Knowledge production in higher education: Between Europe and the Middle East 9781526160584

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Knowledge production in higher education

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The power of one painting is to push the boundaries of what is perceived as the norm, the particular perspectives that create “us” and the “other.” Mazen AlFeel, Syrian artist, 24 June 2021.

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Knowledge production in higher education Between Europe and the Middle East Edited by

Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel

manchester university press

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Copyright © Manchester University Press 2023 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 6057 7 hardback First published 2023 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Cover credit: Mazen Al Feel, Untitled (2014) Cover design: Abbey Akanbi, Manchester University Press

Typeset by Cheshire Typesetting Ltd, Cuddington, Cheshire

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Contents

List of figures and tables Notes on contributors

vii viii

Knowledge production in higher education: the Middle East and Europe – an introduction  Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel

1

Part I: History   1 Between nostalgia and the colonies: the evolution of French scholarship on the Middle East  Timo Behr

21

  2 Orient-ations: German scholarship on the Middle East since the nineteenth century Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel

39

  3 Middle East Studies in Italy: a field in search of an identity and recognition within and outside academia Giulia Cimini and Claudia De Martino

60

Part II: Liminality   4 Malta: boundaries, identity and positionality in the teaching of the Middle East James N. Sater

83

  5 Teaching Europe in Palestine: resisting the ‘new normal’? Asem Khalil

103

  6 Teaching Europe and the Middle East at universities in Turkey Aylin Güney, Emre İşeri and Gökay Özerim

122

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Contents Part III: Orientalism

  7 Is decolonisation the decisive factor – or even the relevant term? 250 years of Middle East Studies in Denmark Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen

139

  8 Challenges to a transformative education: ‘EUrientalism’ at Egyptian universities157 Bassant Hassib and Jan Claudius Völkel   9 Teaching the enlightened student: political polarisation and the ongoing quest for critical thinking Anne de Jong

177

Part IV: Hierarchies 10 Knowledge production at a time of pandemic: navigating between Syria and the UK Juline Beaujouan 11 Who teaches the Middle East in Europe? A gender perspective Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel 12 ‘In between’ the academic and policy communities: the position(ality) of think tank(er)s in knowledge production in and on the Middle East and Europe Daniela Huber

197 214

233

A potential paradigm shift in knowledge production: some concluding reflections252 Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel Index260

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List of figures and tables

Figures 4.1 Student enrolment at the University of Malta in study units with MENA content, 2002–20 4.2 Student enrolment in study units with MENA content in social sciences, law and humanities

92 93

Table 6.1 Five-yearly number of new universities in Turkey in the post-2000 period (includes both state and foundation universities)124

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Notes on contributors

Juline Beaujouan is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep), based at the University of Edinburgh, where she researches local conflict management and intercommunal trust-building in Iraq and Syria. Juline received her PhD from Durham University where she was awarded the al-Sabah fellowship and acted as a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Open World Research Initiative. She is the co-editor of the volume Syrian Crisis, Syrian Refugees: Voices from Jordan and Lebanon (2020), and co-author of Islam, IS and the Fragmented State: The Challenges of Political Islam in the MENA region (2021). Timo Behr holds a PhD in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He has held research positions with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Jacques Delors Institute, Global Public Policy Institute and EU Institute for Security Studies and has taught International Relations at SAIS, the University of Bologna and the University of Helsinki. He has also worked as an adviser for the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Abu Dhabi and as a consultant to the World Bank Group. He currently serves as Co-Managing Partner at Westphalia Global Advisory, a political risk consultancy, and a subject matter expert at the Hague Centre for Security Studies. Giulia Cimini is a Junior Assistant Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna and a Gerda Henkel Research Fellow. She was previously Visiting Fellow at the International University of Rabat (UIR), Teaching Assistant of Politics at the University of Naples L’Orientale, and Visiting Fellow at the Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies Institute at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research interests include Maghrebi political parties, dynamics of contention and security assistance. She has published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, Contemporary Politics, Middle Eastern Studies and The Journal of North African Studies, among others.

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Notes on contributors ix

Anne de Jong is Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Conflict at the University of Amsterdam with a regional expertise on the Middle East (Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Bahrain). Prioritising subaltern everyday perspectives, her research interests centre on violence/non-violence, radical activism and social movements, human rights violations and resistance, anti-racism and anti-colonial struggles. For her PhD (2011, SOAS) she conducted a 19-month fieldwork research in the Occupied Palestinian Territories including East Jerusalem and Gaza. Concurrent fieldwork was carried out in Syria and Bahrain and her ongoing research project extends to South Africa and Nepal. Emphasising anti-racism and social justice struggles, her current work focuses on non-violent resistance in armed conflict (Palestine), the transition between armed and unarmed struggle (Nepal) and anti-racism and anti-colonial activism (South Africa and the Netherlands). Born from the necessity of doing ‘fieldwork under fire’, research ethics and innovative methodology have grown central to her work and are also reflected in her teachings. Claudia De Martino is a researcher in Middle Eastern Affairs at UNIMED, currently specialising in development at the ILO Turin. In 2016 she was Postdoc Fellow at the University of Naples L’Orientale within the EUspring (‘Arab Spring’) project (2015–16) and DAAD annual scholarship recipient in 2015. She received her PhD in Social History of the Mediterranean at the Ca’ Foscari University in 2012. She got an EMU2 scholarship at the Hebrew University (2008) and was Visiting Fellow at the Van Leer Institute of Jerusalem (2009–10). She was Teaching Assistant at the Chair of History of Europe and the Mediterranean at Roma Tre University (2008–12) and has authored three books, Israele, pace senza prosperità (2019), Il nuovo ordine israeliano (2017) and I mizrahim in Israele (2015), and a number of articles/book chapters, such as ‘Israel and the Italian Communist Party (1948–2015)’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 48:4 (2015), and ‘Clashing narratives of the October War: collective memory and group ­perspective’, in A. Siniver (ed.), The October War (2013). Aylin Güney is Professor at the Department of International Relations, the Dean of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences and the Acting Dean at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Yaşar University, Izmir. She was granted the Jean Monnet Chair for International Relations and European Studies in 2011. She has also been a convenor of the Jean Monnet Permanent Course on ‘Politics of European Integration’ at her former alma mater, Bilkent University. She lectures on EU integration, EU– Turkey relations and Europeanisation. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on these topics.

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Notes on contributors

Bassant Hassib is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the British University in Egypt. She earned her PhD in Euro-Mediterranean Studies from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University (2017), her thesis being titled ‘The EU’s Civil Society Facility in Egypt’. Her current research is on cybersecurity and (counter)surveillance in Egypt, and Egyptian counter-terrorism policy and civil society. Hassib received a GERSS scholarship from the DAAD in 2015 and an ‘Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility Student’ scholarship in 2016. In 2020, Hassib was awarded the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS) Fellowship. Sonja Hegasy is Vice Director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. From 2019 to 2021 she was Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. Her interests include civil society and social movements, modern Arab intellectual thought, modern cultural history as well as politics of memory in post-conflict societies. She is the author of Staat, Öffentlichkeit und Zivilgesellschaft in Marokko (1997). Her most recent articles are ‘The liminal intellectual: a contrapuntal reading of Abdellatif Laâbi’s Un autre Maroc’ (in ‘Where is the Maghreb? Theorizing a liminal space’, ed. B. Guabli, Arab Studies Journal, 24:2 (2021), 48–70); and ‘“Der Text liest den Leser”: apropos Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, 1935–2010’, Polylog, 44 (2021), 129–36. Daniela Huber is head of the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome and editor of The International Spectator. She is also adjunct professor at Roma Tre University (International Politics). She is co-work package leader in the H2020 project EU-LISTCO, researcher in the Jean-Monnet Network EUMENIA, and mentor in the Gem-Stones project. She holds the Italian national habilitation to function as associate professor in Political Science, a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an MA in International Relations from the Free University of Berlin. Her research interests include EU and US foreign policies in the Middle East, the regional and international dimension of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and contemporary politics in the Middle East. Emre İşeri is Professor at the Department of International Relations, Yaşar University, Izmir. He is also an associate member of the editorial board of the Journal of Global Faultlines. Professor İşeri holds a PhD from Keele University (International Relations department). He has taught in various universities, including on energy politics at the University of the Peloponnese in the ‘Mediterranean Studies’ MA programme. His current research areas include energy policy, political communication, Euro-Asian politics and

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Notes on contributors xi

Turkish foreign policy. He has published articles and chapters in numerous books and journals, including Geopolitics, Journal of Balkan and Near East Studies, Energy Policy, Turkish Studies, Security Journal, South European Society and Politics, European Journal of Communication, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture and International Journal of Communication. Asem Khalil is the H.H. Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Vice-President for Community Affairs (since 2016), Birzeit University. Dr Khalil is the former Dean of the Faculty of Law and Public Administration (2012–15) and the former director of the Ibrahim Abu Lughod Institute of International Studies (2010–12). Dr Khalil holds a PhD in Public Law from Fribourg University, Switzerland, a master in Public Administration from the National School of Administration, France, and a doctorate in Utriusque Juris, Lateran University, Italy. He was a visiting researcher at the Hauser Global Law School Program, NYU School of Law (2009–10 and 2015–16). Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and vice-director of Turkey–France Relations Research Center (TUFRAM), Marmara University, Istanbul. She holds a PhD from the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris). Her research is focused on transnational actors, the role of economic actors in international politics, state-building processes, foreign policy decision-making, Turkish foreign policy and feminist IR theory. She conducts fieldwork in the Middle East, mainly in Turkey and Iraq. She taught as lecturer at Sciences Po Paris between 2010 and 2013 and at Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul) between 2013 and 2015 before joining her current institution. She speaks Turkish, French, English and has a basic command of Arabic. Gökay Özerim is Associate Professor at the International Relations Department and the Director of the European Union Research Centre at Yaşar University, Izmir. His main study fields are international migration, security, youth and the European integration process. He was awarded a Jean Monnet Chair on Migration in EU–Turkey Relations by the European Commission in 2019. He carried out a part of his PhD research at the University of Oxford in 2010 through a Chevening Scholarship from the UK government. In 2014 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been also working on several European Union funded projects and delivering training on intercultural learning, youth participation, social responsibility and project management since 2004.

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Notes on contributors

Michelle Pace is Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research focuses on European–Middle East and North Africa relations, democracy and de-democratisation studies, emotions in international relations and critical migration studies. She has been/is the Principal Investigator (PI) on a number of large project grants funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy and the Wellcome Trust in the UK, and in Denmark on projects funded by the EU’s H2020 as well as the Erasmus+ Programme, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Carlsberg Foundation. She has been a co-editor of the peerreviewed journal Mediterranean Politics and remains an active member of its editorial board. Her recent publications include The Routledge Handbook on EU–Middle East Relations (2021, co-edited with Daniela Huber and Dimitris Bouris). James N. Sater is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, University of Malta. He previously held full-time positions in the International Studies Department at the American University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates, 2008–18) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at al-Akhawayn University (Morocco, 2005–08). He was also a Guest Professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (2012–13) and a Guest Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine (2012). He is the author of Morocco: Challenges to Tradition and Modernity (2010; 2nd edn 2016) and Civil Society and Political Change in Morocco (2007). He is also a co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa (2021). His research interests include sectarianism, citizenship, electoral politics, gender, marginalisation and migration, with a focus on North Africa and Arab Gulf monarchies. Articles include ‘Drafting Tunisia’s constitution: tensions between constituent power and constituted power in the transition process’ (Al Sabah Paper Series, University of Durham, 2018); ‘Patronage and democratic citizenship in Morocco’, in R. Meijer and N. Butenschøn (eds), The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World (2017); and ‘Citizenship and migration in Arab Gulf monarchies’, Citizenship Studies, 18:3/4 (2014). Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen is Professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies, University of Copenhagen. His field of research is contemporary Islam, more specifically the establishment of a modern Muslim public sphere, and the role of the Muslim ulama in modern Arab states. Lately, his research has primarily focused on the role of Islam in the new pan-Arab television networks. He is the author of Defining Islam for the Egyptian State – Muftis and Fatwas of the Dār al-Iftā (1997). He has also co-edited Middle Eastern Cities 1900–1950: Public Spheres and Public Places in Transformation

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Notes on contributors xiii

(2001), Global Mufti: The Phenomenon of Yusuf al-Qaradawi (2009) and Arab Media Moguls (2015). Stephan Stetter is Professor in International Politics and Conflict Studies at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich. He is co-editor of the leading German-language IR journal Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen. Stephan Stetter regularly publishes in leading peer-reviewed journals and with leading book publishers. His main research interests are historicalsociological theories of global politics, social evolution theory, Middle East politics and society as well as EU foreign and security politics, in the Mediterranean and beyond. His most recent book is The Historicity of International Politics: Imperialism and the Presence of the Past (edited with Klaus Schlichte, forthcoming). Jan Claudius Völkel is Academic Dean at IES Abroad Freiburg, Associate Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute, University of Freiburg, and Regional Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI). He was DAAD long-term lecturer in Euro-Mediterranean Studies at Cairo University, Faculty of Economics and Political Science (2013–17), and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute for European Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, conducting a research project titled ‘The role of national parliaments in the Arab transformation processes’ (2017–19). His articles have been published in Mediterranean Politics, Journal of North African Studies, Middle East Critique, European Foreign Affairs Review and others. René Wildangel is currently a lecturer at the International Hellenic University (IHU) in Thessaloniki where he teaches history and political science courses in the MA programme ‘Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean  Studies’ (BSEM). Additionally he works as a freelance journalist and consultant. He has held positions as a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a MENA human rights expert at Amnesty International Berlin and has served as the country director of the HeinrichBöll-Foundation’s Palestine/Jordan office in Ramallah from 2011 to 2015. He has also served as an adviser on foreign policy in the German Bundestag and the US Congress; and as a desk officer at the German Federal Foreign Office. Wildangel holds an MA in History, Political Science and Literature from the University of Cologne, and a PhD in Middle Eastern History from the same university, which he completed as a research fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. He spent an academic year at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and studied Arabic at the IFEAD (now IFPO) in Damascus.

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Knowledge production in higher education: the Middle East and Europe – an introduction Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel

Introduction As a child, wrote Taha Hussein in his celebrated autobiography The Days (al-Ayyam), he ‘was convinced that the world ended to the right of him with the canal’, and he could not ‘imagine that there was human, animal and vegetable life on the other side of the canal just as much as there was on his side’ (Hussein, 2018 [1926]: 10). With this metaphorical description, the boy who would later become Egypt’s most celebrated intellectual of the twentieth century referred not only to the blindness that befell him during childhood but also about the poverty in his village, and its restrictive cultural and religious traditions, which limited his horizon even further. Yet, they also ‘gave rise to his yearning for the world “beyond the canal”. Knowledge and education were to be his route out into the wider world’ (Pflitsch, 2015: n.p.). Taha Hussein saw education not only as the key to his own personal development, but also for the whole Egyptian nation in its striving for modernisation and liberation from European colonialism. Much of his inspiration for the intended renaissance (nahda) of education in Egypt and the Arab world resulted from his move from al-Azhar University (with its traditional base of religiously inspired teachings) to Cairo University (having emancipatory aspirations) for his PhD. His subsequent relocation to Montpellier and Paris (1914–19) enabled him to cross the canal even further. Here, he pursued a doctorate d’État with an analysis of the works of the renowned Arab historian Ibn Khaldun under Émile Durkheim and Paul Fauconnet (Roussillon, 1999: 1363), and met his wife, Suzanne Bresseau, a devoted French Catholic, thus bringing Europe and its southern neighbourhood into his private and professional life. Many fellow ‘nahdawis’ (those who strove for an ‘Arab renaissance’) shared his observations, which originated in a deep desire for Arab national self-determination and liberation from European colonial domination. Education had an important place in their conceptualisation of a better

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Introduction

future in a double sense: as emancipation from European domination (as external constraint), and in liberation from the centuries-old religious domination over higher education (as internal constraint). Initially, higher education materialised in the Arab world mainly at the religious study epicentres of Zitouna in Tunis (founded in 737), Qarawiyyin in Fez (859) and al-Azhar in Cairo (969). In the awakened nahda moment, new ‘flagship universities’ were founded across the Middle East1 and North Africa (MENA): Cairo University in 1908,2 Damascus University in 1923, the Lebanese University in Beirut in 1951 and Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1957. These universities were meant to trigger unprecedented, independent and decolonised knowledge production, yet in reflection of ‘European best practice and to some extent the strengths of their colonial masters’ (Waterbury, 2020: ch. 2). With this expectation of ‘liberating’ the Arab peoples, the MENA’s modern universities were inherently political from their conception. Meanwhile, in Europe, educational establishments had also become deeply  political (and politicised) institutions. This was evident when the British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1916) reflected, ‘Education should not aim at a dead awareness of static facts, but at an activity directed toward the world that our efforts are to create.’ In Taha Hussein’s thinking, this translates into the role of higher education to widen our horizons across shores. Both Europe and the MENA region went through immense political turmoil during the twentieth century and, in both, a virulent public and political discourse ensued that centred around the role and responsibilities of institutions of higher education in times of crisis. Between the two world wars, with the imminent onset of the Great Depression, the American educational philosopher Robert Maynard Hutchins deemed it to be the task of the university to ‘procure a moral, intellectual, and spiritual revolution throughout the world’ (Hutchins quoted in Mayer, 1993: 328). Higher education’s politicisation was further augmented during the decades after the Second World War, when thinking became dominated by the globe’s split into a ‘first’, a ‘second’ and a ‘third’ world (Coronil, 1996: 53–4), and the shock pertaining to academia’s multiple involvements in the horrors of the Second World War (Abbott and Schiermeier, 2000) became apparent. Instead of contributing to Hutchins’s ‘moral, intellectual, and spiritual revolution’, scientists had assembled weapons of mass destruction, had planned the Holocaust and had vindicated the Nazis’ inhumane differentiation of humankind on the basis of their race, belief, health or sexual orientation. By observing the trial against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt (1963) not only coined her famous phrase ‘banality of evil’ but also developed her idea of ‘worldly education’: thinking, and eventually judging,

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Introduction 3

can never happen alone. For Arendt, ‘thinking was of the world, worldly; and as such was nothing if not dialogical’ (see Nixon, 2020 for an analysis). From Taha Hussein to Hannah Arendt, education has historically been seen as enriching one’s Self through the encounter with an Other – seeing and meeting the unknown world ‘beyond the canal’. Institutions of higher education provide the space for such encounters, which happen through in-classroom teachings, readings of assignments and writings of papers in libraries and at home, during conferences and research trips. As such, academic knowledge production is genuinely political and dialogical. Higher education under Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, the Baath Party in Syria, Muammar Qadhafi in Libya – as well as in communist Eastern Europe – was the space for politicised abuse for national mobilisation purposes (al-Maaloli, 2016; Aran Milton, 2013). As Alaoui and Springborg (2021: 3) put it: Most postcolonial Arab educational systems were geared to the needs of expanding states seeking to inculcate nationalist orthodoxy among their diverse populations. Their primary vocational focus was thus the civil service, the tangible manifestation of social contracts that have underpinned these authoritarian orders and that shield graduates from international competition.

For MENA scholars, the predominance of authoritarian regimes has heavily impacted on their professional – sometimes even their personal – life. Being in exile or simply abroad, the long arm of the regime back home often put them under immense pressure, both in their teaching and in their research. In that understanding, the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ opened the way to another sort of ‘other side of the canal’: the hope for a new democratic framework for their genuine scholarly work. This gave them a feeling both of liberation and also of empowerment. Amal Grami (2018: 19) saw MENA scholars following the Arab Spring as ‘for the most part no longer represented as silent, passive and incapable of resolving conflicts regarding the relationship between power, knowledge, action and thought’. Sadly, the recent reautocratisation trend across the MENA region has closed this democratic window of opportunity in most Arab countries (Völkel, 2022). For the MENA and Europe as the selected foci regions of this edited volume, our contributors shed light on how academics have deliberated the immensely politicised nature of institutions of higher education and their practices – be these, in the context of colonialism, decolonialism, nationbuilding or political transformation (see Berube and Nelson, 1995; Dei and Kempf, 2006). The book therefore explores the politics of institutes of higher education in view of the scholarly practices that are characteristic of the ways in which the MENA is taught at European universities and how Europe – or increasingly, the European Union (EU) – is discussed at

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Introduction

i­ nstitutions of higher education in the MENA. A reflexive understanding of how we teach and study Europe/the EU at MENA universities and how we teach and study the MENA in Europe is needed to help overcome existing divisions between the Global North and the Global South in knowledge production, ‘which creates multiple and competing peripheries and signals the need for a reframing or retheorizing that is attentive to multiple and diverse ways of knowing and understanding the world’ (Naylor et al., 2018: 199). This introduction is organised as follows: It will first reflect on the institutional and individual positionality of educators in higher educational establishments. Thereafter we introduce the core themes of our contributions and conclude with reflections on the role and responsibility of the academic community in the knowledge production process. By doing so this edited volume engages with the classic ‘Area Studies controversy’ on how to construct knowledge about other regions (Bank and Busse, 2021; Stevens, Miller-Idriss and Shami, 2018: 27–38; Szanton, 2004; Tessler, Nachtway and Banda, 1999; Waheed, 2020). This controversy has been traditionally reflected in a tension between disciplines, including International Relations (IR) and Area Studies along with calls for more dialogue between them. This is why the authors of this volume agree that it is important to bring IR into conversation with Area Studies. Moreover, much of this debate has traditionally been rather United States-centric. In fact, ‘the’ Area Studies controversy has often been the story of American academia; however, these dynamics have played out differently in a European setting as well, for example, in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The present edited volume thus constitutes an important contribution to this debate by providing insights into how the Area Studies controversy is played out in various parts of Europe and in the MENA, which has seldom been perceived as a place constructing knowledge about other regions, in the present case Europe.

Positionality and the academy That positionality – institutional or individual – has an inalienable effect on the nature of scholarly output is widely recognised across the social sciences. Lila Abu-Lughod’s claim that ‘every view is a view from somewhere’ (Abu-Lughod, 1991: 141) is finding renewed relevance in discussions of foundational disciplinary biases. For instance, David Lake’s (2016) critique of IR as a ‘white man’s discipline’ builds on vibrant a priori attempts to reformulate the field of political science and IR in a way that exceeds the limits of the white, male academic’s intuitive imagination of the political

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Introduction 5

world (Acharya, 2013; Akhtar et al., 2005; Ayoob, 2002; Griffin, 2007; Kovach, 2010; Le Melle, 2009; Smith, 2012; Wilson, 2009). Moreover, feminist IR scholars including Julie Mertus (2007) and Deborah Stienstra (2000) sought to reveal and challenge the gendered nature of IR. With reference to the MENA region, Morten Valbjørn and Waleed Hazbun (2017: 3) have been key in advancing the debate about non-Western concepts in IR by asking, ‘how can the “non-West” to a larger extent become a “producer of knowledge” rather than being an “object of knowledge” and how can insights from different places be connected in a genuinely international debate?’ (see also Burns, 2014; Darwich, Valbjørn and Salloukh, 2020; El Shakry, 2020; Hazbun and Valbjørn, 2018). Ahmed M. Abozaid (2021) responds by showing how a good cohort of scholars from the Global South have in fact been producers of knowledge, if only Western scholars in their ‘white self-absorbed societies’ had been actively listening. Samer Abboud (2015) earlier also reflected on the manner in which subjective experiences of faculty and students shape the classroom and the study of global politics. To this we add: what about the knowledge production of many educators from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other MENA countries who, like Taha Hussein, left their home states and set up new homes in European (or other Western) countries? Are these academics representative of knowledge produced about the MENA in Europe? For instance, do (originally) Maghrebi researchers in French universities – in particular those who hold French citizenship – symbolise French knowledge production about the MENA (that would mean: as outsiders) or North African knowledge production of the MENA in France (which would mean: as insiders)? And, what about Europeans working at MENA universities: from which position(ality) do they look at things? Among the various issues that arise regarding knowledge production by transnational scholars, the role of (originally) native intellectuals in this activity assumes a special significance for at least two reasons: first, it is important to understand what kind of ‘local’ knowledge and disciplinary protocols these intellectuals bring to the production of knowledge. Second, this, in turn, sheds light on the significant influence MENA intellectuals in diaspora wield in European knowledge production about the MENA and vice versa (or the sway that European intellectuals in diaspora carry in MENA knowledge production about Europe). Such liminal positionalities also carry responsibilities in the classroom and in public debates. The overwhelming tendency to teach and discuss literature authored by white, male scholars and by those who tend to overlook the colonial foundations of intellectual deliberations within the social sciences and humanities has triggered efforts to ‘decolonise’ the university (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nişancıoğlu, 2018; Mbembe, 2016). Arguing that ‘Africa is not a country,

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but it is taught like one’, Breeanna Elliott (2017) stipulated that the curricular material provided to students would need ‘to humanize the diverse people of Africa and to normalize the various lives they lead’ (emphasis in original). Similar concerns regarding the teaching of the MENA have led to initiatives like Portland State University’s ‘Middle East Teaching Tools’, and events like ‘The Ethics of Political Science Research and Teaching in the MENA’, jointly held at Rabat’s Mohammed V University and the London School of Economics in 2015 (with funding from the APSA MENA Program and Carnegie Foundation), which address ethical issues in the study of violence, access and power in the field, the biases of research funding instruments and the challenges of drawing insights from Area Studies into mainstream disciplines (Balta, 2015; Burton, 2015; Darwich, 2015). This edited volume is firmly rooted in this growing body of academic works that critically engage with politics in/of higher education and research. To this end, it is embedded within the history and development of relations between Europe and the MENA. It recognises that relations between these two regions have been marked by political, economic, social, cultural, academic, artistic and religious entanglements: in other words, relations have been and continue to be equally informed by a history of economic, intellectual, political, societal and cultural exchanges, as well as by wars, imperial conquests, crusades, resources exploitation, colonialism  and postcolonial hierarchies of international politics. Seeing  the  still  persistent dominance of the Global North in determining the nature and norms of international politics, it would be ‘easy’ to simply relay the often-stigmatised perception of the MENA in Europe. Nonetheless, as this edited volume involves perspectives from both the MENA and Europe, its contribution to the study of the politics of/in higher education is two-fold. First, by exploring how the MENA is taught in Europe and how Europe is taught in the MENA, this edited volume treats both regions as having their own agency, as places that are critical to our understanding of the relevance and impact of learning in university environments. Accordingly, this volume brings together a group of interdisciplinary scholars to systematically challenge, differentiate and understand the dynamics and realities that go beyond dominant (Europe-/MENA-centric) accounts, while trying to avoid the pitfalls of simplification and knowledge fragmentation. Second, this volume aims to contribute to thinking of ways in which higher education can be decolonised. In doing so it explores the impact of colonialism not just on teaching and research in Europe but also on the manner in which Europe is taught at MENA universities. Several academic works have shed light on how assumptions about racial and civilisational hierarchies remain firmly rooted in the foundations of various academic

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Introduction 7

fields (for example Gerring and Yesnowitz, 2006; Grondin, 2012; Shapiro, 1999). Furthermore, these assumptions have served as intellectual justifications for colonial endeavours in the MENA (as well as Africa, Latin America and Asia). In the era of the postcolonial, efforts have been made to challenge many of these assumptions. Nonetheless, such assumptions persist in public discourses as well as in academic studies. In its core aims and promised contribution this volume fills the need for new ways of thinking about the history and context that educators are products of – and how in turn these experiences impact upon the knowledge that gets produced in higher educational establishments. The decentring and decolonisation of knowledge production on the MENA and Europe is not just necessary, it is long overdue.

Knowledge production in and on the MENA and Europe: An overview The contributions to this volume explore different aspects of mutual (re)presentation(s) at institutions of higher learning in the MENA and Europe. To this end, the chapters provide a nuanced overview of the manner of knowledge production of these two regions in Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Palestine and Turkey. Before we proceed with further elaboration on the raison d’être framing this volume, it is important to highlight our challenge as guest editors in the selection of case countries. Choices and exclusions were unavoidable as an inclusion of all relevant countries would have broken the mould. For example, the Nordic countries are only represented by Denmark. Arab monarchies are not included whatsoever. We recognise that some omissions may be more critical than others, not least chapters on Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Spain, Tunisia, the UK, and Qatar or the United Arab Emirates (as well as, to a lesser extent, Kuwait) as hosts of new branches from internationally renowned universities in often remote ‘educational cities’.3 Similarly, it would have been interesting to offer a study on the work being carried out at the Oriental Studies Insitute of the University of Sarajevo since its foundation in 1950 or at the Department of Oriental Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Belgrade: Orientalism and Balkanism were ‘multilayered and polyphonic’ in former Yugoslavia (Hetemi, 2015: 312). Unlike a comprehensive handbook on Euro-Mediterranean relations and mutual perceptions, the purpose of this edited volume is to elaborate on overarching issues that apply not necessarily to certain countries only, such as colonialism (France, but similarly Italy, Spain, the UK) or the

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influence of religion on early scholarship (the Catholic church in Europe as well as MENA universities as places of primarily theological studies in their early periods). At times, non-ideational reasons worked against the inclusion of a case study. In the initial phase of this project we had gone to great lengths to secure a contribution on the United Kingdom, for instance, but for various reasons none of the colleagues we approached were available or able to commit, although they all deemed this to be a crucially important endeavour. The large number of Middle East scholars and academic institutions makes the UK an important site for the production of knowledge about the Middle East. In addition, the UK has been prominent in the Saidian debate on Orientalism and colonialism, partly due to Britain’s historical role in the  region and its ongoing very close ties with a number of Middle East countries (Wearing, 2018). Therefore, an examination of how the Middle East is taught and studied in the UK would have provided relevant insights into the interplay between (post)colonialism and the way the MENA is studied. British (MENA) research institutes receive a high number of students and scholars from the region; but in the UK’s privatised higher education system, they also receive massive financial support from MENA sources, a point that raises questions about these research centres’ academic independence (Delmar-Morgan, 2016). The contributors to this volume also recognise that ‘the Middle East and North Africa’ and ‘Europe’ are not just apolitical, spatial demarcations of particular regions. They are constructed categories that are imbued with particular discourses, histories as well as impressions of regional and global political realities that define not just perceptions of the ‘Other’, but also perceptions of the ‘Self’, in view of the ‘Other’. In the same way as the nahdawis around Taha Hussein had intended to combine their ‘revival of the Arab-Islamic tradition while engaging modern European concepts and methods’ (Ahmed, 2018: 15), the contributions in this edited volume provide for a reflexivity in our understanding of how reflecting on Europe and the MENA equally requires a reflection of the Self as well. This edited volume sheds light on how important this double perception is. Probably any university seminars on Europe and/or the MENA start with the seemingly simple question: What is Europe? And what is the MENA? Irrespective the already disputed usage of both the terms ‘MENA’4 and Europe,5 a clear geographical definition for either region is non-existent. The concept of a cultural space around the Mediterranean that is confined by the Alps in the north and the Sahara in the south is certainly not false. In terms of food, culture, history and lifestyle, a Sicilian certainly shares less with a Finnish than with a Moroccan or a Tunisian – despite the former two sharing the privilege of an EU passport and other codified EU privileges. ­

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Introduction 9

Such similarities beyond the classical dichotomy between Europe and the MENA find their echo also in many of the contributions collected in this book, which we subdivide into four thematic sections. These must not be understood as sharp categories that mutually exclude each other, but rather as concentric circles that have an individual core but otherwise may overlap as well: history, liminality, Orientalism and hierarchies. Following this categorisation, the first three chapters show, in a comparable historical approach, the influence politics and the state have had on higher education. Timo Behr distinguishes the different strands of Middle East Studies in France and provides an overview of their historical roots. Subsequently, he analyses how these approaches have changed over time and the way in which these traditions have evolved with the changing landscape of French domestic politics as well as France’s growing interests overseas. Similarly, Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel explore intellectual entanglements in research and teaching traditions between Germany and the MENA regarding what is perceived as the ‘Orient’ over the longue durée of global modernity. They take as their point of departure the emergence of Oriental Studies in the Prussian Empire, the increasing embeddedness of German Orientalism in the imperial ambitions of the German Empire, as well as continuities and discontinuities in Oriental scholarship in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, followed by the division in East and West Germany and eventual reunification in 1990. For Italy, Giulia Cimini and Claudia De Martino explore the interest of Italian scholars in the histories, societies and politics of the ‘Near East’ which dates back to the nineteenth century. They argue that this pursuit was rooted in European Orientalism and that the development of Middle East Studies as an autonomous discipline has been intricately interlinked with Italian monarchical, colonial and republican history. Since the end of the Cold War, and particularly in the last two decades, these studies have significantly evolved in Italy, mirroring a mutated international context. The second section deals with countries and societies in liminal situations, either geographically or in terms of their nation-building processes, and their imaginings of Europe and the MENA. They are united in a positionality that oscillates between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. James Sater’s chapter zooms in on how teaching the MENA in Malta relates to the history and geopolitical environment of this small island state. Unlike major Western countries, Malta has not had a colonial relationship with the MENA and was itself subject to occupation and British colonial rule from 1813 to 1964. Furthermore, due to the significant influence of Arab and Muslim rule over the Maltese islands (870–1091) and Sicily, and subsequent trade relations with North Africa, the country displays a deep Arab heritage, most notably in its language. This historical trajectory has impacted on MENA-related

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courses at the University of Malta – which, in turn, serve to tackle Malta’s own identification and embeddedness in the MENA region. In Palestine, Europe is largely taught in the context of its colonial past and how this past has contributed to the creation of the Israel–Palestine question. Asem Khalil argues that a thorough understanding of Europe and its history is indispensable for a nuanced understanding of Palestine itself. This contribution represents some hard questions about addressing controversial issues in higher education. From the way in which Europe is taught at Palestinian universities one observes that educators need to be cautious and work on establishing guidelines dealing with potential biases, point(s) of view, and the need for reflexive and critical thinking. It is with such (teaching) awareness that educators can facilitate students’ deep learning on challenging topics in the classroom. Aylin Güney, Emre İşeri and Gökay Özerim guide us through the manner in which universities in Turkey had to increase the diversification of courses on regional studies in IR departments, particularly following the end of the Cold War, which precipitated various chain reactions that affected the country. Although there are not many EU/Europe dimensions in the courses on the MENA, there is a comprehensive and wide selection of courses under the title of EU/European Studies. When the courses on the MENA are analysed, it is observed that the EU aspect is almost non-existent (although there are some courses within EU Studies that deal with the EU’s foreign policy towards the MENA countries). The authors argue that the reason for the lack of attention to the EU’s role in the MENA and its embodiment in MENA-related courses can, first, be related to the relative importance of the role played by the United States in the region. Second, the geographical location of Turkey and the lingering question about its ‘liminal’ characteristic in between the MENA and Europe can be another reason why there is not sufficient attention paid to the EU in those courses on the MENA region. Three chapters further illustrate this contest between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in the third section of this edited volume with an explicit discussion of Edward W. Said (1978)’s concept of ‘Orientalism’. In his famous work Said revealed how knowledge about the ‘East’ is often produced through imagined constructions rather than through actual facts. In doing so the ‘East’ is set up as the antithesis of the ‘West’ – through literary texts and historical records. These ‘a priori’ formulations of the ‘East’ are therefore limited in terms of their understandings of the actual lived lives in the MENA (Pace, 2006). Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen explains how Danish scholarly engagement with the MENA began in earnest in the second half of the eighteenth century. This was due to a political engagement with the piracy states of the Maghreb. A series of military defeats in the nineteenth

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Introduction 11

century put an end to this international engagement. Consecutive scholarship was concentrated on the classical MENA languages and literatures. Contemporary Middle East Studies with a socio-political focus were only introduced from 1981. In the twenty-first century, the Danish military engagement in the region, jihadi terrorism, the cartoon crisis and the thorny issue of immigration have had immense effects on Danish scholarship. The author argues that irrespective of this new engagement and interest, some of the old deficiencies have not been overcome. Scholars pay insufficient attention to local MENA debates, and they either ignore or exaggerate religion and culture as factors of influence in MENA society and politics. This reflection is echoed in the contribution by Bassant Hassib and Jan Claudius Völkel who explore the image of Europe at Egyptian universities through the particular lens of ‘transformative education’. As Diwan (2021: 15) shows, the ‘social and political “returns” to education, in the sense of its contribution to the formation of emancipative social and political values, are […] dismally lower in the [MENA] region than in the rest of the world’ (own omission). The politicisation of higher education has, however, impacted upon Egyptian knowledge production over the last decades, and Europe has been modelled as both ‘friend’ and ‘foe’. The authors argue that it was, in particular, Nasser’s conceptions of emancipation and decolonisation that informed the manner in which ‘Europe’ features at Egyptian universities. Given the EU’s economic importance, it has at times been described as a partner as well. Moving to the Netherlands, Anne de Jong describes her experience with ‘enlightened students’ who are convinced that they have overcome Orientalism. In an autobiographical account, she explains how, by immersing herself within the gaze of her own students, she radically changed her BA  course on the Anthropology of the MENA at the University of Amsterdam. She further narrates how students come to her seminars equipped with their own opinions as formulated through news sources, and how they are prepared to face their own prejudices and shortcomings. In a nutshell, students today expect to learn about the real MENA, which brings an entirely new set of teaching and knowledge production challenges. The fourth set of chapters discusses aspects of hierarchy, whether between Europe and the MENA, between gender identities or between researchers and policy-makers. Juline Beaujouan discusses the existing imbalance between northern and southern academia using the example of collaborative research between UK and Syrian scholars, under the particular conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on her own extensive experiences in Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and other places in the Mashreq, she engages with the public health crisis as an opportunity. So, while the limitation on travel options had put a halt to many transnational research projects, it also

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strengthened the agency of local scholars in MENA countries, who now can serve as accepted partners on an equal footing in joint research programmes with European counterparts. Without doubt, the pandemic has obliged donors and organisers to better value and accept the work of local academics such as in Syria. Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel’s chapter on feminist approaches to the study of the MENA and Europe argues how it is crucial to analyse the manner in which the MENA is taught at universities in Europe. More specifically, she focuses on how researchers consider these knowledge production processes from the perspective of gender as a cross-cutting issue. She maintains that it is imperative to focus on ‘who teaches’ in order to bring out the position and role of female academics in their respective institutional structures and classrooms. Along these critical lines, this volume also turns our attention towards the role of think tanks in knowledge production. Working within the confines of a prominent think tank in Rome, Daniela Huber reflects on the knowledge produced within think tanks as liminal spaces between academic and policy-making communitites. She highlights three constraining factors on this type of knowledge production: the context in which think tanks operate – whether autocratic or democratic; the funding structures – public or private, generating a tough, competitive environment; and larger structures of occlusion and exclusion/inclusion which shed light on the European gaze on the Arab world but not vice versa. She considers the impact that think tank environments have on their researchers as well as their emancipatory potential and need to work more closely with marginalised communities.

Concluding reflections Cognisant of fragmenting labels in constructions of ‘the MENA’ and of ‘Europe’, our contributors supersede such logics by immersing themselves as subjects and objects of the study at hand, making themselves simultaneously ‘scholar’ and ‘subject’. Thus, the MENA and Europe cease to be somewhere ‘out there’ for observing the Other, and become spaces where researchers observe themselves, in the field, but also in classrooms and conference halls. Zooming in on mutual scholarship about ‘Europe’ and/or ‘the MENA’ opens up a wide range of possibilities for superseding visions of so-called traditional Orientalists, to abandon the sets of magnifying glasses through which the MENA and/or Europe are studied as fascinating objects of desire in their own right. In short, what we (as editors) and our contributors to this edited volume set out to do is to embark on a far more

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Introduction 13

introspective study. Taha Hussein’s ‘other bank of the canal’ does not lose its fascination as unknown territory for ongoing research of (whatever) a disciplinary focus; but it loses its alienness, and it becomes part of the Self, through reflexive, ongoing knowledge production. How do we negotiate this territory, that is, the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in higher education’s knowledge production? When knowledge production about Europe and the MENA matters, in which politics, history, the economy, as well as social and cultural relations are closely bound up, we cannot be objective and nuanced in our research and teaching methods if we do not tackle these subjects from an open, interdisciplinary perspective. It should be expected that the centrality of the MENA in Europe and of Europe in the MENA would translate into a thorough understanding of each region on either side. There is, however, insufficient knowledge of each region’s languages together with often simplistic perceptions of their respective political, historical, economic, social and cultural processes. In light of these challenges, this volume explores the politics that underlie the pedagogical and curricular practices that determine knowledge production: that is, the way the MENA is presented in European universities and how Europe is featured in academic institutions in the MENA. It does so in order to systematically challenge, differentiate and understand the dynamics and realities that go beyond dominant (Euro-/MENA-centric) accounts, while trying to avoid the pitfalls of simplification and knowledge fragmentation.

Notes 1 The term ‘Middle East’ became popularised in 1957 through the Eisenhower Doctrine in the discussion of the repercussions of the Suez Canal crisis (1956). Before these events, the ‘Near East’ (Western Balkans) and ‘Middle East’ (Levant) were used to describe various parts of the Ottoman Empire. The terms ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ were coined during the Roman Empire, where the Orient resembled the country where the sun rises (sol oriens) and the Occident resembles the country where the sun sets (sol occidens). Hassan Hanafi (1998; see for details the chapter on Egypt in this volume) criticised the use of ‘Middle East’ as a ‘projection from outside, not emerging from inside’ and as part of a ‘cycle of Eurocentrism’. He suggested ‘Arab World’ or ‘Muslim World’ as the most appropriate term instead, which has been criticised however for its exclusion of non-Arabs and the equation of ‘Arab’ with ‘Muslim’ (not least, the ‘Muslim World’ is certainly larger than the ‘Arab World’). ‘Middle East’ seems to be a politicised term especially when used as a reference to the political(ly constructed) region. Academic journals are called ‘Middle East Studies’, ‘Middle East Policy’; and even the ‘Journal of Postcolonial Studies’ uses the term ‘Middle East’ more

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Introduction

often than the geographic synonym ‘West(ern) Asia’. While there are reasons for understanding the term ‘Middle East’ as Eurocentrist indeed, its actual usage is still much more widespread than the potential equivalent ‘West(ern) Asia’, even in postcolonial journals. We therefore opt to use the term ‘Middle East’ throughout this edited volume, mostly in the combination ‘Middle East and North Africa’ (MENA). 2 Cairo University was named ‘Egyptian University’ until 1940 and ‘Fuad I University’ until 1952. 3 Some of these have had a strong presence of branches of American and to some extent European universities: for example, Georgetown University in Qatar, New York University Abu Dhabi, Texas A&M at Qatar and University of Birmingham Dubai. There are also institutions like the Doha Institute, which has branded itself as being distinctly Arab, not only in terms of teaching language but also by offering ‘an Arab perspective’. 4 On the origin and disputed use of the term ‘Middle East’ as part of ‘MENA’, see endnote 1. 5 In colloquial as in academic language use, ‘Europe’ can refer to the European Union, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Continental Europe, Scandinavian Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, etc. In a lecture at an online symposium organised by the German  Maghreb Foundation for Culture and Media on 29 May 2021 (www.mediamagde.com/de/ news/144), former Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki hinted at the fact that ‘Scandinavian governments act completely different than France’ in the MENA; thus, ‘Europe’ needs to be critically reflected too.

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Part I History

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1 Between nostalgia and the colonies: the evolution of French scholarship on the Middle East Timo Behr Introduction Efforts to archive, categorise, analyse and interpret the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have a long tradition in France. France’s political domination of parts of the region from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth century inevitably left a lasting mark. French scholars analysed and shaped these geopolitical interactions and were in turn shaped by them. Edward W. Said, in his seminal work on Orientalism, takes this ‘closeness’ of the French traditions with the Orient as one of the starting points for his analysis (Said, 1978: 4) and acknowledges the enormous productiveness that it engendered. In the case of France, this ‘closeness’ led to an intimate and enduring intermingling of scholarly, social, cultural and geopolitical activities that continue to shape the research and teaching of French Middle East Studies to the present day. This chapter analyses this close interaction between French research and teaching of the Middle East with French political projects and ambitions. It will do so by focusing on the central contributions of some  of  the key authorities in French Orientalism and Middle East  Studies and investigate their evolving relevance for French academia and politics  today.  In  the  process, the chapter identifies several specific traditions in French analysis of the region that have left a lasting legacy. Even though  these traditions have been contested and reinterpreted over  time,  and increasingly  have to contend with other legacies and v ­ iewpoints in what is an ever more globalised marketplace of ideas, they continue to  exercise significant influence over scholarly and public discourse. The first of these traditions is the idea of the Mediterranean as a social, cultural and even political entity, which has been a continuing object of interest to French scholars and represents an enduring ambition for French politicians. While the significance and the meaning of the Mediterranean as a subject of study and an object of political power has changed ­considerably

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over time, it has remained a central and somewhat unique element of French interactions with the MENA. A second and equally important tradition revolves around the role of political Islam in the region, as well as its interplay with French concepts of republicanism and laïcité. The clash of these two revolutionary and universalist forces – French republicanism and political Islam – has led to a complex scholarly interplay that has taken on various shapes and forms. However, for most of the Fifth Republic, the political consequences have been clear, with France opting to confront Islamism in all of its forms, both at home and abroad. This tradition has been thrown into sharp relief once more in the debates about Islamism in France during the autumn of 2020. A third tradition that has found some continuous expression in French scholarship espouses a more ecumenical view of Islam, while adopting a somewhat essentialist view of MENA culture and society. This tradition is more focused on studying and understanding the dislocation and clash that results from the interaction of Western modernity with Middle Eastern and Islamic society, drawing on long French traditions in sociology and anthropology. To demonstrate the formation, evolution and rootedness of these traditions, this chapter analyses the development of French Orientalism, from early scholarship to the Enlightenment and the colonial period through the struggles of decolonisation, the rise of new approaches to the discipline, and the recent war on terrorism in the MENA. The authors and contributions reviewed in this context are, by necessity, selective, and are intended to demonstrate trends and principles rather than provide a full overview of the body of French scholarship.

Early scholarship The emergence of Oriental Studies in France is commonly dated to the publication of the Bibliothèque orientale in 1697 by Berthélemy d’Herbelot de Molainville (1625–95) (Macfie, 2002: 31). D’Herbelot’s work aspired to be a universal dictionary of the countries and peoples of the East, in which he surveyed the principal cultures and religions of the entire region from North Africa to Asia. D’Herbelot’s publication was followed by various accounts of travellers, merchants and missionaries and the translation of important texts by scholars such as Antoine Galland (1646–1715) and Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) which fuelled the Enlightenment interest and vogue for all things Oriental. French Orientalism first acquired an institutional form under the patronage of Louis XIV, who created chairs of Oriental Studies at the Collège de

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France and dispatched archaeological expeditions to different parts of the Ottoman Empire. These early blossoms of scholarship would burst into bloom during the French Revolution, which witnessed a rapid expansion of chairs and institutions specialising in Orientalism. Thus, in 1795 a convention established the École des langues orientales vivantes in Paris, installing Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) as its chairman. De Sacy is generally regarded as the father of Orientalism in France (Said, 1978). Sacy had acquired a vast knowledge of Semitic languages through his religious upbringing and was driven in his work by his Jansenist beliefs. Jansenism, a prominent movement in Catholicism at the time, emphasised the universal deep structures of sentences, as opposed to their surface orderings. De Sacy adopted this method for the study of Oriental languages, arguing in the preface to his grammaire arabe (1810) that all languages are based on a universal set of rules, the ‘règles générales de la métaphysique de la langage’ (general rules of the metaphysics of language) that reflect certain properties of the mind. It was due to his belief in the existence of these règles générales that de Sacy became convinced that the key to scholarly understanding of the Orient was philology. Thus, he argued that ‘the historical analysis and comparison of languages, pursued largely through the study of written texts […] could yield unique insight into the timeless essence of civilizations’ (Lockman, 2004: 68, own omission). At the same time, he dismissed the living languages as an object of study. In doing so, de Sacy established the core tenets of Orientalism in France, which emphasised the study and translation of key texts, supposed to reveal the essence of Islamic civilisation. After his promotion as Professor for Arabic and Persian at the Collège de France, de Sacy founded the Société asiatique through which he had a lasting impact on Oriental Studies across Europe. Under de Sacy, French Orientalism also established an early link with France’s colonial project in North Africa. Thus, de Sacy supported France’s occupation of Algeria in 1830 by hiring interpreters for the French army, most of which were his own students. De Sacy also selected the most important text for study by colonial troops, a universal history by Ibn Khaldun, translated by his student William de Slane (1801–78). This early link between the study of the Orient and its exploitation has had a crucial impact on the further development and politicisation of French Orientalism.

