[Jerusalem Post] Mitchell Bard - In the past academic year, some progress was made toward redressing the dramatic imbalance between professors with little or no expertise demonizing Israel and genuine scholars of the country's history, politics and culture. The new Schusterman Center for Israel Studies was inaugurated at Brandeis, bringing the number of U.S. centers to nine. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) sponsored 26 visiting Israeli professors across the country who taught roughly 100 new courses. AICE is also supporting a number of postdoctoral fellows in Israel studies and graduate students. The venerable Middle East Studies Association, which was hijacked long ago by the anti-Israel faction, is now facing a challenge from some of the leading intellects in the field, such as Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who have formed a rival association, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, that hopes to supplant MESA as the home for scholars rather than polemicists.
2008-07-25 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive