The Fall Lineup of Middle East-Related Conferences

By Betsy Barlow

Fall is traditionally a season of academic and policy conferences, but this year the offerings seem to be particularly packed with interesting topics and speakers. The Middle East Institute scheduled its 49th annual conference Sept. 29-30 in Washington on the topic Middle East Uncertainties, with William Quandt, now at the University of Virginia, delivering the keynote address.

Also gathering in Washington are The Association of Arab-American University Graduates, who will meet for their 28th annual convention at the Omni Shoreham Hotel on Oct. 20-22. The program, entitled In Search of an Arab Renaissance: The Role of Arabs at Home and Abroad, will include addresses by two university presidents, Robert Haddad of the American University of Beirut and Sari Nusseibeh of Jerusalem University. Hanan Ashrawi, founder of the Independent Human Rights Commission, and Professor Edward Said of Columbia University will participate in a panel on "The Future of Palestine." Several well-known and highly regarded authors from the Arab world also will be present. El-Tayeb Saleh, author of Season of Migration to the North and Wedding of Zein, will speak at the banquet on Saturday, Oct. 21.

The Algerian writer Assia Djebar, author of Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, A Sister to Scheherazade, and Far From Medina, will participate in a panel on "Culture as Social Activism" with Egyptian novelist Fawzia Assad and Salwa Nashashibi, president of the International Council for Women in the Arts.

Other panels will focus on "The Crisis of Governance," "Arab Health Development," and "Identity Without Intolerance." For information or reservations, contact AAUG at 2121 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Suite 310, Washington, DC 20007, phone (202) 337-7717, fax (202) 337-3302. Hotel reservations should be made directly with the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, 2500 Calvert St. NW, Washington, DC, phone (202) 234-0700 or (800) 843-6664. Mention the AAUG conference when making your reservation.

The annual meeting of the Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society will be held on Oct. 28-29 at the Seaborg Room, the Faculty Club at the University of California-Berkeley. For further information, contact the society at P.O. Box 445988, San Francisco, CA 94142-5988, phone (510) 653-2201.

Science, Technology and Islamic Values: Building Ties into the 21st Century is the topic of a conference to be held Dec. 1-3 at Penn State Scanticon Conference Center Hotel. Featured speakers include: Ali A. Mazrui, Andrew White Professor at Cornell University; and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Studies Professor at George Washington University. For additional information, contact Dr. Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., History Department, Penn State University, 303 Weaver Building, University Park, PA 16812-5500, phone (814) 863-0086, fax (814) 863-7840.

Members of the Middle East Studies Association will meet at the Washington Hilton Dec.6-9. On the first day of the conference, associated organizations will meet. From Thursday noon Dec. 7 through 6 p.m. on Saturday Dec. 9, 140 (count them!) panels will be offered, including a talk on "The Tasks of a Critique of Islamic Reason" by Mohammed Arkoun, professor at the University of Paris III and the 1995 MESA Visiting Scholar; a special session on "Saudi Arabia: Islam, Modernity and Development" by distinguished professors from King Saud University; a session on the Karabagh conflict; one on "Promoting Rights and Freedom"; and also a program on "Building Consensus, Muslim Women's Rights and the U.N. World Conference at Beijing."

The conference also includes a vast book exhibit and a three-day film festival. Nearby, at the National Museum of American History, there will be an exhibition of photos of Arabic-speaking peoples who migrated to the U.S. between 1880 and 1950 utilizing the resources of the Naff permanent collection at the museum and photos recently commissioned by an NEH-supported project of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) in Dearborn, MI.

K-12 Educator Workshops

In conjunction with the MESA meeting, the Middle East Outreach Council will hold a workshop for teachers on Thursday, Dec. 7, from 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. The theme is connections between U.S. and Middle Eastern history. For further information, contact Zeina Azzam Seikaly at (202) 687-6176.

The annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies, meeting this year in Chicago Nov. 9-12, includes several clinics and panels on aspects of the Middle East and Islam. For further information, contact the National Council for the Social Studies, 3501 Newark St., NW, Washington, DC 20016, phone (202) 966-7840, fax (202) 966-2061. The NCSS conference also features an impressive display of textbooks and other educational materials for K-12 classes.