Orientalisme appliqué De Sacy’s focus on philology and ‘eternal truths’ was, however, soon complemented by a more activist Enlightenment strain that was not satisfied

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with the translation and archiving of texts, but instead looked for reasons that could explain the present and past, drawing on diverse sources, including geography, history, religion and the development of institutions. This evolving fascination with the concrete world was driven both by the sceptical rationalism of the French Revolution, as well as the expanding geostrategic interests of post-revolutionary France. In 1798, as de Sacy was shaping the study of the Orient at the École des langues, Napoleon Bonaparte landed near Alexandria and occupied Egypt. Although Bonaparte’s strike was aimed at disrupting Britain’s link with the colonies, his Egyptian expedition soon made claim to missionary pretentions, drawing in archaeologists, philologists and engineers in what some French historians subsequently dubbed an episode of applied Orientalism (orientalisme appliqué). The expedition led to the publication of Description de l’Egypte (1809), an enormous work that attempted to provide a complete picture of Egypt, its history, people, flora, fauna, institutions, monuments and all other significant characteristics, triggering a proliferating scientific interest in the contemporary Orient and its people. As the Orient moved from being an abstract and distant subject of study into the geopolitical, economic and cultural space of la plus grand France, driven by her expanding vision and sense of mission, Orientalists espoused two different views on how France should deal with this vast region: by restoring the Orient to some perceived former glory, or by assimilating it into a French conceptualisation of a Latin European culture. One aspect of this is captured by the writings and teachings of ConstantinFrançois Volney (1757–1820). Volney, a doctor and traveller of the region, published his Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte (Travel to Syria and Egypt) in 1787, which reached considerable prominence during Napoleon’s expedition. Volney’s account differed significantly from some of the other descriptions of the region at the time, by focusing on the current political state of the countries he visited, instead of past empires. Moreover, Volney displayed sympathy with the Muslims he encountered, arguing that they possessed some ‘sort of goodness of heart, humanity, and justice; and above all never fail to manifest great fortitude under misfortune, and much firmness of character’ (quoted in Hourani, 1980: 85). However, Volney did share a common perception at the time – that the Orient was run by despotic and authoritarian forces and that the ‘Turkish spirit was destroying the accomplishments of the past and the hopes of the future’ (Volney, 1959 [1787: 28). Modifying Montesquieu’s theory of ‘Oriental Despotism’, Volney, a rationalist and anti-cleric, argued that it was Islam that was the source of this despotism. Writing about the Qur’an he stated, ‘and what is the consequence, if it is not to establish the most absolute of despotism in he who commands, through the blindest of devotion in he who obeys?’ (1959: 371).

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Dismissing the Ottoman Empire as corrupt and fanatic, he argued that it was in the interest of France that a ‘modern’ power would install itself in Constantinople and take charge of the development of the country – to ‘liberate the numerous peoples from the yoke of fanaticism and tyranny, to return the sciences and the arts to the lands of their birth […] and for the glory of the Orient reborn to efface the glory of the ancient Orient’ (1959: 156, own omission). While originally arguing that it was the duty of Russia to provide this modern power, Volney soon transferred the responsibility to France. Volney’s conclusion, and parts of his analysis, were contested by Ernest Renan (1823–92), a French philologist and scholar of religion. In his L’Islamisme et la science, Renan agreed that the ‘current inferiority of Muslim countries, the decadence of states governed by Islam, the intellectual sterility of races that derive their culture and education from that religion alone’, is based entirely on Islam (Renan, 2011 [1883]: 1). While Renan acknowledged that Islamic civilisation flowered during the Middle Ages, overtaking Europe in many aspects, he argued that this blossoming of culture and the sciences was not something produced by indigenous, Arab sources, but was the result of the reassertion and translation of Greek and Persian traditions. Muslim scientists, according to Renan, did little more than translate the ancient Greek texts that had been forgotten by the Christian world. Moreover, Renan held that many scientific contributions during this era were made by Andalusians and Persians, not ethnic Arabs. While drawing on some of the same analysis, Renan therefore developed a very different vision of the Orient from Volney. According to Renan, it was not possible to restore the Orient to some supposed former glory, since it never really was glorious in its own right. Instead, Renan argued that any progress ‘Islamic civilisation’ had achieved was the result of its adaptation to and assimilation of outside influences that were in fact opposed to Islam. In his mind, the only way for the Orient to join the modern world, therefore, would be for it to forsake its Islamic traditions and emulate all that is European, as it had successfully done in the past. Volney and Renan informed different traditions when it comes to the region (traditions that have taken various shapes): one seeking mutual enrichment and cooperation with an albeit weaker Orient, the other, its surrender and assimilation into Europe. At the same time, both shared a distaste for Islam, which they considered as irreconcilable with European culture.

The heir to Rome The French conquest of Algeria in 1830, again motivated by geopolitical considerations, gave another new direction to French Orientalism.

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Little was known about Algeria at the time and experts in Arabic and other Semitic languages were in short supply. To govern Algeria in any meaningful sense, the French therefore had to accumulate a detailed knowledge about the people and their customs, an exercise in which de Sacy’s students played a prominent role. In the course of this exercise, Orientalists largely turned themselves from providers of knowledge into providers of a colonial ideology. To allow for a more detailed study of Algerian customs and to serve as an intermediary between the tribes and the French authorities, a new military unit, the bureaux arabes, was set up in 1841 by the first French governor, General Thomas Robert Bugeaud. The bureaux arabes was staffed by military men, who had been trained at the École des langues orientales and were regarded as more sympathetic to the indigenous population than the settlers, who were not interested in the study of Algeria and its customs but in the conquest and appropriation of land (Hannoum, 2001: 356). Within the short period of its existence (1841–71), the bureaux arabes diligently fulfilled its role of collecting and disseminating knowledge about Algeria and thereby laid the foundation for the study of North Africa. One of the most influential texts that conditioned all other studies of North Africa during this period was the translation of Ibn Khaldun’s ‘Ibar by William de Slane. In 1847, de Slane published his translation of the second part of the ‘Ibar under the title Histoire des Berbères, to serve as a general framework for the history of North Africa. However, de Slane’s translation provided a highly distorted version of Ibn Khaldun’s writings, creating an artificial distinction between Arabs and Berbers, relegating the former to the Oriental realm while arguing that the latter were inherently Europeans that were descendants of Roman, Greek and German settlers. Belonging for long to the Roman Empire, de Slane argued that it was only through the Arab conquest that the Berbers were split apart from Europe and were subjected to Arab despotism. De Slane’s interpretation provided the basis for ethnographers of the bureaux arabes to build up the image of a common Latin-Mediterranean past, based on six centuries of Roman domination and derived from a shared ‘rational’ Latin culture (Lorcin, 1995: 99–118). This enlightened Latin legacy was seen as competing with an Ottoman legacy, drawing on more bellicose and fanatical Asian and Arab traditions. France, as the heir to Rome, represented the custodian of this rational Latin civilisation and the protector of the Berbers as a proto-Latin people that were subjugated by Arabic invaders. In their study La grande Kabylie, Colonel Eugène Daumas and Captain Paul Dieudonné Fabar, members of the bureaux arabes, depicted the Berberinherited Kabyle as living in a state of primitive democracy, a ‘sort of savage Swiss’ (Hannoum, 2001: 348–9), applying Roman law instead of Islamic law.

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Although short-lived, the work of the bureaux arabes endured beyond its existence and was later taken on by a civilian institution, the Société archéologique de Constantine, under the guidance of Ernest Mercier. Mercier and others adopted, with few changes, the view of North Africa’s history as a ferocious opposition between two races, by applying it to Morocco and other countries. These ideas continued to proliferate until the 1930s, when they were taken on by Louis Bertrand’s Algérianiste movement, which argued that a viral new white race was being created by the pieds-noirs (people of French and European origin born under French colonial rule) in North Africa that was destined to reinvigorate a France fallen into decadence. Only with the onset of a long and bloody war of liberation in North Africa were the Berbers delegated to their old place amongst the ranks of the other backward peoples of the Orient. Opposition to the supposed division of North Africa into Berbers and Arabs came from a small school of scholars, including Thomas Urbaine (1812–84). Urbaine, who later converted to Islam, argued that Berbers and Arabs were not distinct people, but first and foremost Algerians and Muslims that had assimilated over centuries. Urbaine also broke with previous interpretations, arguing that Islam was not inherently a despotic force, but on the contrary had shown great tolerance towards other people. This led him to the contentious conclusion that the ‘fanaticism’ of the Muslims in Algeria was mainly a reaction to the occupation of their land by France (Hannoum, 2001: 360). For Urbaine, stability could only be achieved by integrating Algeria into France and ensuring equal treatment for settlers and native Algerians. Tolerance and acceptance rather than dominance and assimilation were therefore the principles espoused by Urbaine and his supporters. Urbaine’s vision was later appropriated and given new meaning by writers such as Gabriel Audisio (1935) and Albert Camus, as well as artists of the École d’Alger, who promoted the vision of a common Mediterranean heritage and the existence of an eternal Mediterranean homeland that was able to accommodate all the differences of North Africa and Europe (Ruel, 1991). The idea of a shared Mediterranean past and identity similarly was famously adopted by Fernand Braudel and the French Annales School. Through his seminal work Braudel continued to emphasise the existence of an eternal Mediterranean region, based on an integrated geography and a shared historical system (Braudel, 1946). Despite the considerable differences between the bureaux arabes, Mercier, Audisio and the Annales School, all of them informed an enduring strain in French Middle East Studies, conceiving of the Mediterranean as an integral system that shares a common history, and traditions, of which France was and remains an integral part.

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Ecumenical mysticism Louis Massignon (1883–1962), one of the more peculiar scholars of French Orientalism, took the idea of Christian–Muslim understanding to a different level. A scholar of the Arab world, Massignon became a fervent Catholic after a personal religious experience in Iraq in which an Arab reportedly saved his life (Krokus, 2017: 48). Massignon’s deep religious affinities permeate his most important writing, La passion de Husayn ibn Mansur Hallaj, published in 1922. The work recounts the life of Mansur al-Hallaj, a Sufi teacher, who was executed in 922, for violating what was at his time the orthodox interpretation of Islam. Massignon’s work on al-­Hallaj is informed by a radically different vision of history. Thus, Massignon believed that the history of the world is not determined by great collectives, but by outstanding individuals, who ‘take upon themselves the sufferings and imperfections of others, the sinners, the ignorant, the poor and the oppressed’ (Hourani, 1991: 126). The work of these individuals lives on in their teachings and through their deeds and prayers, forming a chain of ‘heroic souls’, which is the real thread of human history. Massignon’s beliefs can be traced back to an occultist strain in French Catholicism which resembles a recurring theme in Sufi writings. Almost as radical as his view of history was Massignon’s epistemology that breaks with the prevailing positivism of his time. Thus, Massignon shunned any pretension of ‘detached objectivity’ as mode of enquiry, but rather practised a form of participation, based more on faith than on knowledge. According to him, it is not enough to have a firm understanding of philology; in order to understand the deeper meanings of mysticism, researchers need to involve themselves in the practice of this language (Burrell, 1998). Massignon’s peculiar version of Orientalism, his studies and his beliefs had a lasting impact that has exceeded the narrow circles of French Orientalists. Thus, he founded a community of prayer, in which Muslims and Catholics prayed together and for one another. Through his work and actions Massignon is widely credited with having impacted the relations between the Catholic church and the Muslim world, giving an impetus to the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1965. Within the discipline of Orientalism, Massignon remains the most important representative of a small group of left-wing Catholics who have stressed the ‘progressive’ characteristics of Islam that emphasise the spiritual value of the Muslim religious experience and condemn the historical injustices inflicted by Europeans against Islam, both as a religion and a group of peoples. Due to their position, they have often been accused of sanctifying Islam and have drawn some angry reactions from conservative scholars such as the British scholar Elie Kedourie (1992).

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Decolonisation and the ‘new Left’ After the Second World War, France saw the rise of a new generation of social scientists who were much concerned with the problems inherent in the modern condition. Shaped by the period of late colonialism and the wars of decolonisation, these analysts were troubled by the impact of the loss of culture, the objectification of social institutions, and the pathologies they effected. With the publication of Race et histoire (1952) and Tristes tropiques (1955), Claude Lévi-Strauss established a new role for anthropology that began more assertively to question colonisation and the cultural stereotypes of imperialism. At the same time, other French intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Ricoeur, tried to break down the traditional divisions between the social sciences. These changes were reflected most prominently by Jacques Berque (1910–95), son of a high-ranking official of the Algerian government who had spent much of his youth in North Africa. His relationship with the Arab world was therefore intimate and personal, not dissimilar to that of Urbaine or Massignon. Although devoid of their religiosity, Berque described himself as a son and citizen of the Maghreb (Hannoum, 2004: 85). Leaning on Lévi-Strauss, Berque defined himself as a ‘historical anthropologist’ whose special area of interest was the scientific and technical revolution and its effect on the modern world. For Berque, this revolution started and was owned by the Western world, which profited from the rest of the world, on which it imposed its rules. It was only when nationalism arose in other parts of the world that some nations reclaimed their identity and independence. However, with independence other problems asserted themselves. Thus, ruling elites imposed on their nation a modernity without roots and connection to the history of their countries and siphoned off the benefits of the modern world for their own use. Opposition to these new elites carried the risk of putting in place inflexible and rigid elites that drew too heavily on a certain vision of their history and who therefore might hinder progress. In L’Orient second, Berque argued that the Orient had to face the challenge of modernity by building ‘atop the ruins of the first Orients, with the resurgence of a second Orient’ (Berque, 1970). According to Berque, Orientalists have to turn for help to the people of the Arab world and concentrate more on the present than they have done previously. While this is what he practised, Berque remained intensely aware that he, as a foreigner, always remained on the outside and regarded himself as a ‘travelling companion’. This led him to reject Massignon’s search for analogies between Islam and the West. For him Islam always remained ‘the Other’, but an Other that has to be apprehended and accepted in itself. In the course of his work, Berque introduced anthropology, sociology and

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other social sciences to Oriental Studies and toppled philology as the exclusive method of the field. Thus, Berque involved Oriental Studies deeply in the epistemological revolution of the 1960s, which flowered in France somewhat earlier than in the rest of Europe. Berque’s critique of traditional Oriental Studies and its epistemology was shared most notably by another French social scientist at the time, Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002). Bourdieu first went to Algeria in the context of his military service. Awed and fascinated by the country and the war of decolonisation, he decided to stay on and conduct some scholarly research on traditional Algerian society and the impact of colonialism. Influenced by theories of structuralism that circulated at the time, Bourdieu gave specific importance to the underlying structures that distinguished both ‘traditional’ and ‘uprooted’ Kabyle society. In a bid to unearth these structures, Bourdieu, a trained sociologist, turned to empirical investigations and drew freely on concepts and methodologies from other social science traditions. In this process, he traversed the established boundaries of sociology, ethnology and Oriental Studies and set a precedent that others would soon follow. One of the fundamental achievements of his work was therefore to question the traditional epistemology of the field and the strict separation of disciplines, in which sociology was restricted to the study of Western societies, while ethnology focused on ‘primitive’ people, and Orientalism on people with universal religions (Yacine, 2004). In Algeria, Bourdieu’s work was focused on two related processes. On the one hand, Bourdieu explored the problems of contemporary Algerian society (Bourdieu, 1979), which struggled to deal with the ills of war and the enormous social changes brought about by the French colonisation. The other part of his work concerned itself with the dynamics of traditional Kabyle society, its underlying structures and how they were affected by colonialism. Drawing on his theory of the habitus, Bourdieu sought to demonstrate the ways in which traditional society had fostered social stability and how its balance was unsettled by colonisation, engendering instability and war. Throughout his work on Algeria and colonialism, Bourdieu underlined that the differences that existed between the Orient and the Occident, as they manifested themselves in Algeria, were not predetermined, but were largely the work of colonialism. It was colonialism and its uprooting of traditional society, without any regard for the cultural context, which was responsible for the social and economic malaise that Algeria was experiencing. Bourdieu also warned that the radical anti-colonial elements in Algeria were deemed to repeat the mistakes of the colonisers, with their craving for an Algerian nation-state, based on Western principles. His aim was not to encourage this new elite in its unconscious project of destruction of its own

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culture but to help them perceive the cultural contradiction at the heart of their project of national construction. Berque and Bourdieu therefore form part of a tradition of French scholars that turned the original Orientalist tenets on their head. According to them, it was the imposition and appropriation of Western modernity that led to the demise of the Orient. To save itself, the Orient and Oriental society needed to reconnect with their roots, rather than adopt some form of Western modernity that was not fit for itself. Instead of assimilation or amalgamation, as advocated by earlier Orientalists, the most appropriate way forward was separation, in order to preserve the Orient’s authenticity and roots and to help it to develop its own form of modernity more in sync with its traditions.

Marxist critiques During the 1970s, Samir Amin (1931–2018), a Franco-Arab scholar, provided a Marxist critique of the field by adopting the basic assumptions of ‘dependency theory’ to the Arab world. In his L’accumulation à l’échelle mondiale (Accumulation on a Global Scale), published in 1970, Amin criticised the dominant ‘bourgeois’ theories of development. In his mind, bourgeois social thought was Eurocentric, materialistic and linear and was not applicable to the Arab world. Building on his theoretical work on development, Amin challenged the traditional European history of the Arab world in his 1976 book La nation arabe. In this work, Amin rejects the idea that Europe brought civilisation and progress to the Arab world and offers a counternarrative that is based on political economy. According to him, medieval Arab society was neither capitalist, nor pre-capitalist, categories that cannot be validly applied to the Arab world at that stage. Only colonialism integrated the Middle East into the global capitalist system, ‘proletarianized the Arab masses, and set up as its local agent a comprador class of former merchants who now extracted surplus value from the labors of the fellahin’, as Aboul-Ela (1998) put it. Thus, for Amin, the West did not bring civilisation and development, but a proletarianisation of the populace that aggravated social conflicts. Amin insists that the only solution for the Middle East to get out of its current economic dependency is a ‘delinking’ from the world economy. According to him, this would constitute a greater reliance on its domestic economies and not necessarily to take the form of international isolation. Despite this call for greater self-reliance, Amin remains critical of the rise of fundamentalist Islam, which he views as opposed to his Marxist critique, arguing that Arab society remained under the yoke of an outward-oriented

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economic and an introspective and traditionalist cultural milieu (Amin, 1976/1978: 131). To escape this trap, Amin advocates a third way that would avoid the fallacies of both total outward orientation and total inward orientation. Another Marxist critique of traditional Orientalism was developed by the French scholar Maxime Rodinson (1915–2004). One of Rodinson’s earlier works, Mahomet (1961), approaches the life of the Prophet from a sociological perspective and tries to explain the rise of the Muslim faith and the Arab conquest of the Middle East from a socio-historical view. This famously led him to the conclusion that Muhammad was a combination of Jesus and Charles the Great. Rodinson takes a similar approach in his perhaps most famous work, Islam and Capitalism, published in 1966. There, he aims to disprove the thesis that Islam and capitalism are somehow opposed to each other and that it was consequently the fault of Islam that capitalism did not develop in the Arab world. According to Rodinson, this perception is based on the work of Max Weber, who asserted that the emergence of capitalist ‘rationality’ was a function of the Protestant ethic. Oriental scholars accordingly had ascribed a lower level of rationality to the Islamic world, which explained the absence of capitalism. Rodinson disputes this view, arguing that ‘the Qur’an is a holy book in which rationality plays a big part’ (Rodinson, 1974: 78) and that logic plays a key role in interpretations of the Qur’an. By implication, Rodinson also dismisses the notion that Islam somehow favours a socialist system of economy. While Rodinson therefore confers a primary role on sociological and Marxist explanations to describe the problems of the Muslim world, he appreciated the power of religion and remains unconvinced by the speculations of other Marxists that Islam would disappear once the Muslim world had joined the modern fray. Marxist writers, therefore, offered new explanations for why the Middle East remained economically behind Europe, dismissing earlier cultural and religious explanations and, like Berque and Bourdieu, calling for an authentic and independent Middle East.

Islamism and the new al-Andalus The rise of Islamism, from the early 1980s onwards, triggered the latest body of literature in French Middle East Studies and contributed to another refocusing of the field. However, contrary to some Anglo-Saxon analysts, few French scholars regarded the rise of Islamism as a simple ‘reassertion’ of essential Islamic characteristics. Assessing the development,

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expressions and future of political Islam, three specific contributions stand out in French scholarship. Gilles Kepel, in his path-breaking book Jihad: Expansion et déclin de l’islamisme (2000; transl. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, 2002), attributes the emergence of Islamism to the cultural revolution the Islamic world experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. According to him, this ‘cultural revolution’ amounted to a collective change of mind, driven by a handful of religious intellectuals, and was given added impetus by the collapse of secular and modernising nationalism everywhere in the Islamic world. According to Kepel, at the time that Arab nationalism reached its peak with Gamal Abdel Nasser, Houari Boumedienne, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and others, three religious writers laid the founding stones for the impending rise of Islamism: Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, Mawlana Mawdudi in Pakistan and Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. The rise of fundamentalist Islamism has largely been conditioned by the writings of these three thinkers. Islamism, therefore, has been the result of a ‘war of ideas’ that followed the demise of Arab nationalism. According to Kepel (2020: 5), 1979 was ‘the year the Pandora’s Box opened, unleashing the global Islamic terrorism plaguing us to this day’. However, he sees the inevitable decline of Islamism, starting with the 9/11 terrorist attack, driven by excessive violence, creating internal fitna (trial, schism) in the Arab world (Kepel, 2002). Through a series of books, Kepel traces the development of jihadism, including how it impacted the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions and later resulted in attacks on France. Despite all of this, Kepel has been optimistic about the possibilities of integrating tolerant Islamic trends with existing secular and liberal values. A laboratory for this process, according to Kepel, could be a multicultural Europe that may yet evolve into a ‘new Andalusia’, where ‘the hybridization and flowering of two distinct cultures can produce extraordinary progress in civilization’ (Kepel, 2005), thus directly challenging the assimilationist policies propagated by the French Fifth Republic to this day. In his latest book, Kepel (2020) expresses similar optimism that a multinational alliance could help bring a post-‘Islamic State’ renaissance to the Levant. Olivier Roy considers the recent rise of jihadi terrorism to be less motivated by the Islamist doctrine than by the appropriations of Western mores and habits. In L’Échec de l’islam politique, Roy argued that one of the reasons behind the emergence of the Islamist movement was the desire for a cultural reappropriation from the West. While Roy acknowledged the reformist potential of this movement, he argued that the Islamists’ selfdeclared ideological purity would ultimately spell its end. In Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (2005), Roy similarly predicts the end of jihadi forms of Islamism and points to striking similarities between contemporary Islamism and the radical European left of the 1960s and 1970s.

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According to Roy, both sides have been drawing on a pool of alienated and dislocated youth, while talk of a pan-Islamic Ummah resembles in many ways earlier Trotskyist ideas of the proletariat. Contemporary Islamism is therefore not a phenomenon that has deep roots in the essentialist nature of Islam, but rather stems from important contemporary changes. Thus, Roy contends that contemporary Islamism is very much the product of the same process of globalisation that the jihadis profess to be resisting. While Islamists erroneously believe that they represent original Islamic tradition, what they in fact represent is a negative form of Westernisation (Roy, 2005: 43). According to Roy, this is triggered in some cases because of an incomplete transition to modernity that has produced large swathes of  unemployed, uneducated and sexually frustrated youth that are in search of outlets to vent their anger. According to Roy, Islam in fact has been irrevocably changed by the effect of secularism and modernisation and it no longer represents a unified system of believers. François Burgat has been critical of the tendency of Western intellectuals to dismiss Islamic extremists as ‘Islamic crazies’. Drawing on Bourdieu, he argues that, ‘cloaked by the term Islamic extremism, they are hidden beneath the atavistic symbol of all oriental fanaticism. It is a term well suited for providing racist prejudice with an inscrutable alibi of legitimacy founded on ethical and secularist grounds’ (Burgat, 2003: 13). In his book L’islamisme en face, Burgat argues that Islamism, although coloured by regional and national specificities, is the product of one historical dynamic: the resurgence of an earlier Arab nationalism, prematurely pronounced dead, ‘clothed in imagery considered more indigenous’ (Burgat, 2003: 14). According to Burgat, Islamism therefore merely replaces Western concepts, such as nationalism and Marxism, imported earlier in order to meet the needs of Muslims to distinguish themselves from the West. While socio-economic analysis goes some way to understanding the emergence of Islamism, it is only through Islamist discourses that it is possible to throw some light on this phenomenon. To this end, Burgat engages in a direct dialogue with Islamists and, in L’islamisme en face, concludes that it is wrong to dismiss Islamic movements in their entirety as extremist and opposed to modernity. According to Burgat, it is only a fringe of the various manifestations of political Islam that continues to advocate violent methods. Moreover, he considers Islamism and modernity as compatible phenomena, arguing that ‘the values of modernity are much less renounced than rewritten in the terminology of the symbolic system of Islam’ (Burgat, 2003: 16). According to Burgat, the adaptation of Islam to modernity is far from over, and continues to be pursued by Islamic scholars in the Middle East and around the world. Dismissing earlier declarations of the death of Islamism as premature, Burgat holds

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that Middle East Studies seems to be evolving from earlier assumptions that have pitted Islam and democracy against each other. Burgat concludes that, eventually, when Islamist movements are no longer suppressed and can freely participate in electoral processes, they will eventually lose their distinctiveness and align their political agendas. However, for this to happen, the West has to accept that the universal values it holds dear can also be expressed through the symbols and historical references of non-Western cultures. This argument puts Burgat in line with Massignon and other French scholars who advocate a consensual modernity, a new sense of ecumenism.

Conclusion: enduring legacies in a globalised world French scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and Islam have evolved significantly over time. Starting from their focus on philology and the analysis of key texts, and being rooted in what was a strongly Eurocentric and exclusivist worldview, French scholarship has become increasingly multidisciplinary and has integrated diverse views and ideas. In the process, the teaching body and reading lists of French institutions have evolved significantly, integrating research and voices from the French Muslim community, from the Arab and Islamic world, as well as scholarship from prominent Anglo-Saxon writers and researchers. As a result, it may be argued that French academic traditions of studying and teaching the Middle East and the Islamic world have become increasingly diluted  through their interactions with a more globalised and inclusive curriculum.  In fact, traditional works of French scholarship no longer play  as  prominent a place in the classroom or in the reading lists of French  universities as they would have done in the past. Nevertheless, some of the academic approaches and visions that have been developed by French Orientalists and Arabists have endured and continue to generate an impact. Perhaps one of the most enduring and influential of these French concepts is the idea of a common Mediterranean heritage and culture that is embodied and championed by France (Behr, 2011; Pace, 2006). This concept of a deeper cultural, political and geographical link between France and parts of North Africa and the Middle East has been fully appropriated and frequently drawn on by French politicians and policy-makers. A long arc of French scholarship from the bureaux arabes to Gabriel Audisio and Fernand Braudel has contributed to developing this particular French vision of a common Mediterranean heritage that represents an area of study and research, as well as a target of political interaction. This concept gave

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rise to a number of French political projects on the region, from the politique méditerranéenne to the French-inspired Union for the Mediterranean. Another enduring tradition that has been appropriated, in particular, by French Gaullists combined the secularist and anti-Islamist theories of Volney and Renan with the assimilationist views populated by the bureaux arabes. These traditions caution against the ‘backward influence’ that Islam has exercised on the Middle East and propagate the assimilation of Muslim minorities into the secular ideology of France. Key tenets of this approach have been captured in France’s politique arabe, first propagated by Charles de Gaulle and later revised by Jacques Chirac (Behr, 2014). Thus, Gaullist writers like Jean-Pierre Chevènement (1995) identified a similarity between Gaullism and Arab nationalism that they date back to the Arab renaissance (nahda), which they see as having functioned as a transmission belt for the French Enlightenment to the Arab world. The argument, not dissimilar to that of Ernest Renan, was that French rationalism and concepts of Western modernity would help to lift the Arab Middle East from religious fanaticism and backwardness and shape a new Middle East in the image of France proper. The emergence of political Islam in the 1980s served as a catalyst, posing a direct threat to both Arab nationalism and French Gaullism. In the Arab world, it threatened to undermine French influence and ideas, challenging Gaullists claims to grandeur. In France, ‘intégrisme’ was seen as a longterm challenge to France’s secular and republican order that needed to be contained. The result has been a strong anti-Islamist reflex in French foreign policy that continues to exercise a strong hold on France’s Middle East strategy. The deep and enduring roots of this view have been aptly demonstrated by the debate about Islam and Islamism in France in late 2020, following the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty and the subsequent discussion launched by President Emmanuel Macron. Moreover, elements of this approach have not been limited to Gaullist politicians or the political right. Both Jacques Berque and Maxime Rodinson expounded the benefits of Arab nationalism and warned against the dangers of Islamism. While Kepel’s research dismisses simplistic and undifferentiated views of Islamism, he too identifies the fundamentalist Islam that emerged after 1979 as the key challenge for the region and the universalist pretensions of France. Lastly, it is possible to identify a tradition in French writing, thinking and approaches to the region that draws on the works of Urbaine, Massignon and Bourdieu, as well as Marxists like Samir Amin. What combines these diverse viewpoints is the argument that the decline of the Islamic world and its recent troubles are not the result of some essentialist fundamentalist strain, but rather the result of the Islamic world’s interaction with Western modernity. In political France, the clearest expression of this, perhaps, was

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The evolution of French scholarship 37

the Third Worldism (tiers-mondisme) propagated by parts of the French left in the 1960s and 1970s, which explicitly rejected universalist claims of Enlightenment humanism. This tradition, while prominent in large parts of French academia, never gained a strong political representation, given the dominance of Gaullist thought. Moreover, Third Worldism in France had an ambivalent relationship with political Islam. Although some considered Islamism as an authentic expression of independence and rejected the ‘phantom of intégrisme’, others on the anti-clerical left dismissed it for its supposed despotism and brutality. In either case, it never gained much political support and was largely dismissed following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Nevertheless, this tradition appears to have continued to inform contemporaries like Roy and Burgat, who have adopted similarly bleak views of the impact of Western modernity on the Arab world. While France’s study of the Middle East has been shaped by its political, social and cultural interactions, it was never monolithic. Instead, it has been able to accommodate a multiplicity of different views, approaches and interpretations. Despite the growing international influences on the study and teaching of the Middle East in France, several powerful traditions of theorising about the Middle East and Islam endure. While these persistent strains are reformulated and provided with new meaning by each successive generation of French scholars, they have left a lasting mark on the discipline and are likely to maintain some relevance into the future.

References Aboul-Ela, H. (1998) ‘The drowsy emir and the world system: Yahya Tahir ‘Abd Allah, Samir Amin, and the Arab predicament of dependency’, Edebiyat – Journal of Middle Eastern Literatures, 8:2, 217–38. Amin, S. (1970) L’accumulation à l’échelle mondiale (Paris: Anthropos). Amin, S. (1976) La nation Arabe. Nationalisme et luttes de classes (Paris: Éditions de minuit). Engl. translation: The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggles (London: Zed Books, 1978). Audisio, G. (1935) Jeunesse de la Méditerranée (Paris: Gallimard). Behr, T. (2011) France, Germany and Europe’s Middle East Dilemma: The Impact of National Foreign Policy Traditions on Europe’s Middle East Policy (Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing). Behr, T. (2014) ‘De Gaulle and the Middle East conflict’, in B. M. Rowland (ed.),  Charles de Gaulle’s Legacy of Ideas (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books), pp. 85–98. Berque, J. (1970) L’Orient second (Paris: Gallimard). Bourdieu, P. (1979) Algeria 1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Braudel, F. (1946) La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: A. Colin). Burgat, F. (2003) Face to Face with Islam (London: I. B. Tauris).

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Burrell, D. E. (1998) ‘Mind and heart at the service of Muslim-Christian understanding: Louis Massignon as trailer blazer’, Muslim World, 88:3, 268–78. Chevènement, J.-P. (1995) Le vert et le noir: Intégrisme, pétrole, dollar (Paris: Grasset). Hannoum, A. (2001) ‘Colonialism and knowledge in Algeria: the archives of the Arab bureau’, History and Anthropology, 12:4, 343–79. Hannoum, A. (2004) ‘Faut-il bruler l’orientalisme?’, Cultural Dynamics, 16:1, 71–91. Hourani, A. (1980) Europe and the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press). Hourani, A. (1991) Islam in European Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kedourie, E. (1992) ‘Politics and the academy’, Commentary, August, pp. 50–5, available at www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/elie-kedourie/politics-theacademy (accessed 22 July 2022). Kepel, G. (2000) Jihad: Expansion et déclin de l’islamisme (Paris: Gallimard). Kepel, G. (2002) Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kepel, G. (2005) The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Kepel, G. (2020) Away from Chaos: The Middle East and the Challenge to the West (New York: Colombia University Press). Krokus, C. (2017) The Theology of Louis Massignon: Islam, Christ, and the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press). Lévi-Strauss, C. (1952) Race et histoire (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Lévi-Strauss, C. (1955) Tristes tropiques (Paris: Plon). Lockman, Z. (2004) Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lorcin, P. (1995) Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudices and Race in Colonial Algeria (New York: I. B. Tauris). Macfie, A. L. (2002) Orientalism (London: Pearson Education). Pace, M. (2006) The Politics of Regional Identity: Meddling with the Mediterranean (London: Routledge). Renan, E. (2011 [1883) L’Islamisme et la science. English translation, by Sally P. Ragep, available at www.mcgill.ca/islamicstudies/files/islamicstudies/renan_ islamism_cversion.pdf (accessed 22 July 2022). Rodinson, M. (1961) Mahomet (Paris: Club francais du livre). Rodinson, M. (1974) Islam and Capitalism (New York: Pantheon). Roy, O. (2005) Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press). Ruel, A. (1991) ‘L’invention de la Méditerranée’, Vingtième Siècle, 32, 7–14. Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Volney, C.-F. C. (1959 [1787) Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte (Paris: Mouton). Yacine, T. (2004) ‘Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria at war: notes on the birth of an engaged ethnosociology’, Ethnography, 5:4, 487–509.

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2 Orient-ations: German scholarship on the Middle East since the nineteenth century Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel

Introduction This chapter explores the connections between Germany and the ‘Middle East’ by looking at knowledge production on this region in German universities. Based on a study of several main traditions of studying the ‘Orient’ over the longue durée from the early nineteenth century until the present, the chapter proceeds chronologically and presents a selection of key trends in German-language scholarship. After discussing the emergence of Oriental Studies prior to the formation of Germany as a nation-state in 1870/71 and then during the Kaiserreich with the Empire’s growing imperial ambitions,1 we thereafter look at continuities and discontinuities in the Weimar Republic and during the Nazi reign. Finally, we take a comparative perspective on teaching and researching the Orient in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and examine how this related to the Cold War and, afterwards, the united (and Europeanised) country since 1990. Some main trends become visible. First, despite substantial changes in interdisciplinarity and the social sciences since the mid-twentieth century, and incorporations of trends from English-speaking academia more recently, classical text-based scholarship without ‘studying humans’ is still common in Islamic Studies and other scholarship on the region. Second, this results in a complex picture as far as the political implications of knowledge production are concerned: owing to a humanistic perspective (as a philosophical tradition, not as the social science study of concrete humans), there is a strong trend of emphasising shared civilisational dispositions as well as various forms of entanglements between Europe (or ‘the West’ more broadly) and the Orient – a form of ‘non-Othering’. At the same time, following the very different political contexts throughout Germany’s history, knowledge production has, time and again, been linked to political projects and ideologies that underpinned various versions of Othering: from the racialised distinction between Indo-European and Semitic languages in the

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nineteenth century to the stereotyping of Middle Eastern people – mainly Arab Muslims – post-9/11. This politicisation also facilitates an instrumental relationship with the region, for example with a view to the German– Ottoman alliance prior to and during the First World War and the (largely unsuccessful) attempt by Nazi Germany during the Second World War to generate support by Muslims under British, French and Soviet rule.

Oriental Studies in German states and the German Empire Before Germany became a nation-state and an empire in 1871, Germanspeaking polities already had a vibrant and diverse university landscape. In that context, modern Orientalist scholarship emerged in the late eighteenth century at theological faculties as part of Protestant endeavours to deeply and systematically engage with biblical sources. The study of languages was thus central. Ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek were paramount here. Over the nineteenth century this developed into a wider interest in mainly spiritual and philosophical texts from the Orient. This led to a massive increase of scholarship that deciphered (ancient) Oriental languages of major civilisations, covering Egyptian hieroglyphs, Assyrian cuneiform, Chinese, and in particular Sanskrit and pre-Persian Avestan (key scholars over this period include Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Friedrich Creuzer and Karl Richard Lepsius). Bar any German imperial ambitions, these scholars were mainly driven by an interest in learning about religiousspiritual traditions and the greatness of (ancient) civilisations, owing to strong humanistic beliefs popular at this time, culminating in an interest in an original state from which all human civilisations, languages and religions developed. Deep cultural entanglements and similarities between East and West were thus central topics underpinning knowledge production on the Orient during this period. Thus, knowledge production did not only centre on studying Oriental civilisations in an isolated manner, but took a strong interest in discovering the ancient Oriental roots of Christianity, Judaism and Western civilisation. German Oriental scholarship in this period, for example, ventured into the study of similarities of languages across Eurasia, such as the discovery of the shared roots in syntax and vocabulary of Indo-European languages, and the theory of language families more generally speaking. From a broader perspective, this was often underpinned by a cosmopolitan and universalist philosophical outlook that emphasised the embedding of East and West in shared cultural parameters (e.g. languages, philosophy, monotheism), a tradition that runs from Wilhelm von Humboldt in the early 1800s (Meßling, 2008) to the present (e.g. Assmann, 2020). However, this fascination with

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German scholarship since the nineteenth century 41

the Orient as the ‘fount of civilizations’ (Marchand, 2009: 68), on the one hand, and the pervasiveness of cultural entanglements between Orient and Occident, on the other, was mostly limited to historical and philological studies: it was about the study of ancient languages and texts, and did not include a wider interest in the contemporary Middle East and people living there (Mangold, 2004). This changed only gradually, and not least because individual German scholars – who lived neither in a joint state nor, with the exception of Prussia, in a powerful European state – were able to make use of the imperial networks of other European powers such as the Dutch, British, French and Russians – a tradition that dates back to the eighteenth century, when the Danish king sponsored Carsten Niebuhr’s geographical and theological research in Egypt, Yemen, Anatolia and elsewhere (see the contribution of Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen in this volume). Such imperial networks nurtured a constant flow of manuscripts and artefacts – derived from the emerging fields of archaeology and geography – from the Middle East to Europe. This resulted in an increasing interest in studying contemporary Eastern languages too – including Arabic and Ottoman. Moreover, in an attempt to become ‘emancipated’ from faculties of theology, a sophistication and professionalisation of Orientalist scholarship set in: specialised subfields such as Egyptology, Assyriology, Indology and others emerged, studying these different civilisations’ cultural heritage from non-­ theological perspectives. The focus was largely on ancient civilisations, such as Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, but also covered the contemporary region. Professional associations were founded; the establishment of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) in the state of Hesse (and legally registered in the state of Saxony) in 1845 attested already to the growing interest in both the ancient and the contemporary Orient from empirical perspectives. The DMG’s journal, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (Journal of the German Oriental Society), explicitly excluded theological articles. Marchand (2009: 98) concludes that because of the high quality of this philological tradition and its landmark achievements in making legible ancient texts in hieroglyphs, cuneiform and other scripts, ‘Germans by the 1850s had become the most proficient, respected, and numerous orientalists in the world despite having no colonial Empire.’ The period since the 1850s – stemming from the wish to move beyond theology and to establish Oriental Studies as a distinct scholarly field – witnessed a growing interest in the contemporary Middle East and the Ottoman Empire. Also, modern Islam – and how Muslims practise Islam – now became a topic of interest from such proto-social sciences perspectives: for example, in the intellectual exchange between (Hungarian, but German speaking) Ignaz Goldziher and Muhammad

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Abduh, one of the founding figures of the Muslim reform movement in the second half of the nineteenth century (Jung, 2011). The waning influence of the churches within Germany underpinned this turn to a wider social focus on the ancient and contemporary Middle East. The bourgeois movement of Kulturprotestantismus (cultural Protestantism) was central here: it drove Protestant theological debates in the direction of a more ‘modern’ and enlightened version of Christianity, which necessitated critical, hermeneutic engagement with original biblical sources. But it also led to analogies made by Orientalists with a view to how they observed Islam: a discourse emerged (at times in intellectual exchange with leading Muslim scholars of the time), based on the argument that the enlightened past of Islam over time gave way to politically backward orthodox interpretations. Analogies between contemporary Islam and the European experience of the Middle Ages were drawn: Islam should and could become an enlightened religion too (as German scholars thought Protestantism had), not due to Western education and impositions but based on a rediscovery of its own past, a past that was seen in that tradition as deeply connected with the West, given the shared religious (ancient Israel) and philosophical (ancient Greece) roots of Christianity and Islam (Assmann, 2018). As Susannah Heschel (2012) explains, a different, but related, move was visible in German-Jewish scholarship on Islam and the Muslim world during the nineteenth and early twentieth century: as part of the more general endeavour by European Jews to become accepted as equal citizens, Jewish scholars looked at Islam as a historically tolerant, enlightened religion with a long-standing tradition of Islamic-Jewish philosophical and political encounters. Both religions were portrayed as pure monotheism and thus more rational than the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. And the tolerance of enlightened Muslim rulers from the Middle East in comparison to the ‘dark’ European Middle Ages was emphasised. Overall, the interesting point is that the East appeared in these various fields of German Oriental scholarship not as an ‘Other’, but more as (an estranged) part of the ‘Self’. This set the pace for a strong tradition that fed, as highlighted above, the emphasis of joint civilisational elements between East and West, which was later picked up in Karl Jasper’s theory of axial time (Assmann, 2020) and which resurfaces today in theories of connected and entangled modernities (Stetter, 2021). Notwithstanding this tradition of knowledge production, political contexts shaped antagonistic and instrumental forms of Othering too – from Prussian relations with the Ottoman Empire (Croitoru, 2018) to the political, economic and military alliance of the Wilhelmite imperial Germany. The German Empire became a colonial power after 1884 and also fostered in that context its alliance with the Ottomans. This uptick in formal

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­olitical relations increased the political status of Oriental scholarship p further, both in terms of a demand for quite mundane and profit-oriented projects such as employing university-trained engineers and geographers for railway construction in the Ottoman Empire (McMeekin, 2018) but also the wider imperial ambitions of Germany. New key institutions devoted to the contemporary Orient supported Germany’s imperial ambitions: for example, the Seminar for Oriental Languages in Berlin or the Colonial Institute in Hamburg, founded in 1887 and 1908, respectively. Oriental scholars such as Carl Heinrich Becker supported Germany’s imperial ambitions during the First World War (Jung, 2014). The lay Orientalist Max von Oppenheim founded the Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient as a German intelligence unit during the war. In that context and since the mid-nineteenth century, Oriental scholarship also contributed to the rise of racist ideology, specifically anti-Semitism. While modern ‘scientific’ racism has broader pan-European intellectual underpinnings (Hobson, 2012), it prospered not least in Germany where Oriental Studies, starting with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (Meßling, 2008), argued that the grammatical differences between Indo-European languages (tellingly referred to as ‘Indo-Germanic’ in Germany), on the one hand, and Semitic languages (and ultimately people, including European Jews), on the other, extend to a fundamental civilisational hierarchy.

Oriental studies in the Weimar Republic and during the Nazi reign The German military presence in the Middle East during the First World War and the presence of Arab and Muslim prisoners of war (Höpp, 1997) did not lead to an overall turn to social sciences’ perspectives on the region and the people living there. A field of ‘Islamic Studies’ that would go beyond the classical philological approach – a predecessor to ‘empirical’ Middle East Studies – remained an exception in the Weimar Republic too. To be sure, the imperial ambitions and political aspirations of the German Empire in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) led to an increased demand for Orientalists in the state apparatus, making use of their linguistic skills and advanced understanding of the region’s cultural, religious and social structures – this instrumental Othering underlining the ‘compatibility of scientific, ideological, economic and political’ aspects of Orientalism (Ellinger, 2006: 29). Yet, albeit existent, this trend hardly translated into a more systematic approach of studying the region’s history or its current social and political set-up. Moreover, although there was growing sympathy for Germany amongst disappointed Arab nationalists (striving for independence and continuing

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their anti-colonial struggles, mostly against Great Britain), the region was clearly no longer a priority for interwar German foreign policy, burdened with financial debt and domestic social and political instability. This was due to several factors, amongst them the defeat in the war, which was experienced by many Germans as a national humiliation, the loss of colonial territories (mainly in Africa, the Pacific and China), the demise of the Ottoman Empire as a key ally – and the almost total dominance of France and Great Britain across the region. During the democratic Weimar Republic (1919–33) there were few academic positions at German universities on the MENA other than from a theological, archaeological and linguistic perspective – focusing on Semitic languages, Sanskrit and Assyriology. Some of the few exceptions were Richard Hartmann in Leipzig, Franz Babinger as Extraordinarius for Islamic Studies in Berlin,2 Karl Süssheim as Extraordinarius for Islamic history and languages and Friedrich Giese as a professor of Turkish and Islamic Studies in Breslau (Wokoeck, 2009: 165). These scholars had two journals at their disposal which addressed contemporary political and ideological developments in the region (and are still relevant today): Islam: Journal of the History and Culture of the Middle East (Der Islam: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients), edited since 1910 by German Orientalist and high-ranking cultural official Carl Heinrich Becker, and Die Welt des Islams (The World of Islam), published by the German Association for Islamic Studies (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde) since 1913 (Wokoeck, 2009: 166). For most segments of the German public, ‘the Orient’ was less a place of concrete and real encounters and more a place for the projection of desires and fantasies, starting with the popular and often Orient-related novels by popular author Karl May, who never (or only after having written about them) visited most of the places described in his novels. ‘The Orient’ became a scholarly, artistic and popular fad in thriving Berlin. Perceptions ranged from popular romanticised themes in the classic Orientalist sense with designs, exhibitions and music clubs3 to the undisguised colonial and racist gaze. A vicious form of antagonistic Othering was displayed in the popular Völkerschauen (ethnological exhibitions), exhibiting ‘natives’ and their ‘exotic’ cultures, including those of North Africa: in 1878 about 62,000 people came to see ‘Hagenbeck’s Nubierschau’ (Nubian exhibition) in Berlin’s Zoological Garden (Thode-Arona, 2013), which became a regular venue for the racist Völkerschauen, as well as the popular ‘Luna Park’ in Berlin-Halensee, which staged a ‘Sudanese people and predator show’ in 1921.4 The small Muslim community in Germany, located mainly in Berlin, was hardly a factor in public opinion – although in intellectual circles the fascinating sojourn of Russian Jew Lev Nussimbaum turned Caucasian Muslim prince Essad Bey in Berlin’s public life triggered

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Orientalist ­ imaginations (Reiss, 2005). The ‘Islam Institute’ became a rare institution representing Muslims and converts in 1927, while, a few years earlier, in 1924, the Moslimische Revue was founded as a publication focusing on Islamic teachings aimed at the general public in order to ‘enlighten Germans regarding such teachings, as well as the moral and social standards brought upon mankind by this faith’ (Heimbach, 2001: 50, authors’ translation). The rise to power of the Nazi movement in 1933 dealt a death blow to this relatively liberal era, but also to the long tradition of internationally leading philological scholarship on the (ancient) Orient. As all areas of research and knowledge production in Germany, universities were ‘Aryanised’ and ‘purified’ during the 1930s, pushing out all Jewish scholars, writers and intellectuals. This purge dealt a heavy blow to science and especially to the field of classical Orientalism, which was closely intertwined with the study of Semitic languages and religion, specifically Judaism. Obviously, no place remained for the study of Judaism apart from the vicious and  eliminatory propaganda of the Nazis and their pseudo-scientific, racist and soon genocidal agenda – no less than 85 per cent of Orientalists employed at German universities were dismissed or forced to resign (Ellinger, 2006: 127). However, the Nazi Party had no clear vision of what should come instead (Wokoeck, 2009: 197), but it was clear that those who remained in their positions or took over from those scholars forced out now fully served their Nazi overlords. As economic interests in the wider Middle East increased drastically across Europe, in particular due to the new oil discoveries (mostly in Persia), the Nazi government gradually demanded additional expertise on the region. This coincided with a rising political interest in Islam and the Islamic world (meaning mostly the Arab countries), which were seen as potential allies against the British, French and Russians. Research bodies such as the Institut für Geopolitik in Munich became one of the centres focusing on neologisms like Religions-Geopolitik, highlighting Islam as a major rising force in international relations (Motadel, 2017: 38). At the same time the Seminar für orientalische Sprachen at the University of Berlin was dissolved in 1936 and integrated into the Auslandshochschule, which later became the Deutsches Auslandswissenschaftliches Institut (DAWI) when it was merged with the ‘German Academy for Politics’ (Deutsche Hochschule für Politik) in 1940. This was an institution that basically served as an ideological foreign policy research institute with a faculty serving as a training academy for diplomats and other official Nazi emissaries (Botsch, 2005). Tellingly, its dean was the high-ranking SS officer Franz Alfred Six, an associate of Reinhard Heydrich and for a while Adolf Eichmann’s superior in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (the Reich’s Main Security Office).

