Can Middle East Studies be fixed?

Yes, if we get rid of the left wing professors.

Last April, the Manhattan Institute hosted Kramer in New York. "His speaking to us today is primarily for reasons that belong to his outspokenness on behalf of the idea of not politicizing history, especially Middle East history," said Roger Hertog, the vice chairman of AllianceBernstein, in his introduction. "You should all get a copy of Martin's book Ivory Towers on Sand, where he really discusses and analyzes what's happened on college campuses, relative to Middle Eastern history."

In the speech, Kramer explained the fundamental problem: "In the 1980s and 90s, Middle Eastern studies were transformed into a field where scholarship took a backseat to advocacy, where a few biases became the highest credentials, where dissenting views became thought crimes." (His remarks may be heard on the Manhattan Institute website.)

Kramer points to the late Edward Said's seminal 1978 book Orientalism as chiefly responsible for the political poisoning of an entire academic field. Others have shared this insight, which is explored in rich detail by Robert Irwin in Dangerous Knowledge, a comprehensive book published last year.

Kramer, for his part, presented a devastating picture of how Said's book spread like a virus as it encouraged professors to trade scholarly pursuits for ideological agendas. "Middle Eastern studies came under a take-no-prisoners assault, which rejected the idea of objective standards, disguised the vice of politicization with the virtue of commitment, and replaced proficiency with ideology," he wrote.

The fundamental purpose of Ivory Towers on Sand was to highlight an important problem in our country's understanding of the Middle East, and in this respect it succeeded. It certainly did not lead to a sea change in attitudes on campus -- a desperately tall order. Today, Kramer says the situation among the professoriate hasn't changed. "If anything, it's gotten worse," he admits.

Read the whole thing as our universitites are one of the most important fronts in the war on terror.