Totally unsurprising
I picked up on this from a post at Steve Gilliard's News Blog. This is no different than what the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out as regards environmental issues. Like Florida 2000 (the "citizens riot" whose participants were bussed in), it's just another expression of the fundamental approach the Republican party is taking toward disagreement: shout 'em down, shut 'em up.
Warping Mideast judgments
By Steven Heydemann, director of the Center for Democracy and the Third Sector at Georgetown University
March 14, 2004
Intelligence failures in Iraq point to the dangers of letting politics influence research.
Appointed officials with a partisan political agenda used their influence to silence dissenting opinions. They selectively played up evidence that supported predetermined conclusions. Expertise was sacrificed for the sake of political expediency, with unfortunate results.
Ignoring these lessons, partisan critics are now working to politicize university-based research on the Middle East--and, by default, every other world region.
Exploiting the language of accountability and playing on post-Sept. 11 fears about terrorism, Islam and the Middle East, these critics have persuaded Congress to consider a politically appointed advisory board to "evaluate" the work of area studies centers that receive funds from the Department of Education through a program known as Title VI.
Federal funding for Middle East centers is incredibly modest--centers at 17 universities get about 10 percent of Title VI funds, with grants that average only about $500,000 per year. Yet federal support is important in persuading universities to back centers with their own resources and to attract additional money, typically private.
Why create a politically appointed advisory board for Title VI now?
Why impose this extra layer of control over a single program at the Department of Education, an agency of the executive branch that is hardly underregulated?
Critics claim that Middle East studies have gone off the rails. On one hand, they say the field is insular and self-interested, caught up in theoretical fads to the neglect of public service. On the other hand they see it as too political, harboring views and opinions they define as anti-American because they are critical--sometimes abrasively so--of the administration's policies in the region.