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The institute with its ideologically motivated research staff (including Arab and Indian researchers) played a key role in forging a new propagandistic agenda of Islam and the Islamic world (Ellinger, 2006: 234ff.). Popular books in the 1930s increasingly framed Islam as being compatible with Nazi-German aspirations, while on the ground Arab and Muslim citizens were often discriminated against. Paul Schmitz, author of a number of popular books during this period, such as All-Macht Islam! Weltmacht von morgen? (Almighty Islam! Tomorrow’s Global Power?), promoted an anti-imperialist and foremost anti-British agenda and became a correspondent of the leading Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, in Cairo. This overall propagandistic approach was not lacking contradictions, as the Nazis and Hitler himself traditionally considered the peoples of Asia and the Levant as racially inferior and as deserving to be dominated by white colonial masters (Wildangel, 2007: 70). But, with the start of Germany’s unprecedented military campaigns, the wider Muslim world was regarded as an important potential ally, from European soil (Bosnian Muslims and Muslims in the Soviet Union) to the Levant and South as well as South-East Asia. This strategic alliance was now increasingly backed up by an alleged ideological alignment between Nazism and Islam, produced and reproduced by a myriad of institutions and networks set up to feed the Nazis’ excessive propaganda and war machine. During the Second World War, Orientalists played a significant role in the foreign office (Auswärtiges Amt) and other ministries as well as the Wehrmacht, the intelligence services and the SS. The Nazis now invested  considerable efforts in creating and spreading their propaganda in the  Arab world, ensuring the collaboration of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husayni, and other exile figures who were hoping Nazi Germany could advance their anti-British and anti-Zionist agendas. Arabic-language radio programmes and print materials, among them propaganda outlets such as Der Islam or Barīd ash-Sharq (Orientpost), were instrumental tools used to present Germany as the natural ally of the Islamic world (Wildangel, 2012: 512). On the Eastern Front, deep inside the Soviet Union, the German occupiers rebuilt mosques and madrasas (Qur’an schools) and recruited local religious authorities. Around the looming defeat at Stalingrad in 1941, the Wehrmacht and the SS recruited tens of thousands of Bosnian and Albanian Muslim volunteers and conscripts, Tatars from the Crimea, as well as Muslims from the Caucasus and from Central Asia. Those Muslim soldiers were taken care of by so-called military imams who were responsible for their religious concerns such as prayer and diet, but also their political indoctrination (Heine, 2000). The production of knowledge on Islam during this era did not, however, care about any prior trends in the academic tradition; it was a purely ideological endeavour, a stark

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form of instrumental Othering – an antagonistic and genocidal Othering as far as Judaism was concerned. One should be careful when taking at face value the image of systematic collaboration with the Muslim world – or when viewing the Nazis’ propaganda of a tried-and-tested ideological congruence as proof of Islamic or Arab embrace of National Socialism and fascism.5 Little is known about local reception (Herf, 2009), but a 1943 poll on broadcasting conducted in Palestine suggests that this propaganda hardly earned the trust of local listeners, who preferred other stations over the notorious ‘Radio Berlin’ (Wildangel, 2014: 116). While there is no reason to belittle the existing examples of real collaboration, manifold examples of Arab resistance and denunciation of Nazism are documented (Achcar, 2010; Höpp and Reinwald, 2000; Motadel, 2014; Wildangel, 2012). An often bitter debate with interlinkages to current political narratives6 divides historians and political scientists looking at the issue from perspectives on totalitarianism (with a focus on the collaboration aspect and the ideological propaganda that was produced) and those focusing on local perspectives (motives for collaboration and reception, including sidelined anti-fascist Arab voices). Some of the lost individual stories which illustrate these contradictions have been recently uncovered and contribute to academic knowledge construction on the region and its interlinkages with Germany. One example is the story of Mohamed Helmy, an Egyptian medical doctor in Berlin who was discriminated against and arrested due to his origins and his critical attitude towards the Nazis. Helmy treated and hid Jewish patients in Berlin and was recognised, in 2014, by the Israeli Holocaust remembrance institution Yad Vashem as the first Arab ‘Righteous among the Nations’.7 Another little-known fate is that of Hedwig Klein, a Jewish student of Islamic Studies, Semitic Studies and English Philology in Hamburg. When she was denied her PhD despite successful completion in 1937, and following a failed emigration attempt from Germany, her former professor, trying to protect her, sent Klein to work with prominent Arabist Hans Wehr – who, at the time, was compiling an Arabic–German dictionary which the Foreign Office considered instrumental for translating Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic. While this collaboration protected her for a short period, ultimately Klein was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there in 1942 (Buchen, 2018). Hans Wehr’s dictionary – also widely used in its English-language ­translation – today remains a key resource for students and scholars of Arabic (thus reflecting some path dependency with the philological tradition of the nineteenth century in this otherwise overtly politicised period), while Hedwig Klein’s contributions to this masterwork are largely forgotten (Buchen, 2018). Meanwhile, the Oriental Studies department of her alma

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mater, Hamburg, employed Bertold Spuler as a Professor of Islamic Studies from 1947 until 1980 – a former translator for the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, and head of the Islam Institute in Göttingen, which trained Muslim clerics for service in the German military. These selective examples reveal one crucial detail: as in other parts of German life after Germany’s  total defeat in 1945, the ideological baggage of the Oriental sciences was swept under the carpet. Most experts with knowledge on the region continued their careers in academia or public life undisturbed (Ellinger, 2006: 436) – either abroad, or in (West and East) Germany, as knowledge on the region was soon in high demand again due to the two German ­republics’ ­integration into the Western and Eastern blocs, respectively.

Oriental Studies during the Cold War and after 1990 Amongst socialist countries, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had the leading Middle East Studies’ programme in terms of resources and output, second only to the USSR (see Hafez and Höpp, 1998). Experts were needed to produce knowledge about the Muslim Soviet republics8 as well as for the new Cold War constellation in the MENA. In contrast, in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) Orientalistik or Islamwissenschaft (the term varies from university to university) did not enjoy much political promotion. Until today, it remains part of the so-called Kleine Fächer9 (small subjects) or Orchideenfächer – a term still in use. Reinkowski (2008: 20) rightly calls the eclectic combination of theories and methodologies in the field a ‘conglomerated knowledge-tradition’, as it makes use of classical studies as well as various disciplines and is thus not a discipline in its own right. At its core is still – and owing to a century-old tradition – the study of classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, the classic Islamic sources (Qur’an, sunna, hadith), as well as Islamic law, sciences, mysticism, literature and poetry. These studies draw strongly from secondary works stemming from the icons of classical Orientalism at the turn of the nineteenth century (including Joseph Schacht, Ignaz Goldziher and Carl Brockelmann). Apart from the EU-sponsored Bologna process – which has brought about changes towards internationalisation and a stronger integration into the social sciences – purely text-based research for contemporary topics (i.e. a discursive construction of the region detached from real people and lived experience or ‘research without humans’) surprisingly still has currency in post-Saidian German scholarship. ‘We understand the “natives” (the citizens and scholars of the MENA) best on the basis of European concepts’, is a trope still often heard in Middle East and Islamic Studies, as well as, ‘they do not have the necessary distance for objective science’.

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Furthermore, Islamwissenschaft is often confused with being a theology, although chairs for Islamic theology were introduced in Germany only from 2010 in a tedious process involving the universities, the state, representatives of Islamic institutions and individual Muslims. In East and West, it was the GDR that was regarded as a highly esteemed centre of language learning and philology.10 Generations of students on both sides of the Iron Curtain immersed themselves into Arabic with grammar books like the famous ‘Krahl/Reuschel’ (Krahl and Reuschel, 1974). Leipzig became the centre of Middle East Studies in the GDR, and ‘in contrast to Oriental Studies at West German universities, research in Leipzig corresponded to the multidisciplinary principle of Anglo-American Area Studies’ (Hafez and Höpp, 1998: 103, own translation). More specifically, the interest in social history led to a focus on the histories of workers and communist movements around the globe, national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and the comparative study of revolutions. In theory, this could have tied in well with the main alterations in French history writing in the twentieth century, the Annales School (see Timo Behr in this volume); in practice, since embedded in the ideological framework of state-sponsored Marxism-Leninism, this was, however, less the case (Schultz, 1991).11 In West Germany though, the Annales School – and for Middle East Studies, Fernand Braudel’s seminal studies on the Mediterranean (see Braudel, Duby and Aymard, 1987) – became over time landmarks of debates on the region. The increasing global diplomatic recognition of the GDR in the late 1960s/early 1970s necessitated additional regional knowledge for the East German foreign and intelligence services. The GDR’s rapprochement with the Arab world – for instance during the 1967 Six Day War – was based on joint socialist, developmental and anti-imperialist agendas spearheaded by the USSR (Hafez, 1995). Middle East Studies were a ‘helping hand’ here: Hafez and Höpp (1998: 100) emphasise how ‘university studies and teaching obligated in principle to work for the GDR foreign policy’. The authors find that academic findings in Middle East Studies basically did not exhibit deviations from Marxism-Leninism (1998: 109), while topics that were in conflict with the GDR’s position on international law or economy were evaded. This led to the underestimation of nationalistic fervour and aspirations in Marxist as well as other leftist groups in the MENA or to a misjudgement of the role of great landowners in the region. There were basically no monographs about Middle East policies of socialist countries, and topics such as Egypt under Sadat, the conflict in the Western Sahara, the Lebanese civil war or the Iran–Iraq war were much deferred. Overall, Hafez and Höpp conclude, Middle East Studies in the GDR were in fact forced into a tight ideological corset. In addition, since the early 1980s,

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‘Arab students developed into populations of special concern for the MfS’ (Hoffmann, 2021: 2) – the East German secret police (MfS) partly used them to spy on fellow students or act as informants about their home countries. Relations between the GDR and Israel had been deteriorating since the latter’s foundation, which was echoed in the choice of research topics. Public propaganda around the Warsaw bloc, including the GDR, at times even equated Israel with Nazi Germany in the 1970s (Voigt, 2008). Zionism (including the socialist kibbutz movement) was regarded as an extended form of capitalism and imperialism until the Gorbachev years. In the end, Israel and the GDR never established diplomatic relations. Obviously, for West Germany – starting with the Reconciliation Agreements and the consecutive establishment of formal diplomatic relations in 1965 – Israel became an important ally during the same time span, and helped West Germany to gain international recognition as a democratic state that broke with older Prussian/German traditions of militarism, authoritarianism and anti-Semitism. The GDR in turn saw itself as an anti-fascist state (and portrayed itself as such in contrast to the Federal Republic): in official state ideology (but certainly not on the ground) anti-Semitism had been overcome and the Shoah remained a relatively neglected event in East German official remembrance culture and education syllabi, whereas in West Germany – from the late 1970s – the picture gradually became a different one, including in knowledge production. With unification in 1990, East German Cultural Studies were under a generalised suspicion of having been ideologically misguided by MarxismLeninism, historical materialism, a class point of view and the significance of international geostrategic interests dictated by the USSR. After what was (generally and tellingly) called Abwicklung (literally translated as ‘unwinding’), at most a quarter of East German Middle East scholars continued working at universities or non-university research centres (Hafez and Höpp, 1998: 138). The interest in revolutionary workers’ movements subsequently vanished for decades. A much needed and innovative recommendation in the early 1990s to install Middle East economists, sociologists and political scientists at Berlin’s Humboldt University within the respective disciplines was discounted. The multidisciplinary Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), which had developed out of the Institute of General History (IfAG) in East Berlin, was one of the few centres to continue the more social history-oriented and interdisciplinary approach of former East Germany. This approach was at the time indeed an innovation in the West German academic field of regional studies, as the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat, 1992: 46) acknowledged. Simultaneously, with the end of the Cold War the ZMO was rebranded as a centre focusing on the study of the wider Muslim world including Sub-Saharan Africa and

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Asia. Freitag and van den Heuvel (2021: 28) still identify blind spots of research ‘for major parts of history from the ninth to the eleventh and sixteenth to the eighteenth century’ (own translation). The various new approaches debated in the USA and the wider anglosphere (linguistic turn, cultural identity turn, subaltern studies, postcolonialism etc.) were belatedly absorbed in Germany after unification. Today, twenty-five universities offer a degree in Islamwissenschaft, and the respective professorships have increased from thirty to forty since 1995. They provide for diverse courses shaped by the respective professors’ specialisation (e.g. Graeco-Arabica, the botany of Abū Hanīfa ad-Dīnawarī ˙ that Edward W. or the visual worlds of drones). It comes as no surprise Said’s (1978) critique of the construction of an Orient mediated through a chauvinistic Western art canon (music, literature, fine arts) has transformed Middle East Studies in Germany as well, with scholarship inspired by postcolonialism today figuring prominently in many PhD and research projects. Said’s Orientalism is regarded by most academics as the founding text of ‘postcolonial studies’, and the herein identified power–knowledge nexus can no longer be ignored when it comes to studying Muslim worlds. Often from interdisciplinary angles, scholars of Islamic Studies now reflect upon their own positionality and the power relations at play in the field. At the same time, remnants from the colonial exchange of knowledge have not completely vanished. Examples of ongoing oppressive relations, where the production of knowledge is connected to power (and exploitation) are: the journalist and the stringer, the scholar and the informant, seconded versus local staff (for the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on fairer relations in knowledge production, see the contribution of Juline Beaujouan in this volume). Under the title ‘Unease within Islamic Studies’, Poya and Reinkowski (2008) critically self-assessed the main controversies in the field, largely the aforementioned centrality of Islam after the Cold War, while most scholars in the field do not have a background in religious studies, and the discipline has a deficit in its own theories and methodologies. Their conclusion is shared by us: philological competence matters, but will not suffice in a growing interdisciplinary field with a globalised student body and an interest in lived societies in the region. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, a growing securitisation focus and a strong tendency to stereotype ‘the’ Middle East and Islam took place once again at the expense of more nuanced historical and cultural research. Students flocked to learn Arabic, hoping to increase their employability with a view to the sudden request for counter-terrorism experts. Indeed, a number of positions were created within the various federal and state offices of the domestic intelligence service and the ministries of interior. Poya and

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Reinkowski see a danger that the field is being degraded to simply providing prompts about ‘the Muslim other’ (2008: 10), underpinning an often heated debate about Islam in Germany. As far as contemporary politics is concerned, several German universities have research centres, chairs and study programmes directly related to the region: for example, in Tübingen, Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Munich at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University or Marburg University. International contacts and exchanges with universities and scholars from the region are firmly established at these and other university centres. While there is no uniform focus, there are different conceptual lenses through which the region is studied. Research and teaching ranges from post-structuralist, cultural studies and post-Keynesian approaches (see for example, Ouaissa, Pannewick and Strohmeier, 2021) to institutionalist approaches that have a strong emphasis on questions of (regime) stability and authoritarianism (see, for example, Kneuer and Demmelhuber, 2020; Schlumberger, 2008; for a critical appraisal of this research design, see Hegasy, 2010). As André Bank and Jan Busse (2021: 541) have shown, the Arab uprisings are in this context a ‘critical juncture’ also for German MENA scholarship insofar as the uprisings have questioned not only Orientalist assumptions (e.g. of passive populations), but also assumptions about MENA’s exceptionalism in terms of authoritarian endurance. While explanations for the uprisings, and their consequences, differ widely, German scholarship, often through English-language publications, has become part of a broader international debate that challenges established theoretical and methodologcial assumptions about the region. In addition to universities, contemporary research on the MENA originates from other institutes, such as the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, which was established in 2006 (replacing the Deutsches Übersee Institut [DÜI, founded in 1964], German Overseas Institute) or the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP) in Berlin with its Middle East and North Africa department – and its long-term director (2005–19) Volker Perthes, a German Middle East scholar, who in 2021 became the UN special representative on Sudan. The SWP is Germany’s most prominent think tank and advises the German government and parliament. Its scholars are both former practitioners and researchers (see Daniela Huber’s chapter on think tanks in this volume). A turn from postcolonial studies to epistemic decolonisation set in cautiously after the Arab uprisings and revolutions of 2010/11. The desideratum to engage with local theory-building (beyond Ibn Khaldun and Averroes) is voiced by numerous prominent German scholars in Area Studies (Dağyeli, Ghrawi and Freitag, 2021; Derichs, 2017) and selectively

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in the general disciplines as well. Whereas postcolonial studies are regarded as always in reference to the colonial (a danger that is not fully addressed with the term ‘decolonial’ either), epistemic decolonisation seeks to think contemporary matters by systematically including non-Western conceptual and methodological approaches, while avoiding subsuming everything as colonially induced. The decolonisation of thought is an immensely complex endeavour, and German-language scholarship does not have the critical mass to fully embark on such a comprehensive project as a systematic decolonisation on the MENA. For example, in the case of the oeuvre of the Moroccan scholar Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, who published more than thirty monographs between 1970 and 2010, a qualified translator would need to be fully acquainted with philosophical debates and criticism of alJabri by his peers, with Islamic philosophy as well as contemporary French philosophy, and contemporary politics and policies in Morocco and the region. Besides Arabic, the knowledge of classical Greek would not be a disadvantage either; French would be a must. There are less than a handful of scholars in the Germanophone area who fulfil these preconditions, but they would need several years to finish a translation of the four-volume magnum opus Naqd al-aql al-’arabi (Critique of Arab reason). Only recently, the attempt to publish a translation into German funded by the GeorgesAnawati Foundation failed for reasons of time and the necessities of scholarly biographies in Germany in the twenty-first century.12 Thus, instead of talking of a ‘dialogue on eye-level’, for as long as German scholars do not even know the ‘Luhmanns and Habermases’ of the MENA, German scholars will have to work in close – and possibly more humble – cooperation with their colleagues in the Global South (Hegasy, 2021). While the ZMO has set up a number of initiatives and publications for decolonial thought, the influence of area knowledge on the humanities and social sciences has remained scarce. As a more common trend, the classical disciplines continue to have a rather poor view of Middle East Studies, and (for example) historians of the Middle East or Africa have, by and large, rather grim career prospects across German history departments. Too little notice is given to knowledge produced within Area Studies, as evinced by few to nil citations from sources in local languages or the respective Area Studies journals. Area Studies scholars remind their colleagues in the classical disciplines that their conceptual and epistemological apparatuses are deeply embedded in ‘Western’ (or ‘German’ for that matter) rather than global, let alone universal, ways of knowledge production (Bamyeh, 2019; Derichs, 2017). We dare to suggest that (exceptions confirming the rule) two parallel structures of knowledge production about the region exist, which are as competitive as (often) ignorant of each other: those with language skills and fieldwork and those without; the study of jihadism at various

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German universities being a prime example. This is not to say that scholars without regional language skills may not write about the MENA (though this would surely not be acceptable in comparable cases like, say, Iberian Studies without Spanish proficiency or Russian Studies without Russian). But it certainly is a call for a much greater investment in translations. Another critical aspect of German Middle East Studies should be mentioned: although less bleak than a decade ago, scholars from the region or second-generation migrants rarely get appointed to tenured professorships. The somewhat incremental pace of change is underlined by the observation that German universities – in contrast to, for example, the United States13 – have until today no specified pedagogy for students growing up in Arabic (or Turkish, Persian, etc.) speaking households, so-called heritage learners. Middle East Studies in Germany are shaped today by a student body within which many students who are Germans speak the respective languages as one of their mother tongues. The resulting gap between students that start from scratch and those that can speak these languages already is ignored at German universities and often a laissez-faire approach reigns. A telling illustration of the exigencies of the global twenty-first century versus the nineteenth-century requirements of Islamic Studies is the system of transliteration for languages from the region – a philological system which is deemed as outlived and looks absurd to every native speaker. It demonstrates the chasm around which Islamic Studies manoeuvre today, while there is no doubt that the field aspires to contribute to the understanding of a world region in all its cultural, religious and political facets.

Conclusion As we have shown in this chapter, a philological interest in biblical and spiritual sources of the East preceded Germany’s imperial ambitions in the MENA region. In the nineteenth century, a scholarly interest existed in discovering the ancient roots of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Western civilisation, often – but not always – paired with a humanistic interest in shared civilisational roots, a form of ‘non-Othering’. Instrumental (e.g. economic interests and political alliances) and antagonistic (e.g. racism and anti-Semitism) ‘Othering’ that emerged during the German Empire went to extremes during the Nazi era. As shown, specific ideological concepts of ‘Islam’ to study and win over Muslims were invented during this period. The ambiguities of Nazi Germany’s policies towards Muslims can be seen by the fact that some were actively and sometimes forcedly recruited into the Waffen-SS, while this did not prevent the Nazis to imprison other Muslims in concentration camps on racist grounds. Under these

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c­ ircumstances and with the separation of Semitic from Islamic Studies at universities, proper Oriental scholarship could no longer function. Some of this expert knowledge did, however, make it into the two newly founded German states after the Second World War. Today, a reformed, postSaidian version of Orientalistik remains alive in Germany and exhibits a deep historical engagement and interest with the multifaceted and influential Islamic world over the last fourteen centuries based on philological aptitude as well as knowledge of the classical Islamic sources with the aforementioned blind spots. This highlights a forceful path dependency of academic knowledge production in light of fundamental political ruptures, from the German Empire to the united and Europeanised Germany. We also found a turn to methods and perspectives stemming from the social sciences, since the 1960s, both in the USA and the GDR (the FRG joined in here later on), as another prominent characteristic – while prior to the 1960s empirical research on the region was rather an exception. But this turn to ‘real people’ in the region is not only driven by academic interest. The employability of Middle East experts in foreign services, intelligence gathering, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and governmental institutions has been a central factor. As we have shown, within academia the impact of Islamic Studies on the general disciplines remains rather minimal. And a debate on epistemic decolonisation has only just begun. The study of languages, intense field research, personal engagement with people in the region and the unmediated representation of colleagues from the Global South remain, in any case, central topics.

Notes  1 Given the focus of this chapter – post-1870/71 – on what became Germany, we leave out the story of Oriental Studies in the Habsburg Empire/Austria. But it should be noted that a comprehensive perspective on Oriental Studies in German-speaking contexts needs to take note of developments in past and present-day Austria and Germany combined, given the competition between Austria and Prussia over hegemony in German-speaking lands until the 1870s, and the struggle over Austria’s German identity deep into the twentieth century, with the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany being the most prominent example.  2 Babinger’s career was ended due to a defamation campaign, peaking in a 1934 racist slur in the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, entitled ‘Professor Babinger: tragedy of a Jewish Mischling’ (Ellinger, 2006: 55).  3 Germany’s recent and very popular television series Babylon Berlin featured the legendary Moka Efti club, which included an Egyptian salon and Orient Express designs (Oltermann, 2017).

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 4 These titles of the mentioned shows were found in material of the Prof. Dr.  Gerhard Höpp estate (File 07.01.004), https://www.zmo.de/en/library/ stocks. For further readings, see Zimmerer (2013, in German) or Bruce (2017).  5 Let alone the questionable term ‘Islamofacism’ or similar expressions, which mainly serve as political battering rams.   6 Most visible in Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Mufti al-Husayni was a key figure responsible for the execution of Germany’s murder of Jews in the Shoah (Holocaust) (BBC, 2015).  7 See www.yadvashem.org/press-release/30-september-2013-10-35.html.  8 Six of the fifteen republics had a Muslim majority.  9 A ‘small field’ in Germany typically does not consist of more than three tenured professorships at one university. 10 For an appraisal of Middle East Studies in East Germany, see Hafez and Höpp (1998); for West Germany, see Johansen (1990) and Poya and Reinkowski (2008). 11 For the discipline of history, Schultz argues that the high standards developed in social history had already come to a halt in the 1960s and were – in the main – superseded by raison d’état. We thank Heike Liebau for this reference. 12 A translation into English of his main works was completed by I. B. Tauris after the philosopher died in 2010. 13 We are thinking here of the pedagogics of teaching Arabic to mother tongue speakers developed by Alexander Elinson at Hunter College in New York: www.hunter.cuny.edu/classics/arabic.

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Braudel, F., G. Duby and M. Aymard (1987) Die Welt des Mittelmeeres: Zur Geschichte und Geographie kultureller Lebensformen [The world of the Mediterranean: on the history and geography of cultural forms of life] (Frankfurt: Fischer). Bruce, G. (2017) Through the Lion Gate: A History of the Berlin Zoo (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Buchen, S. (2018) ‘Hedwig Klein and Mein Kampf: the unknown Arabist’, Qantara, 7 April, available at https://en.qantara.de/node/30632 (accessed 25 July 2022). Croitoru, J. (2018) Die Deutschen und der Orient: Faszination, Verachtung und die Widersprüche der Aufklärung [The Germans and the Orient: fascination, contempt and the contradictions of the Enlightenment] (Munich: Hanser). Dağyeli, J. E., C. Ghrawi and U. Freitag (eds) (2021) Claiming and Making Muslim Worlds: Religion and Society in the Context of the Global (Berlin: De Gruyter). Derichs, C. (2017) Knowledge Production, Area Studies and Global Cooperation (New York: Routledge). Ellinger, E. (2006) Deutsche Orientalistik zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1945 [German Oriental Studies at the time of National Socialism 1933–1945] (Edingen-Neckarhausen: deux mondes). Freitag, U. and N. van den Heuvel (2021) ‘Die Geschichte des Vorderen Orients und Nordafrikas an deutschen Einrichtungen – Entwicklungen und Trends’ [The history of the Middle East and North Africa in German institutions – ­developments and trends], VHD Journal, 10, 27–30. Hafez, K. (1995) Orientwissenschaft in der DDR. Zwischen Dogma und Anpassung 1969–1989 [Oriental Studies in the GDR. Between dogma and adaptation 1969–1989] (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient Institut). Hafez, K. and G. Höpp (1998) ‘Gegenwartsbezogene Orientwissenschaft in der DDR und in den neuen Bundesländern. Kontinuität oder Neubeginn?’ [Contemporary Oriental Studies in the GDR and the new federal states. Continuity or a new beginning?], in W.-H. Krauth and R. Wolz (eds), Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung. Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften im Umbruch [Science and reunification. Asian and African Studies in transition] (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), pp. 95–163. Hegasy, S. (2010) ‘Representing change and stagnation in the Arab world: re-­ thinking a research design’, The Mediterranean Review, 3:2, 23–42. Hegasy, S. (2021) ‘“Der Text liest den Leser.” Apropos Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri, 1935–2010’ [‘The text reads the reader.’ Apropos Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri, 1935–2010], Polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren, 44, 129–36. Heimbach, M. (2001) Die Entwicklung der islamischen Gemeinschaft in Deutschland seit 1961 [The development of the Islamic community in Germany since 1961] (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz). Heine, P. (2000) ‘Die Mullah-Kurse der Waffen-SS’ [The Mullah courses of the Waffen-SS], in G. Höpp and B. Reinwald (eds), Fremdeinsätze: Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen 1914–1945 [Third-party assignments: Africans and Asians in European wars 1914–1945] (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch), pp. 181–8. Herf, J. (2009) Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

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Heschel, S. (2012) ‘German Jewish scholarship on Islam as a tool for de-­orientalizing Judaism’, New German Critique, 39:3, 91–107. Hobson, J. (2012) The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics: Western International Theory, 1760–2010 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hoffmann, S. (2021) ‘Arab students and the Stasi: Agents and objects of intelligence’, Security Dialogue, 52:1, 62–78. Höpp, G. (1997) Muslime in der Mark. Als Kriegsgefangene und Internierte in Wünsdorf und Zossen 1914–1924 [Muslims in the Mark. As prisoners of war and internees in Wünsdorf and Zossen 1914–1924] (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch). Höpp, G. and B. Reinwald (eds) (2000) Fremdeinsätze: Afrikaner und Asiaten in europäischen Kriegen 1914–1945 [Third-party assignments: Africans and Asians in European wars 1914–1945] (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch). Johansen, B. (1990) ‘Politics and scholarship: the development of Islamic Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany’, in T. Y. Ismael (ed.), Middle East Studies. International Perspectives on the State of the Art (New York: Praeger), pp. 71–130. Jung, D. (2011) Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam (London: Equinox). Jung, D. (2014) ‘The “Ottoman–German jihad”: Lessons for the contemporary “Area Studies” debate’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 41:3, 247–65. Kneuer, M. and T. Demmelhuber (eds) (2020) Authoritarian Gravity Centres: A Cross-regional Study of Authoritarian Promotion and Diffusion (New York: Routledge). Krahl, G. and W. Reuschel (1974) Lehrbuch des modernen Arabisch [Textbook of modern Arabic] (Leipzig: VEB Verlag). Mangold, S. (2004) Eine ‘weltbürgerliche Wissenschaft’: Die deutsche Orientalistik im 19. Jahrhundert [A ‘cosmopolitan science’: German Oriental Studies in the nineteenth century] (Munich: Franz Steiner). Marchand, S. L. (2009) German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). McMeekin, S. (2018) The Berlin–Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Meßling, M. (2008) ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt and the “Orient”: on Edward W. Said’s remarks on Humboldt’s Orientalist Studies’, Language Science, 30, 482–98. Motadel, D. (2014) Islam and Nazi Germany’s War (London: Harvard University Press). Motadel, D. (2017) Für Prophet und Führer. Die islamische Welt und das Dritte Reich [For the prophet and the Führer. The Islamic world and the Third Reich] (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta). Oltermann, P. (2017) ‘Sex, seafood and 25,000 coffees a day: the wild 1920s superclub that inspired Babylon Berlin’, The Guardian, 24 November, available at www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/24/babylon-berlin-real-1920s-super​ club-behind-weimar-era-thriller (accessed 25 July 2022). Ouaissa, R., F. Pannewick and A. Strohmeier (eds) (2021) Re-configurations: Contextualizing Transformation Processes and Lasting Crises in the Middle East and North Africa (Wiesbaden: Springer VS).

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Poya, A. and M. Reinkowski (eds) (2008) Das Unbehagen in der Islamwissenschaft. Ein klassisches Fach im Scheinwerferlicht der Politik und der Medien [Unease within Islamic Studies. A classic subject in the spotlight of politics and the media] (Bielefeld: Transcript). Reinkowski, M. (2008) ‘Islamwissenschaft und relevante Redundanz’ [Islamic science and relevant redundance], in A. Poya and M. Reinkowski (eds), Das Unbehagen in der Islamwissenschaft. Ein klassisches Fach im Scheinwerferlicht der Politik und der Medien (Bielefeld: Transcript), pp. 19–35. Reiss, T. (2005) The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught between East and West (London: Vintage). Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Schlumberger, O. (2008) Autoritarismus in der arabischen Welt. Ursachen, Trends und internationale Demokratieförderung [Authoritarianism in the Arab world: Origins, trends and international democracy support] (Baden-Baden: Nomos). Schultz, H. (1991) ‘Was bleibt von der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR?’ [What remains of history science in the GDR?], Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 2:1, 22–40. Stetter, S. (2021) ‘The Middle East in global modernity: analytic polycentrism, historic entanglements and a rejuvenated Area Studies debate’, Mediterranean Politics, 26:5, 657–81. Thode-Arona, H. (2013) ‘Hagenbeck: Tierpark und Völkerschau’ [Hagenbeck: zoo and ethnological exhibition], in J. Zimmerer (ed.), Kein Platz an der Sonne: Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte [No place in the sun: places of remembrance of German colonial history] (Frankfurt: Campus), pp. 244–56. Voigt, S. (2008) ‘Das Verhältnis der DDR zu Israel’ [The relation of the GDR to Israel], Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 28 March, available at www.bpb. de/internationales/asien/israel/45014/ddr-israel?p=all (accessed 25 July 2022). Wildangel, R. (2007) Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht. Palästina und der Nationalsozialismus [Between axis and mandate power. Palestine and national socialism] (Berlin: Zentrum Moderner Orient), available at https://archiv.zmo. de/publikationen/Studien_online/studien24_digital.pdf (accessed 25 July 2022). Wildangel, R. (2012) ‘The invention of ‘Islamofascism’. Nazi propaganda to the Arab world and perceptions from Palestine’, Die Welt des Islam, 52:3/4, 526–43. Wildangel, R. (2014) ‘More than the Mufti. other Arab-Palestinian voices on Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 and their postwar narrations’, in I. Gershoni (ed.), Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion (Austin: University of Texas Press), pp. 101–26. Wissenschaftsrat (1992) Stellungnahmen zu den außeruniversitären Forschu­ ngseinrichtungen der ehemaligen Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR auf dem Gebiet der Geisteswissenschaften und zu den Forschungs- und Editionsabteilungen der Akademie der Künste zu Berlin (Cologne), available at https://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/archiv/B051_2–92.html (accessed 30 January 2022). Wokoeck, U. (2009) German Orientalism: The Study of the Middle East and Islam from 1800 to 1945 (New York: Routledge). Zimmerer, J. (ed.) (2013) Kein Platz an der Sonne: Erinnerungsorte der deutschen Kolonialgeschichte [No place in the sun: places of remembrance of German ­colonial history] (Frankfurt: Campus).

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3 Middle East Studies in Italy: a field in search of an identity and recognition within and outside academia Giulia Cimini and Claudia De Martino Introduction This chapter explores the evolution of Middle East Studies (MES)1 in Italy, and offers a state-of-the-art analysis of Italian academic thematic patterns, mosaic-like teachings and research. It revolves around two main research questions: how does a major ‘amnesia’ (Pace and Roccu, 2020) of the national colonial past play out in Italy’s MES tradition?; and to what extent can this be ascribed to a structural dependency of the Italian academia on those in power in terms of MES agenda-setting? We explain how far in the past a genuine scientific interest by Italian scholars towards the ‘Orient’ stretches back, partly building upon, and partly emancipating itself from, the Church-led centuries-old tradition of Oriental Philological Studies. To a certain extent, we argue, a proto-­ scientific turn in Oriental Studies replaced earlier theological and missionary purposes with a colonial project, which was first sponsored by the liberal authorities of the new Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) and further pursued under Fascist rule (1922–43).2 Rooted in mainstream Orientalism (Said, 1978) but displaying national peculiar traits (Proglio, 2012), the development of Italian MES as an autonomous discipline has been intricately intertwined with the country’s monarchical and republican colonial history in a relationship of mutual benefit and exchange. This had a profound impact on research agendas, both thematically and in terms of resources, as Italian MES followed the ebbs and flows of politics, systematically sidelining a selfreflection on Italy’s colonial past until the mid-1990s (other than isolated individual attempts in the mid-1960s). Moreover, the ‘colonial original sin’ introduced a flawed binary perception of MES as pertaining to underrated non-European countries, thus dismissed as a minor branch of enquiry. The more markedly ‘scientific’ turn since the nineteenth century succeeded in broadening the research horizons of Italian MES but failed to emancipate them from the long-standing intellectual and financial dependence on the ruler of the day, be it the Church or the state. Browsing through Italian

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MES research topics, black holes stand out: while the Arab–Israeli conflict, migration flows, Islam and the ‘Mediterranean’ are recurrent themes dictated by the political contingency of the moment, in-depth analysis of colonial crimes stay largely neglected to this day and are yet not incorporated into educational curricula at all grades. Italian MES are still struggling to get rid of this dual dependency. In 2016, however, the outrageous murder of the Italian PhD researcher Giulio Regeni while conducting fieldwork in Egypt marked a temporary discontinuity in the traditional academic alienation from politics. The Italian academia reacted – as a close-knit community – in seeking justice on behalf of the victim. Nonetheless, on this occasion it sadly discovered its vulnerability, as it was left alone to face the challenges that area studies research, and particularly fieldwork, are exposing scholars to: political authorities deny the academia a broad legitimacy, watering down its claims for justice through unprincipled diplomatic means. In addition, MES still come up against substantial organisational hurdles affecting Italian academia’s functioning at large, such as the lack of structural funding and high compartmentalisation, plus suffering from its lower ranks within academia at large. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, it provides a cursory look at the historical evolution of Italian MES; it then offers an analysis of the longstanding colonial ‘amnesia’ underpinning them; third, it explores Middle East Studies’ current status within the academia, arguing against the heavy state-funding dependency still typifying it. It concludes by taking stock of MES’s quest for emancipation from political power, as well as from misperceptions Area Studies are still confronted with both within and outside academia.

MES in Italy: a need for emancipation from the dual Church and state dependency All through the ‘dark centuries’ during the Middle Ages, Oriental languages continued to be studied in monasteries for exegetic and missionary purposes. Suffice it to mention the decree issued by Pope Clemente V in 1311 CE according to which the universities of Rome and Bologna had to introduce the teaching of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldean ‘in order to promote the study of the Oriental languages and so to facilitate the conversion of the heathen’ (Landon, 1909: 271 quoted in Auroux et al., 2001: 1185). Under the church’s temporal power, missionary zeal merged with scholarly interest, leading to a remarkable growth of Oriental Studies concentrated in Rome. Notably, even the secular main tradition of these studies from

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the last decades of the nineteenth century to the 1940s – the so-called Scuola Romana – developed next to the Vatican where most of the libraries holding precious collections of books and documents were located, and not in cities with major Islamic influence, such as Palermo or Naples. Besides the study of Semitic languages, a rich tradition of travelogues thrived, mostly authored by aristocrats wandering around the French Maghreb Protectorates such as Tunisia, often sponsoring an over-romanticised exotic imaginary of the Islamic ‘Other’ in typical Orientalist style. Besides the church’s theological input, a genuine renewal of secular MES stretched back to the Renaissance’s revived curiosity about the Orient, spurred by the transfer back to the Italian peninsula of major archival collections of the Eastern Roman Empire after its fall in 1453: the Eastern Church’s dignitaries then emigrated to the maritime Republic of Venice bringing along wide collections of ancient manuscripts, codebooks and miniatures, until then mostly unknown in the West.3 However, a more proto-scientific turn in MES as a specific and independent cluster was brought about only four centuries later by three key interrelated events: the merger of the Italian states into a single kingdom in 1861; the conquest of the city of Rome by the new state (1870) which brought the acquisition of many Church collections; and Italy’s entrance into the European scramble for colonial territories in Africa. The main drive in this revival of MES was therefore political, being spurred by the newborn state’s first colonial expeditions sparked by the quest for national prestige. The main representatives of this new ‘scientific’ turn in stark opposition to the long-standing ‘antiquarian’ model practised by the Church were Michele Amari (1806–89), David Santillana (1855–1931), Leone Caetani (1869–1935) and Carlo Alfonso Nallino (1872–1938), all acknowledged as leading scientific authorities throughout Europe and beyond (Bausani, 1957). What was consolidated was a complex academic model made of both a very rigorous scientific practice and a partisan legacy of intellectual dependency on those in power. In fact, Italian MES scholars, with the remarkable exception of Caetani, actively contributed to both the liberal and the fascist colonial regimes’ objectives. The several successive Italian colonial enterprises4 were keystones in the legitimation of the new country’s statebuilding project projecting itself overseas. Colonialism was a fundamental tool in the aspiration of the new state to rise among the modern European powers (Agbamu, 2019; Triulzi, 2003).5 Not that much different from other European societies, the ‘myth’ of progress, the moral responsibility – and especially the patriotic duty – of civilising ‘inferior others’, became part of the ideological arsenal supporting Italian colonial action. Imbued with Orientalist references, Italian MES scholars provided the authorities with

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essential cultural tools to interact with local people – above all, the needed language skills and a broad insight on customs and traditions, as evidenced by the spread of dictionaries and handbooks (Soravia, 2005). In particular, in the years between the two world wars and thanks to the establishment of a number of influential public institutions,6 MES came to be systematised through the publication of standard textbooks, such as the first comprehensive Arabic grammar (Grammatica teorico-pratica della lingua araba), published in 1937. At the same time, Orientalist scholars, and particularly those of the above-mentioned ‘School of Rome’, were offered in return appointments to public offices (Soravia, 2005) and social prestige as authorities in the field of extra-European knowledge and given first-hand access to government’s documents, sources and funding. The wide convergence between intellectual and political agendas proves the extent to which this field of study owed its raison d’être to political authorities. It thus comes as no surprise that most coeval Italian scholars embarked on the colonial enterprise with full enthusiasm without questioning its agenda. For instance, Laura Veccia Vaglieri (1893–1989) and the above-mentioned Carlo Alfonso Nallino, then two of the most distinguished Orientalists, made no reference in their works, and little reference overall,7 to the brutality concurrently exerted by the authorities over the Arab and African people subjected to Italian rule, nor displayed any critical stance on the Euro-centred Orientalist cultural practices widespread among both the Italian leadership and the public at large. Even more deafening was the silence surrounding the introduction of racial laws in the colonies as test cases, even earlier than those applied in the mainland against Jews (Labanca, 2002: 355–60).8 The Orientalist representation of the ‘Other’ and the colonial origins of MES were instrumental in the construction of a national academic culture enforcing strict separation and a dual scheme between those studies concerning the ‘modern world’, that is, Europe and the West, and extraEuropean non-Western countries. This binary schematisation guided by a Self/Other dichotomy was entrenched in the missionary tradition inherited by the Church as much as by liberal and fascist authorities. Paradoxically, in the post-1945 period and despite the wide support that both scholars and public opinion gave to colonisation, Italian colonial dominions rapidly sank into oblivion. Likewise, in the four successive decades a critical reflection on the use of academic knowledge for nationalist purposes and on colonial heritage was largely missing. The academic ‘detachment’ from politics translated into two different trends: on the one hand, a politically engaged, pro-Marxist academic component championing against other Western countries’ colonial wars without critically enquiring into Italian national colonial crimes; on the other hand, a neutral philological tradition, mostly focused upon Islam as a religion. Both streams entailed

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a structural separation between academic research and its positioning with respect to politics, the result of which was the consideration of postcolonialism ‘as a field that may be fascinating but really concerned almost ­exclusively with the history of others’ (Mellino, 2006: 464). Since the inception of the twenty-first century, and particularly in the last decade, MES have significantly evolved in Italy, mirroring a growing global context and as a result of the openness of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries to foreign scholars practising field research. This trend encouraged an already growing sensibility of Italian academics towards civil society and local agency, following the reception of the influential book Life as Politics by the Iranian-American scholar Asef Bayat (2010) and particularly in the footsteps of the post-2011 Arab Spring’s cultural shift. This stream of scholarship started off as less compliant with state authorities’ objectives.

Thematic lines and black spots: lights and shades of Italy’s ‘new’ MES after 1945 After the Second World War, Italian MES did not tackle the issue of decolonisation. Throughout the so-called ‘economic boom’ (1951–60) and for a decade later, few studies were devoted to colonial mandates such as Somalia, still administered as a trusteeship by the first Republican governments (Attuoni, 1953; Azzaroli and Simonetta, 1966; Meregazzi, 1954). Scanning through the publications from the 1950s to 1970s,9 it stands out how Somalia, as much as Libya, Ethiopia and Eritrea, was looked upon as a distant object, with no interest to carry out any critical assessment of the long-term impact of Italian colonial action.10 Thus far, this silence is deafening compared to the debates raised – not without hesitation or contentiously – in neighbouring EU countries, such as France (see the contribution of Timo Behr in this edited volume). In comparison, Italy seemed to enjoy a positive form of ‘amnesia’, only a partial ‘redirection’ and no ‘atonement’ at all, as Pace and Roccu (2020) would put it.11 Instead, Italy displayed a ‘not guilty’ identity towards its former colonies and blissfully overcame decolonisation without plunging into any internal strife. It was not until the mid-1990s that the first series of critical colonial studies appeared, preceded by the pioneering volume on the Italian brutal conquest of the Ethiopian Empire authored by Del Boca (1965). Remarkably, he was a journalist and not an academic, and only belatedly and controversially integrated at the University of Turin as a professional historian (Del Boca, 2000). The groundbreaker of Italian colonial studies made an opening in Italians’ widespread self-perception as ‘a good people’.

