Martin Kramer

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Martin Seth Kramer (b. 1954, Washington, DC) is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Shalem Center, and Harvard University's Olin Institute. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.

Contents 1 Education 2 Career 3 Political involvement 4 Critique of Middle Eastern Studies 4.1 Ivory Towers on Sand 4.2 Campus Watch 4.3 HR 3077 4.4 "Columbia Unbecoming" 5 Bibliography 5.1 Books 5.2 Journal Papers 5.3 Martin Kramer on American scholars of the Middle East 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Education

Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History M.A. from Columbia University.^[1]

• Tel Aviv University, 1971-73 - Middle Eastern Studies
• B.A. Princeton University, 1975 (summa cum laude) - Near Eastern Studies
• M.A. Columbia University, 1976 - History
• M.A. Princeton University, 1978 - Near Eastern Studies
• Ph.D. Princeton University, 1982 - Near Eastern Studies ^[2]

[edit] Career

During a 25-year career at Tel Aviv University, Martin Kramer directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies; taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; and served twice as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. He is currently the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, and Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard University.

He is a senior and past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly.^[3] Primarily a scholar of twentieth century Islamist intellectual and political history, Kramer has also published columns in the National Review magazine^[4][5] and on the websites of the History News Network^[6], martinkramer.org^[7] and bitterlemons.org.^[8] (Front Page Magazine publishes selected pieces of Kramer's on its website^[9])

[edit] Political involvement

Martin Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East.^[10] However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.^[11]

He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign.

[edit] Critique of Middle Eastern Studies

[edit] Ivory Towers on Sand

In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America. The work criticizes Middle Eastern Studies in the United States for what Kramer argues is a systematic left-wing bias backed with poor scholarship.

Zachary Lockman, Professor of modern Middle East history at New York University, has criticized Kramer's "selective indictment" of Middle East studies, contending that "Kramer’s psychologizing account of why so many scholars and students in Middle East studies were receptive to critiques of the field’s hitherto dominant paradigms is shallow and tendentious." He writes that underlying Kramer's claims in Ivory Towers is "an extraordinarily naïve and unsophisticated understanding of how knowledge is produced" and that his "inability or refusal to grasp this suggests a grave lack of self-awareness, coupled with an alarming disinterest in some of the most important scholarly debates over the past four decades or so."[1]. Lockman also criticized Kramer's promotion of bill HR 3077 as "an attempt to stifle critical voices and diminish the autonomy of American institutions of higher education and long-established principles of academic freedom."[2]Kramer in turn accused Lockman of being supportive of academic boycotts for political purposes. ^[12]

Joel Beinin, professor and former president of Middle East Studies Association of North America, has also criticized Kramer.[3].

[edit] Campus Watch

Main article: Campus Watch

Kramer has supported Campus Watch, an organization which criticizes what it views as flawed and biased scholarship on the Middle East in the United States.^[13][14]

In early 2006, Kramer was criticised in a working paper entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who accused him of a "transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars" in relation to his involvement in Campus Watch.^[15] They subsequently expressed their regret for erroneously attributing a role to Kramer in founding Campus Watch. ^[16]

[edit] HR 3077

Kramer has promoted HR 3077, a bill in the United States House of Representatives designed to reform Middle East Studies in the US. Saree Makdisi argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the bill "poses a profound threat to academic freedom".^[17][18][19]

[edit] "Columbia Unbecoming"

Main article: The David Project Center for Jewish Leadership

Kramer supported Columbia University students who, in 2005, alleged in a film entitled "Columbia Unbecoming" that they had been intimidated by faculty who they viewed as anti-Israel in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department.^[20] Kramer has also been supportive of Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch (another initiative of the Middle East Forum).^[21][22]

Joseph Massad, Associate Professor at Columbia University, has accused Kramer of attacking him and other professors of Middle East Studies. Massad wrote, "Kramer, Pipes, and co. are angry that the academy still allows democratic procedure in the expression of political views and has an institutionalised meritocratic system of judgment…to evaluate its members. Their goal is to destroy any semblance of either in favour of subjecting democracy and academic life to an incendiary jingoism and to the exigencies of the national security state with the express aim of imploding freedom. Their larger success, however, has been in discrediting themselves and in reminding all of us that we should never take the freedoms that we have for granted, as the likes of Kramer and Pipes are working to take them away."^[23]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Books

• Political Islam (1980) ISBN 0-8039-1435-0
• Islam Assembled (1985) ISBN 0-231-05994-9
• Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (1987) ISBN 0-8133-0453-9
• Hezbollah's Vision of the West (1989) ISBN 0-944029-01-9
• Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East) (1991) ISBN 0-8156-2548-0
• Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (1996) ISBN 1-56000-272-7
• The Islamism Debate (1997) ISBN 965-224-024-9
• The Jewish Discovery of Islam (1999) ISBN 965-224-040-0
• Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) ISBN 0-944029-49-3

[edit] Journal Papers

• The American Interest Azure magazine, Autumn 2006.
• Nation and Assassination in the Middle East, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004.
• Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists?, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2003.
• Policy and the Academy: An Illicit Relationship?, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003.

[edit] Martin Kramer on American scholars of the Middle East

• Pape-Kramer debate - a debate involving Robert Pape and Martin Kramer
• Islam Obscured, Martin Kramer on John Esposito
• Stephen Walt's World, a critique of Stephen Walt
• The Arab Nation of Shakib Arslan by Martin Kramer, a critique of Shakib Arslan
• Albert Pasha: criticism of Albert Hourani by Martin Kramer
• Islamist Bubbles, an assessment of Gilles Kepel by Martin Kramer.
• Arab Pen, English Purse: John Sabunji and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, a critique of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt by Martin Kramer
• Ignatieff's Empire, criticism of Michael Ignatieff
• The Day the Rabbi Rescued Rashid, a critique of Arthur Hertzberg

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• M. Kramer's website
• M. Kramer's blog
• M. Kramer's entry with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy