The Middle East Studies Association remains the very picture of everything that has gone wrong in the American academy. (Although I don’t want to diminish the madness of my own discipline, anthropology, which produced Nicholas De Genova, of “million Mogadishu’s fame.”) Ever since 9/11, I’ve been offering criticism’s of MESA. Those criticisms are inspired by the vitally important work of Martin Kramer, whose book, Ivory Towers On Sand, broke open the scandal of Middle East Studies. Now, to her credit, Lisa Anderson, the current president of MESA, has issued an important piece of self-criticism that implicitly acknowledges the truth of many of Kramer’s criticisms. You can find that letter, and more about this turn of events, at Martin Kramer’s weblog, Sandstorm.

By the way, it’s notable that Columbia University is at the center of so many of our current controversies. Columbia is the home of the founder of “post-colonial studies,” Edward Said, and Columbia unquestionably has one of the most one sided programs of Middle East Studies in the nation. Also, the De Genova affair was no fluke. Some years ago, Columbia University decided to turn its department of Anthropology into the most cutting edge outpost of anthropological postmodernism in the country. Clearly, it succeeded.