Audrey Shabbas of Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR) announces that several more workshops have been scheduled for K-12 educators in various parts of the country. To enroll in one of these acclaimed workshops, or to arrange for a workshop in your area, please call the AWAIR office at (510) 704-0517.

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

Social studies educators at the K-12 level aim to increase both knowledge and skills among their students. When studying the Middle East, they look for opportunities to increase map skills, timelines, graphing, and above all, critical thinking skills.

Greenhaven Press in San Diego, CA publishes an Opposing Viewpoints series in which topics are addressed from various standpoints, and the young reader is asked to think critically about the information provided. I have used the books on Israel and on The Middle East, and have found that they provide disparate views in an accessible form. I was therefore intrigued to see that Greenhaven also had published a series of Opposing Viewpoints for Juniors, and that the new series listed a book on The Palestinian Conflict: Identifying Propaganda Techniques.

Unfortunately, this book, written by Neal Bernards in 1990, is a disappointment. While it has a chapter on understanding editorial cartoons, which surely is an important topic, the section is very short and not very inclusive. Throughout the book questions are framed in a very limited way. In the example provided at the start of the book, the opinions range from "I think Israel should be reserved for Jews" to "I think the Jews and Palestinians should share Israel." Nothing is said about a possible two-state solution, an option which seems to dominate discussions outside U.S. school books.

Again, the question addressed in chapter 3, "What Role Should the U.S. Play in the Middle East?" is framed as either "The U.S. Should Aid Israel" or "The U.S. Should Not Aid Israel." Surely the options for the U.S. in the Middle East are broader than these alternatives. One longs for a fuller discussion of U.S. economic and political interests, or some reference to George Washington's advice to his fellow Americans about avoiding foreign entanglements and "passionate attachments," instead of simply pursuing U.S. interests.

It also seems surreal, in a book attempting to identify propaganda, to have Joan Peters (p. 13) identified as a "former White House Middle East expert" and her analysis quoted, without any further information about her work. It is extremely unlikely that young students will know that Joan Peters' book From Time Immemorial is not taken seriously by any qualified historian or demographer of the area. Norman Finkelstein in the U.S. and Albert Hourani in Britain both reviewed the book and discovered that Joan Peters apparently does not understand Hebrew, because many of the sources she cites actually say the opposite of what she claims.

Hourani, after documenting numerous mistakes in the first 50 pages, comments that it is pointless to go on, since it is a worthless book. The book also was scoffed at by Israeli demographers, yet here it turns up once again in the U.S. The students cannot be expected to know that her argument is not adequately supported, but the author and editor should have known.

Critical thinking skills do need to be developed. For the Middle East, however, materials used should be based upon a good knowledge of Middle Eastern history, and familiarity with curricular needs, to ensure that they actually will benefit students.

Greenhaven also sells the Lucent Book series on World Disasters, which includes a book written in 1991 by Bradley Steffens called The Children's Crusade. I purchased this hoping that it would help to bring home to young people some of the tragedies of that era. However, on page 7 the book contains the wrong date for Saladin's recapture of Jerusalem. Worse still, it contains more serious examples of misinformation. For example, on page 22 the book falsely reports that "The Muslims gave the people they conquered a simple choice: conversion to Islam or death...Those who refused [to convert] were killed on the spot." If that isn't bad enough, the author adds a section at the end which attempts to tie, in a muddled way, the Children's Crusade to the current Israeli-Palestinian tensions. "Muslim" terrorism is cited, but not the Israeli violence against Palestinians living under occupation, which obviously is the other side of the same coin. The book claims that "Muslims and Christians cannot accept Israeli leadership because they cannot accept being ruled by Jews," without explaining what has been the actual experience of the Muslims and Christians of Palestine under Israeli rule.

Writing to the publishers and authors may help. In many cases, they simply do not know the subject fully, and have relied on erroneous secondary sources. The lesson here seems to be that even books which seem to have nothing to do with the modern Middle East may attempt to shape, or should we say poison, young minds. Eternal vigilance seems to be required.

Betsy Barlow is the outreach coordinator of the University of Michigan's Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.