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Likewise, his politically engaged colleague Giorgio Rochat (1971, 1973, 1979) sketched a first critical portrait of Marshal Pietro Badoglio (Rochat and Pieri, 1974): the man for all seasons wryly linking the most crushing military defeat of the Italian liberal regime with both a major role in the fascist colonial expansion and the country’s controversial leadership in the post-Second World War capitulation (Salerno, 2019 [1979]). Since the 2000s a gradual awakening has taken place but MES academic knowledge filtered down little to the general audience. As the historian Nicola Labanca (2002) wrote in his seminal book Oltremare (Overseas), even if nowadays everyone in Italy knows by heart popular songs such as ‘Faccetta nera’ (‘Pretty black face’) and ‘Tripoli bel suol d’amore’ (‘Tripoli beautiful land of love’) of the colonial era, only a handful of citizens are able to place any former Italian colony on a map or recall the historical circumstances that brought them about. This public attitude of ignorance and denial is no longer related to the lack of critical studies on colonial history, but rather to the existence of a permanent gap between academic research and public opinion. Many international scholars, though, denounce the collateral damage of this collective practice of denial and oblivion (see, for example, Blanchard, Bancel and Lemaire, 2006) and point to the joint will of academia and the authorities to classify Italian colonial history as a difficult page to be ascribed to a set historical age. No room whatsoever is left to the emergence of a ripe ‘politics of memory’ tackling sensitive issues, such as the inclusion of former colonial minorities within the national community; the need to introduce alternative remembrance days (Pace, 2022); and the necessity of launching a serious debate about reforming university and school curricula, adjusting them to recent multicultural findings. In fact, Blanchard (2006) argues that Italy has so far been spared the heated debates raging in other Western countries because it lacks its own ‘Republican indigenous’, that is, a grassroots movement of citizens of colonial origins challenging its national narrative from within. Exonerated from a national sense of guilt, it joyfully embarked on the Anglo-Saxon postcolonial studies’ approach, rejecting detailed chronicles of events to focus on societal and anthropological aspects where colonial history is no longer given centre stage (Lacoste, 2010: 404). While struggling to reckon with the colonial legacy, MES gradually broadened their geographic and thematic focus. From the dominant historical-linguistic approach in the 1960s, new research trends appeared in the 1970s. Indeed, a new generation of scholars came to the fore, widely influenced by the gradual opening to US academic culture. The most famous scholar of the time was Alessandro Bausani (1921–88) who coined the expanded notion of Islamistica (Islamic Studies) as ‘the

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scientific study of Islam in its global aspects’, encompassing its political and anthropological elements, thus stretching beyond the simple religious facet (Bono, 1971: 372). In addition, Bausani exposed MES academic practice’s lingering limits, denouncing the neglect of socio-economic issues as much as the lack of teamwork and disciplinary common standards. In 1971, to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO, Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente)12 gathered Italian MES scholars to take stock of the discipline: the Congress contributions highlighted the predominance of historical studies, language and literature, as well as a great bulk of works still devoted to early Islam. In his Congress review article, Salvatore Bono (1971: 373) pointed to the overstretched notion of ‘Oriental Studies’ spanning from the Near East to Africa and lamented the same shortcomings pointed out by Bausani. His state-of-the-art review called for the further opening of the discipline to take in political science and economics, and this time his comments found a warm welcome in a quickly-changing Italian academic context, influenced by Europe’s increasing exposure to US academic trends. Upon the release of the first scientific journal explicitly mentioning ‘MES’ in its header (Middle Eastern Studies Journal, 1964), the US academia had in fact initiated the brand new course of ‘Area Studies’, eagerly transposed to Italy. The big challenge now was to build a new field of study geographically and sector-wise much more inclusive than the former ‘Near East’ and no longer strictly associated with the Islamic world, to comprise the non-Muslim State of Israel (Davison, 1959). This conceptual shift came over together with a thematic renewal in US research avenues turning to power dynamics, state–society relations and grassroots movements. Italian academia followed suit and throughout the 1980s–2000s it gradually implemented the same reading grid, reframing the field and diverting the bulk of its research efforts to address the spectrum of hegemony and counter-hegemony against the backdrop of a waning Cold War logic. The major fault line then passed between those supporting pro-Marxist, Gramsci-inspired views13 in the reading of MENA wars and policies (Manduchi, Marchi and Vacca, 2017) and those staunchly shielding US interests and reading of regional dynamics. Among the latter, some designated fresh and innovative research frameworks to read traditional top-down authoritarianism in the MENA, such as the ‘rentier state’ concept elaborated by Giacomo Luciani, scholar and former deputy director of leading Italian energy company ENI, together with Hazem al-Beblawi (Luciani and al-Beblawi, 1987), a prominent economist and, between 2013 and 2014, Egypt’s interim prime minister. Concurrently, Italian MES broadened their geographical horizon to comprise a ‘Greater Mediterranean’ stretching as far as the Horn of Africa and the Indian

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s­ubcontinent, thus projecting them beyond the political influence of a middle-power state such as Italy. What paved the way to this radical cultural change was the ‘Third Way’ approach adopted by one of the major political parties of the time, the Italian Communist Party (PCI, Partito Comunista Italiano). By analysing the tense relationship running between Europe and its former colonies, the PCI decided – not without internal disagreement – to side with the new indigenous national movements striving for independence against European colonial powers which were obstinately attached to their shreds of power and resisted decolonisation. Srivastava (2018) rightly catches the major difference between the ‘pro-Third World’ approach developed in Italy and the US-inspired postcolonial studies: whereas the former was rooted in the daily fight of party members, intellectuals and activists politically supporting decolonisation processes worldwide, the latter was a critical reflection with no political strings attached, born and bred inside the academia. The strong political engagement prevailing in Italian communist culture could partly explain why attention was mainly directed to protesting against other colonial wars of the time, such as the Algeria War (1954–62) or the Vietnam War (1956–75), rather than critically processing Italy’s own past crimes. The dominant Marxist approach kick-started the thriving study tradition on the Arab–Israeli conflict, bringing many scholars, mainly historians, to focus on it from the vantage point of the Palestinians. The main representative of this major disciplinary trend was Guido Valabrega (e.g. 1967, 1999) who, despite his Jewish origins, started off his career with a thesis on the Palestinian worker and peasant movements which he identified as central for achieving pan-Arab independence. Indeed, the Arab–Israeli conflict acted as the main research focus of Italian MES over more than three decades.14 In Gerges’s (1991: 218) words, it was an ‘obsession’ besetting the field: an ‘intellectual obsession’ partly explained by Jerusalem being an elective place of interest for both the Catholic Church and ‘its herd’. In addition, the new field of ‘Mediterranean Studies’ emerging in the 1990s took the lion’s share. This was due both to endogenous and exogenous factors, the former being associated with the geographical position of Italy at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea; and the latter with the influence exerted by three major international events: the outbreak of the first UN-led war against Iraq (the Gulf War) after the collapse of the binary world order (1991); the hopes raised by the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO (1993); and the enthusiasm raised by the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership launched by the European Commission (1995, the so-called Barcelona Process). In particular, the latter marked the launch of a very ambitious policy aimed at setting a new course in EU–MENA relationships, ideally establishing an area of multilateral cooperation. Along these lines, it

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was especially the Italy-based but EU-led European University Institute (EUI, since 1972) that eagerly embraced the European Commission’s pan-Mediterranean framework spearheading the Barcelona framework process. It did so by designing a dedicated programme, the ‘Mediterranean  Programme’ (1999–2013), which, in the words of the Institute, placed ‘the EUI at the forefront of the Euro-Mediterranean research dialogue’.15 However, this flourishing stream of ‘pro-Mediterranean’ studies was once again induced by and supportive of a state-led process. This overt political engagement brought many scholars of the time to overemphasise the existence of a common pan-Mediterranean identity based on shared ethnocultural features that had survived centuries of internecine conflict, while obscuring the deep colonial wounds and the wide economic gaps dividing the two shores – an academic enthusiasm soon due to wane as the peace envisioned by the Oslo Accords was stalled by the Israeli right in 1996. Moreover, the 9/11 attacks on Washington, DC and New York drew public attention to the tense relationship simmering between the West and the MENA region still shaken by deep identity and development issues. In so doing, they unveiled a potential hatred between those two ‘poles’ questionably referred to as ‘clashing civilisations’ (Huntington, 1996). Against this backdrop, a notable exception stood out in the national academic context: the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Bologna has been leading its own independent research agenda following that of US universities. Although SAIS does not devote a specific research or study programme to the Middle East, it regularly holds MES events, conferences and seminars. Moreover, it distinguishes itself by adopting a more policy-oriented and hands-on research approach, constantly dialoguing and confronting renowned international scholars but also local and international policy-makers. In so doing, it opens up the academic community to the wider society, and in particular to area experts outside the academia and decision-makers. However, both SAIS and the above-mentioned EUI dwell within the Italian academic context, enjoying little or no interaction with average Italian universities due to the language barrier, the different academic recruiting procedures and research histories. In contrast to SAIS’s agenda, in Italy no major attention was paid to investigating the spillover effect of the 9/11 attacks, though it is well documented that the press – probably more influenced by the international information agenda-setting – started taking more notice of events occurring in the MENA region, thus indirectly bringing MES into the limelight. Islam and the region thereby became major attractions, moving beyond academic circles: this interest was mirrored by increased editorial and news production, an astonishing mushrooming of works on the Arab-Islamic world that tripled when compared to previous years (Galleri, 2011), and a genuine

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interest in the debate on Islam’s potential compatibility with democracy confronting opposite perspectives (Allam, 2006; Guolo, 2007). Heightened public interest for the MENA region was also due to the onset of incoming mass migration flows from Muslim-dominant countries, which started being perceived as a structural phenomenon and accordingly codified by the so-called ‘Legge Foschi’ (Colucci, 2018),16 with the year 1998 hitting the psychological threshold of one million foreign migrants living in Italy thanks to the Immigration Policy Regularisation Decree issued in the same year (CESTIM, 2000). During the decade 2010–20, MES devoted themselves to analysing the Arab Spring in all its facets, but dealt mostly with migration flows, routes and reasons. As the number of refugees from the MENA region and beyond grew year by year, together with the number of conflicts shaking the region, migration studies and geopolitics gained ground, with other global topics – such as Islamic terrorism, Gulf economies, the Sunni–Shia divide – taking a minor share too. The Arab Spring’s disillusion gradually took hold: the uprisings had brought into the limelight a new revolutionary, internet-connected MENA generation which most Italian scholars,17 in tune with their Anglo-Saxon colleagues, believed was able to reform their societies from within by toppling their unyielding governments. With their projects abruptly coming to an end, though, those short-lived hopes were dashed and with them the possibility of MENA reconciliation with so-called ‘modernity’, too often oversimplified and unilaterally associated with Western standards of democratic and societal progress. However, those uprisings also marked an intellectual divorce between MES scholars and the public at large, dissenting both on the well-meaning nature of protests and their outcomes. Suffice it to think that the Arab Spring, while arousing excitement amongst a consistent majority of Italian academics, soon turned into internecine bloodshed and domestic conflict, paving the way for new major migration flows deeply unpopular in Italian public opinion circles. In the last two decades, Italian academia seemed to be willing to redeem itself by shaking off the above-mentioned tradition of complacency towards both Church and state powers to embark on new avenues of independent research and severing the link with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this context, Giulio Regeni’s brutal murder in early 2016 came as a major shock; it acted as a wake-up call for the academic community to become even more critical of political power and to engage not only with the pressing issues of the Middle East, but also with Italian disputable institutional, entrepreneurial and lobbying activities in the region. In light of the authorities’ visible reluctance to appreciate the work and protect the lives of researchers active in nonEuropean countries (Casini, Melfa and Starkey, 2019), Italian ­academia, like

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similar institutions elsewhere in Europe, is questioning itself about the high risks run by scholars carrying out field research. At the same time, it points to the double standard shown by Italian authorities in this regard: namely, a de facto lack of diplomatic protection of their fellow citizens, contrary to official statements (Bonini and Foschini, 2017). Academics also increasingly challenge the widespread perception of public opinion about MENA as dangerous areas and societies to keep away from (Wike, Stokes and Simmons, 2016). However, the never-bridged gap between academia and the public at large is widening. On one side, there is an emboldened academia ever more critical of political power; on the other, a public opinion which seemingly does not appreciate the benefits of carrying out fieldwork research in areas considered risky (Casini, Melfa and Starkey, 2019) – a dangerous hiatus that, conflating the traditional pretentious attitude of Italian academia (to keep away from mainstream media) with the constantly dropping university enrolment rates (OECD, 2020), could easily turn Italian MES into an isolated ivory tower with little or no influence on society at large, at a time when getting qualified information on the MENA is most needed. In sum, despite the positive coming of age of Italian MES, they still suffer from major challenges. Some of the above-mentioned critiques of both Bausani and Bono still hold today, plus the inability to set an independent agenda and share it with a broader audience. Moreover, the permeability of the field by foreign scholars remains extremely low: Italian scholars continue to marginalise the production of works authored by MENA scholars, displaying weak and unsubstantial translation rates of non-­ European authors and including too few of them in their midst. MES scholars’ ranks are getting larger, yet they still struggle to gain full recognition in a conservative academic system as a coherent and full-fledged discipline, as proved by the weaker distribution of relevant teaching positions, better illustrated in the next section below.

Portrayal of a field in search of recognition Between the 1990s and 2010s, the US-led MES gained momentum and succeeded in setting up a standard academic programme. In line with other West European countries, Italy witnessed a boom in interest for extraEuropean areas, as evidenced by the sharp increase in university MES enrolment rates. On both the ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ sides, this growing interest in MES translated into the setting of common academic standards, such as the introduction of Modern Standard Arabic courses, this time fully incorporated in the curricula as a fundamental linguistic requirement to obtain a master’s degree (Kalati, 2005).

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However, when compared to other academic domains, MES still distinguish themselves as being extremely heterogeneous, and, against the backdrop of a highly conservative, compartmentalised academic system, they pay the price for being too hybrid to be classified according to existing rankings. In addition, they suffer from the overall structural problems affecting scientific research in Italy, among which the shortage and erratic nature of funding rank first. Opportunities for national funds are somewhat scant and scattered, and mostly earmarked by the Ministry of University and Research (MIUR, Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca) which recently split from the Ministry of Education. In 2014, for instance, one of the major research grants issued by the MIUR – the Scientific Independence of young Researchers (SIR) grant – promised to become the official support mechanism for a young generation of researchers and to privilege interdisciplinary and team-based projects, but it never saw a re-edition after the first call.18 Likewise, since 1997, an important funding programme devoted to research projects of national interest (Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale, PRIN) was progressively undermined in terms of funds and frequency of calls: from being annually issued, it became randomly announced between the years 2009 and 2016. Although the PRIN mechanism was eventually revitalised in 2017 with a quadrupled budget (ANVUR, 2018), randomness prevails, while the amounts of available funding vary widely. Financial allocations to research over the last years have swung back and forth but have remained overall low. According to the last report issued by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes, Italy’s R&D (research and development) spending accounts for 1.32 per cent of GDP, considerably lower than the EU and OECD countries’ average (1.95 per cent and 2.36 per cent, respectively) (ANVUR, 2018). The report also testifies to an uneven distribution of resources across regions, to the detriment of the south and the islands.19 In short, calls for funding are competitive, yet launched in erratic ways and not on a regular basis. All these features negatively affect research activities, by making mid- to long-term planning difficult, if not impossible. The dominant uncertainty in securing funding does not encourage longterm investments, neither in academic personnel nor in research development, and there is a significant incentive to look for alternative sources of funding, mostly European Commission grants. Therefore, it is no surprise that disciplines perceived as less ‘relevant’ to the country’s economy, that is, those falling under the broad MES umbrella, could be further penalised at times of financial strain, as evident at smaller universities, where MES run the risk of being eliminated.

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A second major fault is what we could refer to as a ‘silo organisation’, which mirrors a resistance and uneasiness to open up to an interdisciplinary approach. In fact, research and teaching in Italy are organised according to 367 micro ‘Scientific Disciplinary Sectors’ (SSD) further aggregated in Recruitment Sectors (188), then Macro-Sectors (88) and finally in macrodisciplinary ‘Areas’ (14). Although disciplinary boundaries fluctuate over time to accommodate societal socio-political changes, SSDs are quite stable and watertight containers (Bellotti, Kronegger and Guadalupi, 2016) conditioning the recruitment and career evaluation process, as well as funding allocation. Academic staff are thereby recruited on SSD-related grounds of expertise. For instance, in order to be eligible as associate professor, one has to pass a national competition and be evaluated by a public scientific committee reviewing the candidate’s CV not only for the quality and quantity of scientific output, but also for their relevance for the SSD applied for (Bellotti, Kronegger and Guadalupi, 2016). Thus, every scholar-to-be takes into due consideration the venues for their works, as each SSD has its own list of academic journals and strict eligibility criteria to obtain the abilitazione (the official ‘qualification’):20 although academics can potentially change their affiliation throughout their career, only one per cent of them actually dare to do so (Bellotti, Kronegger and Guadalupi, 2016). This way, academic careers display little flexibility, as scholars tend to stick to their SSD only. This can be quite problematic for Area Studies. In fact, MES are yet not merged into a single department with standardised curricula and research procedures, but rather split across a wide range of existing SSDs. Being extremely diversified in terms of both geographical coverage and approach may prove both a blessing and a curse, as it attests to their vitality but also makes their academic status precarious. In 2018–19, the Italian Association for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO, Società per gli Studi sul Medio Oriente) carried out a thorough mapping project on Italian scholars working on this area. According to its data,21 Italian MES academics are distributed across 21 SSDs grouped into five macro areas (out of 14): (1) philology and art history; (2) history, philosophy; (3) law studies; (4) economics and statistics; and (5) political and social sciences. Most of the 133 mapped scholars active in the field (around 55 per cent) belong to the domain of philology et al., followed by that of political and social sciences (21 per cent), with the remainder distributed along other disciplines. These numbers not only point to the liveliness of MES, but also to their high fragmentation, as it is well known that they struggle with a thorny definitional dilemma about geographical and cultural boundaries as a result of their being an offspring of an ‘artificial nineteenth century abstraction’ (Gerges, 1991: 209). Indeed, SeSaMO is a good

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example of what MES are about, grouping together scholars working on MENA and Muslim-majority countries, such as the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, as well as migrant-sending countries. At the risk of oversimplifying, we argue that MES reflect a plurality of ‘Others’ extremely different in their midst, covering most of what is ‘left’ out from alleged geopolitically ‘relevant’ macro-regions: this extreme geographical plurality, let alone the kaleidoscope of thematic patterns, time frames and methodological toolkits, make it difficult to find a common thread. In addition, the stigma within the university remains high: a scholar of any background working on these ‘Others’ will find it more difficult to be acknowledged as a mainstream political scientist, historian, jurist or economist, being perceived first and foremost as belonging to a grey area with no clear academic affiliation. As mainstream disciplines had been conceived only insofar as they deal with the West – or alternatively with global powers such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – studies predicated on other non-European states are not clearly included. Moreover, this conceptual cleavage has practical implications: for instance, a MES junior scholar may struggle to progress towards the official ‘qualification’ due to a not-so-obvious match between his or her academic works and strictly defined SSD disciplinary borders, thus paying the price for the conservative ‘silo mentality’ penalising interdisciplinary ‘contamination’ in research. SeSaMO’s mapping study also points to MES’s close similarities to Italian academia’s dysfunctional organisation overall. For instance, in terms of generational and geographical divide, the picture does not significantly depart from general top-down and highly hierarchic academic traditions. In line with the national average, MES scholars account for a tiny minority of full professors (9 per cent) followed by associate professors (almost 33 per cent), while non-tenure-tracked researchers and post-docs represent the true core of the research personnel (57 per cent). Likewise, most of these scholars are geographically concentrated in the north of the country (51 per cent), fewer in the south (30 per cent) and fewer still in the centre (19 per cent), reflecting regional divides. Nonetheless, two of the three oldest and most renowned universities with ‘Oriental’ professorships are based in Rome (La Sapienza) and in Naples (L’Orientale), respectively located in the centre and south of Italy. This has twofold negative implications. First, with the exception of the Ca’ Foscari University hub in Venice, most of the scholars are spread out at minor universities neither specialised in ‘Oriental’ studies, nor offering specialised BA and MA MES curricula, thus carrying out their work in an insulated environment. Second, the three main reasearch poles (Rome, Naples and Venice, and to a lesser extent Turin in recent years) draw the main bulk of resources, students and staff,

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to the detriment of smaller universities, feeding into an already established trend towards university concentration. To end on a positive note, in comparison with Italian academia displaying a wide gender gap at leadership roles on a national scale, MES stand out as showing a far more balanced ratio at senior positions (around half) – a breakthrough supposedly due, though, to their current underrating within the academic ranks.

Conclusion In this chapter we have highlighted the fact that Italian MES, whose geographical coverage is broader than this label straightforwardly evokes, have been suffering from an ‘original sin’, that of their colonial origin. Also, they have been constrained by two conceptual limits: the erudite, politically disengaged and nitpicking antiquarian tradition of Church-led philological studies and their intellectual and organisational prostration to the political ruler of the day. Nonetheless, from the 1980s this composite discipline has progressively moved towards increasing independence, gradually taking on board a critique of colonial power dynamics. Nonetheless, until today, and unlike other European countries, Italian MES academics tend not to focus on former colonies, which fell into the broader category of former ‘Oriental Studies’ before the adoption of the US-driven academic reframing of MES. The latter are still largely overlooked in both university curricula and the media, contributing to the erasure of collective memory from public debates. The only exception is Libya, which draws public and academic attention, mostly due to its current relevance for migration and energy issues. Notwithstanding the fact that MES research interests – both geographically and thematically – are growing far more diversified and independent from government agendas, they are suffering from the flip side of ‘selfcentredness’ shared by the whole Italian academia, till recently refraining from engaging with the media to reach out to the public at large. Moreover, MES are struggling to define their status as an autonomous discipline within the academia, thus overcoming their relative marginalisation while being equally penalised by the structural, financial and organisational constraints affecting Italian universities overall. The greatest challenges looming in the near future for MES in Italy include the task of shaking off their academic inferiority complex and taking on the duty of influencing public debate on pressing and politically sensitive issues such as migration flows and Italy’s colonial legacy – two heated issues that could dictate future events in the country.

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Notes  1 In Italy, ‘MES’ does not exist as a single disciplinary university department or programme but relates to a geographic area expertise, shared out by multiple research domains. MES scholars therefore do not identify as such but according to their respective ‘scientific disciplinary sectors’ (SSD, Settori Scientifici Disciplinari).  2 With the exception of the Republic of Salò in the north (September 1943 to April 1945).  3 For instance, Cardinal Bessarione donated more than 900 books to the Republic of Venice in 1468 (Bianca, 2017: 318).  4 Assab and Massawa in 1881, Somalia and Eritrea in 1889 and 1890, Libya (more precisely, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania) and Ethiopia in 1911 and 1936 respectively, all rather unsuccessful in hindsight.  5 Above all, the most evocative events were Italy’s military defeat at Adua by the Empire of Ethiopia in 1896 and Italy’s ‘revenge’ on it with the victory of May 1936 and the proclamation of an empire in East Africa (comprising Ethiopia and the pre-existing territories of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea).  6 For example, the Istituto Coloniale Italiano in 1906 (Istituto Italiano per l’Africa since 1947), the Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (IsMEO) in 1933, later known as the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO), and the Istituto per l’Oriente Carlo Alfonso Nallino in 1921.  7 See, for instance, Cresti (2004) on the mild critiques by Carlo Alfonso Nallino of the ‘brutal acts’ perpetrated by Italian authorities at the expense of the peaceful Libyan population in 1930.  8 Among others, the ‘Defense of the Race’ Law of 20 December 1937, the royal decree law of 17 November 1938 banning mixed marriages, and Law 1004/ XVII of 29 June 1939 introducing the crime of ‘damage to the race prestige’.  9 A useful source for the scholarly production and bibliographic collections in Italy is the website Internetculturale at www.internetculturale.it. 10 The first critical essays on Somalia were published only in the 2000s by Quartuccio (2001) and Hagi Scikei (2001). 11 ‘Amnesia’ is to be understood as the complete erasure from memory of the national colonial past; ‘redirection’ as the process of self-centring by the past colonial power in all relations with its former dominions; and ‘atonement’ as the inclination to carry out restorative justice gestures to former colonies in both symbolic and financial terms. 12 The IsIAO was closed by decree in 2012 for economic reasons after the 2008 financial crisis. 13 This approach revolved around the scientific journal Studi storici, founded in 1959 as a quarterly review of history, published by the Istituto Gramsci and distributed by Carocci Editore. 14 Among the more than 300 works published on the Arab–Israeli conflict between 1960s and the early 1990s, see Goglia (1980), Savioli (1988), Capanna (1989), Maltese (1992) and Codovini (2000).

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15 Since 2016, the ‘Mediterranean Programme’ has morphed into a new research track named ‘Middle East Directions’ (MEDirections), hosted by the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. In line with the European Commission’s research guidelines in the Horizon Research programme and the Union for the Mediterranean’s Partnership on Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (2018–28), the MEDirections Programme aims to turn the EUI into the single greatest Mediterranean research hub bringing together scholars from the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. 16 Law no. 943 of 30 December 1986 establishing ‘the equal treatment in the placement of extra-European migrant workers and combatting clandestine migration’. 17 By making a simple bibliographical search using the keyword ‘Arab Spring’, Internetculturale shows up twenty-seven records which mostly express a genuine interest and confidence in the Arab Spring’s societal renewal projects. 18 The MIUR call was plagued by many shortcomings and drew a number of criticisms from the same young researchers it was meant to support: first of all, it succeeded in financing only 4.3 per cent of the submitted projects, for overall lack of funding and not based on scientific reasons; second, the budget allocated to each of the only 216 projects eligible was deemed insufficient by the same beneficiaires. The MIUR did not provide any explanation about the cancellation of ‘call for bids’ in the following years. 19 The overall number of university-enrolled students has dropped by 65,000 between 2005 and 2015, more than half (35,000) of whom have been missing from the universities of the south (Intravaia and Zunino, 2016). 20 That is, the title of associate or full professor. For the position to become effective, one has to pass a local competition and be hired by a university before the title acquired expires, as it is valid only for a given period of time. 21 The following numbers and percentages are the authors’ personal elaboration (and approximation) based on the original data collected and kindly made available by SeSaMO.

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Bausani, A. (1957) ‘Islamic Studies in Italy in the XIX–XX centuries’, East and West, 8:2, 145–56. Bayat, A. (2010) Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Bellotti, E., L. Kronegger and L. Guadalupi (2016) ‘The evolution of research collaboration within and across disciplines in Italian Academia’, Scientometrics, 109, 783–811. Bianca, C. (2017) ‘1468. Bessarione e l’altra Bisanzio’, in A. Giardina (ed.), Storia mondiale dell’Italia (Bari: Laterza), pp. 318–21. Blanchard, P. (2006) ‘La France, entre deux immigrations’, in P. Blanchard, N.  Bancel and S. Lemaire (eds), La fracture coloniale. La société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial (Paris: La Découverte), pp. 177–86. Blanchard, P., N. Bancel and S. Lemaire (eds) (2006) La fracture coloniale. La société française au prisme de l’héritage colonial (Paris: La Découverte). Bonini, C. and G. Foschini (2017) ‘Omicidio Regeni, le bugie di Cambridge sui  rischi di Giulio’, La Repubblica, 2 November, availabe at www.repub​ blica.it/esteri/2017/11/02/news/regeni_cambridge-179993364 (accessed 26 July 2022). Bono, S. (1971) ‘Gli studi sul vicino oriente in Italia nell’ultimo cinquantennio’, Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 26:3, 371–80. Capanna, M. (1989) Arafat: intervista al presidente dello Stato palestinese (Milan: Rizzoli). Casini, L., D. Melfa and P. Starkey (eds) (2019) Minnena. L’Egitto, l’Europa e la ricerca dopo l’assassinio di Giulio Regeni (Messina: Mesogea). CESTIM (2000) Scheda A: Quanti sono gli immigrati in Italia (Verona: Centro Studi Immigrazione), www.cestim.it/sezioni/materiali_didattici/2–3_cose_che_ non_so_di_lui/a.pdf (accessed 15 March 2021). Codovini, G. (2000) Storia del conflitto arabo israeliano palestinese (Milan: Mondadori). Colucci, M. (2018) Storia dell’immigrazione straniera in Italia. Dal 1945 ai giorni nostri (Rome: Carocci). Cresti, F. (2004) ‘Il professore e il generale. La polemica tra Carlo Alfonso Nallino e Rodolfo Graziani sulla Senussia e su altre questioni libiche’, Studi Storici, 45:4, 1113–49. Davison, R. H. (1959) The Near and Middle East: An Introduction to History  and  Bibliography (Washington, DC: Service Center for Teachers of History). Del Boca, A. (1965) La guerra di Abissinia 1935–41 (Milan: Feltrinelli). Del Boca, A. (2000) Un testimone scomodo (Domodossola: Grossi). Galleri, G. (2011) ‘L’Islam nell’editoria italiana. Anni 2000–2007’, Between, 1:2, 1–9. Gerges, F. A. (1991) ‘The study of Middle East International Relations: a critique’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 18:2, 208–20. Goglia, L. (1980) Questione palestinese e nazionalismo arabo (Urbino: Argalia). Guolo, R. (2007) L’Islam è compatibile con la democrazia? (Bari: Laterza). Hagi Scikei, N. (2001) Somalia: un’invenzione italiana (Pisa: Edistudio). Huntington, S. P. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster).

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Intravaia, S. and C. Zunino (2016) ‘La grande fuga dall’università’, La Repubblica, 14 January, available at https://inchieste.repubblica.it/it/repubblica/rep-it/2016/01/14/ news/la_grande_fuga_dall_universita_-130049854 (accessed 26 July 2022). Kalati, A. (2005) ‘Storia dell’insegnamento dell’Arabo in Italia (I parte: Roma e Napoli)’, AnnalSS, 3, 299–330. Labanca, N. (2002) Oltremare. Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: Il Mulino). Lacoste, Y. (2010) La question postcoloniale. Une analyse géopolitique (Paris: Fayard). Landon, E. H. (1909) A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, vol. II (Edinburgh: John Grant). Luciani, G. and H. al-Beblawi (1987) The Rentier State (London: Croom Helm). Maltese, P. (1992) Nazionalismo arabo e nazionalismo ebraico, 1798–1992: storia e problemi (Milan: Mursia). Manduchi, P., A. Marchi and G. Vacca (2017) Gramsci nel mondo arabo (Bologna: Il Mulino). Mellino, M. (2006) ‘Italy and postcolonial studies: a difficult encounter’, Interventions, 8:3, 461–71. Meregazzi, R. (1954) L’amministrazione fiduciaria italiana della Somalia (A.F.I.S.) (Milan: Giuffrè). OECD (2020) Italy: Overview of the Education System (EAG 2020) (Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), available at https:// gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=ITA&treshold=10&top ic=EO (accessed 26 July 2022). Pace, M. (2022) ‘Concluding reflections: decolonising knowledge on Euro– Mediterranean relations’, in D. Huber and L. Kamel (eds), Decolonising (Knowledge on) Euro–Mediterranean Relations: Insights on Shared Histories and Futures (Rome: IAI), pp. 75–85. Pace, M. and R. Roccu (2020) ‘Imperial pasts in the EU’s approach to the Mediterranean’, International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 22:6, 671–85. Proglio, G. (2012) Orientalismi italiani (Castagnito: Antares). Quartuccio, D. (2001) ‘Le opere pubbliche nella Somalia italiana tra le due guerre mondiali’, PhD thesis, University of Cagliari. Rochat, G. (1971) Militari e politici nella preparazione della campagna d’Etiopia 1932–36 (Milan: Franco Angeli Editore). Rochat, G. (1973) Il colonialismo italiano: la prima guerra d’Africa, la guerra di Libia, la riconquista della Libia, la guerra d’Etiopia, l’Impero (Turin: Loescher). Rochat, G. (1979) Italo Balbo aviatore e ministro dell’Aeronautica 1926–1933 (Ferrara: Bovolenta). Rochat, G. and P. Pieri (1974) Pietro Badoglio, Maresciallo d’Italia (Turin: UTET). Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Salerno, E. (2019 [1979]) Genocidio in Libia. Le atrocità nascoste dell’avventura coloniale italiana (Rome: Manifestolibri). Savioli, A. (1988) Arafat, Yasir, I giorni delle pietre: viaggio nei territori occupati da Israele: intervista a Yasser Arafat, documenti inediti dalla Palestina (Chieti: Vecchio faggio). Soravia, B. (2005) ‘Ascesa e declino dell’orientalismo scientifico in Italia’, in A. Giovagnoli and G. Del Zanna (eds), Il mondo visto dall’Italia (Milan: Angelo Guerini e Associati), pp. 271–86.

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Srivastava, N. (2018) Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930–1970 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Triulzi, A. (2003) ‘Adwa: from monument to document’, Modern Italy, 8:1, 95–108. Valabrega, G. (1967) La rivoluzione araba (Milan: Dall’Oglio). Valabrega, G. (1999) Palestina e Israele: un confronto lungo un secolo tra miti e storia (Milan: Teti). Wike, R., B. Stokes and K. Simmons (2016) ‘Negative views of minorities, refugees common in EU’, Pew Research Center Survey, 11 July, available at www.pewre​ search.org/global/2016/07/11/negative-views-of-minorities-refugees-common-ineu (accessed 26 July 2022).

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Part II

Liminality

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4 Malta: boundaries, identity and positionality in the teaching of the Middle East James N. Sater

Introduction Bertrand Russell’s (1916) view of education as directed towards ‘the world that our efforts are to create’ and as cited in the introduction to this volume reflects an optimistic view of education found in the liberal arts model. Yet, when the ‘Middle’ East (and North Africa, MENA) is the focus of our education, it reflects a particular objectification of this region in European scholarship and teaching. At the core of this objectification lies the issue of epistemological boundaries, starting with the geographical term used that connotes Eurocentrism and colonial interests: the ‘middle’ of the way to India and the ‘Far’ East. Other boundaries relate to the ethnicisation of the region as an ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ world, which also embodies colonial strategies: the creation of ‘Arab’ kingdoms at the onset of post-First World War colonial tactics, and of ethnically based subunits for ‘indirect’ rule, as in the case of British India, the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms, Palestine or Lebanon. In contrast to the optimism found in the liberal arts, Max Weber (1919) expressed a cautious attitude towards values and opinions in his famous ‘Science as a vocation’ lecture. The context at the time saw enthusiastically politicised students flooding the universities in Germany’s post-First World War revolutionary climate, as well as a growing revisionist movement hoping to ‘regain’ the lost German colonies and associated ‘glory’ (Grindel, 2015; see also the contribution by Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel in this volume). Studying the MENA has continuously been similar, in that there is hardly a geographical subject that has been more politicised, religionised, eroticised, villainised and securitised as a subject of study and as a geopolitical, colonial space, and students often seek answers from professors about boundaries, inherent in the process of objectification. Under these circumstances, the case of Malta’s main higher education institution, L’Università ta’ Malta (UM, University of Malta), offers a unique perspective, as identity, rather than colonial strategy, has had a powerful impact on the drawing and imagination of boundaries and the

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development of both curriculum and teaching instruments with respect to the MENA. The boundaries inherent in both the country’s geopolitical location, as well as in socio-cultural narratives and structures, play a crucial role in this respect. As I will illustrate, the absence of a Maltese colonial policy does not make teaching any less politicised or ‘value free’ and encourages educators to reflect on the question of identity and values with students hailing from an increasingly more diversified background. As I further indicate, confronting students with their own ethical position(s) in the study of the politics of the MENA may offer a pedagogical tool halfway between that of ‘creating a new world’ (Russell, 1916) and ‘refraining from propagating one’s own view’ (Weber, 1919). Combined with a variety of theoretical, ‘neutral’ and game-oriented thought models (Langlitz, 2019), which underlie classical analysis and theorising, this can help clarify students’ own ethical positions when analysing the politics of the region. The chapter is based on five formal interviews with full-time faculty members at the Faculty of Arts of the UM. I also obtained raw enrolment data from the Registrar’s office, which allowed me to quantify some aspects of the teaching of the Middle East between 2002 and 2020. The purpose of this data was to gain insights into the actual teaching of the Middle East, and identify trends that I could situate within Malta’s geopolitical position and historical narratives. On the one hand, Malta has been free from explicit colonial endeavours in which boundary setting served important geostrategic interests. On the other hand, Malta has inherited academic traditions and practices from the United Kingdom that inform views on the MENA, yet adapts them to the Maltese islands’ identity and associated boundaries.

Teaching the Middle East in Malta One hundred and fifty-one years of British colonial rule (1813–1964) had – and still have – a profound impact on the Maltese population, whose number stood at 475,000 in 2018. Along with many parts of its legal, linguistic and political system (English as official language besides Maltese; a Westminster parliamentary two-party system; and more), the country’s education system is built on the UK model with programmes of studies, centrally administered exams, and external examiners. In contrast to many European countries, Malta has not had any colonial possessions,1 nor grand foreign policy designs or interests that a foreign policy department would support. Given its size, Malta also has comparatively few resources to spend on institutions such as think tanks. Therefore, its public university, L’Università ta’ Malta, has the sole responsibility of producing knowledge – in the case of the present chapter – on the MENA. Yet, as in the UK its

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undergraduate and postgraduate programmes are evaluated by individual external examiners; the university is thereby open to external influences and trends in academia at the programme level. Internally, 5.7 per cent of its academic staff are international, many hailing from the UK and Italy due to language and geographical proximity. With 15 per cent, the Faculty of Arts – where most MENA-related teaching occurs – employs the largest number of international academic staff (Baldacchino, 2020). The student body has become increasingly internationalised, especially at the Faculty of Arts. Of the UM’s student body, 10.3 per cent is international, and the Faculty of Arts has the largest relative percentage among all faculties with a total of 20.5 per cent in 2020. This means that, with respect to teaching the MENA, cultural norms and narratives not specific to Malta are as important as local ones. This is especially true in some postgraduate degree programmes in the area of International Relations that enjoy outside support. Worth mentioning are Swiss and German decade-long financial support for the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (MEDAC), EU support for the Network on Humanitarian Action and the Centre for the Study and Practice of Conflict Resolution, an offspring of MEDAC supported by George Mason University from the United States. One point regularly emphasised by members of the university’s leadership is that the university’s official name is Maltese: ‘L’Università ta’ Malta’, not its English translation. Yet, with some exceptions – such as in law and in Maltese literature and linguistics – the language of instruction in all its classes is English, and a cursory review of its website (www.um.edu.mt) indicates that nearly all of its content is in English. Each year, lecturers receive messages reminding them of the exclusionary usage of English in their interactions with all students, reinforcing a self-image of cosmopolitanism and openness to the world that is typical of international scholarship. Yet, whilst the working language for the university’s academic staff remains English, working language, yet not written language, among its administrative staff is mostly Maltese. This illustrates what Friggieri (1986: 211) identified as two strains in Malta’s literary tradition: one traditional, inward looking and aiming at authenticity, the other modern, seeing itself ‘not (as an) isolated unit in a small community, but as a real part of the whole world’s contemporary literary production’. Similarly, the university has become more open in its academic recruitment strategies, with open calls published on its website. Yet, in EU comparison, it is at the far bottom of all member states with its 5.7 per cent international academic staff, especially compared to other similarly sized states such as Liechtenstein and Luxembourg where international academic staff represent 95 and 65 per cent of the total number of academics, respectively. Also, Germany (11 per cent), Finland (15 per cent), Denmark

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(18 per cent), Belgium (22 per cent), Austria (25 per cent), UK (30 per cent) and the Netherlands (35 per cent) fare higher (European Tertiary Education Register, 2019: 14). Some international scholars have therefore become integrated into its academic community, yet these developments are often based on individual contacts between cosmopolitan academic communities as they develop over time, especially inside the EU and more specifically between the UK, Italy and Malta. However, socio-economic conditions and restrictive international advertisements may reflect a tendency to remain a community of scholars with local, rather than international, roots. All of this means that as overall external influences at UM remain quite limited, knowledge production about the MENA reflects much more the country’s history and boundaries rather than international trends. Furthermore, in Malta UM represents quite a monopoly on knowledge production about the MENA, due to the absence of institutions such as think tanks.

The Middle East and Malta’s turbulent boundary setting The teaching of Arabic was introduced in the early seventeenth century, ordered by the Holy See shortly after the Holy Congregation of Propaganda Fide in 1622 (Cassar, 2011: 126). The Maltese language has deep roots in Siculo-Arabic, and the Vatican saw this as an asset for teaching Arabic in Malta, potentially transforming Malta into an outpost from which to send missionaries to the MENA. The Arabic language missions in Malta were rather unsuccessful: the number of Arabic students never exceeded a handful and, as Cassar (2011: 127) observes, ‘the Catholic authorities were soon to discover that the Maltese were more interested in learning Latin, Italian, and other European languages rather than Arabic’. At the very latest since the siege of Malta by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century,2 anti-Arab and anti-Muslim thought intermingled, creating an important boundary and common strain among the Maltese that their identity is based on not being Arab (Pace, 2006: 123, 126). This comes in addition to a selfethnicisation as ‘Catholic’ which appears, quite remarkably, as a seconddegree ethnicisation and boundary as it follows from being Christian. As remarked by Boussevain (1978: 113), this is one of the remarkable results of indirect rule that empowered traditional parishes, and not local governments across the islands.3 One may also include the fact that the Maltese religious identity is not only celebrated in saintly, local feasts: the shipwreck of St Paul in 60 CE in one of its bays marks Malta as one of the cradles of the birth of Christianity (Boussevain, 1978: 111), mentioned in the New

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Testament (Acts 28:1–10), and is namegiver to one of Valletta’s oldest churches, the Church of St Paul’s Shipwreck. All of this led to linguistic searches of the Maltese language away from its Arabic heritage, into Phoenicians, Carthaginians and other pre-Arabic peoples and cultures, and their languages (Brincat, 2011). A national consensus emerged to name Maltese a Semitic language, disregarding the 300 years when Malta was, together with Sicily, conquered by Arab rulers, and when the local people intermingled with outsiders and were Arabised and Islamised (Grima, 2019). In fact, the Arabic heritage exceeds linguistics, in that flat rooftops and, until recently, a separation by gender4 are reminiscent of the North African cultural space (Boussevain, 1978: 108), illustrating an overlapping cultural sphere around the Mediterranean basin. The focus on Malta’s Phoenician (read: non-Arab) roots was also supported by colonial interests: as a geopolitical unit, Sicily and later Italy had a significant influence on Malta, both of which left Malta with a Roman-inspired cultural heritage that undermined British colonial rule, especially among the country’s Italian-speaking elites in the first half of the twentieth century. The search for Phoenician cultural roots – pushed by Lord Gerald Strickland after the First World War (Cassar, 2011: 125) – was meant to undermine the Roman heritage that had coexisted with other influences. The effect, however, has been to understand the Mediterranean roots of the island in a very distant past, differentiating the people from its Mediterranean surrounding. This may be one of the reasons why the country’s cultural orientation is not geared towards the Mediterranean, but rather towards the north, a point forcefully underlined by Grima (2008) when he argues that the Mediterranean only serves for branding and the perceived attraction for tourists. The foundation of modern Malta by the Knights Hospitaller, a group of knights to whom the Spanish throne granted political authority over Malta in the sixteenth century, as well as the colonisation of Malta by the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century, served this northern orientation since medieval times. The sea with all its dangers and the south’s perceived lawlessness and backwardness, was to be distinguished and maybe feared; in fact, as pointed out by Cassar (2011: 130), the Knights Hospitaller had as their raison d’être to ‘wage perpetual war against the omnipresent Muslim Turk’ in the Mediterranean. In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, depictions of Arab Muslims as lesser people, rapists and violent, marked much of the country’s literary and visual cultural production (Debono, 2009). In contrast to defining identity during the colonial period in Phoenician terms as described above, Malta’s post-independence period was marked by a significant socio-political rapprochement with its Arab roots and specifically with Libya. Malta was one of the first countries to recognise

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the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) as the representative of the Palestinian people. The anti-colonial drive of its controversial prime minister, Dominic Mintoff, made the political elite look for partners in the south and, presumably, alternative funds for its development during the 1970s and 1980s. This was all the more important when Mintoff’s fierce anticolonial political orientation meant restricting and ultimately ending its support for British military personnel on the island, and revenues thereby collected. Visa processing for Libyans was heavily simplified, and Maltese nationals were among the few nationalities that were allowed to own property in Libya during the 1980s and 1990s. The developing partnership with Libya, with Libyans heralded as ‘blood brothers’ (Debono, 2009), became much more than simple economic relations. It included the arrival of many Libyan Arabic instructors and military advisers, as well as the building of a Libyan-funded mosque and garden in Paola from 1978 to 1982. The partnership significantly shaped Malta’s socio-political orientation when, in the 1980s, Arabic was introduced as a compulsory subject in Malta’s schools (in contrast, in today’s national curriculum there is no single compulsory foreign language) and became a requirement for entering university. At UM, this period left a scar when for a number of years socialist-inspired student-worker schemes were introduced and many academics left, a situation that is reflected in many contemporary literary works by authors such as Immanuel Mifsud, Alex Vella Gera and Mark Vella (Reljic, 2014). This period also left UM with an infamous alumnus by the name of Kim Jong Il of North Korea, who appears to have received English language instruction during his holidays in the 1970s. He was a personal guest of then Prime Minister Dominic Mintoff and offered prospects for military training and weapons (Sansone, 2011). The consequence of this over-politicisation of Malta’s connection to Libya appears to be a degree of societal distance: since the 1990s enrolment in the UM’s Arabic programmes has trickled to a dozen each year (Debono, 2009). In university life, there is no Arab-Maltese friendship university club, Palestine friendship group, or groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine that have launched activities including the (controversial) Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign at hundreds of universities elsewhere. Against this background, teaching the MENA in Malta is situated in a context in which the country’s identity formation with respect to the Mediterranean as a boundary is fundamental. The past has divided the small island state into two divergent yet overlapping cultural strands: one strand in which traditions inform the ways of perceiving the country’s place in the Mediterranean and, inter alia, its relations with the Arab Muslim world; this strand coexists with a cosmopolitan outreach, which has made the Maltese look for foreign adventures and opportunities that

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Europe, the Arab world and other regions of the world have traditionally represented, including the British Royal Navy, Libya and Italy throughout the twentieth century (working in oil-rich Libya has allowed a good number of Maltese to reach economic prosperity in the 1980s, for instance). More than that, community life organised along religious lines and parishes became the most fundamental societal structure, and a form of protection against the central government (especially given Malta’s history as a fortress state), maritime dangers, including raids and diseases such as malaria that flourished in coastal areas. In fact, anthropologist Jeremy Boussevain focused on Malta’s village organisation and introduced – as an analytical concept – a we–them binary to frame primary solidarities. Frequent violent clashes between organisers of religious feasts and political party supporters have been explained using this societal principle. An ethnicised sense of patriotism and parochialism may equally be understood through this binary (Boussevain, 1978: 113, 121).5 The university and its student body, uprooted from its traditional Valletta campus and having moved to the hills of Msida in Tal-Qroqq in the late 1960s, is situated in between such village life and the cosmopolitan coastal zones, and combines elements of both cultural strands. As I will outline below, the view of the MENA has been equally informed by some of these attributes.

Curriculum A relatively high number of departments and institutes offer courses with Middle Eastern content. The university boasts a Department of Oriental Studies, which, in the 1990s, offered Near East Studies to which an introduction to Arabic was associated. This is complemented by Cultural Studies programmes in Mediterranean Studies, offered by the Institute for Mediterranean Studies and the Department of Anthropological Science. In fact, one study unit on Mediterranean Studies had been a compulsory unit for all undergraduate students in the Faculty of Arts in the 1990s, reflecting that the History of Mediterranean Civilisation had been a key academic course at UM since the 1960s. A large number of courses and institutions include a geographical Mediterranean outlook as part of their description, including the earlier-mentioned Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies (MEDAC). For the past ten years, the International Relations (IR) Department has had specific faculty who have taught MENA-related courses, with some research interests in the Mediterranean and the Arab world being part of researchers’ academic foci. Teaching the MENA has traditionally involved its regional languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Hebrew, Kurdish, Armenian and Tamazight.

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As a degree programme (Honours), Classical Arabic was introduced in the 2000s at the Department of Oriental Studies (together with two other languages: Hebrew and Chinese). Cultural and regional studies are also included in this department’s course offering, including ‘The Emergence of Islam: A Religious Overview’. Its BA (Honours) programme in Near Eastern Studies focuses extensively on Phoenician and Punic Archaeology, History and Archaeology of the Holy Land, as well as Islam and Medieval Christendom together with readings of ancient Arabic and Hebrew texts. Whilst, over the years, courses with Arabic as a course code have had student numbers rarely above fifteen, two study units stand out: ‘Modern Arab History’ and ‘The Contemporary Arab World, Politics and Culture’, both of which had ninety-four course participants in 2004–5. Whilst this reflects a large interest in the student body with respect to the MENA, it also reflects fluctuations that are visible in enrolment numbers. In fact, this ‘bulge’ in 2004–5 can be associated with statements by the then Minister of Education, Louis Galea, who promoted the study of Arabic, as well as initial interest that came with the offering of a diploma in Arabic during that year (European Movement, 2004). In spite of such interest, what transpires is that the teaching of Arabic has been made more ‘remote’ and ‘oriental’ by combining – under one roof – students who are interested in Chinese, Hebrew, biblical studies and (distant) archaeology. In turn, the Arabic degree programme does not have a link to the instruction of Maltese. In fact, the study of Maltese linguistics does not require the study of classical Arabic, in spite of its genealogical importance. Other observations with respect to institutionalised boundaries are crucial: the teaching of Arabic in a three-year degree programme does not include a year abroad in an Arabic-speaking country. This assumes that it is possible to reach fluency of Arabic without an extended stay in the MENA region. In turn, students of Arabic have the ability to participate in an Erasmus exchange programme in another European country. Given the importance of language in both boundary setting and its deconstruction, some more points are worth noting. Arabic receives a comparable large number of mature students – an instructor’s estimate is around 40 per cent. In addition, about 20 per cent are students for whom an Arabic dialect is native. Many of the mature students appear to see Arabic as a career advancement tool, and view it quite instrumentally. In turn, students who choose Arabic in order to understand more about their own society in the Mediterranean, or to study something unusual as a way of deconstructing the world around them, remain – according to faculty members – an exception.6 In the Department of History, the MENA is covered in its compulsory ‘Contemporary Mediterranean History’, which, amongst other topics, focuses on the history of the Arab–Israeli conflict and North African

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relations. In fact, the objective of this course, as stated in the course syllabus, is ‘to support students’ knowledge of recent international history with the inclusion of a strong Mediterranean component, in line with the Mediterranean focus and tradition of the History Department’. An elective course on ‘Christians, Jews and Muslims in Medieval Society’ illustrates a tendency to ethnicise societies in the Mediterranean, focusing on Spain, Sicily/Malta and the Near East. In IR, the study of the MENA has not been a traditional focus point among local (Maltese) scholars. However, Malta’s relations with Libya, and its proximity to the geopolitical space that is the Mediterranean, made scholars continuously look at its southern neighbours as a way of comparing Malta’s own politics with that of the southern Mediterranean. This is why there has been a continuous interest in MENA affairs, including among students, that warranted designated positions and classes as Middle Eastern. Interestingly, in its recent history two instructors who specialised on MENA affairs were of international origin, and in an interview one instructor of an introductory course to Middle East politics explicitly excluded Malta’s own relationship with the MENA and Libya in the course content. In contrast, it must be pointed out that a focus on Palestine/Israel remains highly relevant in MENA teaching, to the extent that the conflict appears in history classes, as separate study units in anthropology, as well as in the introductory courses in security studies and Middle East politics. Given the overlapping political interest in decolonisation that crosses the boundary of the Mediterranean Sea, this reflects a point of departure for Malta’s shared, contemporary Mediterranean identity (see for instance Calleja Ragonesi, 2019). Boundaries and self-conception also find their place in titles of study units such as ‘religion and secularism in international relations’, bringing in strong historical references to Malta’s own political struggle over the influence of the church in politics and society (Baldacchino, 2018). The course ‘Introduction to the Contemporary Arab-Muslim World’ feeds into overlapping and historically embedded notions of Arab-ness and Islam and their importance for Malta’s geopolitical identity. While these implicit constructions of identity find their ways into the curriculum, there are other, quite powerful factors at play. One is the importance of Malta’s self-conception in social science scholarship as that of a small state and island. In fact, UM houses a prestigious Institute of Small Island Studies, and leading members of its research faculty have been very prolific writers in the scholarship on small states (Baldacchino, 2018). In comparison, whilst some researchers have written on migration, given its politically divisive character they also faced challenges (especially on social media) and some feared not being able to sustain their employment if they continued.7

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Enrolment profiles Since 2002, now that enrolment data has been digitalised and is accessible for analysis, 6,442 students have been enrolled in classes in which a MENA language, the MENA region, Islam, North Africa, or any of the countries that are usually grouped together as MENA are explicitly mentioned in the course title. This compares to 72,867 students that were enrolled in study units that connote Europe or any of the countries that make up the European continent. 658 MENA related study units have been offered since 2002. As can be seen from Figure 4.1, by far the largest number of students have taken courses with study codes that denote Arabic (linguistics or literature) as the discipline. Over the past eighteen years 2,501 students registered in 327 study units. Archaeology and theology arrive in clear second and third place, followed by Hebrew. Among the social, legal and historical disciplines, it is anthropology that has registered the highest number of students (415), followed by IR (201), Mediterranean, Spanish and Latin American Studies (176) and history (156). A note of caution is advised in this ‘head count’ and this macro view on teaching the MENA – the region may very well be treated in history, IR and other Mediterranean study units without it appearing evident in the course title. Furthermore, it may also be that anthropological study units do not hesitate to mention geographical units in cultural denominations, as the focus of study (culture) may not attempt to be as universalist or comparativist as is often the case in International Relations. Nevertheless, a trend of which degree programme covers the MENA appears quite clear: Others International Relations Law Philosophy Mediterranean, Latin American, Spanish… History Theology Hebrew Archaeology Arabic Anthropology 0

500

1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000

Source: Author’s calculations from enrolment (2002–20) UM’s Registrar’s Figure 4.1 own Student enrolment at the data University ofobtained Malta from in study units withOffice.

MENA content, 2002–20. Source: Author’s own calculations from enrolment data (2002–20) obtained from UM’s Registrar’s Office.

