaking services to ordinary Jordanians. It also describes Orbach’s personal encounter with anti-Americanism. America, he argues, needs the American policy critics in its struggle against the America haters, but this requires that the U.S. listen more carefully to its critics and do a better job explaining its policies to Middle Easterners. "Unofficial ambassadors" of the United States—travelers, archaeologists, journalists, or professors—are the "appeal of America incarnate" and play an important role in winning the battle for hearts and minds. Whether one agrees with Orbach's analyses or not, <i>Live from Jordan</i> will likely win the battle of hearts and minds of those seeking an entertaining summer read. <i><a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/members/assaf_moghadam/" rel="nofollow">Assaf Moghadam</a> is a member of MESH.</i> As far as summer readings go, my most enjoyable recent read was Benjamin Orbach’s Live from Jordan: Letters Home from My Journey through the Middle East (Amacom, 2007). Orbach spent more than a year in Amman and Cairo studying Arabic, and made excursions to Israel, Morocco, Oman, Syria, and Turkey while in the region. His emails home form the raw material for this elegantly written and often hilarious book. The book’s scope is broad—the author details his day-to-day experiences, from finding an apartment in Amman to providing matchmaking services to ordinary Jordanians. It also describes Orbach’s personal encounter with anti-Americanism. America, he argues, needs the American policy critics in its struggle against the America haters, but this requires that the U.S. listen more carefully to its critics and do a better job explaining its policies to Middle Easterners. “Unofficial ambassadors” of the United States—travelers, archaeologists, journalists, or professors—are the “appeal of America incarnate” and play an important role in winning the battle for hearts and minds. Whether one agrees with Orbach’s analyses or not, Live from Jordan will likely win the battle of hearts and minds of those seeking an entertaining summer read.

Assaf Moghadam is a member of MESH.

]]> By: Tamara Cofman Wittes http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/07/summer_reading_2008/#comment-814 Tamara Cofman Wittes Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:00:28 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/07/summer_reading_2008/#comment-814 Specialists in Middle East affairs might do well to go outside this realm in their summer reading. For those who have spent all too much energy immersed in the perennial debates in our field over the politics of scholarship, I will recommend an under-appreciated but very powerful argument about freedom of inquiry by my friend, Jonathan Rauch. <i><a href="http://astore.amazon.com/harvard-20/detail/0226705765/" rel="nofollow">Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought</a></i> (University of Chicago Press, 1995) was written in response to the culture wars and campus speech codes of the 1990s—but it is equally relevant to contemporary arguments about how Middle Eastern studies is taught on campus and debated by scholars. Jonathan's analysis also begs the question of the relationship between free politics, free economics, and free inquiry, and whether it is possible for wealthy, high-tech city-states like Dubai to build a "knowledge society" in the absence of broader social and political freedom. A short, crystal-clear read that will leave you with much to ponder. <i><a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/members/tamara_cofman_wittes/" rel="nofollow">Tamara Cofman Wittes</a> is a member of MESH.</i> Specialists in Middle East affairs might do well to go outside this realm in their summer reading. For those who have spent all too much energy immersed in the perennial debates in our field over the politics of scholarship, I will recommend an under-appreciated but very powerful argument about freedom of inquiry by my friend, Jonathan Rauch. Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1995) was written in response to the culture wars and campus speech codes of the 1990s—but it is equally relevant to contemporary arguments about how Middle Eastern studies is taught on campus and debated by scholars. Jonathan’s analysis also begs the question of the relationship between free politics, free economics, and free inquiry, and whether it is possible for wealthy, high-tech city-states like Dubai to build a “knowledge society” in the absence of broader social and political freedom. A short, crystal-clear read that will leave you with much to ponder.

Tamara Cofman Wittes is a member of MESH.

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