Middle East Studies After 9/11: Defending the Discipline

Crisis is the handmaiden of introspection, so it is not surprising that, even as demand for expertise on the Middle East and Islam ballooned after September 11, the attacks also generated a wave of criticism and debate about the state of Middle East studies and its track record in helping to make sense of those awful events. Much of this debate has been internal to the field and motivated by a desire to use hard-won expertise effectively at a moment of extraordinary suffering and loss. As in other moments of crisis, however, specialists have also been targeted by those for whom the attacks underscored the shortcomings of a field that—in their view—did not adequately anticipate what happened. Like the Sinologists who "lost" China and the Sovietologists who missed the collapse of communism, Middle East specialists have been charged with "getting it wrong," with misunderstanding and misrepresenting the region they study.