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it is Arabic that is considered by the largest number of students as an asset for their careers and study interests, followed by archaeology. Together, these degrees make up for a substantial student intake over the past eighteen years (even if overall enrolment remains low). Theology – given its importance in Malta’s history and socio-cultural landscape, in that religious identity played a key role in national identity – covers the third most important way of looking at the MENA with its focus on religion. A closer look at social sciences and humanities reveals that anthropological approaches (compared to IR approaches) to the MENA are dominant in this subject area (Figure 4.2). This is an important observation in two ways. On the one hand, Maltese culture possesses a recognisable Arabic heritage in family names, towns, architecture and language. In turn, its ‘northern’ orientation is detectable in first names: Maltese first names have become very rare, and until 2020 the public registry has not allowed writing them in Maltese spelling in official documents, mentioning technical reasons (Micallef, 2020). In turn, English, Italian and French first names like Joe, Chris, Michelle, Edward, Mario, Isabelle, Pierre or Amy are omnipresent. The use of English in education and especially among children raises specific cultural questions with respect to the Maltese language’s Arabic heritage, in which similarity and difference are identity markers. On the other hand, the lack of geopolitical, bilateral engagement with and in the MENA, with the notable short-lived exception with Libya during the 1980s, meant that whilst foreign policy with respect to the MENA remains geopolitically important and a source of income that can, in the case of its citizenship by investment scheme, easily be earned, it is not based on a national strategy. Natural resource procurement, rich cultural links, or labour procurement Others International Relations Law Philosophy Mediterranean, Latin American, Spanish… History Anthropology 0

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Source: Author’s own calculations from enrolment dataunits (2002–20) from UM’s Registrar’s Figure 4.2  Student enrolment in study withobtained MENA content in socialOffice.

sciences, law and humanities. Source: Author’s own calculations from enrolment data (2002–20) obtained from UM’s Registrar’s Office.

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strategies that characterise postcolonial relations between Europe and many Middle Eastern countries are all absent from the country’s foreign policy orientation. In fact, the country’s bilateral development cooperation programmes and international cultural contacts often ‘jump’ over the MENA to reach out to communities in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Philippines, as part of strategic links that the church has built with Christian communities in these countries (Arena, 2020). In this respect, it is important to note that the geopolitical space that Malta finds itself in is dominated by one single international issue: irregular migration patterns across the Mediterranean.8 In turn, it has been to this issue that, in recent years, teaching has turned its attention. The year 2012 saw the launching of the successful interdisciplinary MA in (International) Humanitarian Action by the IR department that is one of the most successful MA programs in the Faculty of Arts.9 It would, however, be simplistic to conclude that Malta’s geopolitical space, dominated as it is by the issue of irregular migration, is the primary factor for success of this MA, or at the origin of its creation. In fact, faculty links between the IR department and the University of Bochum (Germany) created the incentive to develop an MA in 2012 with the view of joining the ‘Network on Humanitarian Action’ (NOHA) consortium in 2014. This would allow UM to benefit from larger, network-based admissions to its MA programme, including scholarship holders from around the world based on the EU’s Erasmus Mundus programme. Indeed, it has been the European Commission that has supported NOHA (and not a national government), because of a need to provide more training in humanitarian action (as opposed to development expertise) that the EU found itself in dire need of. Hence, EU-linked networks of faculty and the needs of the EU have been fundamental in the success and support of this MA, reflected in international admissions and global alumni with students hailing from Brazil, the United States, Vietnam, Ghana and a large number of other countries around the world. Whilst some local students have joined the MA in humanitarian action, given the dire and perceived local need for such a programme, the market of local admissions was initially saturated and is now fluctuating. Interestingly, Malta’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion has supported this programme through scholarship schemes for Tunisian and Palestinian nationals that reach out to the MENA in new ways: Tunisian and Palestinian students have applied in large numbers and have joined this highly successful MA programme. It would, however, again be misleading to conclude that the ministry seeks to ­establish a h ­ umanitarian field with respect to the MENA, and its own positioning in this respect. First, the number of scholarships is quite small – varying between one and two per year. Second, UM does not have a large number of taught MAs that allow for easy academic access. And third, the

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relevance of humanitarian action is easily justified in the context of ongoing violence in the occupied Palestinian territories and irregular migration coming from Tunisia. Student enrolment numbers only affect realised outcomes from a macro perspective. Lecturers at UM have considerable autonomy in deciding the content of classes, the names of study units, as well as reading lists, textbooks, audio-visual material, because of the university’s approach to academic freedom that includes teaching. This means that lecturers may include their preferences in their teaching, reflecting their own identities and, concomitantly, scholarly interests and traditions. With regard to the MENA, this has been discernible in two study units offered by the IR department that had a direct and an indirect religious-ethnic component reflecting that of the lecturer. ‘Religion and Secularism in International Relations’ introduced by an ethnic Middle Eastern lecturer, and reflecting this lecturer’s research interests, emphasises religion as a unit of analysis that is contrasted with secularisation. Similarly, ‘The Contemporary Arab-Muslim World’ designates shared characteristics of Arabs and Muslims in the analysis of the region. Conversely, my own comparativist background with almost two decades of teaching experiences in North Africa and the Arab Gulf region meant the introduction of subregional study units: ‘Government and Politics in North Africa’, ‘Government and Politics in the Persian Gulf’. Clearly, each designation includes epistemological boundaries, and each puts a particular emphasis on what the MENA stands for: religion and ethnicity, on one hand, that can be taught together and that combine analytical perspectives, or (separate) geographical units, on the other.

Pedagogy This last section aims to relate issues of boundaries and the we–them binary to classroom pedagogy and ethics at UM. From the above analysis of UM’s curriculum and study unit enrolment, it appears clear that few students who take classes with a MENA content do so because of a programmatic interest in the MENA, or because Malta’s geopolitical space features the MENA heavily. In addition, many of the classes in the disciplines where MENArelated topics are taught, notably anthropology and IR, feature a high number of exchange students through the EU’s Erasmus programme and Malta’s northern geopolitical positioning. In fact, because the language of instruction at UM is English, the university has been particularly attractive for many EU exchange students. As a consequence, instructors face a situation in which exposure to the MENA through prior study in history, geography or travel is low (some children of mixed couples, especially of Libyan

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origin, are exceptions).10 In turn, stereotypes and headlines about Islam and the MENA have a strong impact on students, and meet a significant local we–them binary. When I conduct meetings with high school students and their teachers about what global fears they feel concerned about, Islamic terrorism features very high in spite of the fact that the country has not suffered any of the attacks that many northern countries have experienced. In this light, the role of an educator can be crucial. In Álvaro Morcillo Laiz’s (2019: 226) reading of Max Weber’s thought: ‘Rather than seducing students and encouraging them to adopt professors’ preferences, teachers can and should help students understand the meaning of their actions and recognize the values underlying them.’ With ‘fear’ (of the MENA) being such a deep-rooted emotion, and a we–them binary embedded in cultural attitudes and institutions, it is all the more important to focus on recognising underlying values of action and thought. This also means recognising that an identity in which religion is prominent, and an ethnicisation of politics that is a colonial byproduct, lend themselves to the common view of analysing the MENA as exceptional. Two approaches, one emphasising the role of Islam in understanding MENA politics and society, and the other one countering it head on, are two common ways of approaching the issue of exceptionalism in both teaching and scholarship (Haddad and Schwedler, 2013: 213). Mandaville (2013), in his explanation of countering exceptionalism, offers a Weberian teacher-centric pedagogical approach that aims at demystifying the complex realities of religion in politics. Calling it ‘practising counter-exceptionalism’, this is built on three teaching objectives that are content related and that deconstruct any binary construction: first, Islam is not monolithic; second, Islamic groups are social movements and political parties; third, the interface of religion and politics is not unique to the Muslim world. In the case of UM’s undergraduate programmes, the common challenges in the practice of counter-exceptionalism are amplified by fears and historical narratives as well as the absence of study-abroad semesters in the MENA. This is because Mandaville’s objectives can only be coherently included in the curriculum when students learn from a variety of cases the complex realities on the ground, creating a type of student-centred decolonisation of the curriculum from the bottom-up. Different instructors may adopt multiple ways of dealing with this, either by including writers of different origins in their reading list(s) with the aim of decolonising the curriculum, or by using everyday examples from regions to bring the content of life situations into the classroom, emphasising similarity across  cultural spaces. In the case of the NOHA MA in Humanitarian Action, the global availability of scholarships through Erasmus Mundus

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has been fundamental in enriching the classroom experience. By drawing on shared life situations, instructors report that they aim to illustrate similarity across cultural spaces. At the undergraduate level, however, for students whose academic exposure to the Middle East is limited (as is often the case among Erasmus students), Mandaville’s lecturing of content may be a useful guide in conversations yet does not provide enough guidance for actual classroom organisation, especially if this is to become studentcentred. At UM, some instructors put the linguistic similarity in discussions to the forefront. One of the best known Maltese historians, Godfrey Wettinger, put as the first question to his students, ‘Are we Arabs?’ as an introduction to lecturing about the Arab presence on the Maltese islands (Bishtawi, 2017). This is why in Malta’s study context, addressing the many preconceptions head on is, in my observation, an important alternative to lecturing about them. I derive this from Meera Sabaratnam’s (2011: 784) ‘dialogic mode of enquiry in IR’ in which she argues for more positionality to decrease the subject–object stratification in teaching. In this context, contemporary knowledge about politics shifts from year to year and provides for a large number of contexts for ethical positions to be explicitly addressed. One class that I developed, ‘War and Peace in the Middle East’, focuses on a number of key issues and events that spark preconceptions and controversies. One student activity is to orally argue in favour of and against the following, reductionist political positions: ‘Jerusalem is the de facto capital of Israel. Any manoeuvres that aim to deny this only hinder the prospects for peace’; ‘Given the history of the 1990s and the nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, its toppling was the best thing that ever happened to Iraq’; ‘Civil war in Lebanon will continue until the country is split into a Christian and Muslim state’; ‘Syria should not have yielded to pressure to leave Lebanon in 2005’; ‘Russia’s 2015 military involvement in the Syrian war has brought back the hope of finally resolving the crisis’. By doing so, students bring their positionality into the classroom, allowing for these to be debated in public. Another strategy is to allow students to bring media representations of the MENA into the classroom through unmoderated blogs that they write and comment on. The activity is for an individual to write a blog of about 300 words about an issue, derived from a newspaper article that has caught their attention, and to ask five other students to comment on the content – explicitly allowing subjective evaluations (even if supervised by the instructor and the participation of other students). In one such blog, a student comments on the issue of the right to life, drawing on the killing of eleven Jewish congregates in Pittsburgh in 2018 and the hostile media representation it triggered, and comparing it to the everyday killing

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of Yemenis and Iraqis that do not make headlines. Whilst this point is quite common and the issue of media representation a useful focal point for student debates as they relate to the boundaries of our value systems, especially as it pertains to we–them binaries, having a blog in which students themselves lead the discussion allows for the appropriation of arguments. Here, the response by one student, ‘I totally agree with you, especially about the points made in regards to the media’, illustrates the immediate pedagogical effect of making boundaries and positionality part of the discussion with respect to the Middle East. This represents a step away from the teacher-centred lecturing of course content and moves students to reappropriate the inherent positionality that studying the MENA entails.

Conclusion This chapter analysed how undergraduate teaching of the MENA at L’Università ta’ Malta has been shaped by the country’s location in the Mediterranean, its linguistic and cultural relations with the Arab world, and its colonial and postcolonial history. It argued that identity formation has significantly shaped its outlook towards the MENA, and that this identity formation included important boundary-setting mechanisms with respect to the Mediterranean. Interestingly, the complexity of this issue is indicated by an emphasis of not being an Arab people and by having had Arabic as its only compulsory foreign language in its national school curriculum and as a university entrance requirement in the 1980s. Whilst an outlook to the MENA exists in more contemporary times, it is reflected in cultural and archaeological terms, and the popularity of archaeology, Arabic and anthropology over geopolitical interests in the Mediterranean. In fact, with its geopolitical interests in the Mediterranean being dominated by questions of irregular migration, it has been the MA in humanitarian action that has generated a comparatively large proportion of international students. At the level of pedagogy, this chapter argued for the inclusion of tasks and blogs in student activity, in order to use students’ positionality in course development. This aims to address the overarching theme of this edited volume: that knowledge production about the MENA is centred on ­ centuries-old hierarchical boundaries, and that deconstructing these can draw in students’ positionality as an important reflexive tool. As most MENA-related course content is not based on a coherent MENA degree and curriculum, especially with student mobility programmes making it more difficult to provide this coherence, such tasks appear to be an alternative to

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Mandaville’s content-related approach. Clearly though, the core objective in Middle East Studies – that of the demystification of the MENA – remains a key objective in teaching local and international students. Consequently, practising counter-exceptionalism together with ­inclusion of Middle Eastern perspectives in reading lists remain vital, especially as these help diminish any we–them binaries that appear as foundational in the objectification of the Middle East on the Maltese islands.

Acknowledgements The author wishes to express his gratitude to the students of the MA in Mediterranean Studies (2020–21) and to colleagues at the Faculty of Arts for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts and presentations in an informal session held in April 2021 at the Department of International Relations, University of Malta.

Notes  1 A historical exception are the small nominal possessions in the sixteenth century in Libya and the Caribbean under the Knights Hospitaller (Grech, 2016).  2 The four-month siege serves as a founding myth of the Maltese nation, when 3,000 Maltese soldiers and 3,000 international knights and their servants defended the island against the 40,000-men-strong Ottoman fleet. The end of the siege is annually commemorated during a public holiday on 8 September, called Victory Day, and during carnival.  3 This linguistic mishap may in fact be a colonial legacy in that colonial rule ethnicised a good number of its colonial possessions, from British India to the Persian Gulf all the way to Lebanon, Palestine, Morocco and Malta.  4 Maltese party politics appear to be dominated by men. As of 2020, out of eighteen members of the national government, only two portfolios were/are held by women. One notable yet only symbolic exception is the female, ceremonial president, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca (2014–19). This can be contrasted to the high-profile of Maltese female politicians working at EU institutions, such as Helena Dalli (European Commissioner for Equality) and Roberta Metsola (President of the European Parliament). Similar observations apply to research and science (number of female professors) and other areas of political and economic life.  5 As an anecdote, I may include references by an instructor of the Maltese language who repeatedly referred to Arabic and Maltese in precisely this personalised form of we and them: ‘We got this [word] from them.’   6 Given that only about ten students enrol each year, these observations are subject to fluctuations.

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 7 A recent petition on www.change.org calls for a generalised ban on all rescued arrivals at Maltese ports. Other petitions in April 2020 called on the prime ­minister to open the ports when they were closed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media attacks on activists and university academics are f­ requent (Mayo, 2020; University of Malta Academic Staff Association, 2020).  It must be pointed out that the university employs a large number of part-time lecturers, and that not all full-time positions are part of the university’s Collective Agreement, which protects the employment status of academic staff.   8 Two appeals on 14 and 30 April 2020 by Minister of Foreign Affairs Evarist Bartolo to the EU and to other European countries highlight this point (Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, 2020).   9 In 2020, thirty-five students were enrolled in this taught MA. 10 It appears, though, that this variable is subject to incremental change in the coming years, as the number of Maltese nationals (and residents) of migrant background has experienced significant growth over the past ten years.

References Arena, J. (2020) ‘Oħloq Tbissima will raise funds for missions in Peru, Pakistan, the Philippines’, Times of Malta, 16 July, available at https://timesofmalta. com/articles/view/ohloq-tbissima-will-raise-funds-for-missions-in-peru-pakistanthe.805233 (accessed 26 July 2022). Baldacchino, G. (2018) The Routledge International Handbook of Island Studies (Abingdon: Routledge). Baldacchino, G. (2020) ‘Internationalisation at the University of Malta’, unpublished document (Valletta: University of Malta, Office of the Pro-Rector). Bishtawi, A. (2017) ‘Adel Bishtawi talks to Professor Godfrey Wettinger, Malta’s outstanding authority on medieval history’, Adel Bishtawi (website), 11 August, available at http://bishtawiadel.com/2017/08/11/dissecting-history-the-wetting er-way (accessed 26 July 2022). Boussevain, J. (1978) ‘The Maltese islands’, in A. Sutherland (ed.), Face Values: Some Anthropological Themes (London: British Broadcasting Corporation), pp. 108–36. Brincat, G. (2011) Maltese and Other Languages: A Linguistic History of Malta (Santa Verena: Midsea Books). Calleja Ragonesi, I. (2019) Democracy in Southern Europe: Colonialism, International Relations and Europeanization. From Malta to Cyprus (London: I. B. Tauris). Cassar, C. (2011) ‘Malta and the study of Arabic in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries’, Turkish Historical Review, 2:2, 125–54. Debono, J. (2009) ‘Blood brothers in arms’, Malta Today, 29 April, available at http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/04/29/t6.html (accessed 26 July 2022). European Movement (2004) ‘Arabic at long last’, Times of Malta, 8 August, available at https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/arabic-at-long-last.115681 (accessed 26 July 2022).

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European Tertiary Education Register (2019) Internationalisation of Academic Staff in European Higher Education, Analytical Report 1, available at www.joan​ neum.at/fileadmin/user_upload/ETER_AnalyticalReport_01_final.pdf (accessed 26 July 2022). Friggieri, O. (1986) ‘Malta and the poetics of national awareness’, Revue de Littérature Comparée, 60:2, 207–18. Grech, I. (2016) Hospitaller Malta’s Communication System with the Mediterranean World in the Early Seventeenth Century (Valletta: University of Malta Library), www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/22090/1/17PHDHST002.pdf (accessed 31 May 2021). Grima, A. (2008) ‘The taste of the Mediterranean and other kinnies’, Forum21 – European Journal on Child and Youth Research, 2:12, 22–30.  Grima, J. F. (2019) ‘The Arab conquest of Malta in 870’, Times of Malta, 25 August, pp. 54–5. Grindel, S. (2015) ‘Educating the nation. German history textbooks since 1900: Representations of colonialism’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines (MEFRIM), 127:2. Haddad, B. and J. Schwedler (2013) ‘Teaching about the Middle East since the Arab Uprising’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 46:2, 211–16. Laiz, Á. M. (2019) ‘Introduction: Max Weber’s Science as a vocation as a political failure’, Journal of Classical Sociology, 19:3, 223–8. Langlitz, N. (2019) ‘Psychedelic science as cosmic play, psychedelic humanities as perennial polemics? Or why we are still fighting over Max Weber’s Science as a vocation’, Journal of Classical Sociology, 19:3, 275–89. Mandaville, P. (2013) ‘Islam and exceptionalism in American political discourse’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 46:2, 235–9. Mayo, P. (2020) ‘The scourge of racism’, Times of Malta, 14 June, available at https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/the-scourge-of-racism-peter-mayo.​ 798015 (accessed 26 July 2022). Micallef, K. (2020) ‘Not being able to give Maltese names to your children is shameful’, Times of Malta, 28 April, available at https://timesofmalta.com/articles/ view/not-being-able-to-give-maltese-names-to-your-children-is-shameful.788666 (accessed 26 July 2022). Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (2020) ‘Message from the Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Evarist Bartolo on the migration crisis in the Mediterranean’, 14 April, available at https://foreignandeu.gov.mt/en/ Government/Press%20Releases/Pages/message-from-the-Minister-for-Foreignand-European-Affairs-Evarist-Bartolo-on-the-migration-crisis-in-the-Mediterra​ nean.aspx (accessed 26 July 2022). Pace, M. (2006) The Politics of Regional Identity: Meddling in the Mediterranean (London: Routledge). Reljic, T. (2014) ‘Another brick in the wall’, Malta Today, 29 October, available at www.maltatoday.com.mt/arts/books/45485/another_brick_in_the_wall#. XyhLNC1h06i (accessed 26 July 2022). Russell, B. (1916) ‘Education as a political institution’, The Atlantic, 117, 750–80. Sabaratnam, M. (2011) ‘IR in dialogue. But can we change the subjects? A typology of decolonising strategies for the study of world politics’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39:3, 781–803.

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Sansone, K. (2011) ‘The dear Leader’s secret stay in Malta’, Times of Malta, 20 December, available at https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/The-Dear-Leaders-secret-stay-in-Malta.399242 (accessed 26 July 2022). University of Malta Academic Staff Association (2020) ‘UMASA condemns attacks on academic’s professionalism’, 22 April, available at www.umasa.org.mt/ en/press-release-details/umasa-condemns-attacks-on-academics-professionalism (accessed 26 July 2022). Weber, M. (1919) Wissenschaft als Beruf (Munich: Duncker & Humblodt).

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5 Teaching Europe in Palestine: resisting the ‘new normal’? Asem Khalil

Introduction In 2010, the German Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) offered through its Ramallah office an additional support grant for Birzeit University’s Higher Education programmes. The beneficiary was to be the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies (IALIIS) and its master’s programme in International Studies – the oldest MA programme in Palestine, established in 1994 as a follow-up from the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The suggestion I made at the time was to build an elective, interdisciplinary course on the European Union (EU), offered mainly by Palestinian scholars in cooperation with German and European counterparts. The result became a true success: since 2010, the IALIIS has offered the course almost yearly, and even upheld it when KAS’s support ended, as students kept their interest in learning about the EU (interviews 1, 2). The attractiveness of the idea was to enrich the existing MA programme with a specific course on the EU, supposed to offer historical, institutional and legal perspectives on what this partly supranational, sui generis body went through whilst becoming an increasingly active actor in internal and  external affairs (interview 2). Besides its academic value, such a course would offer students useful insights for their future  career,  particularly understanding the financial involvement of the EU and its member states in the so-called ‘Peace Process’, especially the  EU’s role within the  ‘Middle East Quartet’ (Khalil and Del Sarto, 2015: 139) – a role that  has often been perceived as a much-needed ‘balanced position’  compared to the  United States – although far from trying to replace the US as the main external actor in the Middle East (Interview 3). Ten years later, educators and researchers interviewed for this research confirm the overwhelming acceptance of the idea that teaching Europe in Palestine is important. Within this context, I assess the manner in which

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Europe is taught at Palestinian universities, and how this has affected Palestinian universities’ positioning in relation to the ‘new normal’ – the acceptance of the two-state solution with Israel as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords. ‘Europe’ is thus used as a case study to problematise the overall implications for present and future higher education in Palestine. I will start with an overview of the approach the European Community (EC)/EU has taken towards the Palestinian issue with a critical appraisal of the ‘Normative Power Europe’ (NPE) framework. It emerges that the EC/ EU has been gradually working on its own identity at a global scale (the ‘we’) while normalising its ‘other’, the Palestinians in this case – although always in conjunction to another ‘other’: Israel. Israel’s existence and security remain central in any EU plan of support, whether financial or political (interview 4), namely in the ‘two-state solution with an independent, democratic, viable and contiguous Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbours’ (EEAS, 2016). I will then demonstrate how Palestine has been exceptional in its lack of a codified higher education policy, and how the passage to the ‘new normal’ in the post-Oslo context led to efforts at institutionalising higher education without undermining universities’ prior independence. The West Bank’s three leading universities serve as cases in point: Birzeit, al-Najah and al-Quds. This chapter draws upon existing literature, including primary sources from Palestinian universities, enriched by thirteen interviews: three interviews with educators from Birzeit University and al-Najah University in early 2020, mainly focused on quantitative data from existing Europerelated study programmes, and ten interviews with researchers not directly involved in teaching, in the second half of 2020. These interviews explored the reasons behind those programmes and possible acceptance of their implementation. Interviewees in the second round were approached in a semi-structured manner, with generic opening questions and then more specific follow-up enquiries. Interestingly, despite the clear difference between the two sets of interviewees, instructors and students often talked about Europe and the EU interchangeably even if they were aware that they are not synonymous. Also, they often regroup under ‘Europe’ what in reality is individual European countries, seeing that the EU’s foreign policy is still dependent on its member states. This is why one of the interviewees insisted that when she teaches about Europe she always includes a study of bilateral relations with individual EU member states, and the role they played individually in what happened to (historical) Palestine (interview 5). Following their logic, I too will use ‘Europe’ in the generic sense, unless a specific reference to the EU or a certain member state is necessary.

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Palestinian perceptions of Europe Investigating the way Europe is taught at Palestinian universities adds to scholarship on the external perceptions of Normative Power Europe (NPE). According to Müller (2019: 252), external perceptions help one to assess the way local actors respond to EU peacebuilding practices. For Palestine, this research builds on prior studies, especially by Chaban, Miskimmon and O’Loughlin (2019), Müller (2019), Pace (2010) and Persson (2017). Although existing literature suggests that Palestinians perceive Europe as more favourable to Palestinian positions vis-à-vis Israel, they also tend to believe that the EU ‘has a marginal political role to play in the conflict, besides its generous economic assistance to the Palestinians’ (Persson, 2017: 1418). This is in line with the often-used description of the EU as ‘payer, not player’ (Bouris, 2014: 71; Persson, 2018: 317). It is widely believed that the EU will not sacrifice its strategic alliance with the United States for the sake of the Palestinians (interview 8) – a sense of ‘justice’ or ‘fairness’ towards the Palestinians is no longer expected under these presumptions (interview 3). As interviewee 6 bluntly stated: ‘Europe couldn’t care any less about Palestine. They care about Israel and its reputation.’ Hass (2021) put it simply: ‘The Europeans don’t really care about the Palestinians either.’ However, the EU has become ‘one of the world’s – and also Palestine’s – biggest donors in operations related to both development and conflict resolution. It has emerged as a major actor in regional and global peacebuilding’ (Richmond, Björkdahl and Kappl, 2011: 449). Notably, ‘the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [is] one of the longest, sustained cases of active EU involvement in world politics’ (Persson, 2018: 317, own addition), and the resolution of this conflict through a multilateral approach ‘is a strategic priority for Europe’ (Council of the European Union, 2003/2009: 36). Yet, this happens less through power-based bargaining but rather through what Ian Manners (2002) has famously coined ‘Normative Power Europe’ (NPE). ‘Normative power’ is sometimes confused with ‘soft power’. NPE refers to the focus on norms in the EU’s relations with third states, while ‘soft power’ actively influences third countries with civilian, but vigorous means. The presumed failure of the EU’s soft power in the region – its impact on Israel has been minimal – doesn’t affect the EU’s attractiveness to third countries as a normative model: for its economic prosperity, its abolished borders and its successful internal conflict resolution. In this sense, NPE has nothing to do with what the EU does for Palestine/Israel but to what extent Israelis and Palestinians may use the EU as an example to resolve their own conflict. As the interviews conducted for this research partly confirm, there is widespread confusion between these two different frameworks of analysis. It is therefore of primary importance to keep a clear distinction between

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these concepts, not least during discussions within Palestinian universities, since this distinction is crucial for a differentiated assessment of the EU’s actual influence on third countries (Laïdi, 2008). Without denying that the EU’s self-representation as a ‘force for good’ in the transformation of border conflicts may ‘effectively mask the power inherent in EU involvement in conflicts’ (Pace, 2008: 203), NPE shifts the actorness away from the EU towards those third countries. As Stetter (2003: 153) stipulated, EU democratisation support in Palestine was unlikely, if not impossible to happen ‘without the political will of the Palestinian leadership and Palestinian civil society’. In such a context, shaping conceptions of what is ‘normal’ depends on others’ perceptions (Whitman, 2011: 21). Here, some researchers conclude that Palestinians generally view the EU ‘as a legitimate model for conflict resolution and for defending Palestinian rights’ because it ‘is widely associated with positive values such as diversity, openness, democracy, and human rights’ (Müller, 2019: 262). Yet, scholars also attest to the EU’s limited normative power due to the way it treated Hamas following their democratic victory in the 2006 elections (Pace, 2007; Springborg, 2009: 14ff.; Pace and Pallister-Wilkins, 2018). This was interpreted in Palestine as ‘an imposition of a severe and inhumane regime of sanctions by the EU against Palestinians under occupation’ (Pace, 2008: 214). One interviewee referred to the EU as ‘lying’ about democracy when they did not accept the result of the 2006 elections (Interview 4); another reminded us that the EU had led Hamas to understand – before the  ­elections  – that they would welcome Hamas as a legitimate representative actor of Palestinians in the case of their victory, but then changed course and attitude once this actually materialised (interview 5). In short, ‘what the Europeans did to Hamas after they won the elections was completely undemocratic, and unacceptable, it’s stupid and responsible for the mess we’re having in Palestine’ (interview 6). As a result, Palestinians became more critical towards the inconsistencies they observe between the EU’s normative aspirations and its actual foreign policy conduct (Müller, 2019: 251). The existing inconsistencies reflect the lack of a coherent EU foreign policy, not least resulting from its complex sui generis composition as a multifaceted actor in which EU institutions and member states pursue their own (often separate) agendas. Many EU member states tend to favour Israel for historical reasons; others are seen more on the Palestinian side. Despite its efforts to harmonise its external policies – not least through the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS) in 2009 – the 2012 debate in the UN General Assembly concerning the State of Palestine as a potential UN member state illustrated perfectly how ‘the members of

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the EU had a great difficulty coordinating their voting behavior’ (Gianniou, 2016: 75). Comparable cases have been the position of EU member states towards Palestine’s application and eventual admittance to UNESCO in 2011 and their disjointed message regarding the UN’s fact-finding mission on the 2008 Gaza conflict, specifically the Goldstone Report (Huber, 2021). The following section analyses how higher education in Palestine has reflected and dealt with this ‘new normal’ that followed the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Palestinian higher education Universities have important functions in any society, especially for the future of the younger generation. Chaim Weizmann, a leading Zionist who became the first president of the State of Israel, said in 1925: It is essential that the University should fit into Palestine, become part of it and grow together with it. In order to ensure the latter, the institutes must not only play an important part in developing and fostering science and art in their abstract forms, but, as a living organism, must take part in the actual development of the country. The University must lead the way in solving the important problems which present themselves in connection with the reconstruction of the country. (Roberts, Joergensen and Newman, 1984: 15)

Such words reverberate loudly when reflecting on Palestinian universities today. They offer settings where ‘students can experience the crucial elements of democracy, participation, responsibility, and critical inquiry’ (Baramki, 1987: 20). On campus, students practise their right to speak freely, and they elect their representatives freely and democratically. As such, universities contribute to the steadfastness of Palestine’s society (Jad et al., 2019: VI). Higher education in Palestine offers a forum in which faculty members and students have a role in the liberation of their land(s) from settler colonialism. In the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), education is ‘simultaneously used as a tool by repressive regimes and a medium for protest by the oppressed. [… T]hose in power have focused on maintaining the status quo, while Palestinians have used education to “promote social change and to liberate themselves and their land”’ (Nicolai, 2007: 31, own omission and addition). Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (2000: 83) explained the PLO’s (Palestine Liberation Organization) interest in supporting and financing universities with the underlying sentiment that: national institutions of higher learning can contribute immeasurably to the articulation and development of a national consciousness. They can provide

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training and development of Palestinian society itself and can strengthen the social and cultural foundation of a society torn asunder by a unique military occupation imposed by a settler colonial state.

However, the level of freedom, with universities being a place for critical thinking and research, seems to be in decline (Interview 8). One way to explain this observation is often heard on the university campus: universities, where change starts and extends to the surrounding society, are no longer pioneering institutions. Instead, they are simply a reflection of society at large. Indeed, universities are at the receiving end of the Palestinian education system that suffered during the first Intifada (1987) as a result of the various prolonged closures (Abu-Lughod, 2000: 88). Israel’s targeting of universities and university students did not come to an end with the Oslo ‘Peace’ Process and the establishment of the PA. In recent years, it has become even more aggressive. For young Palestinians especially, ‘the recent increase was only a continuation of a broader Israeli policy of repression, criminalising Palestinian students who were organising since the very beginning of the occupation’ (Muaddi, 2020). Internal problems, such as lack of funding and development perspectives, reduce students’ overall spaces of freedom and liberties further. In fact, the PA’s authoritarian characteristics are being increasingly entrenched, in the absence of accountability, periodic elections and peaceful transfer of powers. Israeli suppression and PA authoritianism, ‘[a]ll this raised the level of anger to a degree that violence replaced reason amongst some students’ (Baramki, 2010b: 19). Eventually, student factions within the university increasingly became a miniature of the outside division between Palestinian factions, most obviously between Hamas and Fatah. During the 1990s, and given Palestine’s lack of statehood, Palestinian higher education institutions remained largely unregulated and subject to spontanous initiatives. Birzeit University was the first Palestinian university to develop two four-year programmes in 1972, a Bachelor in Arts and a Bachelor in Sciences. Bethlehem University followed suit in 1973 and alNajah University in 1977.1 In the 1970s there was no public or governmental body that officially recognised or granted accreditation in the OPT. A Council for Higher Education was established in 1977 to coordinate and standardise higher education in the West Bank (Nicolai, 2007: 39) but refused any cooperation with the Israeli military or civil administration. Therefore, Palestinian universities were established during (and notably, despite!) Israel’s occupation: The Palestinians were […] able to overcome many of the impediments to study created by the occupation. Those who oversaw higher education understood

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Teaching Europe in Palestine 109 particulars of Palestinian society and managed to effectively administer it, despite both their limited resources and the collective punishment measures of the occupation authorities. (Abu-Lughod, 1996: 23, own omission)

Accordingly, universities were perceived as a concrete expression of the nation’s resistence to this occupation: Palestinian students did not have to leave the OPT any longer to attend universities in other (mostly Arab) countries, which often meant that they had no possibility to return to the OPT after finishing their studies. In fact, the Israeli occupation used to impose on Palestinians ‘exit permits’, meaning that Palestinians travelling abroad had to show up before the permitted time limit for their stay abroad, otherwise they lost their right to their ID number. When a Palestinian over-stayed their exit permit there was simply no way to make a return to the OPT – a measure which the Israeli authorities have now rescinded. Nevertheless, the absence of higher education institutions pushed many Palestinians to study abroad, which implied that many found opportunities for work and finally settled abroad, causing a large brain drain (Khalil, 2008a, 2008b, 2015). Besides discriminating against those who cannot afford to study abroad, Palestinians who leave do, often unconsciously, help Israeli settler objectives, by emptying the land of its natives (Abu-Lughod, 2000: 82f.). The establishment of a Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE) as part of the PA occurred around an already existing cohort of Palestinian universities. According to Baramki (2010a: 152), the ‘portfolio for education was the first to be handed over to the Palestinians, in September 1994. It gave the responsibility for all education in the occupied territories, except East Jerusalem, to the [PA]’. The MoEHE gradually adopted policies aimed at regulating the way new programmes would be accredited and old ones periodically reviewed (Law 11 on higher education was adopted in 1998 and was superseded by Decree Law 6 in 2018).2 In 2002, the Accreditation and Quality Assurance Commission (AQAC) was established ‘as the only authorized agency responsible for the accreditation and quality assurance of Higher Education in the [State of Palestine]’ (RecoNow, 2016: 13). However, the MoEHE has never had a dedicated unit responsible for the orientation and supervision of university curricula. Thus, such policies did not amend the ways in which priorities are set, programmes offered and courses introduced. Universities continue to have full control over their teaching offers. Even in cases where the PA develops its own priorities in higher education, it has no means to impose certain courses or programmes that would fit its priorities. As a result, teaching Europe-related courses largely depends on the initiative of individual universities, and possibilities for obtaining exernal funds play a crucial role in this context. Public funding is still minimal at Palestinian universities, and

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most depend on students’ tuition fees or external funding.3 It is hard to quantify the amount of external funding supporting core costs of universities or their research programmes, irrespective of the frequently published EU updates on the various financial and cooperation programmes it offers (Jad et al., 2019: XII). As a result of the Oslo Accords, EU funds were channelled into Palestine for the purpose of ‘democratic state-building’. Universities received funds to establish a number of master’s programmes (Khalil and Del Sarto, 2015: 143). Ever since, the EU has supported Palestinian higher education through various other programmes, including Erasmus+.4 Of special importance was the ‘Palestinian European Academic Cooperation in Education’ (tellingly abbreviated as PEACE), a network of initially twelve, later fifty-two, European universities that collaborated with six (later twelve) Palestinian universities since its inception in 1991 (thus before the establishment of the PA). Co-sponsored by the European Commission and UNESCO, it offered scholarships to Palestinian students and mobility grants for faculty. One of its Palestinian founders, veteran scientist and activist Gabi Baramki (2010a: 120), called this programme ‘an important turning point in the relations between European and Palestinian universities’. Although the programme was formally terminated in 2010 (Carpenter and Tanner, 2015: 8), the participating universities (fifty-four European and all Palestinian) continued to arrange meetings – for example, at Birzeit University in 2013, which had assumed the rotating presidency at the time.

Europe in the Palestinian universities’ curricula While Palestinian universities remained independent from PA or Israeli influence in their curriculum developments, external actors, including from Europe, have had a strong interest in bringing the peace process into Palestinians’ higher education curricula. With their funds, they wield tangible influence on curricula and study programmes at Palestinian universities (provided they obtain the required accreditation by the MoEHE). Of course, Europe and the EU are also part of Palestinian university curricula for genuine academic reasons, whether in history, political science, area or global studies, democracy and human rights, or International Relations (IR), both at undergraduate and graduate levels. At Birzeit University, an undergraduate course on Europe was offered in the history department – later the political science department – and offered almost every year.5 Europe made part of the curricula naturally because, as emphasised by one of the instructors, Europe is connected with the history of the region through colonisation (interview 10).

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Following Oslo, postgraduate programmes mushroomed in all universities. Birzeit’s MA programme in International Studies featured Europe from the beginning, and the PhD Programme in Social Studies, established in 2015 as the first of its kind in Palestine and the only PhD programme currently offered at Birzeit University, considers Europe as a cultural and intellectual reference point. Similarly at al-Najah, the course ‘Global and Regional Political and Economic Blocs’ features the EU prominently, discussing the regional bloc as the biggest trading community in the world. Al-Quds University offers a master’s programme in ‘European Studies’ in cooperation with Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, conducted entirely in English. It includes courses related to law, politics, economics and the history of Europe, and invites students from al-Quds, but also Tel Aviv and Amman, to spend the second study year in Düsseldorf. It is thus an example where German funding mixes academic with political purposes: The intended ‘normalisation’ between Palestinians and Israelis is part of the programme. For one of the instructors, teaching Europe in Palestine helps students understand the European system, policy-making and, most importantly, European agendas in Palestine. Hence, graduates of European Studies become specialists who are capable of influencing policy-makers and eventually of getting more support to Palestine from the EU and European countries (interview 8) by, arguably, keeping the Palestinian file firmly on the EU’s and Europe’s agenda. For another interviewee, teaching Europe in Palestine takes a different approach (interview 13). Many students enrolled in the course to gain some practical knowledge to achieve their career goals and for their personal development. For example, many students were already working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and their main goal was to enhance their knowledge and skills in order to work as diplomats at Palestinian consulates/embassies abroad (interviews 9, 13). Students of International Studies are interested in the EU because this regional organisation is one of the most important global actors (interview 1). Furthermore, many students enrolled in such courses for the sake of knowing more and pursuing their PhD in Europe (Interviews 8, 13). One other objective of such courses on Europe is to benefit from the experience of the EU as a unique regional organisation, to critically study its success factors, and to draw comparative conclusions about the widely perceived failure of the League of Arab States (LAS). This is intended to create a new generation of university graduates who are more capable of creating a united Arab entity that promotes tolerance and peace among people from different Arab states, following the EU model (interviews 8, 9, 13). Interviewed professors stressed this latter aspect as particularly relevant,

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especially since Arab countries have many common factors compared to European countries, such as language, religion and geography (interview 8). Interviewee 7, however, cautioned about looking at the EU as a success story that could be copied by others or that could serve as a model for others. The legacies of European colonialism in the Middle East, not least, and the results of the Balfour Declaration were still visible in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation rendered such ‘European dreams’ of peace, liberty and independence unrealistic in Palestine; no European involvement so far had managed to change that reality (interview 6). This fact notwithstanding, many instructors reflected about their teaching of the EU and its prior integration process as a role model, whose ‘experience of institutional cooperation and the peaceful resolution of conflicts is understood to serve also as an inspiration for peace, democracy and socio-economic development in other parts of the world’ (Müller, 2019: 256). One instructor put it bluntly: the courses at Birzeit University did not intend to teach Europe as a coloniser but as a successful model to imitate (interview 9). Europe was positively contributing to the creation of new generations with good values, which enhanced peace and tolerance among European states. For another interviewee, the European integration process was an interesting story, but rather than a success story to imitate it should be considered as a work in progress instead (interview 6).

Why teaching Europe in Palestine is different The question of Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been historically connected to events taking place outside of its borders, specifically as a result of anti-Semitism in Europe and the atrocities surrounding the Holocaust, which aimed to eradicate all European Jews. The UN General Assembly adopted a partition plan in 1947 with the idea of a state for Jews and a state for Palestinians. This plan built on the League of Nations’ prior establishment of the ‘Mandate Authority’ in 1920 that was tasked with facilitating the establishment of a ‘National Homeland for Jews’, in conformity with the Balfour Declaration of 1917 issued by the British government. For those reasons, studying Europe/the EU fulfils a ‘double function’ for Palestinians: not only to understand what has happened elsewhere, but also what has happened to themselves – that is, the Palestinians’ very own historical genealogy. Despite the above, it is short-sighted to conclude that Palestinians study (or should study) Europe/the EU only to understand their historic relationship(s) with the region. This is tempting for Palestinians to do, but focusing on Europe only from the perspective of what has happened to

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themselves would jam Palestinian higher education programmes into an ‘academic straitjacket’ – thinking about Palestine only as if Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were ‘the centre of the universe’, as one instructor put it (interview 10). As things are more complex, interviewees generally agreed that Palestinians need to study Europe/the EU independently from their own reality: how it functions, how it tackles internal disputes, and how it runs its relations with others. Of course, such studies most likely will always happen with the unspoken association with what this means for students and teachers themselves and how developments in Europe inevitably affect them as Palestinians too. Interviewees insisted that interest in regional and international actors is what should make studying Europe and the EU attractive for Palestinian university students. At first glance, one can notice the academic interest in Europe as part of Area Studies to be similar to that of teaching Africa, Latin America, Asia or any other region. Likewise, one can study the EU as an outstanding (sui generis) case in comparison with other international organisations, not least the LAS, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) or the African Union (AU). Interviewed instructors agreed that the EU serves as a unique example of unity and peace that replaced divisions and violence through the construction of this sui generis supranational entity (interviews 2, 4). With its institutional set-up it has served as a model for the AU, so by its sheer existence the EU already has an impact which is worth closer inspection and study. As interviewee 6 put it: ‘Everything in the EU might be worth studying.’ However, does this mean that the priority in international and global Studies should be the EU? Contrary to the overwhelming positions held by other interviewees who supported this position, interviewee 6 claimed that teaching the EU may not be a priority for Palestinians. For one thing, Asia, especially China were currently rapidly gaining relevance and would become certainly more influential in future than the ‘old continent’.6 But apart from that, they suggested shifting the focus from the EU to countries of the Global South, which have suffered from European colonialism and have the experience of liberating themselves from colonialism and imperialism. Interestingly, this is another legitimate reason for Palestinians to study Europe and the EU: not as a peace project which has overcome decadeslong hostilities and created unprecedented wealth in a formerly war-torn continent, but as an area composed of previous occupiers and exploiters. In sum, interviewees highlighted three reasons why studying Europe is important and has different meanings for Palestinians as compared to studying other areas or regions. These include aspects of history, geography and economy.

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History Teaching Europe in Palestine necessarily covers the historical development of the relationship between Europe and the Middle East region. Palestinians typically study Europe and European countries with a focus on the way they dealt with the region in the past, how they colonised it, divided it, and competed with each other on its disintegration. Edward W. Said’s scathing analysis of Western support of Zionism as not only a colonial matter, but also a civilisational matter, resonates very clearly among Palestinians: Zionism’s conflict with the Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere in the region was seen as extending, perpetuating, even enhancing (to the advantage of the West) the age-old conflict between the West and the Orient […] Zionism and Israel were associated with liberalism, with freedom and democracy, with knowledge and light, with what ‘we’ understand and fight for. By contrast, Zionism’s enemies were simply a twentieth-century version of the alien spirit of Oriental despotism, sensuality, ignorance, and similar forms of backwardness. If ‘they’ didn’t understand the glorious enterprise that was Zionism, it was because ‘they’ were hopelessly out of touch with ‘our’ values. (Said, 1980: 28–9, own omission)

The role of Europe in the creation of the State of Israel is also an important element to keep in mind, for the simple fact that Palestinians paid the price for European anti-Semitism (interview 11). Palestinians, to use another famous expression by Edward Said, became the ‘victims of the victims’ (Said and Barsamian, 2003: 147). As a result, it is often the case that for Palestinians, today’s Europe (that is seemingly supporting Palestinians’ plight for statehood, justice and freedom) is the continuation of yesterday’s Europe (that supported Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel on historic Palestine). Classes on European history can help question and deconstruct the longue durée of this process, but also strengthen this perception, for example when it comes to the role of France in Lebanon or the reticence of Germany when it comes to contemporary matters relating to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, given the history of anti-Semitism particularly in Nazi Germany (Senfft, 2019; see also the contribution of Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel in this volume). The relationship between history and today’s politics is, however, not an easy relationship to disentangle. Interviewee 12 emphasised that historic facts must not be misused in order to adopt certain political positions regarding today’s relationship of Palestinians with the EU or with individual European countries: if history becomes a strict determinatory factor for today’s politics, this would be deplorable. While history is important to the understanding of the present, countries of the region still suffer from

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deficiencies that – at least some of them – can be traced back to the colonial experience. For Palestine, this includes the Balfour Declaration, the support for the Zionist movement in establishing a homeland in Palestine through the mandate of the League of Nations, and the ongoing support of the State of Israel. However, for interviewee 12, it is important not to confuse history with politics: politics nowadays may be determined by the interest of Palestine in having a solid relationship with individual European countries and the EU, for the weight they have in today’s global system, politically and economically.

Geography Europe is one of Palestine’s immediate neighbours, much closer than the United States or China. This makes Europe different for Palestinians and Palestinians different for Europe (interview 11). Baramki (2010a: 116) stated that ‘[w]e initially believed that relations with the universities of Europe were of the greatest importance. Not only were they geographically closest to us, but many of their students and staff already felt some sympathy for us’ (Baramki, 2010a: 116). Thus, when teaching about Europe  – even if it appears in the curricula as ‘just’ another region, or another  international actor – in reality Europe remains different. Let us  take the example of migration: what happens in Morocco or Libya affects Italy and Spain immediately. Palestinian refugees of Syria chose Europe as the destination for their asylum in the absence of shelter and safety anywhere else.7 For Europe, then, stability in the region is central, a matter of national security, not only of foreign or aid policy (Interview 4). Seeing the large presence of communities of Arab or Muslim origin in Europe, the issue of Palestine might have repercussions even for the internal cohesion of Europe itself (interview 5). The EU’s geostrategic interest in peace and stability within the area under the PA’s control and the broader region is therefore noteworthy. This explains why (and how) the EU has to deal with autocratic regimes in the MENA region, which is often criticised as a contradicton to other processes the EU claims to support, such as the contested democratisation processes of the PA (Stetter, 2003: 154).

Economy Vicinity also means that the largest trading partner to many countries in the MENA region is Europe (interview 10). It follows that a renewed interest in Europe and the EU improves business opportunities for Palestine (interview 12).

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As already mentioned, the EU is the biggest donor of financial assistance to the Palestinians. For the period 2017–20, the EU earmarked around €1.28 billion for its multi-annual financial allocation for Palestine through its ‘European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI).8 Indirect benefits resulting from cooperation agreements and international trade possibilities in the framework of the Barcelona Process and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) are thus top priorities (Santoro and Nasrallah, 2010: 89).

Conclusion The reviewed literature and interviews conducted for this contribution show that the factual role of the EU in the Middle East is perceived as politically marginal, because of its assumed dependence on the United States. Interests, rather than principles, remain the key factors that determine the EU’s policies and shape its position(s) vis-à-vis international matters. It is the core raison d’être of European studies in Palestine to substantiate as well as rectify such claims through a critical engagement with the history, economy and politics of Europe and its member states with regard to the Middle East in general and Palestine in particular. This form of knowledge production is, however, difficult to achieve given the challenging conditions for academic teaching in Palestine, and in European studies in particular. Not many Palestinian students have had the opportunity to visit Europe and will most probably never obtain a visa to do so. Europe’s colonial past and its embeddedness in the origins of the Israel–Palestine conflict do not make for constructive knowledge production about Europe in Palestinian universities without that taint of the past. Yet, since colonial times, Europe has been among the regions that Palestinian higher education programmes have studied. A number of cultural, historical and political study programmes and courses have included Europe, European countries, the European Communities (EC) and the EU in their curricula. In conclusion, four sets of reasons can be identified as to why Palestinian universities remain resolute in highlighting the importance of studying Europe and the EU in their programmes: 1. IR and political science programmes mainly aim at understanding the way the EU currently functions, and the way the EU and member states’ policies affect Palestinians and the Middle East ‘peace’ process; they are also interested in the way the EU and its member states interact with other countries (not least with Israel) and with other regional organisations.

