In the wake of the Iraq elections, quite a few folks are criticizing that famously ferocious pessimist, Juan Cole (including Jonah, below). Yet members of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) see Cole as the embodiment of their world-view. That’s why Cole is now MESA’s president-elect.

One more thing. Did you know that you are subsidizing the work of Cole and his academic minions to the tune of millions of dollars every year? Why are you (the taxpayer) doing this? You are doing it in hopes that Juan Cole and his followers throughout the academy will train experts in Middle Eastern languages and cultures who might be recruited to our defense and intelligence agencies. Yet MESA has done everything it can, from formal boycotts, to bans on advertising, to sabotage scholarship programs designed to bring students into national security related government service. That is the point of my little crusade to reform our special federal subsidies to Middle East Studies. We are pouring millions of dollars into the pockets of a veritable army of Juan Coles, in the vain hope that they will train students to help with the war on terror. For a cornucopia of posts on Juan Cole, see this link to Martin Kramer’s blog archive.

Last year, the higher-education lobby managed to block HR 3077, the bill that would reform our subsidies to Middle East Studies, from final passage in the Senate. The bill will be reintroduced this year, perhaps in revised form. This excellent Slate piece by Lee Smith contains an interview with congressman Pete Hoekstra, the key sponsor of HR 3077. Hoekstra is clearly looking for ways to tighten the legislation. Here’s my suggestion. Focus on accountability, the favorite theme of new Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Find a way to measure the extent to which our subsidized area studies programs actually send students into government service and reward those programs accordingly. Juan Cole and his friends are entitled to their free speech. But they are not entitled to a government handout, especially when they do everything in their power to defeat the purpose for which the money is being spent.