Campus Watch, the web site for the Pipes side of the Middle East studies culture wars, has posted a list of "recommended" - i.e. "thoughtful and balanced" - scholars of Middle East studies. They come up with 32 names. About a dozen are so obscure that I've never even heard of them - and I follow Middle East studies pretty carefully - teaching at schools so obscure that you've got to wonder how Campus Watch dug them up (Immaculata College? Georgia Perimeter College?).
I suspect that several of those thirty two are going to be less than happy to see their names on the list. And a whole bunch more of us will breathe sighs of relief that we didn't make the cut! Not because people on the list are going to punished by some imaginary junta of Middle East Studies political correctness commissars... just because it's kind of icky.
There are maybe 7 on the list in that I would put on an Aardvark's publicity stunt, um, I mean list of thoughtful and smart Middle East scholars worth studying with (and no, I'm not going to name them).
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