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2. History programmes shed light on developments in Europe and their immediate impact on the MENA region, in particular – but not limited to – the colonisation era and the post-Second World War events. 3. Cultural studies present Europe critically as one of the main contributors to the advancement of knowledge and culture, specifically the works of the main European philosophers and thinkers. Here, interest is directed at the history of ideas and the way such ideas have travelled from one culture to another. The East–West (or better: orientaloccidental) debate is a permanent, underlying thread in these university discussions. Some students challenge the claim of ‘enlightenment’ when confronting these ideals with the reality of the processes of European extermination of indigenous populations and the colonisation of their homeland. 4. A common denominator of all these programmes is that the inclusion of Europe and the EU serves a practical reason for Palestinian students: competence in European affairs is perceived as relevant for better career opportunities, and not only for those who aspire to work in the nascent Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the much older diplomatic work of the PLO. Interest in Palestine’s foreign and human rights policies has been reinvigorated following the 2012 UN General Assembly resolution 67/19 recognising Palestine as a non-member observer state, and the related connection to international treaties. With the establishment of the PA, the ‘new normal’ prevailed overwhelmingly as support for the ‘peace’ process meant support for the PA as a national authority that enjoys jurisdiction within the framework of the Oslo Accords, and not that of a liberation movement or of an independent state’s sovereign government. This therefore means that the two-state solution became the general framework for this new normal. This ‘new normal’ was supposed to be reflected in school and university curricula, and donor countries, with European counterparts very prominently among them, openly connecting their support for Palestine’s school and higher education system with such an adaptation and revision of respective curricula. Since they maintained their independence from direct governmental interference through the PA and the Ministry of Higher Eduction, universities, however, continue to provide a different narrative to the status quo provided that they are practically (not only theoretically) enabled to do so. In case of a paradigm shift away from the currently prevailing two-state solution – whether a one-state reality or something else (Khalil, 2016) – the universities will be ready for such a shift, arguably much more so than the PA itself and the donor community, including the EU.

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Notes 1 Al-Quds University, Palestine’s fourth biggest university, was inaugurated as a proper university in 1995 only, after its various faculties – some of which had been in place since the late 1970s – merged under the same umbrella. 2 An unofficial English translation of Law 11 is available at http://muqtafi.birz​ eit.edu/en/Legislation/GetLegFT.aspx?LegPath=1998&MID=12691, draft Law 6 is available (in Arabic) at http://muqtafi.birzeit.edu/Legislation/PDFPre.aspx?Y=​ 2018&ID=17010. 3 The three universities I refer to in this chapter (Birzeit, al-Najah and al-Quds) are public universities, that is, not-for-profit entities; they are, however, independent of the PA, and governed by a board of trustees. 4 For details on Erasmus+ in Palestine, see https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/erasmusplus/factsheets/neighbourhood/erasmusplus_palestine_2017.pdf. 5 The political science department was established in 2005, separating from the department of history and political science. The latter was established in 1976, under the name of Middle Eastern studies: http://old.birzeit.edu/ar/node/108609. 6 Such a view resonates with findings in the Arab Barometer’s (2019) Palestine Report, in which the EU tellingly does not even show up among the most important international partners for Palestinians; neither does any European state. 7 See for example Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights, Palestinian Syrians: Displaced Once Again, 2018, available at https://euromedmonitor.org/uploads/ reports/pal-syria-en.pdf (accessed 15 August 2022). 8 See https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/neighbourhood/countries/ palestine_en.

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Carpenter, J. and S. Tanner (2015) Final report for the external evaluation of the programme of university cooperation masters programme on social sciences and humanitarian affairs (Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf000023262 9?posInSet=1&queryId=45ce88f0-cc1b-4115–857a-ed2ac90e4a43 (accessed 27 July 2022). Chaban, N., A. Miskimmon and B. O’Loughlin (2019) ‘Understanding EU crisis diplomacy in the European neighbourhood: strategic narratives and perceptions of the EU in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine’, European Security, 28:3, 235–50. Council of the European Union (2003/2009) A secure europe in a better world. European Security Strategy (Brussels: European Communities), available at www. consilium.europa.eu/media/30823/qc7809568enc.pdf (accessed 27 July 2022). EEAS (2016) Middle East Peace Process (Brussels: European External Action Service), https://eeas.europa.eu/regions/middle-east-north-africa-mena/337/mid​ dle-east-peace-process_en (accessed 28 May 2021). Gianniou, M. (2016) ‘Promoting cohesion and consistency in EU foreign policy: the European Parliament and the Israel–Palestine conflict’, Mediterranean Quarterly, 27:4, 61–80. Hass, A. (2021) ‘The Europeans don’t really care about the Palestinians either’, Haaretz, 24 February, available at www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-theeuropeans-don-t-really-care-about-the-palestinians-either-1.9565079 (accessed 27 July 2022). Huber, D. (2021) The International dimension of the israel–palestinian conflict:  a  post-eurocentric approach (New York: State University of New  York Press). Jad, I. et al. (2019) Study of higher education and research in palestine (Stockholm: Swedish International Development Agency), www.arij.org/files/arijadmin/2019/ uni_2019.pdf (accessed 28 May 2021). Khalil, A. (2008a) Irregular Migration into and through the Occupied Palestinian Territory, CARIM Analytic and Synthetic Notes 79 (Florence: European University Institute), available at https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/10617 (accessed 27 July 2022). Khalil, A. (2008b) The circulation of palestinian refugees and migrants, CARIM Analytic and Synthetic Notes 33 (Florence: European University Institute), available at https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/8354 (accessed 27 July 2022). Khalil, A. (2015) ‘Legal and regulatory framework of highly-skilled migration: the case of the Palestinian Authority’, in P. Fargues and A. Venturini (eds), Migration from North Africa and the Middle East: Skilled Migrants, Development and Globalization (London, I. B. Tauris), pp. 112–33. Khalil, A. (2016) ‘The Palestinian Authority: unsettling status quo scenarios’, al-Shabaka, 5 October, available at https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/palestinianauthority-unsettling-status-quo-scenarios (accessed 27 July 2022). Khalil, A. and R. A. Del Sarto (2015) ‘The legal fragmentation of Palestine– Israel and European Union policies promoting the rule of law’, in R. A. Del Sarto (ed.), Fragmented borders, interdependence and external relations: the israel–palestine–european Union triangle (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 129–54. Laïdi, Z. (2008) Norms over force: the enigma of European power (Basingstocke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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Manners, I. (2002) ‘Normative Power Europe: a contradiction in terms?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40:2, 235–58. Muaddi, Q. (2020) ‘“Arrested at any time”: Palestinian students in Israel’s crosshairs’, Middle East Eye, 9 January, available at www.middleeasteye.net/ news/palestinian-students-arrests-israel-universities-west-bank (accessed 27 July 2022). Müller, P. (2019) ‘Normative Power Europe and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the EU’s peacebuilding narrative meets local narratives’, European Security, 28:3, 251–67. Nicolai, S. (2007) Fragmented foundations: education and chronic crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Paris: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning). Pace, M. (2007) ‘The construction of EU normative power’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 45:5, 1041–6. Pace, M. (2008) ‘The EU as a “force for good” in border conflict cases?’, in T. Diez, M. Albert and S. Stetter (eds), The European Union and border conflicts: the power of integration and association (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 203–19. Pace, M. (2010) Perceptions from Egypt and Palestine on the EU’s role and impact on democracy building in the Middle East (Stockholm: Internatonal Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance), available at www.idea.int/sites/default/ files/publications/chapters/the-role-of-the-european-union-in-democracy-build​ ing/eu-democracy-building-discussion-paper-19.pdf (accessed 27 July 2022). Pace, M. and P. Pallister-Wilkins (2018) ‘EU–Hamas actors in a state of permanent  liminality’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 21:1, 223–46. Persson, A. (2017) ‘Shaping discourse and setting examples: Normative Power Europe can work in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 55:6, 1415–31. Persson, A. (2018) ‘Introduction: The occupation at 50: EU–Israel/Palestine relations since 1967’, Middle East Critique, 27:4, 317–20. RecoNow (2016) The higher education system in palestine: national Report (Bologna: RecoNow), available at www.reconow.eu/files/fileusers/5140_ National-Report-Palestine-RecoNOW.pdf (accessed 27 July 2022). Richmond, O., A. Björkdahl and S. Kappl (2011) ‘The emerging EU peacebuilding framework: confirming or transcending liberal peacebuilding?’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 24:3, 449–69. Roberts, A., B. Joergensen and F. Newman (1984) Academic freedom under israeli military occupation: report of WUS/ICJ mission of rnquiry into higher education in the West Bank and Gaza (London: World University Service). Said, E. W. (1980) The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage). Said, E. W. and D. Barsamian (2003) Culture and resistance: conversations with Edward W. Said (London: Pluto Press). Santoro, S. and R. Nasrallah (2010) ‘Conflict and hope: the EU in the eyes of Palestine’, in S. Lucarelli and L. Fioramonti (eds), External Perceptions of the European Union as a Global Actor (London: Routledge), pp. 78–104. Senfft, A. (2019) ‘Germany and Israel: changing dynamics of a complex relationship’, Palestine – Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, 24:3–4, 7–15.

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Springborg, R. (2009) ‘Is the EU contributing to re-radicalisation?’, in M. Emerson, K. Kausch and R. Young (eds), Islamic radicalisation: the challenge for Euro-Mediterranean relations (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies), pp. 1–24. Stetter, S. (2003) ‘Democratization without democracy? The assistance of the European Union for democratization processes in Palestine’, Mediterranean Politics, 8:2–3, 153–73. Whitman, R. G. (2011) ‘Norms, power and Europe: a new agenda for study of the EU and international relations’, in R. G. Whitman (ed.), Normative Power Europe: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–22.

List of interviews Due to COVID-19 restrictions, all interviewees were interviewed by phone or online.   1. Assistant Professor of Political Science, Birzeit University, 1 September 2020.   2. Associate Professor of Political Science, Birzeit University, 5 September 2020.   3. Assistant Professor at the Mass Communication Department, Qatar University, 1 September 2020.   4. Assistant Professor of Political Science, Qatar University, 9 September 2020.   5. Independent Researcher, 31 August 2020.   6. Professor of Political Science, Birzeit University, 1 September 2020.   7. Research Fellow, University of Exeter, 31 August 2020.   8. Professor of Political Science, al-Najah University, 2020.*   9. Assistant Professor of History, Birzeit University, 2020.* 10. Professor of Political Science, Birzeit University, 30 May 2020. 11. Assistant Professor of Political Science, Birzeit University, 29 August 2020. 12. Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, Birzeit University, 30 May 2020. 13. Professor of International Relations, Birzeit University, 2020.* * Interviewed by a research assistant in the initial phase of data collection in early 2020.

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6 Teaching Europe and the Middle East at universities in Turkey Aylin Güney, Emre İşeri and Gökay Özerim

Introduction: ‘Turkish exceptionalism’, ‘liminality’ and curricular practices in IR Turkish foreign policy has undergone a major transformation since the beginning of the millennium. The first aspect of this transformation has to do with the recognition of Turkey’s candidacy to the European Union (EU) at the Helsinki European Council in 1999. After almost forty years, this marked a crucial turning point in EU–Turkey relations. The second aspect of this transformation is related to the increased importance of the Middle East, especially since the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terrorism’ campaign launched by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. These two important turning points led to a more active stance and dramatic change in the traditional characteristics of Turkish foreign policy: Turkey has changed one of its major foreign policy orientations, which might be summarised as to influence developments in the Middle East region more proactively. Turkey’s military interventions in Syria targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), its engagement in the Middle East (Günay, 2017), the Eastern Mediterranean (İşeri, 2019), Libya, and the ‘migration crisis’ (Özerim, 2018) are some examples of this activism in Turkish foreign policy. This new foreign policy orientation has stemmed from the contemporary Turkish elites’ construction of ‘Turkish exceptionalism’ (Yanık, 2011). This was relevant especially for relations between Turkey and the Middle East due to the Ottoman legacy that marked these relations. However, Turkey’s orientation towards Europe has not only been intense since the Ottoman Empire but has increased even more during the new Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Atatürk) in 1923. Therefore, as a country culturally and geographically located between the East and the West, Turkey has also been depicted as being a ‘liminal’ country (Rumelili, 2011; Yanık, 2011), which aspires to be part of both the East and the West, yet not belonging to either of them. ‘Liminality’ is defined by Malksoo (2012: 481) as

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Teaching Europe and the Middle East in Turkey 123 in-between situations and conditions where established structures are dislocated, hierarchies reversed, and traditional settings of authority possibly endangered. The liminal state is a central phase in all social and cultural transitions as it marks the passage of the subject through ‘a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’. It is thus a realm of great ambiguity, since the ‘liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial’. Yet, as a threshold situation, liminality is also a vital moment of creativity, a potential platform for renewing the societal make-up.

According to Yanık (2011: 80), this liminality and thus the ‘exceptionalist’ identity it creates, is rooted in the hybridization of Turkey’s geographical and historical characteristics. The Turkish foreign policy elite make every effort to underscore Turkey’s geography as a meeting place of different continents. Historically, there has also been an ongoing campaign to depict Turkey’s past as ‘multicultural’ and ‘multi-civilizational’.

Therefore, with regard to Turkey and its distinctive geopolitical location between the intersection of Asia and Europe and ‘East’ and ‘West’, ‘liminality’ is often used as a concept to denote its converging and contrasting geopolitical orientations in foreign policy. In the Turkish case, it can be argued that the ‘liminal’ character is a result of not only its geographical location (with territories both in Europe and the Middle East), but also of its Ottoman past and the modern Turkish Republic that has manifested two different foreign policy orientations as well as historical legacies. Parallel to this new activism that has changed the nature of Turkish foreign policy by an ever-increasing interest in Europe and the Middle East, another important development has taken place with the rising number of higher education institutions (universities) in Turkey, starting in the 2000s. The priorities and necessities of Turkish policy-makers have shaped this institutionalisation within higher education and set the agenda of the IR discipline in Turkey (Keyman and Ülkü, 2007: 99; Özcan and Güvenç, 2018: 51–2). Therefore, the increase in the number of state and foundation ­universities1 was first observed not only in the opening of new IR departments but also in the diversification of courses on area studies in those departments to reveal how the curricular practices prioritise these two important regions (see table 6.1). Against this background, this chapter explores how the curricular practices regarding the teaching of the EU and the Middle East at Turkish higher eduction institutions might reveal and reflect the orientations of Turkish foreign policy and its ‘exceptionalist’ and/or ‘liminal’ character between the

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Table 6.1  Five-yearly number of new universities in Turkey in the post-2000 period (includes both state and foundation universities) Period 2000–05 2006–10 2011–15 2016–20

State universities

Foundation universities

Total

– 49 16 13

5 23 7 20

5 72 23 33

Source: Turkish Higher Education Informational Management System: https://istatistik. yok.gov.tr. The table has been adapted by the authors.

East and the West in geographical terms as conflicting identities (Özcan, 2015). More specifically, it analyses how the two geographical realms neighbouring Turkey have been integrated into IR curricular practices. By doing so, it draws insights and conclusions about how Europe/the EU and the Middle East – as the most important regions in Turkish foreign policy – have been taught in Turkish IR departments. To this end, the chapter draws on a sample academic literature on IR/ area studies education in Turkey (Aydın, Hisarlıoğlu and Yazgan, 2016; Canan-Sokullu, 2018; Keyman and Ülkü, 2007; Ongur and Gürbüz, 2019; Tepeciklioğlu, 2013). The literature on the teaching of area studies is quite rudimentary. There are some studies on the history of the teaching of the EU (Müftüler-Baç, 2003) and teaching of IR in general (Canan-Sokullu, 2018), but a comparative and comprehensive approach to the teaching of Europe – or the European Union – and the Middle East with a comparative focus is missing. Therefore, this chapter fills an existing gap in the teaching of IR with regard to a regional focus.

Methodology: data collection and analysis The analysis of the syllabi of the courses dealing with Europe/EU and/ or the Middle East at Turkish universities reveals the extent to which the curricular practices reflect this ‘exceptionalist’ character of Turkey. As a research method, the study adopts a content analysis of various selected themes in the syllabi collected from the top fifty universities ranking in Turkey (excluding medical faculties). Those Turkish universities were selected from the URAP listing of 2019 (University Ranking by Academic Performance) which was assembled by scholars from the Middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, one of Turkey’s leading research universities.2 Since those rankings that include universities with medical faculties minimise research output impacts of social science faculties in

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general and IR departments in particular, we rely on a ranking list excluding universities with medical faculties. While navigating through the data and making a meaningful and sound analysis to address the research questions set for this chapter, we benefited a lot from the four categorisations in IR teaching by Kacowicz (1993), though in our analysis we went beyond them. We analysed the data with a focus on (a) the type of course (compulsory or elective), (b) the language of the course, (c) the teaching approach (comparative, interdisciplinary, paradigmatic), (d) teaching techniques and tools (traditional, debate/discussion, simulation, group work, movie display etc.), (e) the contextual framework, and (f) the content of the courses on Europe/EU and the Middle East. In terms of coding, the ‘contextual framework’ (general, theoretical, historical, economic, political, strictly focuses on Turkey, etc.) defines here the general context of the course. On the other hand, the ‘content of the course’ (general introduction, conceptual/theoretical, the late Ottoman era, historical process, Cold War politics, Arab/Israel conflict, the US, EU, the UK, France, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Libya, etc.) identifies the weekly distribution and concentration of the topics in the course plan. A given course could include various elements of these categories. Differently put, those various elements under four categories are not mutually exclusive. This means that a coder could include general introduction, historical process and the EU under ‘the content of the course’ category for the same course.

Teaching the Middle East in Turkey Regarding course samples on the Middle East, we obtained twenty-seven syllabi of courses taught at the undergraduate level. While most of these courses are taught in English (fifteen), the bulk of the remaining are taught in Turkish (eleven) and only one in French. Notably, only a few state universities offer Middle East courses in English (especially METU, Bosporus University and Abdullah Gül University); however, English is the prime language of instruction in most of the foundation universities (see, for the problem of teaching language, the chapters on Egypt, by Bassant Hassib and Jan Claudius Völkel, and Malta, by James Sater, in this volume). Arguably, the language of teaching matters in the sense that Turkish students would be more exposed to a variety of ideas through engaging with non-Turkish students3 during in-class discussions and by reading, listening and watching English or French learning materials. This finding could be considered a positive indicator of Turkish students’ exposure to international debates beyond parochial national ones to make sense of developments in the Middle East with domestic implications.

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The majority of courses on the Middle East (twenty-three) are elective. In total, twenty-eight main textbooks have been assigned and twenty of them are originally published by international printing houses (e.g. Cambridge University Press, Manchester University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Westview Press). Among these international textbooks without Turkish translation (to be published by Turkish publishing house Felix Publishing House), Louise Fawcett’s edited volume International Relations of the Middle East (2016) has been widely used in Middle Eastern courses taught in English. A Turkish translation (published by Turkish publishing house Agora Kitaplığı) of William Cleveland and Martin Bunton’s A History of the Modern Middle East (2016) has been one of the most assigned, required and recommended readings. Among those required/ recommended textbooks, various updated editions of Tayyar Arı’s Geçmişten günümüze ortadoğu (The Middle East from past to present, published by Alfa Yayın, 2004) has been widely used. Overall, around half of those main textbooks used are in the Turkish language. Looking closely at the delivery of these Middle Eastern courses, traditional approaches which refer to both the descriptive contents as well as upfront teaching styles such as lecturing without debate have been widely adopted (79 per cent), leaving limited room for critical (6.9 per cent), theoretical/conceptual (13.8 per cent), comparative (0 per cent) and interdisciplinary approaches (0 per cent). Similarly, traditional teaching (79 per cent) is by far the most used technique (i.e. delivery of the course content with limited interactions with the students) followed by debate/ discussion (14 per cent) and other (group work 3 per cent, movie display 3 per cent). The dominance of traditional approaches obliterates the aforementioned positive indicator of Turkish students’ exposure to international debates. Differently put, the way these courses have been taught (i.e. traditional approach) prevents students from critically reflecting on dominant narratives in Turkish political culture. These meta-narratives’ historical roots go back to the late Ottoman period which culminated in the ‘Sèvres syndrome’, meaning that some foreign powers (dış mihraklar), especially the West, are ‘conspiring to weaken and carve up Turkey’ (Göçek, 2011: 105) just like the Sèvres Treaty dividing the land of the Ottoman Empire (the predecessor of modern Turkey) among various imperial powers in 1920. Those narratives include ‘loneliness and anxiousness’ (Tüylüoğlu, 2013) and ‘only strong states can survive in Turkey’s geography’ (Bilgin, 2007). Historically, those dominant narratives breed distrust of anyone apart from ‘real Turks’ (i.e. Anatolian Sunni Muslim people of Turkish descent). Intuitively, one could propose that political science/IR education would cause a crack in the aforementioned meta-narratives. Nonetheless, the main structure of IR teaching

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in Turkey was not designed to test these assumptions but to reproduce them (Özcan, 2013). There is no evidence to propose that Middle Eastern courses are exceptional in this sense. Overall, colonial legacy (i.e. historically grounded sense of insecurity from Western powers’ penetration of the former Ottoman lands) is still relevant for Middle Eastern courses taught in modern Turkey as well. Concerning contextual frameworks of Middle Eastern courses, three of them stand out: political (27 per cent), general (25 per cent) and historical (19 per cent). Regarding the content part, one-quarter has been on the historical process. The share of theory combined with conceptual issues (e.g. power-knowledge, Orientalism, Middle East exceptionalism) is only two per cent. These findings reveal the superficial characteristics of Middle Eastern courses taught in Turkey. Among various security concerns in the region, the Arab/Palestine–Israel conflict is the leading theme, arguably curtailing various human security issues such as minority rights and gender. Our findings – based on the distribution of regional actors in the selected syllabi – reveal that non-Arab states – Turkey (33.7 per cent), Iran (24.7 per cent) and Israel (10.1 per cent)4 – had the highest share, followed by the Gulf monarchies and Egypt in Middle Eastern courses. Apart from their presence in the syllabi concerning their colonial legacies (i.e. British and French mandates in the Middle East), the EU/Europe is almost non-existent in Middle Eastern course contents as an extra-regional actor, except for one course on EU foreign policy towards the MENA region at Yaşar University, Department of International Relations. Relative to the EU/Europe and any other non-regional actor, the syllabi have allocated more space to the United States as an extra-regional great power, and NATO is depicted as a potential actor in the MENA region. Arguably, there could be two reasons behind the asymmetric presence of the United States compared to the EU in Middle Eastern courses. The first is the relative importance of the role played by the United States in the Middle East. As Europe (i.e. the UK and to a lesser extent France) disappears from the content of Middle Eastern courses, the United States fills the power vacuum left by Britain in particular. The early Cold War years coincide with the rise of American hegemony at the expense of British hegemony in the Western hemisphere. American President Truman’s Doctrine in 1947 officially heralded the Cold War and his successor President Eisenhower’s Doctrine in 1957, following the Suez Crisis, officially included the Middle East as a new frontier. Alongside this development, the United States began its support to corrupt, authoritarian regimes (e.g. Saudi Arabia, the Shah’s regime in Iran, or Saddam Hussein in Iraq), anti-communists and, more importantly, Israel at the expense of particularly Palestinians as native inhabitants. The United States has remained the most influential

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non-regional power in the Middle East in the post-Cold War period as well. This is particularly the case in the post-9/11 period, which culminated in the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Coupled with the EU’s hesitancy to directly (e.g. militarily) intervene in the region, it is not a surprise to note that Middle Eastern courses include EU/Europe to a lesser extent than the US in their contents. This trend has continued in the post-‘Arab Spring’ period, with significant implications for Turkey’s foreign policy orientation towards the region.5 Second, the geographical location of Turkey and the lingering question as to whether it belongs to the Middle East or to Europe can be another reason why there is not enough attention paid to the role of the EU in the Middle East (including North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Iran). In the syllabi, Turkey is rather placed at the centre concerning its relations with the EU and the Middle East separately, thus the syllabi neither reveal Turkey as a ‘bridge’ between these two regions nor disclose an interest in the role of the EU in this region.

Teaching Europe/the EU in Turkey The political and cultural connotations associated with the concepts of ‘West’ and ‘Europe’ demonstrate a great diversity for both Turkish society and foreign policy. The meaning of the ‘West’ for Turkey has always been very ambiguous, which covers the United States and Europe together most of the time. Furthermore, ‘Europe’ also evokes a dispersed and complex phenomenon since the perception of ‘Europe’ covers Europe as a geographical area/continent on the one hand and the EU as an institutionalised integration project on the other. More importantly, the Brexit process crystallised this ‘multiple Europes’ perception by Turkey since it brought three different ‘Europe’ options into its foreign policy conceptualisations: the first one is the EU (the ‘European integration’ zone excluding some of the European countries); the second is ‘Greater Europe’, which is more  comprehensive and includes the United Kingdom since Brexit as one of the major actors in the foreign policy of Turkey; and the third is continental Europe, which excludes the United Kingdom. This plurality and dividedness related to the perception of Europe in Turkey is also evident in the curricula of IR departments in Turkey. From this point of view, courses relevant to EU Studies constitute only one branch of Europe-oriented courses in the IR course lists since there is another group of courses that can be clustered under ‘European Studies’ rather than ‘European Union Studies’. While courses under EU Studies take the integration process – along with its different components and policies – to the

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centre, courses that might be categorised under European Studies are more comprehensive in terms of their geographical and contextual focus. When the syllabi of seventy-one different courses from the sample group of fifty universities are categorised, the number of EU-specific courses (85 per cent) is remarkably higher than general European Studies courses (15 per cent). Sixty-three per cent of the EU courses and ninety-one per cent of European Studies courses are embedded as a compulsory part of the curricula. These data demonstrate that courses on the EU have become a fundamental part of curricula in Turkey’s IR departments. Almost one-quarter of EU-specific courses (23 per cent) are designed to explain the European integration process in general terms. Some other courses examine only the historical process of integration (16 per cent) or the political dimension of integration (12 per cent), while twelve per cent of the courses aim to explain and teach specifically ‘European Union–Turkey relations’. The content distribution of EU-oriented courses in our sample course list reveals that the EU is not solely seen as an economic organisation within Turkish academia – since the topics of EU-related courses are quite diversified. Nevertheless, some EU courses’ content and scope go beyond the general introductory level, and more specific courses are available for Turkish students. It is worth noting that, although their number is low, these specific courses focus on technical or some underrepresented issues in EU Studies, such as project management and funding resources, social policy, public policies, environment, and migration policies. It is possible to juxtapose some prominent triggering factors for this diversification and expansion of EU courses in Turkish universities and consequently the Europeanisation of IR curricula. First and foremost, the ‘Europeanisation process in IR curricula’ in Turkey might be considered a reflection of the increasing pace of Europeanisation efforts and the impact of closer relations with the EU from the perspective of a candidate country for membership, in particular from the late 1990s up until the mid-2010s. Simultaneously, increasing collaboration with European universities and the number of EU-funded research and education projects might be considered as other complementary components of this process for higher ­education institutions (HEIs). As highlighted by Müftüler-Baç (2003), political scientists’ interest in the EU increased in Turkey after its acceptance as a candidate country for EU membership. In the last twenty years, many EU institutes and research centres have been founded at Turkish universities. Therefore, EU Studies in Turkey witnessed a sort of ‘deepening process’ by the increasing interests of researchers and related academic activities in Turkey about the EU. In particular, the Jean Monnet Chairs and Jean Monnet Modules funded by the European Commission might be regarded as the other essential factors

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promoting a Europeanisation of IR curricula and integration of more EU-specific courses and research studies. The ‘institutionalisation impact’ might be listed as another factor that helps to explain the increase in the number of EU courses in Turkey. As part of the EU candidacy process (since 1999), the Turkish state has triggered the establishment of EU relations units and coordination centres in many public institutions. Even though it is currently abolished and its duties transferred to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (since 2018) after Turkey’s transition to a presidential system and the consecutive revision of ministries, a dedicated ministry (Ministry of EU Affairs) had been founded, focusing on relations with the EU (in 2011). In the same vein, several research institutes and postgraduate programmes on the EU were activated at Turkish universities from the end of the 1990s. Consequently, the rising numbers of EU courses might be seen as a reflection of the possible demands of students who could seek employment or study opportunities at these institutions and graduate programmes. Finally, another significant factor underpinning the growing interest and deepening of EU-oriented courses in Turkish IR departments might be the EU’s sui generis structure, hence it is a pertinent and invaluable ‘case study’ for the IR discipline. Furthermore, with its clear and distinctive milestones, crises, accomplishments, failures and theoretical tools based on a specific integration process, EU Studies provide an analytical tool to frame discussions and research about Europe in the IR discipline. Therefore, the dominance of EU courses in Turkish IR curricula might be explained not only as a result of the EU’s prominence in Turkish foreign policy but also by its functionality as an analytical tool to explain European identity, European history, European dynamics – and especially the transformation of the European continent after the Second World War – to students in Turkey. This does not mean that Europeanisation in Turkish higher education curricula and research realms has a linear and monophonic structure. It should be expected that critical stances might also be identified in the curricula of a country where around 40 per cent of society does not support EU membership (Aydın et al., 2019). However, the course syllabi, which were analysed as part of our research for this chapter, demonstrate that critical approaches and debates are underrepresented in EU Studies and EU courses offered at Turkish universities. Only four per cent of the courses in our sample might be categorised as courses with a critical teaching approach. Most of the courses on the EU embrace a traditional (57 per cent) or theoretical (21 per cent) approach in teaching the related content. However, we acknowledge that there are also considerable discussions among researchers and professors while teaching the EU which might exemplify

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Teaching Europe and the Middle East in Turkey 131

some of the related critical debates in Turkey. The critical narratives in EU-specific courses in Turkey might be framed under two specific issues. One is related to Turkey’s long-standing EU accession process, which opens ongoing debates about ‘EU hypocrisy’ towards Turkey’s membership. The other critical stance is on the ‘asymmetry in relations’ between the EU and Turkey. This ‘asymmetry’ debate is more likely to emerge, especially in courses describing economic relations through the customs union. One could say that these ‘asymmetry’ and ‘hypocrisy’ debates have a very strong resemblance to the ‘European colonialism’ debate, which is also one of the main analytical tools of this edited volume. This sort of critical debate frames EU integration and Turkey’s accession process as ‘a new form of European colonial relations’. When the contents of European Studies courses are analysed, some specific themes become more distinguishable by their predominance in the course content. Primarily, courses focusing on European history (23 per cent) take the lead together with other courses on specifically the Balkans/ Southeast Europe (23 per cent). European security, European identity and culture, Europe–Turkey relations, Greece–Turkey relations, Cyprus,6 Europe in global politics, foreign policy, and transatlantic relations constitute other major themes of courses. Overall, another remarkable point about the courses both on the EU and European Studies in Turkey might be identified as the ‘geographical concentration’ of the courses. In their study, which investigates teaching about Europe in Spain, Baylina and Prats (2003: 59) argue that the geographical aspect of European Studies is based on the ‘geopolitical complexity of Europe’ and claim that the geopolitical complexity of Europe demanded new analyses of the territory, an explanation of Europe that is adjusted to the new realities of a continent of variable geometry, a Europe of imprecise boundaries, formed by states, nations, regions, cities, and communities.

EU Studies courses in our sample mostly represent the EU as an organisation and do not discern the pluralist structure of the EU stemming from the inherently different characteristics of its member states. Lacking a teaching approach that reflects this diversity, member state-oriented topics in the contents of these courses are almost non-existent. However, there is more plurality in European Studies courses reflecting Europe’s geographical complexity and diversity, particularly elaborating on different regions such as the Balkans/Southern Europe, Eastern and Central Europe or countries as course title and subject or as part of weekly topics. These courses mostly address the distinctive and individual features and dynamics of these regions (such as the frozen conflicts in the Balkans).

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Another analytical tool in our research is the main textbooks indicated in the syllabi. Slightly more than half of the main textbooks (51 per cent) which are offered in the sample syllabi group are published by i­nternational printing houses, and almost half of the main required textbooks (48 per cent) are written in English. The rest of the main reading textbooks are national publications and/or written in Turkish. Our data shows that teaching the EU and Europe in Turkey does not only rely on international resources, but that a set of national studies and literature is also currently available for Turkish students.

Conclusion In light of the analysis of the Middle East and Europe/EU courses in the curricula of IR departments at the top fifty Turkish universities without medical faculties, the primary conclusion we arrived at is that in the content of the syllabi, Turkey is located peculiarly at the centre/intersection of both regions. Therefore, the courses are generally designed to reveal the idiosyncratic character of Turkey’s geopolitical imagination. In other words, Turkey is not considered as part of those regions but is rather located in a liminal position, at least in the curricular practices that we analysed. Second, the teaching of both the Middle East and Europe/the EU is not conducted in a fashion that fosters among students critical thinking about these regions, interaction with each other, and reflections on their internal dynamics. These regions are taken for granted and the fact that they can be alternatively assessed as meta-regions or meta-geographies is not dealt with sufficiently. Therefore, neither a critical approach to colonial history nor an effort to decolonise the curriculum (Jivraj, 2020) is observed in the syllabi on the Middle East at Turkish universities, except for debates about the role of the United States as an extra-regional great power. The EU, on the other hand, is not treated as a key actor in the Middle East in the syllabi of Middle East courses. However, the United Kingdom and France, due to their colonial legacy in the past of the Middle East, are more evident in teaching practices. Another conclusion is that courses on the Middle East treat the region in a manner that neglects the heterogeneity of the region and the inner social, political and economic differences between the subregions. Third, there is a more intense orientation towards EU themes, driven by Turkey’s EU vocation. This points to a particular kind of ‘Europeanisation’ in EU teaching since some of these courses are also offered within the context of Jean Monnet programmes. However, the EU, like the Middle  East, is not taught in a critical way and is rather dealt with as a taken-for-granted

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Teaching Europe and the Middle East in Turkey 133

g­ eopolitical entity. Turkey is again located within a liminal space, being a part of Europe, but not belonging to the EU. This liminality not only refers to the geographical location of Turkey between Europe and the Middle East, but also to both regions’s values, although the latter type of Turkey’s liminal character is not dealt in a detailed manner in the syllabi. ‘Asymmetry’ and ‘hypocrisy’ are the only themes that characterise the critical aspect in teaching on Turkey–EU relations. Therefore, rather than dealing with the technical aspects (for example sector-specific impacts) of the Europeanisation process, courses take a general overview of the inherent challenges in terms of identity, culture and history. The other important observation is the lack of in-depth teaching about EU member states; a comparative perspective would provide important insights for students as the Lisbon Treaty has rendered member states ever more important, especially on decisions regarding enlargement. Therefore, as a candidate country, while courses should place equal emphasis on the EU’s member states, curricular practices in Turkey treat the EU as a monolithic entity. In short, we can argue that the liminal character of Turkey in its foreign policy orientation can also be observed in the way the teaching of two neighbouring regions – Europe and the Middle East – is conducted at Turkish higher education IR departments. Turkey is highlighted in terms of its ‘exceptionalist’ character that depicts the country in an idiosyncratic way and locates it at the interface of these regions, but not belonging to any of them.

Notes 1 There is no ‘private university’ category in the Turkish higher education system. Universities are categorised as either state or foundation universities. 2 See https://www.urapcenter.org. The main objective of URAP is to develop a ranking system for world universities based on academic performance indicators that reflect the quality, the number of their scholarly publications, the number of PhD graduates, and score on the ratio of students to academic staff. In line with this objective URAP has been annually releasing the World Ranking of Higher Education Institutions since 2010, and Field Rankings since 2011. The most recent rankings include 2,500 HEIs around the world as well as sixty-one different specialised subject areas. 3 As of 2020, the number of non-Turkish students in Turkey-based universities was 185,047; see www.studyinturkey.gov.tr/StudyinTurkey/_PartStatistic. 4 Since (the predominantly Muslim populated) Turkey’s recognition of Israel in 1948, Turkish-Israeli relations have had a bumpy ride. Along with internal/­ external dynamics at play, the Palestinian question has affected these bilateral relations from the onset. Followed by their ‘golden age’ of relations in the 1990s,

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these relations faced a new challenge when the pro-Islamic Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in 2002. Already strained relations failed the test of Israel’s Gaza campaign (2008), prompting Erdoğan’s harsh criticism of Israel’s President Shimon Peres at the 2009 Davos Economic Forum and the Mavi Marmara affair in 2010, eventually paving the way for the break in diplomatic relations. In the following years, various other regional tensions (i.e. ramifications of Arab uprisings in Syria and Egypt, tensions revolving around energy discoveries/prospective export routes in the Eastern Mediterranean) have further tensed Turkish-Israeli relations (Sever and Almog, 2019). Israeli–Turkey relations have become further strained because of former American President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the August 2020 ‘Abraham Accords’ jeopardising the two-state solution expectations of the international community – including Turkey. It seems that the Palestinian question will continue to remain the main area of tension between Israel and Turkey, curtailing prospects for further intensified economic cooperation (e.g. the Israel–Turkey gas pipeline). 5 The Arab uprisings served as a litmus test for Turkey, which had managed to intensify its relations with Middle Eastern countries (including Syria) under the doctrine of ‘Strategic Depth’. Following an initial ambiguity, AKP-led Turkey heralded those uprisings. Aiming beyond its power capabilities, Turkey has promoted regime changes in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) at the expense of those established regimes’ (e.g. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE) security considerations. By putting all of its eggs into the basket of Morsi and the MB in Egypt, Turkey’s relations with General al-Sisi led Egypt to break its relations with Turkey in the post-coup period. In the Syrian front, Turkey has locked itself into an antiAssad position and supported opposition groups, mainly Turkmans and the MB forces. Due to its national security concerns emanating from the ‘Islamic State in the Levant’ (ISIL) and US-supported Syrian Kurds (e.g. YPG, PYD) in its immediate vicinity, Turkey has conducted three major cross-border operations (Operation Euphrates Shield, Operation Olive Branch, Operation Peace Spring) in Syria. 6 Contrary to optimistic expectations that the recent energy discoveries to the south of Cyprus would serve as a window of opportunity to bring lasting peace to the Cyprus dispute, those reserves and their prospective export routes (i.e. the East-Med pipeline) have further strained already tense relations. Put differently, those discoveries have tangled with the ongoing dispute over partitioned Cyprus (divided since 1974 into Greek and Turkish zones) and the maritime boundaries of Greek islands adjacent to Turkey in both the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. In this light, Turkey has been involved in the Libyan civil war and taken the side of the UN-recognised Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA). Since the GNA has been supported by the Muslim Brotherhood militias, Turkish involvement in the Libyan civil war has elevated concerns of al-Sisi-led Egypt. Eventually, Turkey struck a maritime deal with the GNA in November 2019 overlapping with the Greek maritime zone claims over the route of the East-Med pipeline project. In the absence of US leadership, it is dubious to what extent the EU would come up with effective foreign policy suggestions to set

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Teaching Europe and the Middle East in Turkey 135 the ground for regional settlement. Overall, involvement of various regional (e.g. France and Italy) and non-regional actors (e.g. the United States, Russia and the United Arab Emirates) with their contending perspectives have transformed the regional tensions into an inextricable knot.

References Arı, T. (2004) Geçmişten günümüze ortadoğu [The Middle East from past to present] (Istanbul: Alfa Yayınları). Aydın, M., F. Hisarlıoğlu and K. Yazgan (2016) ‘Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler akademisyenleri ve alana yönelik yaklaşımları üzerine bir inceleme: TRIP 2014 sonuçları’ [An analysis of IR academics in Turkey and their approaches to the field: TRIP 2014 faculty survey results], Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 12:48, 3–35. Aydın, M., S. Açıkmeşe, M. Çelikpala, S. Özel, C. Dizdaroğlu and M. G. Kösen (2019) Türk dış politikası kamuoyu algıları araştırması [Public opinion survey on Turkish foreign policy] (Istanbul: Kadir Has Üniversitesi Türkiye Çalışmaları Merkezi), www.khas.edu.tr/tr/arastirma/khasta-arastirma/khas-arastirmalari/ turk-dis-politikasi-kamuoyu-algilari-arastirmasi-2019 (accessed 26 May 2021). Baylina, M. and M. Prats (2003) ‘Teaching Europe in Spanish universities: looking for new approaches in regional geography’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 27:1, 57–68. Bilgin, P. (2007) ‘“Only strong states can survive in Turkey’s geography”: The uses of “geopolitical truths” in Turkey’, Political Geography, 26:7, 740–56. Canan-Sokullu, E. (ed.) (2018) Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitimi: Yeni yaklaşımlar, yeni yöntemler [IR education in Turkey: New perspectives, new methods] (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları). Cleveland, W. L. and M. Bunton (2016) A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Fawcett, L. (ed.) (2016) International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Göçek, F. M. (2011) The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era (London: I. B. Tauris). Günay, D. (2017) ‘The roles Turkey played in the Middle East (2002–2016)’, in P. Ercan Gözen (ed.), Turkish Foreign Policy: International Relations, Legality and Global Reach (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 195–215. İşeri, E. (2019) ‘Turkey’s entangled (energy) security concerns and the Cyprus question in the Eastern Mediterranean’, in A. Heraclides and G. Çakmak (eds), Greece and Turkey in Conflict and Cooperation: From Europeanization to De-Europeanization (Abingdon: Routledge), pp. 257–70. Jivraj, S. (2020) ‘Decolonizing the academy: between the rock and a hard place’, Interventions, 22:4, 552–73. Kacowicz, A. M. (1993) ‘Teaching International Relations in a changing world: four approaches’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 26:1, 76–80. Keyman, E. F. and N. E. Ülkü (2007) ‘Türkiye üniversitelerinde uluslararası ilişkiler ders müfredatı’ [IR curricula of universities in Turkey], Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 4:13, 99–105.

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Malksoo, M. (2012) ‘The challenge of liminality in International Relations theory’, Review of International Studies, 38:2, 481–94. Müftüler-Baç, M. (2003) ‘Turkish political science and European integration’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10:4, 655–63. Ongur, H. Ö. and S. E. Gürbüz (2019) ‘Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitimi ve oryantalizm: disipline eleştirel pedagojik bir bakış’ [IR education in Turkey and Orientalism: a critical pedagogical approach to the discipline], Uluslararası İlişkiler Dergisi, 16:61, 23–38. Özcan, G. (2013) ‘Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitimi ve yabancı düşmanlığı’ [IR education and xenophobia in Turkey], in H. Altınay (ed.), Yalnız ve endişeli ülke: Türkiye [Lonely and anxious country: Turkey] (Istanbul: Açık Toplum Vakfı), pp. 49–60. Özcan, G. (2015) ‘Türkiye siyasetinde jeopolitik söylem’ [Geopolitical discourse in Turkey’s politics], in M. Yeşiltaş, S. Durgun and P. Bilgin (eds), Türkiye dünyanın neresinde? Hayali coğrafyalar ve çarpışan anlatılar [Placing Turkey in the world? Imagined geographies and conflicting identities] (Istanbul: Koç Üniversitesi Yayınları), pp. 119–54. Özcan, G. and S. Güvenç (2018) ‘Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitiminin tarihsel gelişimi’ [Historical development of IR education in Turkey], in E. CananSokullu (ed.), Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitimi: Yeni yaklaşımlar, yeni yöntemler [IR education in Turkey: New perspectives, new methods] (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları), pp. 17–58. Özerim, M. G. (2018) ‘Stretching, opening or sealing the borders: Turkish foreign policy conceptions and their impact on migration, asylum and visa policies’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 20:2, 165–82. Rumelili, B. (2011) ‘Turkey: identity, foreign policy, and socialization in a postenlargement Europe’, Journal of European Integration, 33:2, 235–49. Sever, A. and O. Almog (eds) (2019) Contemporary Israeli–Turkish Relations in Comparative Perspective (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Tepeciklioğlu, E. E. (2013) ‘Türkiye’de uluslararası ilişkiler eğitimi: Lisans ve lisansüstü ders programlarının karşılaştırmalı bir analizi’ [IR education in Turkey: a comparative analysis of undergraduate and graduate curricula], Ege Akademik Bakış, 13:3, 303–16. Tüylüoğlu, G. (2013) ‘Yalnız ve endişeli ülke: Türkiye’ [Lonely and anxious country: Turkey], in H. Altınay (ed.), Yalnız ve Endişeli Ülke: Türkiye [Lonely and anxious country: Turkey] (Istanbul: Açık Toplum Vakfı), pp. 3–4. Yanık, L. K. (2011) ‘Constructing Turkish “exceptionalism”: discourses of liminality and hybridity in post-Cold War Turkish foreign policy’, Political Geography, 30:2, 80–9.

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Part III

Orientalism

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7 Is decolonisation the decisive factor – or even the relevant term? 250 years of Middle East Studies in Denmark Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen Introduction The overall story is well known: by the early nineteenth century, competing European powers were moving from a dominance of sea trade and established trading posts all over the world, to direct military control over faraway territories. By the early twentieth century much of Asia and Africa was under the colonial tutelage of a few dominant European states. By mid-century, however, this was considered an anachronism, even in these European states themselves. Two world wars had delegitimised the ideology of white civilisational and moral superiority. And Europe was now split into two parts, clients of the new super-powers, the USA and the USSR. In historical terms, decolonisation was a relatively swift affair of twenty-five years – in the Middle East, from 1946 to 1971, when the last of the small Gulf states gained independence. With the big exceptions of Algeria and Palestine, in most places decolonisation was also fairly peaceful. In the region, a strong and independent state had been on the agenda of local elites since at least the 1920s, and now state building and nationalism went hand in hand. Many of the newly founded republics embraced radical socialist ideologies, ever watchful of Western tendencies of ‘neo-imperialism’. New school systems were established for all children who would now learn about the brave national resistance to the colonial powers. Why, then, do we have to discuss decolonisation fifty years after it was achieved everywhere in the region (with the partial exception of Palestine)? Why should we disregard local achievements and still consider the citizens of independent states, with their independent cultural lives and educational policies, as somehow in need of liberation from colonialism? Is this not a wilful ignorance of local agency? A new variation of Eurocentrism? It is difficult to deny that over the last decades, European policies towards refugees and immigrants have hardened. But is this a relic of a colonial past? And if so, how do we explain the period before these attitudes and policies gained ground? Was there not a critical counter-current

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that hailed universalism and rejected racism in all its forms? How, then, have colonialist attitudes been passed on from generation to generation, but skipping one? Did not the European expertise on these matters undergo some reform? One way to delve into these questions would be to focus on one institution that produced knowledge of the Middle East all along: the Oriental departments of Western academia. How was the culture and life of colonised peoples taught in Western universities from the time of political decolonisation till now? And, prior to that, was colonialist supremacism actually part of the learning to be apprehended by students? This chapter looks into the ways in which the Middle East has been taught and understood in a Western European setting. It will focus on a small European country, Denmark, on its history of Oriental Studies and broader public culture as related to the Middle East. Although Denmark was neither a colonial nor an imperial power in the Middle East, it did engage in the region, and held a respectable place in Oriental Studies. In books about the history of Middle East scholarship in Europe, Denmark has a notable role, due to its scientific exploration and the contributions of University of Copenhagen professors (Fück, 1955: 114; Irwin, 2006: 141–3). These contributions have, however, been utterly neglected by Edward Said and others who wrote about an unchanging culture of ‘Orientalism’ as a discourse on the Orient designed and perpetuated to legitimise and consolidate European colonial rule, and later Western domination. After discussing the concept of decolonisation and its relationship to the Orientalism debate, the chapter will sketch the history of Oriental and later Middle East Studies in Denmark with a special emphasis on how it was taught in departments of Oriental Studies. It will argue that neither the advent nor the demise of colonialism had much impact on this study. The major developments in the study and teaching of the Middle East came much later, primarily due to immigration and political developments since 1989.

Postcolonialism or decolonisation? The term ‘postcolonialism’ implies that colonialism has passed and we are in a different era. This is in line with a common understanding of decolonisation as the process during which colonial powers retreated and independent and sovereign states emerged in Africa, Asia and the Global South. And this use of the term is still the most relevant in the field of Middle East Studies today; recently, its most prestigious scholarly journal, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, provided an overview of

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the research on decolonisation, limiting it to the period 1945–70 (Schayegh and Di-Capua, 2020). Yet theorists of postcolonialism maintain that colonial structures and divisions have not been overcome and remain a key problem in the world, and not only in the former colonised parts of it. To these theorists, decolonisation is an unfinished business, or even only about to begin (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018: 4). In the study of the Middle East, the subject of the persistence of colonialist perspectives was raised (mainly from the left) in the 1960s and gained an institutional presence with the establishment of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and its Report in the United States in 1971, and the Review of Middle East Studies in the United Kingdom in 1975 (Hajjar and Neva, 1997: 4). At the time, much of this leftist perspective was subsumed under the heading of dependency theory. According to dependency theory, international economic and political power was structured in an unfair exchange between the dominant centres in the Western countries, on the one hand, and on the other, the countries of the ‘periphery’ – that is, in those parts of the world that had until recently been colonised – which continued to deliver raw materials for Western industries. The Middle East thus principally delivered oil and remained at the receiving end of capitalist innovation and development (Lockman, 2004: 154–8). By the 1980s, this materialistic approach was partly supplanted by a renewed interest in cultural differences. Here, it was the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978 that incorporated Middle East Studies into a broader ideological framework, soon known as postcolonialism. Said singled out the academic study of Oriental languages and cultures as an indispensable accomplice in colonialism itself, as well as in its intellectual continuation. The practice of philology – the study of the language and literature from the perspective of roots, etymologies and syntax – posed an understanding of emotion and thought that was confined to stay within the limits of the language system. The philological method at the centre of Oriental Studies, argued Said, gave scientific authority to an understanding of the Orient as Europe’s contrast, or ‘Other’, and its people as not only emotionally and intellectually different from Europeans, but also incapable of the fundamental changes that modernity would impose upon them (Said, 1978: 3–4). Far from being sympathetic specialists of the region and its people, Orientalists were actively involved in its perennial submission. To Edward Said, and the theoreticians who were inspired by him, Orientalism is not a respectable discipline, but a pernicious tool in Western political and cultural hegemony. Decolonisation may have taken place, more or less successfully, in the former colonies. But it is long overdue in Western universities.

