Sublime

As someone who had spent several years on American campuses, all of these ideas rang familiar to me. They echoed the sixties’ revulsion to military strength, the romance with developing societies, and the questioning of American primacy. Regarding the Middle East, in particular, one could discern the reverberations of Edward Said’s Orientalism, whi

Said’s book became canonical in many Middle East Studies departments, pressuring students and professors to prove they were not Orientalists. Israel’s history was subjected to withering revisionism.

Such trends compelled me to stand my ground. I worked to expose Said’s Orientalism screed, noting that the first experts on the Middle East came from Germany and Hungary, neither of which ever colonized the region.