A December 12 conference at Columbia University, “Iran after the Election,” displayed not only the politicized scholarship the public has come to expect from Morningside Heights, but included verbal fireworks from Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi. Brendan Goldman attended the conference and reported on it for Campus Watch. His report, “Politicization of Middle East Studies on Display at Columbia U. Iran Conference,” appears today at FrontPage Magazine:
“We overthrew a dictatorship only to go from bad to worse,” said Mansour Farhang, a prominent figure in the early Islamic Republic of Iran who now serves as a professor at Bennington College.
Farhang was speaking at a Columbia University conference held on December 12th entitled, “Iran After the Election”. Green shirts and scarves, symbols of the Iranian opposition, permeated the audience of some 250 people that filled the sterile Altshul auditorium. Attendees included Iranian expatriates, prominent experts of the field, students, and members of the general public.
The conference served to highlight the leftist politicization of Middle Eastern studies. With a few notable exceptions, the panels’ academics drew moral parallels between the Islamic Republic’s policies and those of the Bush and Obama administrations and encouraged an acquiescent American foreign policy in the face of Iran’s nuclear program.