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The scholarly criticism of Said’s thesis has been summarised by Irwin, amongst many others. There were a number of issues in the history of the discipline that Said simply got wrong, in part due to his lack of interest in institutions and journals; many of the figures he treats were not scholars and, conversely, some of the most famous scholars were well-known anticolonialists; Said strangely omits the German-language contribution which was leading in Europe (see the contribution by Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel in this volume) and thus undermines his idea of an intrinsic connection between colonialism and Oriental Studies (Irwin, 2006: 281–98). Equally strangely, I would add, Said also omits the period 1870–1914, the heyday of imperialism which should have been of particular interest to his thesis. Finally, as pointed out by Fred Halliday (1993: 159), much of the scholarship conducted by British or French scholars in the period was of a high order, because, contrary to what Said implies, odious politics does not preclude good scholarship. To this specific criticism of Said, one may add the critique of postcolonial theory in Middle East Studies. Ella Shohat has pointed out that the notion itself places coloniser and colonised in the same position; she commends the older term of ‘postindependence’ because it ‘invokes an achieved history of resistance, shifting the analytical focus to the emergent nation-state’ and ‘provides expanded analytical space for confronting such explosive issues as religion, ethnicity, patriarchy, gender and sexual orientation, none of which is reducible to epiphenomena of colonialism or neo-colonialism’ (Shohat, 1992: 107). And she adds that by attributing power to the nation-state, the term ‘post-independence’ ‘also makes Third World regimes accountable’ (1992: 107). In light of the 2011 Arab revolutions which were not even remotely caused by the colonial powers or their Western successor states, this is an important argument against the terms ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘decolonisation’. While criticism of Said’s thesis has been strong within the field itself, his view of Oriental Studies as a political accomplice of colonialism has held sway outside it. After all, philology is a very narrow approach to society and culture, and has long lost its explanatory power in the studies of European nations and their characters. Moreover, given the observable truth in Said’s claim that a Western bias towards Asian, African or Middle Eastern ‘others’ are clearly not simply a thing of the past, people with little knowledge of the history of Oriental Studies have been convinced of his general claim of scholarly complicity. Philology is, however, both a methodology and the name of any scholarly discipline focused on a particular language and the literature in that language. As such, it can develop. Just as, say, classical philology has adopted many new approaches from history, anthropology or archaeology in the

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study of Greco-Roman antiquity, the study of Arab, Turkish and Persian philology has, perhaps somewhat belatedly, done much the same. And just like the study of Slavic philology merged with political science, sociology and other disciplines to become East European Studies, so have the Near Oriental philologies merged with other disciplines to become Middle East Studies. Textual studies are still central, but other sources have been added, and a certain humility as to what language can reveal about the character of a nation and its culture has generally been adopted, also by practitioners of Middle East Studies. These general discussions about the intimate connections between, on the one side, Orientalist, and later Middle East Studies, and, on the other side, imperialism, colonialism and decolonisation and current Western–Middle Eastern relations, have focused on the greatest imperial powers, England and France, and the later superpower, the United States of America. As mentioned, other significant scholarly (and imperialist) powers such as the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Spain have received less international attention. Unsurprisingly, this is even more the case with minor European powers such as Denmark which, although they never held colonies in the region, took part in the general scholarly exploration of it. How were Oriental, and later Middle Eastern, studies taught in these countries? And how was the relationship between these academic studies and the overall Western political engagement and cultural attitudes towards the Middle East?

Eighteenth-century Oriental Studies Apart from waves of migration in prehistoric times, Danish contact with the Middle East goes back to the Viking age (800–1100) when Vikings traded as far as South and North Africa and Sicily and brought back Arab treasures, including coins. By the year 1000, Denmark had become Christian, and pilgrims travelled as far as Jerusalem. Denmark was at the margins of a learned Latin culture, and works on the Saracens were available, if quite rare. A scholarly engagement began with the Protestant Reformation (in Denmark in 1536) and the ensuing establishment in that year of a chair of Hebrew at the University of Copenhagen, to study the Old Testament in its original language (Løkkegaard, 1992: 482). This was not an expression of interest in faraway countries or cultures, but a dedication to understand the sacred history uncontaminated by the pope and the Roman church. Martin Luther himself had preached and written against Catholics, Muslims and Jews. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Danish church reformers held similar convictions: the Middle East was impersonated by the ‘Turk’,

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and the Turk by the Ottoman sultan who was at the time a very genuine threat to Europe, if not directly to Denmark itself. The first book ever printed in Denmark (in 1482) was a report and denunciation of the Turkish attack on the island of Rhodes (Schwarz Lausten, 2016). Nevertheless, by the eighteenth century, professors of Hebrew also studied Arabic and published treatises on subjects such as Arabic proverbs or geography, and with publications in Latin or German Copenhagen was a significant scholarly city in the Protestant world. The first scholarly translation of a major Muslim historian, Abu al-Fida, by Johann Jacob Reiske was published posthumously in Copenhagen in five volumes (1789–94). During the second half of the eighteenth century, Copenhagen became a European centre of learning, exploration and publishing about the contemporary Middle East. At that time Germany and Italy were still amalgams of small principalities, and England and France spent the mid-century at war with each other. Denmark-Norway had one of the continent’s biggest merchant fleets which traded in the Far East, India, Africa and the West Indies – where it also had minor territorial possessions. Part of this maritime engagement was the triangle trade, delivering manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the West Indies, and sugar, cotton and tobacco from the West Indies to Europe. At the same time, Danish and Norwegian sailors were captured and sold as slaves by the ‘Barbary’ city-states of Mogador, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. This led to a few naval engagements. Denmark also opened official representations in these countries to negotiate ransom for the sailors or bribe the local rulers to leave the Danish ships alone. Some of the consuls wrote important descriptions of the ports and their hinterland, providing reliable information on their politics and history. Some of these, such as Georg Høst’s description of Morocco, were translated and reprinted elsewhere in Europe (Høst, 1779). Denmark was also engaged in trade with Constantinople and the Levant, and in 1738 King Christian VI (r. 1730–46) funded an expedition up the Nile towards Ethiopia. While the expedition only made it as far as Aswan, the ensuing magnificent publication by Frederik Ludvig Norden (1755) of his drawings of pharaonic temples and Nile locations were published in the major European languages. Norden’s book was also the reason why  the next king, Frederic V (r. 1746–66), was persuaded to send an expedition to Arabia in 1761, solely for scholarly purposes. Of its five members, only the youngest, Carsten Niebuhr, survived to publish a Description of Arabia in 1772, and a longer travelogue in 1774–78, written in German but translated into French and English. As a cartographer, Niebuhr produced excellent maps of, for instance, the Red Sea, and his description of Yemen was the first of its kind. These various books bear the imprint of the Enlightenment era: they are informative, detailed and written in a

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matter-of-fact tone. They often demonstrate a sympathy and understanding of the local culture, and when they polemicise, it is often against European prejudice. One of the consuls, Johann von Rehbinder, published an admiring monograph on the Prophet Muhammad in 1799 (von Rehbinder, 1799; Skovgaard-Petersen, 2020: 160).

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century engagements and studies By 1807 this all ended. During the Napoleonic wars, Copenhagen was besieged and bombarded by the British army and navy, and the king was forced to hand over most of the Danish navy and merchant fleet. In 1813 Denmark went bankrupt, and in 1814 Norway was ceded to Sweden. Fifty years later, in 1864, Denmark lost a war to the growing power of Prussia that now took control of Schleswig-Holstein and embarked on the unification of Germany (1864–70). Politically and militarily much diminished, Denmark became inward-looking and gave up on these overseas engagements. At Copenhagen University, the study of Arabic and now also Turkish and Persian continued, but with little interest in the contemporary Middle East and its opportunities. To compensate, perhaps, the Orient flourished in Copenhagen in the form of consumerist escapism. Amusement parks such as Tivoli and Alhambra had Orientalist architecture, music and performances, and perhaps the most famous play of the century, Aladdin (1805), was inspired by the Arabian Nights. When in the early twentieth century film emerged, Copenhagen became a major centre of film production (until eclipsed by Berlin in the 1920s) and turned out a steady flow of Orientalist melodramas (Tybjerg, 1997). Unsurprisingly, the scholars at the university held the consumerist imaginaries in low regard, struggling as they did to professionalise their field, with journals, societies and congresses (Christensen, 1908). But they had as little influence on the public as they had in political power circles. There were a few exceptions to this state of affairs. Perhaps the most remarkable was the book on the French invasion of Algeria, written by a military officer who had taken part, Adolph Wilhelm Dinesen (2006 [1840]). The book is titled ‘Abdel Kader and the Relations between the French and the Arabs in Northern Africa’ and provides a glowing portrait – the first in Europe – of the leader of a Middle Eastern resistance war against European imperialism. Dinesen, an aristocrat, sympathised both with the right of the Algerians to be left alone and with the chivalry and genius of Abdel Kader himself. As such, it is a testimony to European Romantic enthusiasm and inspiration from the Orient, but also to a European tradition of self-criticism, and a right-wing dismay with modernisation and

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industrial mass society at home. As pointed out by Mackenzie (2019: 26), these tendencies have been neglected by Said and his later supporters and detractors. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, most of the Middle East was colonised, and much of Europe democratised. Both modernised. Ordinary European consumers, also in Denmark, now gained access to luxury goods from the colonies such as cocoa, coffee, rugs and silks. And well-to-do consumers in the Middle East could buy European industrial products and take part in a globalising consumer culture. Travel was much easier now, with steamers, railroads and organised tourism. In Denmark, knowledge of the Middle East was democratised in encyclopaedias, newspapers and other mass media. But although it had become easier to obtain, more profound knowledge of the Middle East remained scarce. From 1850 to 1950 less than a dozen books were published on the contemporary Middle East. ‘The East is a career’, Benjamin Disraeli had written, and there was indeed a need for scholars in the British colonies, as evidenced in the 1916 establishment of the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Not so in Denmark. Apart from the few positions in diplomacy – not taken up by Orientalists – the only new opportunity for a Middle Eastern career was that of a Protestant missionary. From around 1900, Danish missionary societies were engaged in Syria and Aden. My own great grandfather wrote one of the few books about the contemporary Middle East as a missionary temporarily based in Palestine (SkovgaardPetersen, 1923). The most prolific and notable writer on the modern Middle East during this period was Johannes Østrup (1867–1938), extraordinary professor at the University of Copenhagen. Østrup, who knew Arabic and travelled to  the region a number of times, wrote a series of books about the new states of Morocco, Turkey and Egypt, the impact of the world war and similar subjects. In these books, Østrup reveals himself as a positivist and social Darwinist, and hence he considers European expansionism natural and not immoral. At the same time, he rejects the idea of Oriental stagnation and celebrates the dramatic developments that are taking place; these developments include Muslim reformist interpretations of Islam (Bæk Simonsen, 2004: 160–4). To sum up, from 1750 to 1800, serious studies of the contemporary Middle East flourished in Denmark and went hand in hand with a commercial, a political and occasionally even a military engagement. These studies were much less biased than the dogmatic and often bigoted publications that had appeared in the previous centuries, and more realistic and informed than those more escapist and consumerist treatments that were dominant during the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

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In these later publications, Danish authors generally accepted European imperialism and colonialism as a given. The exception is Dinesen’s 1840 book on Abdel Kader which criticises the French imperialist enterprise and may be the first European book to celebrate a leader of the resistance against it. The much later books by Østrup fully accept European colonialism, but emphatically argue against the ideas of Oriental stagnation and Islam’s aversion to development that have been ascribed to a complicit Orientalism. In this he was not alone: as the titles illustrate, a new generation of scholarly journals, Revue du Monde Musulman (1906) and Die Welt des Islams (1912), considered Islam a relevant category, but as a fast-­changing world, not as dogma or eternal message. In terms of conveying accurate information and analyses of the contemporary Middle East, these two journals with connections to the foreign ministries of France and Germany were vastly superior to earlier journals. They brought detailed analyses of social and political issues and institutions, had a section with translations from Muslim newspapers and journals, and invited local Muslim intellectuals to contribute. Like Denmark in the eighteenth century, military, political and economic engagement did in fact lead to a systematic and serious collection of information and more informed assessments. Colonialist stereotypes and escapist fantasies thrived all over Europe, but political engagement also furthered solid, empirical knowledge.

Teaching the Middle East During much of the twentieth century, the teaching of Middle Eastern languages at the university was still a rare pastime with little practical use – an ‘Orchideenfach’, as the Germans put it, akin to the delicate collection of orchids. It was taught in small study circles – often in the apartment of the professor – where a handful of students met twice weekly to read a classic work in Arabic, Turkish or Persian, concentrating on syntax, grammar and the historical development of the meaning of words. An important tool in the class was the Chrestomatie, an anthology of texts in the studied language presenting different genres of texts, progressing in order of difficulty for the untrained reader. These didactic compilations were studied all over Europe and published by leaders in the field such as Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) and Rudolf-Ernst Brünnow (1858–1917). The study of Arabic and Hebrew was still under the heading of Semitic philology. Apart from an interest in the Semitic religious texts – the Bible and the Qur’an, and classical works of Jewish and Muslim theology, philosophy, history and mysticism – the focus was on the philology itself. To become a candidate of Semitic Studies, the student had to prove c­ ompetences

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in several ancient Semitic languages. A new university in Aarhus (founded in 1928) taught the same subjects in the same manner. Decolonisation after the Second World War did not alter that. The same textbooks were in use, there was no interest in the spoken language, and Arabic was treated as a learned, but extinct language on a par with Sanskrit, Latin and classical Greek. Svend Søndergaard, who began his Arabic studies in 1951 and from 1961 became an assistant professor of Arabic himself, recalls no discussion of contemporary Middle Eastern issues, and no denigration of people from the Middle East in class. Teaching was concentrated on the reading and appreciation of classical texts from the Chrestomatie of Brünnow as modernised by August Fischer in 1928. Søndergaard, who had himself spent the years 1959–61 in Gaza and Cairo, had discovered some of the modern Egyptian novelists and found them very interesting. But due to opposition by the professor, Frede Løkkegaard, they were not taught until the 1980s (Søndergaard, interview with the author, May 2021). The first significant modernisation in Middle East Studies was the introduction in 1970 of Ivrit, the modern version of Hebrew, now spoken and written in Israel (Løkkegaard, 1992: 508). As for Arabic, it was only in the 1980s that new teaching material was introduced, now focusing on Modern Standard Arabic, typically setting a scene in modern Jordan or Egypt where a couple of American students made friends with locals and together they engaged in outings and discussions. For the more advanced students, during the 1980s contemporary Arab literature gradually rose to become a subject in its own right. The minor updates of the subject matter that now took place were largely due to long-standing pressure from students. As a result of the youth revolt in 1968, which in Copenhagen took the form of an occupation of the university, students were included in university decision-making. During the 1970s, the radical left began to take an interest in Middle East politics – even if ‘Middle East’ was largely understood in a narrow sense as Israel and its neighbours, reflecting the outlook of the international press. This politicisation of the field concurred with a growing student demand for ‘relevance’. The professors of Oriental Studies in Copenhagen and Aarhus opposed this demand. But developments such as the Iranian revolution of 1979 made it harder to resist. A broader public began to expect interpretations and clarifications of Middle East politics – something the leading professors were ill equipped to deliver. The few attempts that they made were couched in some version of modernisation theory, occasionally combined with broad statements about ‘Muslim’ or ‘Persian’ culture (Asmussen, 1981). By then, however, things were starting to change. New universities had opened that had no intention of copying the Oriental philology tradition.

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At Roskilde University (founded in 1972), many teachers and students were inspired by Marxism and interpreted the Middle East not from perspectives of language and culture but from dependency theory, world system theory and similar approaches. And in 1983 Odense University (established in 1966, later renamed University of Southern Denmark) opened a Centre for Middle East Studies, focused on contemporary issues and renouncing the teaching of languages altogether. When I worked there in the early 1990s, I was repeatedly told the foundation story of the centre: a minister of education had asked the Copenhagen University professor of Arabic for a briefing before leaving for a conference in Egypt. He had declined, stating that this was not within the remit of his institute – whereupon the minister proposed to Odense to fill that gap. Throughout the 1980s, the Odense centre offered courses on the modern Middle East for professionals in business, diplomacy, journalism and the like. There were a lot of readings in politics and social sciences, and the students had to prepare reports on selected subjects. Included in the price would be a study trip to a Middle Eastern country. By the 1990s, a new orientation supplemented and partly supplanted the Middle East: the subject of Middle Eastern immigrants to Denmark and issues of integration. From 2007 the centre reoriented itself towards an international audience, offering an MA in Middle East Studies in English (Jung, 2016). Copenhagen and Aarhus universities followed suit. In 1992, the Copenhagen Institute of Oriental Philology merged with Egyptology, Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology. Despite their focus on antiquity, these fields were more attuned to theory and self-reflection, and this furthered a reorientation of Oriental philology studies towards broader Area Studies. Modern history and social sciences were introduced. The institute was renamed ‘The Carsten Niebuhr Institute’ and began to attract many more students. The programme maintained a focus on language acquisition, but now with an emphasis on a reading and speaking proficiency in the modern languages, rather than a solid grounding in classical Oriental philology. With the advent of satellite television and the internet, Middle Eastern media and their local perspectives became easily accessible: based on its commitment to Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew and Persian, Copenhagen developed its Area Studies towards a study of Middle Eastern media and publics, thus retaining its focus on language, but modernising its use, and introducing an obligatory semester in the region. From 2008, Aarhus University made a similar transition towards contemporary issues, still language-based, but with more focus on Islamic issues, also in a globalising context (Fibiger and Sedgwick, 2016). By the 2020s the classical philological approach has thus been abandoned, and the study of pre-1800 Middle East is now somewhat neglected.

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Two universities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, maintain a strong focus on language acquisition, but they concentrate on subjects (in Copenhagen: media; in Aarhus: Islam) that transcend the geographical Middle East. This could also be said about Odense, and certainly about Roskilde University where the teaching of the Middle East is embedded in broader Global Studies. The classical text-reading is still practised in Copenhagen and Aarhus, but even here it has been superseded by class discussion of assigned scholarly articles. Students prepare presentations and written assignments. The job market for candidates includes media, tourism, export companies, diplomacy, aid organisations, integration projects for refugees, municipalities and secret services. The study of the Middle East is thus generally thriving and dynamic. What is, however, an increasingly obvious caveat is that, compared to the past eras, only a few scholars today actually command a Middle Eastern language. While scholars are generally aware of this deficiency and try to make up for it by using Middle Eastern sources who know English or French, they are still incapable of following local Middle Eastern media and thus tend to neglect the local dynamics and cultural dimensions in Middle Eastern societies. Since 2000, a number of research projects have been launched, typically involving a network of established scholars and a couple of PhD students. These include The New Muslim Public (Copenhagen), Modern Muslim Subjectivites (Southern Denmark University), Sectarianism in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings (Aarhus) and Entangled Histories of Palestine and the Global New Left (Roskilde). These projects are funded by the statefunded Danish Research Foundations, or private funders such as the Velux Foundations. A minor part of the state funding of research has clear political directions, most prominently, Aarhus University’s Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation Processes (2008–13), funded by the Ministry of Defence after an agreement between the government and the antiimmigrant Danish People’s Party. Conversely, when the Social Democrats came to power, its supporting parties on the left were granted money to revive peace and conflict research. In the ensuing public tender, this was granted to a Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts at the University of Copenhagen (2013–16, but continuing with other funding), headed by Professor Ole Wæver and drawing on his work in the so-called Copenhagen School of Security Studies, clearly to help in the devising of non-militaristic solutions to international conflict. The Centre included Middle East conflicts in its analyses, with a particular interest in the ­conflict in Syria.

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A new era Labour migrants from the Middle East began to migrate to Denmark in the 1960s. By the 1970s, many had settled and established families. During the 1980s, political refugees arrived from Lebanon, Palestine and – in the early 1990s – Iraq. In the 2000s, this immigration continued, especially from Syria after 2011. In 2020, migrants from non-Western countries and their descendants now constitute some nine per cent of the population, and they are largely from the Middle East (Danmarks Statistik, 2020: 11–15). By the 1990s, the presence of this growing number of Middle Easterners and their offspring had become an important and divisive political issue. With the 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington, and later bombings in Madrid and London, issues of migration, terror and national security were permanently at the top of the political agenda. In Denmark’s case, the army’s participation in the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) made the country an active player in these global events. Even more so, the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in September 2005 in the newspaper Jyllands Posten triggered angry protests all over the Muslim world; for years afterwards, the newspaper was a target for threats and (foiled) terrorist attacks. By then, Islam was in all sections of the news: from global conflicts to national politics, to intimate and private issues of gender relations, dress code, schooling and personal conduct. Scholars of the Middle East, and particularly of Islam, were now regularly consulted by institutions and authorities which found themselves dealing with issues of cultural multiplicities and differences. University scholars also appeared in the media, often asked to explain features of Middle Eastern politics, economy, society and culture. Increasingly, scholars were also criticised. The ‘collection of orchids’ was long gone: studying the Middle East, its languages and religion meant studying burning global issues, at home and abroad. Students who began their studies after 2000 were generally not much interested in Middle Eastern history; instead, they were engaged in contemporary politics and debates, in the Middle East and Europe. Were the Middle East institutes up to this new reality and its many new demands? Scarcely. In some ways, these were good times; with the increased public attention came research grants, expansion, access to policy-makers and influence. A Nordic Society of Middle East Studies was established in 1989, and Danish scholars engaged again in international scholarly debates over the Middle East. But with increased engagement also came rivalry and internal divisions. Researchers differed in their capacity and willingness to engage with the media. And they could be met with public distrust. After the terror attacks in 2001, public debaters including the then prime

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minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen voiced a general suspicion of the views of experts, not least on the subject of the Middle East and Islam. Striving as they were to present the issues based on their scholarship in a fair and balanced manner, Middle East scholars were often met with accusations of being ‘Islam-apologetic’, that is, for not seeing Islam as inherently barbaric and pre-modern. On the internet, this could lead to vicious verbal attacks, blacklisting and even threats. In the twenty-first century, the Danish public is strongly engaged in issues of Middle Eastern politics and, in particular, religion. Stereotypical and denigrating writing on the Middle East, its culture and populations has become commonplace. Such writing is, however, only very rarely penned by university scholars. They discuss these stereotypes with their students in class, and some also comment upon such upcoming issues in public discussions. But in my opinion, this bias in the public is not simply a rehash of colonialist stereotypes and the racist science that went with it, as the Saidian thesis would indicate. For one thing, it has become much more inimical towards Islam. To give an illustrative example of this contrast with the colonial age, consider the treatment of the Prophet Muhammad: in contemporary Danish anti-Muslim polemics the Prophet Muhammad is denounced as a paedophile. But in the classical ‘Victorian’ scholarly treatment of the Life of Muhammad (1903), Professor Frants Buhl discussed whether he could have been an epileptic. This is a difference not merely in diagnosis but in underlying attitude: while the anti-Muslim polemicists strive to make Muhammad repulsive in order to denounce him and warn against his followers, Buhl considered Muhammad an honest person and therefore he sought to explain why Muhammad could have had visions and believed in them himself (Skovgaard-Petersen, 2020: 418). Contemporary bias against people from the Middle East bears more resemblance to the demonisation of the Turk in medieval Europe than to the self-confident Victorian positivist approach to colonised subjects. Much of it also stems from new images – ‘oil sheikhs’, Ayatollah Khomeini, the ‘Islamic State’ – that is, the era after independence and decolonisation. Most of it would be inconceivable without Arab, Turkish, Kurdish or Persian immigration. But it has also called for corrections; in the 2000s, scholars of the Middle East have once again published books in Danish for a general readership about regional developments, individual countries, food, religion, culture and politics. Some Middle Eastern fiction has also been translated, but here in particular much more could be done. Although the influx of migrants has been a major, and divisive, theme in politics, many people long ago accepted their settlement in the country as a fact of life. Young Danes grow up in a more ethnically mixed and culturally diverse society, and have never known anything else. It has, evidently, also stimulated curiosity and knowledge about the Middle East. The growth in

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public interest in the contemporary Middle East is not only reflected in the growth of student numbers and their concentration on contemporary and political issues. It has also led to initiatives in the Middle East itself. Since 2000, the Danish engagement in Middle Eastern wars, and the threat of terrorism, has led to more funding of research in subjects of political interest. The products of private initiative, the Danish Institute in Damascus opened in 2001, and a Danish House in Ramallah opened in 2010. Finally, a more political and diplomatic institute, the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute, was established in Cairo in 2005. The latter was part of the government’s ‘Arab Initiative’, later renamed the Danish-Arab Partnership Programme, launched in 2004, which has provided significant funds for cultural exchanges, media development, inter-faith activities and cross-cultural cooperation in numerous fields. Concentrated on a small number of Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia – its chances and impact have fluctuated with local political developments, especially the revolutions in 2011 and their different trajectories. The Danish-Arab Partnership Programme also allocated funds to encourage academic collaboration with universities in the Middle East. These were on a minor scale and did not allow for salaries. Here, projects included subjects such as environmental protection and Middle Eastern parliamentarism post-2011. To sum up, in the twenty-first century, the Middle East has become a close neighbour once again, first and foremost through the immigration of labour migrants and refugees from the region. This has been a controversial and divisive issue, and remains so, but it has also made the Middle East and its cultures readily available and observable, and has stimulated interest and improved knowledge. In the universities, Middle East Studies are thriving, but the field is also much more politicised and controversial than at any previous moment in modern Danish history.

Conclusion Returning to the overall question of the nexus between politics, scholarship and the classroom, and the demand for a decolonisation of teaching about the Middle East, what we find is that, in the case of Denmark, there is little direct correlation between, on the one hand, political developments in the Middle East – colonisation and decolonisation – and, on the other hand, research and methods of teaching the Middle East in Denmark. In the earlier phases, the quality of scholarship in Denmark was affected by political developments in Denmark (from flourishing trade to military defeats), as well as broader cultural developments on the continent

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(Enlightenment ideals, romanticism, naturalism). In particular, Denmark’s eighteenth-century military, political and commercial engagement seems to have furthered serious research in contemporary issues. The advent of European colonialism as such did not mark a watershed in either research or teaching methods which were, after all, inspired by the study of classical antiquity. Conversely, in the Danish case, decolonisation was no watershed, either. While perhaps at SOAS and similar schools in the colonial metropolises it had more immediate repercussions, and students demanded a reckoning and a new focus, these developments came much later to universities in Denmark, and for other reasons. Since the 1980s, research and teaching has shifted focus towards contemporary issues, theory has gained a more prominent place, and self-reflection on the practice of studying others is very much part of the study. This may not be entirely unrelated to the international Orientalism debate – and Said and his thesis will be part of the study – but it is certainly no product of it. Once again, the new engagement with theory and self-reflection can also be seen as inspired by classical studies and the modernisation of modern philologies, such as the study of English, German and French. To this one should add the pressure from students for the study of the contemporary Middle East, and the fact that, today, students have already been exposed to the Middle East prior to their study, perhaps through travelling, and certainly through growing up with classmates who were children or grandchildren of immigrants or refugees from the Middle East. These second- and third-generation Danes have also made their way to the university: since the 1990s a significant proportion of the students in  Copenhagen, Odense and Aarhus have a Middle Eastern background – in Copenhagen I would reckon around 25 per cent. Immigration has changed Denmark in much more direct ways than colonialism and decolonisation ever did. It has also been a much more significant factor in the development of Danish politics – and discussions in the ­university classroom. Considered against the discussion about Orientalism and postcolonialism, a complex and contradictory pattern emerges. Classical philological Oriental Studies hardly exist any more, but have been replaced with a study of the contemporary Middle East that is multidisciplinary and practised in a variety of ways in a number of disciplines and departments. This makes it difficult to generalise about their methods or inherent views of the Middle East and its inhabitants. Moreover, those departments specifically oriented towards the Middle East typically have a significant number of students and instructors with a Middle Eastern background, and in this sense they can  perhaps be considered postcolonial in the sense of multi-ethnic and multi-religious, even though Denmark had no colonies in the Middle East.

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Given this state of affairs, it is somewhat ironic that, in postcolonial theory, scholars of Middle Eastern subjects remain under suspicion of being unreformed ‘Orientalists’. All the while, in the local Danish discussion since 2001, the more right-wing commentators accuse the same scholars of being apologetic towards Middle Eastern culture, and particularly Islam. Or, to put it otherwise, insufficiently Orientalist.

References Asmussen, J. (1981) Islam (Copenhagen: Politikens). Bæk Simonsen, J. (2004) Islam set med danske øjne [Islam seen through Danish eyes] (Copenhagen: Akademisk forlag). Christensen, A. (1908) ‘Orientalismen og dens Dyrkere’ [Orientalism and its cultivators], Det ny Aarhundrede, 5:11, 802–11. Danmarks Statistik (2020) Indvandrere i Danmark 2020 [Immigrants in Denmark 2020] (Copenhagen: Danmarks Statistik), available at www.dst.dk/da/Statistik/ Publikationer/VisPub?cid=29447 (accessed 29 July 2022). Dinesen, A. W. (2006 [1840]) Abd el-Kader og Forholdene mellem Franskmænd og Arabere i det nordlige Afrika [Abd el-Kader and the relations between the French and Arabs in North Africa] (Copenhagen: Vandkunsten). Fibiger, T. and M. Sedgwick (2016) ‘Islamforskning på Aarhus: (snart) ti år med ICSRU’ [Islamic Studies in Aarhus: ten years with ICSRU], Tidsskrift for islamforskning, 10:1, 63–73. Fück, J. (1955) Die arabischen Studien in Europa [Arab Studies in Europe] (Leipzig: Harrassowitz). Hajjar, L. and S. Neva (1997) ‘(Re-)Made in the USA: Middle East Studies in the global era’, MERIP-Report, 205, 2–9. Halliday, F. (1993) ‘Orientalism and its critics’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 20:2, 145–63. Høst, G. (1779) Efterretninger om Marókos og Fes [Information about Morocco and Fez] (Copenhagen: N. Möller). Irwin, R. (2006) The Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (London: Penguin). Jung, D. (2016) ‘Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies’, Tidsskrift for islamforskning, 10:1, 36–52. Lockman, Z. (2004) Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Løkkegaard, F. (1992) ‘Semitisk-østerlandsk filologi’ [Semitic-oriental philology], in P. J. Jensen and L. Grane (eds), Københavns Universitet 1479–1979. vol. 8 (Copenhagen: Gad), pp. 477–522. Mackenzie, J. (2019) ‘The orientalism debate’, in W. Greenwood and L. de Guise (eds), Inspired by the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western art (London: British Museum), pp. 16–29. Mignolo, W. and C. Walsh (2018) On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Niebuhr, C. (1772) Beschreibung von Arabien [Description of Arabia] (Copenhagen: N. Möller).

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Norden, F. L. (1755) Voyage d’Égypte et de Nubie (Copenhagen: Maison Royale des Orphelins). Reiske, J. J. (1789–91) Abulfedae annales muslimici (Copenhagen: C. J. Proft). Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Schayegh, C. and Y. Di-Capua (2020) ‘Why decolonization?’ International Journal of Middle East Studies, 52:1, 137–45. Schwarz Lausten, M. (2016) ‘Synet på tyrken i den danske humanisme og reformationstid’ [The view of the Turk in the Danish humanism and renaissance], in P. Schwarz Lausten (ed.), Turban og tiara. Renæssancehumanisternes syn på islam og tyrkerne (Copenhagen: Vandkunsten). Shohat, E. (1992) ‘Notes on the “post-colonial”’, Social Text, 31/32, 99–113. Skovgaard-Petersen, C. (1923) Landet hvor Kilderne sprang (Copenhagen: Lohse). Skovgaard-Petersen, J. (2020) Muslimernes Muhammad – og alle andres. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal). Tybjerg, C. (1997) ‘Orientalisme i dansk stumfilm’, Sekvens. Audiovisual Media in Transition, 1997, 213–28. Von Rehbinder, J. (1799) Abu ‘l-Casem Mohamed. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Menschengeschichte (Copenhagen: Möller und Sohn).

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8 Challenges to a transformative education: ‘EUrientalism’ at Egyptian universities Bassant Hassib and Jan Claudius Völkel

Introduction Egypt, one of the world’s oldest civilisations, takes pride in its unique history. Since the unification of upper and lower Egypt around 3000 bce, the state has remained unified despite its history of several colonisation periods. Egyptians enjoy calling their country ‘Mother of the World’ (‘Umm ad-dunya’), albeit often with a sarcastic undertone. Yet, this historical uniqueness comes at a price. In the words of famous Egyptologist Jan Assmann (2011: 15), ‘the past conveys a kind of connective structure of diachronic identity to societies, groups, and individuals’. Indeed, consecutive Egyptian regimes have used this pharaonic heritage to create a feeling of togetherness, transforming the ‘iconic memory’ into a ‘political memory’ (Assmann, 2006: 216); proclaiming a homogeneous identity: ‘we Egyptians’, against all others, under the leadership of a benevolent but authoritarian ‘pharaonic ruler’ (Meijer, 2021: 47). Since Mohamed ‘Ali, the founder of modern Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century, the struggle against external powers has become an indivisible part of this political memory, whether it was against the Ottoman Empire, Napoleon’s French, or the British who ruled Egypt until 1922 (de facto until 1952). As a consequence of this anti-colonial struggle, the Egyptian Armed Forces emerged as the dominant actor, having almost continuously executed far-reaching control over every sector (Völkel, 2021). The army’s supremacy has also shaped the formation and content of Egypt’s higher education. Obtaining security clearances has become an omnipresent concern for Egyptian academics (Springborg, 2021: 92). International cooperation constantly hangs under the sword of Damocles of Egypt’s multiple intelligence offices: Port Said University, for instance, had to stop five Erasmus-funded projects for lack of security clearance in 2019, leading to a loss of €900,000 in external funding (interview 7). Within this limiting context, we claim that much of the knowledge produced about Europe, understood here as the political entity that later

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became the European Union (EU), and its resembling image results from four conditions: (1) Egypt’s self-perception as a pre-eminent civilisation; (2) its struggle against European colonialism; (3) an ongoing discourse about the compatibility of Egyptian traditional values with European/ Western influences; and (4) the close grip that the regime has had on higher education and its proponents. We argue that, in reference to Edward W. Said’s (1978) seminal book Orientalism and Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi’s (1991) replica Occidentalism, a kind of ‘EUrientalism’ has taken hold at Egyptian universities: Europe is still the symbol of colonial exploitation and Western decadence (i.e. Europe the foe), but it is also Egypt’s closest cooperation partner and stands for progress (i.e. Europe the friend)  – a duality Mignolo (2011) has conceptually theorised. Based on the extant literature in both Arabic and English, we conducted nine semistructured interviews during February 2020 with members and observers of Egyptian universities, from senior professors to students (see the detailed list of interviews at the end of this chapter). These interviewees paint a differentiated picture  about the idea and ideal of ‘EUrientalism’ and how it affects endeavours at studying Europe as an important component of what we refer to as a ‘transformative education’. By ‘transformative education’ we understand an educational system that contributes to the reduction of existing stereotypes between the north and the south of the Mediterranean to build future leaders and societies that peacefully coexist and cooperate. Knowledge produced in such a system results from, first, a critical reflection of the Self, and second, the dialogic interaction between both sides on a par. We explain this interplay of EUrientalism, knowledge production and transformative education in the next section, where we nuance the interrelated constraints that this nexus brings about: the conceptions of Egypt as the Self and Europe as the Other; competing populist discourses in Egypt and Europe; and the government’s firm grip over academic freedom and knowledge production. We embed this within a broader context of social sciences at Egyptian universities and Egypt’s authoritarian political regime. We thus explore how this environment impacts upon academics’ knowledge production on Europe  – ­ exemplied through the ‘Euro-Mediterranean Studies Programme’ – and examine how these dynamics influence students’ ­perceptions and learning about Europe.

EUrientalism: studying Europe and the reflection of oneself The dialectic relation between the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’ marked an important phase in Egypt’s scholarship during the 1980s and 1990s.

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Responding to Edward Said’s Orientalism, Hassan Hanafi (1935–2021), from 1980 Professor of Philosophy at Cairo University, started to develop a ‘mirrored derivative’ called ‘Occidentalism’. His concerns oscillated around the ‘Arab-Islamic crisis’ that he saw rooted in six different problems, with the ‘continued threat that “westernization” poses to Arab identity’ being one of them (Daifallah, 2012: 49; see also Esposito and Voll, 2001: 68–90).1 Having obtained his doctorate in France, Hanafi did not simply copy Said’s idea of the West’s perception of the Orient from a decidedly colonial perspective which he then flipped east–westwards, but presented his approach as the study of the West from the Orient’s perspective as an indispensable part of the complete ‘process of decolonization. Military, economic and political decolonization would be incomplete without scientific and cultural decolonization’ (Hanafi, 2008: 257). Through this process, peoples and cultures of the Orient would change from study objects to study subjects. By cracking the European monopoly on knowledge production, ‘[p]eoples in the Third World can then reach the age of maturity and get rid of western cultural tutorship’ (Hanafi, 2008: 260). In the tradition of Taha Hussein (see the introduction to this volume), higher education has thus a societal task of fulfilling needs beyond the education of students per se and the build-up of individual competences through knowledge production and knowledge transfer: it is an indispensable element for formerly colonised societies’ emancipation from European, or Western, domination. This, however, requires a deep level of self-reflection and internal changes, as Hanafi also saw the Arab world’s overall ‘backwardness’ rooted in two issues: a too strict obedience to culture’s and religion’s own ‘turath’ (heritage) by those who uncritically stick to their traditions, as well as the parallel Westernisation of the Arab (mostly secular) elite. Both groups needed to adapt their attitudes; Hanafi saw neither ‘Salafists’ nor ‘Secularists’ as conducive to overcoming this diagnosed backwardness through the generation of knowledge (Daifallah, 2012: 54f.): Unreflectedly absorbing Western lifestyles is as inappropriate for Arab societies as stubbornly rejecting them. In that sense, Hanafi’s Occidentalism is neither, as occasionally criticised, a simple inversion of Orientalists’ mistakes (Kesbi, 2017: 5) nor a ‘programme of revenge’ (Tønnesson, 1994: 17). Instead, it claims that teaching and studying Europe at Oriental (i.e., here, Egyptian) universities must inevitably include self-reflective processes. This difference notwithstanding, both concepts contain constructivist elements: the way we observe and study the world ‘out there’ constitutes the reality we see. Yet, in contrast to Said’s Orientalism as an ‘alien’ and ‘outside’ perspective of Westerners  towards processes in the non-Western world, Hanafi’s Occidentalists create their knowledge through dialogic interactions between both sides.

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The significance of dialogic interactions was exemplarily asserted for the case of Euro-Mediterranean relations by Pace (2005), who drew on the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin on dialogue, highlighting the role of ‘language’ and the interaction between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. Pace (2005: 296) explains how: The first degree of dialogue requires the unity of the Self. The dialogic process thus requires reconciliation with the Self before interaction with an Other. At the second level of dialogue, an acceptance of the Other in dialogue has to be in place.

Thus, this self-reflective process requires focusing more on understanding and engaging with the Other (on a par) with a more critical self-reflection, and less on being trapped in the ‘self-victimisation’ paradigm/discourse by a state continuously generating a sense of fear of the Other. This self-reflective approach marked Egyptian social scientists’ image of Europe from the 1980s (until 2011). Mona Abul-Fadl (1989, 1992) introduced ‘Europe’ for the first time into the curricula at Cairo University’s prestigious Faculty of Economics and Political Science (FEPS) through an alternative paradigm, consisting of a wave of translating European literature into Arabic and examining how European literature viewed the concept of Islamic resurgence. Resisting the Western dominance in science through redefining concepts of politics, power, authority, crisis and colonialism with the heritage of Islamic literature was meant to end the ‘academic confusion in the West’ about political concepts within Islam (El-Hedini, 2005). At the same time, this emerging ‘Egyptian School’ called for ‘going beyond the traditional binary a “realm of Islam” and a “realm of war” to incorporate contemporary dynamics and interactions’ (Abou Samra, 2021: 420), explicitly calling for encounters and exchanges with people outside their own religious-cultural realm ‘with a view toward adjusting the balance of power among them in a manner that sustains life on earth’ (2021: 420). In this spirit, FEPS scholars started to revive the concept of Islamic resurgence in their own publications, yet not without palpable collegial headwinds: some French-speaking Egyptian professors, such as Nadia Mostafa, Nadia Aboughazi and Hassan Nafaa, refused to teach in French as part of the continuing resistance to the Western paradigm’s overarching superiority in academic circles. Abul-Fadl’s groundbreaking ‘Islamic Political Science/Political Islam’ course, further developed by professors such as Seif Abdel Fattah, Amany Massoud El-Hedini and Nadia Mostafa, was a reflection of the rise of interest in the Islamic paradigm by the mid-1980s and those who sympathised with Islamists among academics and students, and who in turn called for an alternative to Western political thought. ‘This endeavour was

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not a rejection of the Western paradigm, but to offer an alternative that gets rid of the trap of Westernisation of Sociology/the Social Sciences literature in academia, while trying to maintain a balanced secular approach in the literature’ (interview 2). This paradigm compelled students to question  potential biases in knowledge that reproduces Western perspectives regarding their political reality as Arabs and Muslims, by offering them an alternative approach to understanding and analysing regional phenomena. ‘For example, Palestinian resistance to the occupation should not be labeled “terrorist,” and refugees are human beings in need, not threats to national security, nor an opportunity to increase GDPs’ (Abou Samra, 2021: 421). Nevertheless, and in practice, this balanced secular approach was not completely achieved because of ambiguity of these new ideas within the context of the domination of the Western secular themes among Marxists and socialist intellectuals, and because of mis-characterisation of Islamic intellectuals as Islamist activists. This created an intellectual division among academic staff and students at FEPS at the time over the key concepts of this ‘Egyptian School’ in particular, and political science more broadly (Abozaid, 2021). Irrespective of such practical challenges, Hanafi’s Occidentalism was an appeal that studying Europe in Egypt should neither be a simple memorising of Europe’s history, values and characteristics, nor their general criticism and rejection; instead, what we conceptualise as ‘EUrientalism’ signifies a self-reflective paradigm of generating (local) knowledge through studying Europe at Egyptian universities. Within educational establishments, Hanafi saw critical thinking across campuses as essential for conditioning minds to suspect the form and function of everything educators and students encounter, including what is taught in the classrooms. By this, it is precisely not useless that Egyptians study Europe – although they will probably ‘not contribute anything meaningful to European Studies and work for ninety-nine per cent in Egypt in the end and not in Europe, as Europe mostly does not accept knowledge generated in Egypt’, as a current professor at FEPS confessed in a rather disillusioned manner (interview 1); nor would studying Europe only occur from the perspective of the job market. A dialogic and interactive partnership between European and Egyptian universities would instead foster a transformative educational system. Egyptian universities gained far-reaching responsibilities, then, beyond the simple production of knowledge. However, this ‘EUrientalism’ has been challenged by several realities, not least the political context under which educators in Egypt operate. The next section explores the firm grip of authoritarianism on Egyptian social sciences under the pretence of nationalist discourses.

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Social sciences in Egypt: confined within a specific political context European academics have had a major influence on Egypt’s emerging higher education sector. The ‘pioneers of Egyptian sociology’ (Abaza, 2010: 201) studied the teachings of Claude Henri Saint Simon (1760–1825) or August Comte (1798–1857) in France. These included Rifa’a al-Tahtawi (1801–73) and Taha Hussein (1889–1973), Egypt’s most influential and well-known intellectuals, among others. This spirit of ‘modernisation à la Europe’ continued throughout the twentieth century. When the ‘Egyptian University’ (which after 1952 became Cairo University) was founded in 1908, it hosted a number of influential European Orientalists (Hourani, 1963: 326). ‘Sociology was then understood as a science that would help narrow the gap between two worlds – European and Egyptian societies – through the application of sociological laws’ (Abaza, 2010: 202). As Ibrahim (1997: 547) said: ‘This claim to dual ancestry, Western and Eastern, runs through the 100-year march of sociology in the Arab World causing tensions, contradictions, occasional brilliance whilst always maintaining a cross-eyed sociological “vision”.’ The growing nationalist movement in Egypt increasingly used education as a channel for ‘disseminating the true sense of Egyptian-ness through the teachings of history, religion and language’ (Mellor, 2016: 9); universities became spaces for increased emancipation and the construction of a national ‘Self’. After the 1952 putsch of the ‘Free Officers’, Gamal Abdel Nasser supported the massive extension of study places quantitatively, while qualitatively, the education system became fully integrated into the social and political goals of the new regime […] in an effort to grant access to higher education to the newly created middle class that was to become the backbone of the nascent regime. (Cantini, 2017: 265, own omission)

Higher education ‘functioned as a tool to train future party leaders, state cadres, and bureaucrats’ (Abd Rabou, 2016: 55). Social sciences served this mobilisation in a double sense: they were meant to ensure that graduates endorsed the regime and its ideology; and they were meant to train future members of the body politic in the Nasserist attempt to popularise the civilian part of the state (Völkel, 2018: 51). As a result, the popularity of political science in particular was mainly ‘based on a fake assumption held by many students that it is a highway to get prestigious jobs in the government’ (Hassan, 2009: 8). During the heyday of the Nasserist revolution, ‘[n]early every sociologist wished […] to become the ideologist or adviser of the new ruling elite and possibly to join its ranks’ (Ibrahim, 1997: 550, own omission). Meaningful

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research was meanwhile subordinated, if not fully unwanted: a law quickly introduced made prior permissions from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), an organisation under military control, mandatory before carrying out research in Egypt. ‘This was the moment that marked the beginning of the “criminalization of collecting data and conducting research”’ (Abaza, 2010: 203). As Hassan Hanafi himself said: ‘[A]n illiterate population is better controlled and “governed” by MENA regimes because an educated people will question what its government is doing in its name’ (quoted in Pace, 2011: 117). While FEPS was established in 1959 upon presidential decree, modelled along the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),2 teaching remained in Arabic and followed the regime’s overall political tendencies. European languages, such as English or French, were used only in complementary courses (interview 2). This followed ‘the mood of decolonizing sociology, the claims of “indigenizing” the field as a counter-project to Western hegemony extended first to “Arabizing” sociology during the phase of Arab nationalism and later on to “Islamizing” sociology with the rise of Islamism’ (Abaza, 2010: 188f.). After Hosni Mubarak had permitted some regime criticism in university lectures and seminars (Hassib, 2021), his removal triggered some remarkable liberalisation tendencies at Egypt’s universities, albeit for a short period only. The resurrection of military rule from 2013 was a game changer, leading to a ‘climate of fear’ (Kohstall, 2021: 76). At Cairo University, several research centres had to revise their mandates to avoid governmental repression. Intellectualism (by way of critical expression) is declining now as university professors face the threat of termination of their employment or even arrest (al-Monitor, 2020; Committee on Academic Freedom, 2018; Shahin, 2015). The torture and killing of an Italian PhD student from Cambridge University in Cairo in early 2016, plus several rejections at Cairo Airport during immigration procedures of other foreign scholars has extended this pressure also to European researchers and higher education institutions (Saliba, 2020: 156–7). In consequence, many European universities tightened their safety requirements for outgoing field researchers and reduced their cooperation activities with Egyptian counterparts (Peter and Strazzari, 2017: 1531). The requested obedience to regime principles also affects the depiction of Europe: ‘Our ministries never issue any critical remark about the Visegrád states, as they act in line with the Egyptian government’s own attitude, i.e. strong leaders with questionable levels of democracy such as Viktor Orbán’, an Egyptian senior researcher attested (interview 4). In such instances, the Egyptian regime uses those developments within the EU that fit its own legitimisation purposes, irrespective of their high level of contestation in

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Europe itself, in the sense of ‘if an EU leader such as Orbán is limiting civil rights and personal liberties, then we can do it as well’. Potential international exposure for Egyptian students and faculty is increasingly hampered by the authorities. The Ministry of Higher Education’s previous practice of offering PhD scholarships for Egyptians to study abroad has been reduced over the past years for two main reasons: the brain drain resulting from the high non-return rate of Egyptian scholars, combined with the lack of will to reform the higher education system along the lines of foreign models. Governmental spending on education and R&D is dramatically underfunded. This not only hampers academic quality. The lack of available scholarships or study grants requires most PhD students to sustain themselves, often obliging them to work in full-time jobs, which makes it difficult for them to produce innovative research and knowledge (Johnson, 2018; Kubbara, 2018: 55–8). The overall lack of capacity and the structural underfunding of public higher education in Egypt triggered the opening of new private universities, from the 1990s, to offer better working and study conditions. Until then, the prestigious American University in Cairo (AUC) was the only private (albeit non-profit) alternative to state-sponsored tertiary education, aimed at especially upper- and upper-middle-class students (Hanafi, 2011: 293). This new tendency to increase paid-for offers by private universities included ‘profitable sectors within the best faculties of Cairo University, opening up sub-sections in which teaching is undertaken in foreign languages, and access to which is limited to feepaying students’ (Cantini, 2017: 265). At FEPS, a French section and an English section were established within the Political Science Department in 1995 and 1996, respectively. The French section in particular has received major financial and organisational support from the French government in terms of student scholarships and faculty exchange programmes (interview 6). In an age of privatised higher education, students are not ‘revolutionary comrades’ any longer, as they were seen and treated under Nasser, but depoliticised ‘customers of a new kind’ (Cantini, 2017: 266). While private universities – given their exclusive command of the English language and the diversity of their faculty, including national and foreign staff – could potentially contribute to expanding global scholarship, they fail to do so due to their absolute focus on teaching. Therefore, ‘these universities contribute to the isolation of students and faculty from their society’ (Hanafi, 2011: 295). In consequence, one can see the promoted internationalisation of private higher education in Egypt as ‘a mere consequence of capitalism and globalisation without giving much attention to the content (of teaching programmes) but more attention to (the) profit’ (interview 2), as is the case with most private higher education institutions worldwide. In the context

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of discussions about the neoliberal university (Cantini, 2017), this strategic outlook shifts the focus from research-based teaching, as idealised in the traditional Humboldt system (Östling, 2018), to research-detached schoollike teaching. Given the progressive marketisation of higher education, not only students’ fees but also external funds have become increasingly important for the sustenance of Egyptian academia, particularly from Europe or the United States. Western-trained and Western-oriented academics ‘are often over-solicited by foreign donors to conduct research on poverty, peasantry, education and other acute problems. Often, a capable social scientist has become a rarity in high demand’ (Abaza, 2010: 191). Thus, Egyptian social scientists can be divided into four categories (Ibrahim, 1997: 551). Those that (a) work in international circles or (b) are even outside the country might be more interested in, and rather positive about, Europe (Europe the friend). Those that (c) support the  regime’s  nationalist discourse or (d) particularly emphasise religious foundations also within science might, however, be perceived as more alienated from, and hostile towards, Europe and the broader ‘West’ (Europe the foe). The next section explores in more detail this division among Egyptian academics under the government-controlled institutional framework of universities, focusing on the structure of FEPS’s dedicated Euro-Mediterranean Studies Programme.

