More Politicized Scholarship at Columbia U. Iran Conference

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 12^th 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.

The rest of the article is available here.

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Colorado College

Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.