Language is political – teaching Europe in Arabic or English/French? The observation that an academic engagement with Europe requires an internal self-reflective process already affects the ostensibly simple question: which language should teaching happen in? Since the struggle for independence from European domination, supporters of Arabic as academic lingua franca have been emphasising the fact that Arabic as Egypt’s official language (and later even an official UN language) would naturally be the  language of choice in higher education too (Reid, 2002: 100f.). Students with little foreign language skill would otherwise be discriminated against, and academic activities conducted in English would remain in the proverbial ‘ivory tower’ detached from public discourse primarily done in Arabic. However, teaching and researching in Arabic inevitably limits not only the possibilities to include the abundant (and dominating) literature on Europe written in European languages, especially English and French; it also limits Egyptian publications from contributing to the global knowledge ­production on Europe.

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Also, content-wise, language makes a difference. Classes on Europe held in Arabic often keep an ‘Arab perspective’: for instance, FEPS’s Arabic-speaking Political Science programme includes Arab debates and literature on human rights and underscores (more than their French- or English-speaking counterparts) that there is a cultural relativism between ‘European’ and ‘Egyptian’ values (interview 5), especially when it comes to questions of homosexuality or other personal liberties. Therefore, knowledge production in FEPS’s Arabic section is mostly limited to publications in the Arabic language which limits its contributions to global knowledge production. The idea of setting up a ‘Euro-Mediterranean Studies Programme’ (EMSP) at FEPS was met with hesitation by some notable FEPS members. During the 1990s, there used to be a Centre for European Studies, which however was dissolved in 2005 due to a lack of funding (interview 4). While overall relations between the EU and the MENA countries experienced their heyday around the 1995 ‘Barcelona Process’ (see for comparable developments in Italy the contribution of Giulia Cimini and Claudia De Martino in this volume), Cairo University professors developed the idea for an EMSP master’s programme to be set up in cooperation with universities in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and Paris. The master’s programme took off in 2004, after the proposal had secured funding from an EU Tempus grant (2003–6), followed by funds from the Jean Monnet Programme (2010–13). Moreover, it received funds from the German-Egyptian Transformation Partnership after the 2011 revolution,3 and Erasmus+ funds started to enable mobility.4 Otherwise, the programme has been self-funded since 2007, mainly through study fees, and additional contributions by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that has been funding the  full-time position of a German long-term lecturer since 2007 (the ‘Egyptian-German Year of Science’) in order to enhance the European input into the programme. In the first five years, the programme witnessed short-term exchange initiatives of students and staff with partner universities in Europe, for joint courses and cultural/academic dialogues on both sides (interview 2). Later, cooperation with European universities stopped, without clear justifications from FEPS (Kubbara, 2018: 57). The establishment of EMSP narrowed an obvious gap, as no other programme focusing on the Mediterranean region was offered at any Arab university at the time, from 2007 onwards even enriched by a PhD programme. Besides the interest in innovative academic knowledge production and transmission, a further aim of EMSP was enhancing the interaction between Egyptian and European youth by bridging the cultural gaps between both, through changing not only the

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‘EUrientalism’ at Egyptian universities 167 s­tereotypical image of the east in Western minds, but also the stereotypical image of the West in the minds of Egyptian youth. (interview 2)

While this initiative was genuinely developed by Cairo University, it was, however, mostly European guest professors or Egyptian faculty members with a decidedly international orientation who created the first ideas and brought the EMSP to light: Imco Brouwer, Jean Marco, Marco Pinfari, Wafaa Elcherbini (who became the programme’s first director), Ahmed Ghoneim, Mustapha Kamel al-Sayyid and Emad Shahin, among others. The Egyptian government supported the EMSP from the beginning, hoping that graduates, competent in English and well informed about internal EU procedures, would become valuable staff members in those ministries that administered substantial amounts of EU funding (interview 1; Kubbara, 2018: 56; see for the comparable case of Palestine also the contribution of Asem Khalil in this volume). Moreover, graduates have also been hired in international trade and business sectors, as well as Cairo-based offices of international organisations such as the UN or the World Bank, as well as national embassies and development agencies. The initial enthusiasm has however faded away in some parts, as questions about academic rigor have popped up among FEPS faculty members, mainly arguing that an MA, and even more so a PhD, in a rather ‘imprecise’ discipline such as Euro-Mediterranean Studies would not equal a proper disciplinary degree in either economics or political science, as students lacked the necessary competences. ‘The EMSP reminds me of windowshopping: you see everything but you get hardly anything’, an acting FEPS professor described existing concerns about the programme’s value (interview 1). Kubbara (2018: 61) highlighted that some EMSP applicants were even ‘pushed’ towards the ‘original’ Arabic-delivered postgraduate programme, through imposing lengthy and useless bureaucratic procedures and requirements for applications. In this spirit, the question arose in the 2010s whether to abolish the PhD programme and to transform the MA programme from an academic to an applied master’s programme, with a stronger emphasis on acquiring job-related skills, and less on academic essentials (interview 1). Here again, the tendency to depoliticise social sciences in Egypt becomes visible: Euro-Mediterranean Studies will produce less self-reflected, critical students, but rather experts who can quickly join the labour market, not least in Egypt’s government institutions (Völkel, 2021: 108). This had already become evident in the exclusion of students’ needs and aspirations regarding the EMSP, those who, for instance, wished for more international cooperation and exchange (Kubbara, 2018: 56–64). While many FEPS professors believe that bringing European professors as visiting

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faculty into the EMSP is crucial for the success of transformative education through students’ exposure to varied methodologies and viewpoints, this was hampered by the lack of funding and governmental procedural restrictions, embedded in Egypt’s overall lack of academic freedom, particularly in the field of political science, which is considered a threat to academics and students in Egypt, whether from within the country or from abroad (Kubbara, 2018: 64). The next section examines how these constraints play out in the classroom, shape students’ perceptions not only of Europe, but also of their selves, and overall limit the endeavour of knowledge production for a transformative education.

Europe in the curricula and in the classroom Analysing social science courses taught at FEPS, AUC or the British University in Egypt (BUE) confirms the argument that descriptions and perceptions of Europe oscillate between admiration and rejection. However, teachers – as much as students – show a good deal of self-reflection: an ‘EUrientalist’ kernel in Egypt’s university classes is indeed visible. Empirically, a number of professors and students contend that students usually have little knowledge about Europe and the EU when they take up their studies. They often view Europe as a single homogeneous entity but fail to recognise regional differences, including political, economic, religious and ideological variations between states (interviews 2, 4, 8, 9). In addition, students tend to think that life in Europe is easy, overlooking the hard work usually required to achieve wealth, opportunities and a lavish lifestyle (interview 2, 4). Overall, Egyptian students ‘have a positive image of Europe, and many young Egyptians want to travel to Europe – and in the case of clandestine migrants, they even risk their lives’ (interview 5). Regarding self-reflection, however, professors and students noted that in discussing European matters, students initially were either defensive or offensive, that is, they viewed themselves as either superior or inferior towards Europe, but rarely on an equal footing. This can be attributed to several overlapping factors. First, students often have misconceptions not only about Europe, but also about their self-image (interviews 3, 4, 8, 9). As an experienced professor of political science explained: In my course, the main approach was identifying the Self, in order to identify the Other. I endeavoured to examine the gap between the self-image and the reality of both Europeans and Egyptians. We claim that our Islamic and Arab civilisation is based on the concepts of inclusion, respect of women,  and respect of nature, but all of these are not achieved practically. Without

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‘EUrientalism’ at Egyptian universities 169 filling this gap we won’t be able to understand the Other or bridge the gap between ‘us Egyptians’ and the Europeans. This started to change during the course: the more they confronted the misperceived constructions of their self-­ perception, the more they accepted the Other. (interview 2)

Second, in addition to the one-sided study of the colonial history of Europe students received at school, misperceptions about Europe are augmented by Egyptian opinion-makers using the anti-colonial discourse selectively when it suits their purposes. While the government may praise its relations with European countries and the EU (i.e. the friend), it decries European ‘postcolonial behaviour’ when rejecting criticism of its human rights record (i.e. the foe). Apparently, the government wants to maintain this confusion in the minds of students about Europe, as Knowledge is fought by the government, they don’t want you to know. For example, there is no Egyptian equivalent for Erasmus or the DAAD to learn and break this power dysfunction between the South and the North and break this inferiority–superiority dilemma. (interview 4)

This observation was confirmed via an incident in December 2017, when Egyptian universities received an official letter calling for the complete shutdown of all Erasmus+ cooperation activities, a programme the letter described as ‘promoting non-Egyptian values’, in particular with reference to the acceptance of homosexuality and the inclusion of Israeli universities. In the end, the Minister of Higher Education refused to sign the letter, and a new letter was sent to encourage the continuation of the cooperation, but many obscurities remained among involved actors (interview 7). Third, one of the challenges for breaking the superiority–inferiority selfimage and stereotypes inside the classrooms and for developing a perspective ‘on equal footing’ is that European states need to demonstrate their willingness to accept knowledge that is generated in Egypt and thus prove their credibility in viewing Egypt as an equal partner (interviews 1, 2). This issue is critical regarding the image of Europe, especially with the recent wave of right-wing populism, which provokes an undifferentiated, negative perception of Europe that is difficult to challenge in classrooms. In particular, the way Muslims are treated in Europe has been one of the most urgent triggers – with the fascinating caveat that Viktor Orbán, one of the most radical opponents of Muslim immigration in Europe, is usually barred from (official) criticism for the reason already mentioned above. Populist and nationalist narratives by the Egyptian government and media about Europe, predominantly the often harsh treatment of migrants – ­especially Muslims – plus gender promotion and sexual liberty, reinforce this image. In fact, these aspects are among those usually negatively perceived by Egyptian students (i.e. Europe the foe) and are highlighted by

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Egyptian opinion-makers (interview 5). While these have a point, they still use such statements often in a hypocritical manner, as justification for similar problems in their own country and the blatant rejection of any personal responsibility (interview 4). Furthermore, the issue of compatibility of Egyptian traditional values and European/Western influences is often portrayed as cultural imperialism and a threat to the religious identity and morals of Egyptian society. This augments the confusion in the minds of students about the image of Europe, which is something the government wants to maintain (interview 4). Most professors interviewed for this chapter try to present a more realistic image about Europe in their classes (interviews 2, 3, 4, 5). For example, EMSP’s ‘History of Civilisation’ seminar offers an analysis of Western and Eastern civilisations based on the idea that the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ mutually demonise the image of the Other. The course examines encounters between both civilisations and concludes with student projects on ‘Why They Hate Us’ – in which ‘they’ refers to both Egyptians and Europeans. With this concept, the seminar is one of FEPS’s most transformative courses, especially as it also found particular interest among (the few) European students  studying at FEPS: they usually remain silent for the first weeks in class, remaining defensive in debates about European mistreatment of foreigners, typically arguing that not all Europeans are the same. During the course of the semester, the constant exchange of ideas provokes a slow re-reflection5 of attitudes amongst both Egyptian and European students. This mutual in-class encounter contributes, to some extent, to altering the stereotypical images in the minds of both cohorts (interview 2). Illustrative also are courses on ‘The Making of Modern Egypt’ and ‘Middle East and North African Politics’ at the BUE and AUC, respectively. These programmes criticise the narrative that the Orientalist attitude of the 1922–52 period of British de facto colonialism was necessary for the development and modernisation process of Egypt. At the same time, they highlight the fact that the founder of modern Egypt, Mohamed ‘Ali, and his successors were not Egyptians either; they were Eastern Europeans, albeit Muslim. On the other hand, the courses deconstruct claims that Mohamed ‘Ali’s modernisation efforts were an attempt to subjugate and create an authoritarian regime. These claims stemmed from the nationalist historiography created after 1952 that obscured important pieces of history from below – even if it claimed to be speaking on behalf of the people. This nationalist paradigm created conspiracy theories regarding Europeans to justify non-development in the postcolonial context. These courses sought to deconstruct the idea that equates Egyptianness with patriotism and understands Europeans only as colonialists or imperialists. In reality, Egyptians who were part of the nobility often favoured the

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European ­lifestyle and benefited from colonialism and their close involvement with the British during the latter’s rule of Egypt. At the same time, many Europeans in Alexandria, Cairo, along the Suez Canal or elsewhere, including local founders of trade unions and socialist movements, cannot be considered agents of imperialism, since in fact they were anti-colonial and supported the local nationalist independence/resistance movements. Similarly, many Egyptian Jews were unfairly considered Zionists, while in reality they were fighting for their own country as nationalists (interview 3). Overall, students at EMSP were contented with the variety of topics and their usefulness to better understand Europe, but they highlighted the need for a better network approach where they could present and exchange their research through conferences, workshops and seminars outside their own classroom walls (Kubbara, 2018: 59–69). Students at private universities highlighted that the majority of Egyptian professors – with the exception of a few – delivered a one-sided image of Europe as the colonial power, but European guest professors and a few Egyptian professors (especially the younger ones who had more frequent encounters with European counterparts) also showed the other side of the coin (interviews 8, 9). They stressed that, in Egypt, lectures are usually given in a top-down approach compared to what they had witnessed at UK universities during a summer exchange programme, for instance. The only exception they mentioned was a course on ‘Gender in Politics’, whose young Egyptian professor offered students a new approach to deconstruct and question existing norms on gender and sexuality in both Egypt and Europe. This new approach was augmented during their short stay in London: We witnessed ‘pride day’ in Oxford Street which opened our minds to the rights and struggles of people just because they are perceived as ‘deviant’ and realised that the norms and values they learned through Egyptian media and education were constructed to reject European values and enforce oppression. (interviews 8, 9)

During their stay in the UK they learned that not all European countries demonstrate all elements of liberal democracy, or apply it in a consistent and non-selective manner. They were surprised to hear British professors criticising their own government, not least when it came to banning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They also highlighted that they were critical of other European governments’ policies and practices as well. This made Egyptian students understand that Europeans can also be critical of their own regimes, a practice which is rarely found at Egyptian universities. ‘In most of the lectures in Egypt the political narrative of the government is followed by the professors,’ one of the students said. In general, they stated that the exchange experience was highly transformative:

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We have been told, inside the class, that we are critical and engaging. We never felt inferior to UK students. We also learned that in every society there is the liberal, the conservative, the religious and the atheist: It is not a binary paradigm. (interviews 8, 9)

Conclusion: ‘EUrientalism’ in Egypt – between the Self and the Other Higher education is more than pure knowledge production – it is also about becoming ‘worldly’, as Hannah Arendt maintained (see the introduction to this volume). This includes the perception of the Self and the Other. In Egypt, where higher education had a major role to play in the process of nationalisation and emancipation from European domination, this was the case as well, until the Nasserist regime reduced the purpose of higher education mainly to producing competent graduates to support the state administration. Europe was largely depicted as an ‘enemy’, with a persistent, lingering colonial undertone. Higher education, nevertheless, ought to play a central role in kick-­ starting a transformative process that would open up the space for overcoming the dichotomy and permanent binary of ‘us versus them’ between Egypt and Europe. Hassan Hanafi’s ‘Occidentalism’ was an important contribution to this endeavour. It has helped Egyptian academics to question not only the Other, but also the Self through a fresh, critical, insider perspective – the ‘Egyptian School’ arising at FEPS was a prime example, if contested and disputed among Egyptian scholars. In this chapter we argue that an ‘EUrientalist perspective’ is crucial to the further success of this process – as envisioned by Hanafi himself: its potential stems from its treatment of the image of Europe generated through interactions between European and Egyptian universities. However, given factual circumstances, this is rather a normative claim, and challenges remain. In today’s Egypt, Europe is still depicted in a hybrid manner – the admired friend and the rejected foe – while critical reflection of the Egyptian Self is largely suppressed. This effectively hinders transformative education. While ‘EUrientalism’ at Egyptian universities attempts to resist this hybrid image, it still persists as a result of several overlapping constraints. First, there are the preconceptions often held by Egyptian students about their self-image (often as inferior) and the image of Europe (often as superior): understanding Europe requires a critical re-examination of the Self. Second, competing populist discourses in Egypt and Europe damage the credibility of Europe as a trustworthy partner under the framework of the Barcelona Process. Third, there are the narrow confines of

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a­ uthoritarianism in which Egyptian academia can act – on the one hand, the anti-colonial discourse used by the government and media is reflected in academia; and on the other hand, the government controls knowledge through restricting exchanges and budgets. Without bolstering first-hand encounters through dialogue and exchange, which is a vital aspect of ‘EUrientalism’ in deconstructing existing dual stereotypes, students may struggle to promote future partnerships on an equal footing. Nevertheless, a reinstating of this goal as a central element of transformative education is only attainable in a system which allows for the democratisation of knowledge.

Notes 1 The other five identified deficiencies are (1) the absence of liberties, (2) the prevailing social and economic injustices, (3) the continued fragmentation of Arab lands and peoples, (4) the continued ‘retardation’ of Arab societies and (5) the enduring apathy of the masses. 2 See www.feps.edu.eg/en/know/overview.php. 3 The German government stopped this transformation partnership in 2015 due to Egypt’s unsatisfactory democratisation progress. 4 The Erasmus+ programme has lifted scientific Egypt–EU relations to unprecedented levels, broadening the focus of cooperation from the ‘classic 3’ in Egypt (Cairo University, Ain Shams University, Alexandria University) and the ‘classic 3’ in Europe (France, Germany, UK) to literally all Egyptian universities and all EU member states. It has likewise increased the number of European students coming to Egypt; these exchange activities ‘have enhanced and increased the image of Europe’ (interview 7). 5 We use ‘re-reflection’ instead of ‘reflection’ to indicate a second/renewed reflection, now with a more informed, open and critical mind following the students’ (European and Egyptian) first-hand encounter with each other as well as with the teacher and the course material, and their exchange of thoughts and experiences inside the classroom.

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Hassib, B. (2021) ‘Shrinking civic space: Egypt’s counter-terrorism policy post 9/11 and beyond’, in S. N. Romaniuk and E. T. Njoku (eds), Counter-terrorism and Civil Society: Post-9/11 Progress and Challenges (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 233–54. Hourani, A. (1963) Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ibrahim, S. E. (1997) ‘Cross-eyed sociology in Egypt and the Arab world’, Contemporary Sociology, 26:5, 547–51. Johnson, D. (2018) ‘Egypt’s long road to education reform’ (Washington, DC: Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy), available at https://timep.org/commen​ tary/analysis/egypts-long-road-to-education-reform (accessed 29 July 2022). Kesbi, A. (2017) ‘From orientalism to occidentalism: the rise of Westophobia’, Revue interdisciplinaire, 1:1, 1–10. Kohstall, F. (2021) ‘University reforms in Egypt and Morocco’, in H. Alaoui and R. Springborg (eds), The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 67–86. Kubbara, O. (2018) ‘Idafat al-sabgha al-dawleya ‘ala al-taleem al-aly: Kolyet al-iqtesad wa al-’ulum al-siyasiya, Gameat al-Qahira’ [Internationalisation of higher education: Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University], Idafat: Arabic Journal of Sociology, 41/42, 52–69. Meijer, R. (2021) ‘Citizenship in Egyptian, Tunisian, and Moroccan history textbooks’, in H. Alaoui and R. Springborg (eds), The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 41–65. Mellor, N. (2016) The Egyptian Dream: Egyptian National Identity and Uprisings (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Mignolo, W. D. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Östling, J. (2018) Humboldt and the Modern German University: An Intellectual History (Lund: Lund University Press). Pace, M. (2005) ‘Imagining co-presence in Euro-Mediterranean relations: the role of “dialogue”’, Mediterranean Politics, 10:3, 291–312. Pace, M. (2011) ‘Democracy promotion in the context of an occupied nation? The case of Palestine’, in M. Pace (ed.), Europe, the USA and Political Islam: Strategies for Engagement (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 102–24. Peter, M. and F. Strazzari (2017) ‘Securitisation of research: fieldwork under new restrictions in Darfur and Mali’, Third World Quarterly, 38:7, 1531–50. Reid, D. M. (2002) Cairo University and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Saliba, I. (2020) ‘Academic freedom in Egypt’, in K. Kinzelbach (ed.), Researching Academic Freedom: Guidelines and Sample Case Studies (Erlangen: FAU University Press), pp. 141–74. Shahin, E. (2015) ‘I’m one of hundreds sentenced to death in Egypt. The US is “concerned”. That’s not enough’, The Conversation, 1 June, available at https:// theconversation.com/im-one-of-hundreds-sentenced-to-death-in-egypt-the-us-isconcerned-thats-not-enough-42561 (accessed 1 August 2022). Springborg, R. (2021) ‘Educational policy in Sisi’s Egypt’, in H. Alaoui and R.  Springborg (eds), The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 87–102.

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Tønnesson, S. (1994) ‘Orientalism, occidentalism and knowing about others’, NIAS nytt, 2, 14–18. Völkel, J. C. (2018) ‘Political science in Egypt: talkin’ bout a revolution’, in F. Kohstall et al. (eds), Academia in Transformation: Scholars Facing the Arab Spring (Baden-Baden: Nomos), pp. 49–68. Völkel, J. C. (2021) ‘The fingers of the “invisible hand”: Egypt’s government institutions’, in R. Springborg et al. (eds), Routledge Handbook on Contemporary Egypt (London: Routledge), pp. 107–19.

List of interviews 1. Professor of Economics, Cairo University, 19 February 2020. 2. Professor of Political Science, Cairo University/British University in Egypt, 19 February 2020. 3. Former Lecturer in Middle East Politics, American University in Cairo/British University in Egypt (Skype), 16 February 2020. 4. Professor of Political Science, American University in Cairo, 16 February 2020. 5. Professor of Political Science, Cairo University, 19 February 2020. 6. Former Professor of Economics, Cairo University, 17 February 2020. 7. Former National Coordinator ‘Erasmus Egypt’, American University in Cairo, 18 February 2020. 8. Political Science student, British University in Egypt, 17 February 2020. 9. Political Science student, British University in Egypt, 17 February 2020.

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9 Teaching the enlightened student: political polarisation and the ongoing quest for critical thinking Anne de Jong Introduction Two years ago, it hit me: for the first time, all my students were born after 9/11 or at least had no recollection of a pre-9/11 world. They have not lived through the collapse of the twin towers and the ‘war on terror’ is their frame of reference for thinking and talking about the Middle East. This radically changed my BA course ‘Anthropology of the Middle East’ at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), but not in the way one might expect. Before this realisation, I had always started with Edward W. Said’s Orientalism (1978), countering stereotypes, peeling off structures of thinking and critically exploring how this particular form of Othering shaped and still shapes power-filled socio-economic, military and academic relations. While I still insist on a robust and critical academic approach, my current students are prudently aware of how skewed the popular image of the Middle East is. My course attracts the kind of students who follow the news, question literally everything and are prepared to face their own prejudices and shortcomings. Applauding themselves for not buying into political propaganda, they come to class expecting to learn about the real Middle East. And this comes with an entirely new set of teaching challenges. How to reach students who are convinced they overcame Orientalism? What to do with an endearing but extremely flawed romanticised picture of the Middle East? In this chapter I will provide a personal overview of the changing teaching landscape in the political context of the Netherlands. Day-to-day examples and practical interventions/teaching methods will highlight how Islamophobia, political naivety and positionality of students have shaped and deeply influenced both my pedagogical approach and my perception of critical reflexivity. Where I first insisted on an academic approach free from interference from popular misconceptions, critical reflection led me to actively create a space for student-based learning firmly grounded in the – skewed or otherwise – political environment which shaped those students.

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In conclusion, I will juxtapose my own experience as an anthropology lecturer at the UvA with experiences of colleagues from other disciplines and/or other Dutch universities in order to show that teaching the Middle East to students with widely different predispositions actually mirrors the current fractured political landscape in the Netherlands. While this is often depicted as all negative, I pose that it may create a more in-depth learning experience if we are willing to apply a critical, ethical and ongoing reflexivity that we normally reserve for our research activities.

Not catering to political dispositions My first experience as a teacher rather than a student of the Middle East was at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Also, at my alma mater, my classroom practice was deeply influenced by critical mentors such as Laleh Khalili (2007, 2010), Gilbert Achcar (2004, 2013) and Gabriele vom Bruck (1997, 2016). Encouraged by a truly international and diverse student body, I opened each first class of term with the firm statement: ‘I do not cater to any political disposition.’ This certainly did not mean I avoided political themes or discussions but instead conveyed a strong commitment to an academic freedom that refuses to take ‘the political climate’ or the ‘tweet/hype of the day’ as a starting point for students’ learning. Rather than taking, for example, the ‘war on terror’ as a starting point, I insisted on a power–knowledge nexus approach which, inevitably, started with Said’s Orientalism. Orientalism, as is well known, is a specific form of Othering ‘based on the ontological and epistemological distinction between “the Orient” and “the Occident”’ (Said, 1978: 2). In class we emphasised the material aspects of Orientalism – not mere prejudice but continuous domination, restructuring and authority over the Middle East – and how academic writings often function to enable and legitimise this Orientalist thought and practice (1978: 2–9). Practically, this meant that students immediately delved into questions of border-making, international military interference, funding, representation and knowledge-making (al-Ali and Pratt, 2009; Bolak, 1996; Said, 1978). For example, introducing second-year bachelor students to gender and sexuality in the Middle East could easily take current public debates on veiling, domestic violence or girls’ education as a departure point. As renowned anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (2020: 1) recently affirmed, however, ‘anyone teaching about gender and sexuality in the Middle East in the Euro-American academy has to contend […] with the politics of representation’ (own omission). And with that, adequate ‘attention [should be paid] to the politico-historical shifts in the ways women and

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sexuality are represented’ (2020: 1, own addition). In this sense, it is less interesting to predominantly focus on prejudices and misrepresentations which white Western students may currently have/hold, and instead more beneficial to introduce those students directly to rigorous voices from – and theories about – contemporary experiences of gender and sexuality in Middle Eastern contexts (Altorki and El-Solh, 1988; Kanafani and Sawaf, 2017). In sessions 2–4 of the course we delve, for example, into the very broad themes of gender and religion in the Middle East using the texts of Deeb (2009), Deeb and Harb (2013) and Mahdavi (2008). These themes are particularly riddled with prejudice and politicised public debates but instead the selected authors provide an in-depth, critical, emic and academic analysis. These are not easy texts. On the contrary, Deeb’s (2009) ‘Emulating and/ or embodying the ideal: the gendering of temporal frameworks and Islamic role models in Shi’i Lebanon’ is clearly written for a peer-scholar audience rather than students. When combined with the more accessible, or at least relatable, article ‘Choosing both faith and fun’ (Deeb and Harb, 2013) it immediately opens an opportunity for my students to reconsider their own worldview and moral rubric. As I elaborate below, these two articles are then deepened and connected to a case study via a student presentation. The book Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Mahdavi, 2008) therewith ties the previously mentioned abstract concept and theories to the messiness of everyday experiences. Without taking students’ prejudices, such as the submissiveness of Muslim women, as a starting point, this academic, emic-textual approach counters such faulty perceptions and lets students appreciate the complexity of gender and sexuality in the Middle East. Similarly, I refuse to take Western binary perceptions about the so-called Israel–Palestine ‘conflict’ (de Jong, 2018) as guiding principles for discussion on the contemporary situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories including annexed East Jerusalem and besieged Gaza. Instead, carefully selected articles provide students with diverse and often contradictory local everyday experiences. ‘Zionism from the standpoint of its victims’ (Said, 1979), for example, submits a subaltern political view whereas Lori Allen’s (2008) ‘Getting by the occupation’ sensitively conveys complex experiences of continuous violence in Gaza. Concurrently juxtaposing my own book on joint Palestinian and Israeli non-violent resistance (de Jong, 2011) with Erella Grassiani’s (2013) book on Israeli soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) purposely confuses students’ previously predominantly binary perceptions and replaces those with a multiplicity of thoughts and analyses. The approach briefly described above does not cater to political dispositions and refuses to take the headline of the day as a starting point.

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Instead, it introduces students to highly relevant contemporary scholarly debates by using key academic articles prioritising voices and everyday experiences from the Middle East. This general set-up is academically sound and runs smoothly in the cosmopolitan, diverse context of SOAS in London. However pedagogically robust, this approach became instantly deficient when I moved to the Netherlands where the post 9/11 murder of two prominent figures – a film-maker and a politician – had shaped the political context to the extent that I felt myself forced to not just address but prioritise this in my lecture hall.

Muslims and tolerance in the Netherlands It is certainly not my intention to set the Netherlands apart or to treat the UvA as an exceptional case different from the rest of the world. On the contrary, as this volume points out, scholarship and teaching in and about the Middle East is foremost characterised by global entanglements. That said, very local events have shaped the Dutch political – and by ­extension, academic – context so much that it influences almost every aspect of ‘doing the Middle East’ in the Netherlands today. As Miriyam Aouragh (2014) meticulously documented, the murder of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and the murder of documentary film-maker and professional provocateur Theo van Gogh in 2004 paved the way for a blatantly open Islamophobic public discourse. This was not only characterised by right-wing public figures such as Geert Wilders, but also led to a climate in which political left-leaning parties completely abandoned Dutch Muslims by remaining silent about anti-Islam crime and rhetoric (Aouragh, 2014; de Koning, 2016). These political murders and consequent electoral shifts in the Netherlands accelerated anti-Islam connotations apparent since 9/11 and created or at least amplified an exclusionary racist-nationalist discourse which ‘excluded anyone who dared to express solidarity with Palestinians, branded anyone that challenged the perspective of “the Dutch” as anything but open-minded and tolerant from the imagined Dutch nation and left those dissident “others” considered not really Dutch’ (de Jong, 2018: 274). While these two murders are still very prominent in Dutch collective memory and are often perceived as historic markers – despite the fact that the murderer of Pim Fortuyn was a radical climate activist – the ­concurrent shift or acceleration of Islamophobia and ‘intolerance in the name of tolerance’ cannot be adequately understood without looking at the very Dutch historical intertwined interpretation and practice of pillarisation, multiculturalism and the double-edged sword of tolerance (Essed

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and Hoving, 2014; Ghorashi, 2014). Pillarisation refers to a society which is culturally, politically and social-institutionally divided into ‘pillars’ or subcultures based on religious or ideological beliefs (Maussen, 2015), each with their own schools, sports clubs, community centres and/or places of worship. This system of stratification was embedded in political policy roughly between 1930 and the 1960s and enabled a divided society to exist bound by a common ‘live and let live’ cultural denomination often presented (or glorified) as different but equal. When it became clear in the 1970s that the – initially intended to stay only temporarily – gastarbeiders (migrant workers, literally ‘guest workers’) who migrated predominantly from Muslim majority countries such as Turkey and Morocco would permanently stay, two political ‘solutions’ to this multi-ethnic ‘problem’ competed: the embedding into the fading pillar system or the embrace of a new multicultural approach. While these are often portrayed as polar opposites, with the one being segregated-conservative and the other progressive-inclusive, more recent interpretations point out that both relied deeply upon the concept of tolerance from the ‘real’ Dutch towards the newcomers or ‘not truly’ Dutch (de Jong, 2018; de Koning, 2016). As Hage (2012) eloquently points out, tolerance signals an ethno-nationalist claim of belonging and governmentality which automatically distinguishes between those with the power to tolerate and those subjected to being tolerated. Regardless of political disposition, the dichotomy ‘modern, tolerant, open-minded Dutch’ versus ‘backward, intolerant, Muslim nonDutch’ (despite official Dutch citizenship) thus shaped the years leading up to 9/11: and the two, in popular opinion, have been affiliated with the killings of Dutch prominent figures and have much influenced (and continue to influence) Dutch perceptions towards ‘Muslims’ and ‘the’ Middle East up to the present day. Much-needed attention to these binary distinctions has been paid in relation to concurrent symbolic exclusion, Islamophobia and micro-aggressions (Essed and Hoving, 2014; Leeuw and Wichelen, 2005; Vroon-Najem, 2014). Central throughout these analyses are readily observable, or less visible but no less present, rigid dichotomies which signal inclusion and exclusion and therewith illusively being considered ‘really’ Dutch or ‘not really Dutch’. It is imperative to notice that this rigid binary discourse is not limited to political play or right-wing or conservative media. On the contrary, as will be shown below, Dutch scholarly discourse has not been exempted but rather drenched in the same rhetoric, and even if one actively rejects such simplifications, one has, in the current academic climate in the Netherlands, at least to respond to this dichotomous thinking, policy and practice.

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Lawfare, threats and terrorism The first time I was personally and directly confronted with the Dutch political context regarding the Middle East was in my job interview at the UvA. Since graduating from SOAS in 2011 I knew I had to, at some point or another, explain the choices I had made during the fieldwork period of my PhD which ultimately led me to join a controversial non-violent action – the Gaza Freedom Flotilla – which got me arrested, put into an Israeli jail and which left ten fellow passengers dead and three dozen or so seriously wounded (Arraf and Shapiro, 2011; de Jong, 2012). Obviously, this had not been a politically naive or ill-considered action. On the contrary, in this period of my PhD research I was well aware of the debate surrounding academic activism or activist academia or militant ethnography (Flood, Martin and Draher, 2013; Scheper-Hughes, 1995). At time of participation, however, it should be noted that I did not consider joining the Gaza Freedom Flotilla as an activist or even as an activist academic act. Instead, I saw it as an ethnographic tool and anthropological duty to do justice to neutrality and objectivity when studying joint Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent resistance (de Jong, 2015). I did not see my participation as an activist act or as an academic activist attempt to influence the social injustices I study, but rather perceived it as an acknowledgement of the ‘epistemological distinction between “truth relaying” and “knowledge production” […] From this perspective, the activist/academic problematic is not a “neutral” problem but a product of a certain way of knowing associated with the academy’ (Russell, 2015: 222, own omission). That said, participation in such action may have far-reaching consequences for academic careers regardless of scholarly intent (Acar and Coşkan, 2020). In pursuit of my first assistant professorship, I was thus very aware that this was a contentious point to navigate as an early career scholar in a precarious position. After all, I did not want to compromise on my critical scholarship, but I also did not want to end my academic career before it had even started by foregrounding a simplified activist academic or academic activist identity (Aktas, Nilsson and Borell, 2019). As such, I had carefully prepared answers as to why I had joined the flotilla or how this fitted in my research profile or interpretation of anthropological scholarship. I was not prepared, however, for the question the search committee did pose to me: ‘Can you elaborate on how you will make both Jewish and Muslim students feel at ease in your “critical” classroom?’ I was taken aback by such unquestioned identity politics, by the assumed binary opposition Jewish–Muslim and by the automatic supposed political preposition this apparently signalled. While this actually led to an open in-depth exchange between the various members of the selection committee and

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myself, it did sensitise me to how ‘Dutch thinking’ about the Middle East, both in public and academic discourse, is divided into seemingly fixed rigid religious and nationalist binaries. The extent of this dichotomous way of thinking soon became clear when I was hit with a so-called WOB-verzoek within the first six months of employment at the UvA. A WOB-verzoek is similar to a Freedom of Information request (FOI request) and in the Dutch context applies to communication and documents from people in public governing or higher managerial positions. While this should thus not apply to a newly appointed pre-tenured assistant professor, I got served with the request to hand over all email correspondence regarding a university event about the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). This event, with the title ‘The Politics of Cultural Freedom’, set out to address different questions in relation to the growing global boycott movement like: Should culture and art be regarded as standing ‘above politics’ and therefore be spared the growing boycott against Israel? Is the cultural boycott inherently in conflict with freedom of speech and freedom of the exchange of ideas?1

While this discussion may be considered controversial by some, it was not the content of the meeting that the WOB-verzoek challenged but instead the speakers. The request read that it objected to the one-sidedness of the presenters and that this would go against academic standards of even-handedness and objectivity. This seems odd since one invited speaker was Palestinian (Omar Barghouti) and the other Israeli (Eyal Sivan), as was requested. This request to begin with exemplifies the centrality and normalisation of binary thinking in the Dutch scholarly world. The insistence to include, in this case, a Palestinian and an Israeli speaker is not so much ­content-related but unconsciously signals two rigid exclusive groups with both having to be represented in order to be academically even-handed (Taraki, 2006). We therefore invited one Palestinian and one Israeli speaker. Not because we agree with this simplistic binary but because we did not want the format to distract from the content. Regardless, the petitioners claimed that because Eyal Sivan is a critic of Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians he wasn’t the right Jewish Israeli to be included in the event. While those that filled the  complaint did not specify what the ‘right’ Jewish Israeli would then entail, it is safe to assume that this should be a Jewish Israeli who opposed BDS and who upholds a more mainstream Zionist Israeli discourse which includes upkeeping the initial binary ­ distinctions Jewish–Muslim and Palestinian versus Israeli. In the end, a lawyer from the university’s team had the case dismissed on procedural grounds. My position, after all, is not subjected to FOI requests. Nonetheless, it was really uncomfortable to be the subject of such ‘lawfare’

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(Gordon, 2014), especially because I still was in a precarious position at that time and because it reinforced the notion of me being some sort of radical or ultra-critical scholar-teacher despite my insistence on an academic rigor approach set out above. In the following years, several other bogus WOB-verzoeken were handled in a similar manner. It should be noticed, however, that such lawfare tactics can lead to self-censorship particularly among non-tenured staff because they do not want to ‘rock the boat’ or be perceived as an activist instead of an academic – a false distinction to begin with. Because even if one sees it as their duty of due diligence in the process of knowledge-making (Russell, 2015), this does not exempt individual scholars from ‘reprisals, both externally from political opponents and internally from those within the university who perceive their involvements as nonconformist’ (Flood, Martin and Dreher, 2013: 18). In addition, it is important to point out how such accusations of bias, via lawfare or otherwise, can lead to silencing and isolation in teaching. Personally I did not change the subjects or ways I taught the Middle East but I did prepare each class meticulously and started recording each session knowing I was ‘on the radar’ of the Dutch version of Campus Watch. Recording my sessions thus became a tool to defend myself from outside accusations of anti-Semitism but also from internal possible reprimands because these recordings could function as proof of my academic professionalism (Flood, Martin and Dreher, 2013: 18). As Aktas, Nilsson and Borell (2019) eloquently point out, I thus navigated scholarly activities with an alternative or even underground form without yielding to institutional or political intimidation. Campus Watch is an American online organisation which urges students to report professors who allegedly teach ‘the’ Middle East in a biased manner (Abdulhadi and Shehadeh, 2020; Beinin, 2004). The official aim of Campus Watch is stated to be to improve teaching and learning about the region but given the forms of early reports and the aggressive manner in which professors are approached, Campus Watch de facto functions as a platform to ‘smear’ academics who are in any way critical of Israel (Goldberg and Makdisi, 2009; Ismael, 2011). In the Netherlands, a similar platform arose in 2014. This platform – which manifested, among other places, on the Facebook page Linkse indoctrinatie op mijn Universiteit2 (Left indoctrination at my university) – is a hotline where students are encouraged to submit examples of perceived leftwing teaching in Dutch universities. Moderated by Yernaz Ramautarsing, former second in command of the Dutch right-wing political party Forum for Democracy, it openly reinforces that supporting Israel is so-called ­conservative/right wing while supporting Palestine is so-called progressive/ left wing. This immediately forces both teachers and students in universities who explore the situation in Israel and Palestine beyond the simplistic peace

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and ­conflict paradigm (de Jong, 2017) to defend themselves. I, for example, was reported for ‘being pro-Palestine and thus anti-Israel’. I could easily respond to media outside of the university because I had, as a precaution, recorded all my lectures and could thus prove that no anti-Semitic teaching had taken place. Because the report was submitted anonymously, however, it did create a very uncomfortable situation within my own university. Some colleagues, especially those working on the Middle East themselves, like Annelies Moors (2009) and Erella Grassiani (2013), immediately and publicly expressed their support for me. Many more, though, did not comment at all and I assume that at least some colleagues’ silence meant that they did not want to get involved or concluded that there must be some truth to the accusation since I am such a ‘critical scholar’3 to begin with. This chapter has as a core focus my own experience as a teacher and researcher in the Netherlands. Therefore, I particularly look at local processes of Othering, Islamophobia, challenges and threats in relation to the particular Dutch political background of perceived tolerance, verzuiling and continuous political support for – and economic cooperation with – Israel. While, as an anthropologist, I give these local specificities much weight, I am certainly not insinuating that the encountered smear campaigns, accusations or public vilification as briefly described above are unique to the Netherlands. On the contrary, at the University of Toronto in Canada, for example, a recent offer to scholar Valentina Azarova as director of the International Human Rights Program (IHRP) was retracted on the basis of her work on Israel’s human rights abuses (Gadzo, 2020). In this case, complaints and pressure from a private donor played a crucial role, and as Corey Balsam, national coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices Canada points out, this is not an individual incident: ‘Those who openly criticise Israel and support justice for Palestinians are finding themselves under attack left, right and centre’ (Balsam quoted in Gadzo, 2020). Another example comes from Germany where the cultural policy spokesman of the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), Lorenz Deutsch, accused Cameroonian intellectual Achille Mbembe of anti-Semitism and demanded that Mbembe be banned from delivering a speech at the important summer cultural event the Ruhrtriennale (Crétois, 2020). He based his accusation of anti-Semitism on a passage from Mbembe’s Politiques de l’inimitié (2018) ‘in which Mbembe, referring to Israel’s settlement policy, argues that it is “in some ways reminiscent” of apartheid in South Africa’ (Mbembe quoted in Crétois, 2020). This particular incident drew worldwide attention and support from Mbembe’s colleagues at the university in Johannesburg and beyond. However, less well known instances where accusations of anti-Semitism are instrumentalised to exclude, silence or vilify scholars critical of Israel’s policy to Palestinians are widespread (Beattie, 2017).

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These a­ ccusations, threats and other obstacles are not just limited to publications or research outlets but also spill over into the classroom. Some colleagues from other departments or universities faced outright hostility from students in the classroom environment actively challenging their objectivity and authority. Interestingly enough, quite the opposite happened to me.

The enlightened student So far, I have described how an increasing anti-Islam political environment spilled over into academic discourse and teaching practice in the Netherlands. Much research focuses on the discursive consequences that the ‘war on terror’ has had on perceptions of the Middle East, but in this chapter I have, thus far, drawn attention to very practical, observable and personal repercussions. I have briefly sketched the extent to which the rather crude dichotomy ‘conservative-Israel-Jew-right wing’ versus ‘progressive-Palestine-Muslim-left wing’ has dominated Dutch public ­ thinking and have shown how this was accompanied by intense instances of ‘lawfare’ aimed at discrediting individual academics and thereby silencing/ stopping critical practice. I have also shown how the public naming and shaming of perceived ‘left’ or ‘anti-Semitic’ university professors could lead to self-censorship and a sense of isolation, especially for early career scholars. Following from the above, one would expect an increase in students heavily influenced by this public discourse challenging the curriculum or teachers themselves. If I am honest, as a publicly deemed ‘lefty academic’ I even expected to be challenged to a certain extent. But, in the years following these public condemnations, I noticed a quiet devotion settling into my classroom. In reality my class was filled with students who very consciously chose to study the Middle East under my guidance. They were not deterred by the negative publicity but actually drawn to my course. This new type of student – born roughly between 1998 and 2002 – had never known a political environment that was not shaped by and drenched in ‘war on terror’ rhetoric. And maybe especially because they were so aware of that fact, they had formed a political determination to counter such negative depiction of the Middle East. They came to class curious to learn about ‘the real’ Middle East. They came overly aware of the skewed picture of the region that has been fed to them through Hollywood movies and other popular sources. Many had actively sought to already adapt their simplistic understanding of the Middle East by studying, for example, alternative news resources such as Jadaliyya or by joining the Dutch chapter of ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’. While such conscious and ‘enlightened’ students may be easier to teach than the aforementioned conservative student, I immediately

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e­ ncountered new obstacles and challenges – because, as the editors stipulate in the introduction of this volume, our job as educators is not so much to counter one simplistic depiction of the region with another but rather to avoid ‘simple answers to complex questions’. For me this meant that I had to rethink my original ‘I do not cater to political dispositions’ for the first time. Obviously, I did not simply adapt my curriculum to the so-called left-leaning tendencies of my students. I did feel, however, that I had to bring public debates and political surroundings much more to the forefront. Whereas before I placed academic analysis front, left and middle, I now challenged both students and myself to actually engage with public debate, but in an academic manner. Much of the old curriculum still stood. Complex texts by my peer contemporary scholars such as Lara Deeb (2009) were devoured by my devoted students. But since the pious women about whom Deeb writes were initially elevated to some sort of mythical creatures by my students, I had to firmly ground these texts in everyday lives and everyday experiences. In order to do so I implemented two major pedagogical (and political) changes. First, I opened an online discussion forum on the protected Virtual Learning Environment (VLE-Canvas) of the UvA. Each week I placed provocative statements or prepositions to which students could respond directly, applying the abstract theories they had just learned. In addition, I encouraged students to interact and start their own discussion thread, particularly about recent relevant media articles, by explicitly including this in the grading rubric that was available to the students from the beginning of the course. This grading rubric was purposely designed to be very clear so that students knew what to do in order to obtain a high grade for this part of the assessment which counts for 30 per cent towards the final grade. For example, pointing out a particular guiding discourse in a newspaper article would earn them a six out of ten for that week, whereas analysing this discourse and connecting it to the literature and lecture content of that week would significantly raise their grade. Since I intentionally included materials such as pamphlets, manifestos or documentaries from ‘left leaning’ or politically fringe organisations this encouraged students to move beyond their romanticised one-dimensional interpretation of phenomena in the Middle East. Second, I redesigned another graded assignment to be able to include many more books and therewith detailed examples of the complexity of everyday lives in various parts of the Middle East. As has been drawn out by colleagues, and elsewhere in this volume, ‘the’ Middle East does not exist (Medani, 2013; Tétreault, 1996). In order to truly grasp the diversity and complexity of this region one has to, at least from an anthropological perspective, delve deep into localised examples of the themes and ­theories

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one studies in the course (Haddad and Schwedler, 2013; Alli, 2020). Because of time constraints within the neoliberal university, however, one cannot assign one book per week or even one book per designated theme. I therefore divided the seminar class into smaller groups of three students with each student assigned one ethnography relevant to the theme of that particular week. The groups would concurrently present a 3D QARQ (Quote, Argument, Relation, Question4) of all three books, relate them to the concepts, literature and online discussion of that theme and thereby (1) counter simplified representations (Choudry and Vally, 2020; Moghnieh, 2017), (2) connect complex concepts and theories to their own experience, and (3) deepen interpretations of public debates, discourse and practice by applying what they have learnt during the module.

Conclusion: reflecting on politicised learning One can read this chapter as a practical resource with tips and tricks about teaching the Middle East in politicised classrooms based on my personal, political and pedagogical development. I certainly do think the set-up of this course would work in other settings and I think an exchange of different approaches to teaching the Middle East is valuable on its own. In line with the aim of this book, however, I would like to use these final pages to reflect upon how my personal experience within the politicised context of Dutch universities can contribute to a better understanding of the process in which knowledge is being produced, particularly when it comes to teaching the Middle East in Europe and, conversely, teaching Europe in the Middle East. This foremost means consciously reconsidering one’s audience – ­students’ political dispositions in times of mis- and disinformation ranging from romanticised perceptions to outright racist or colonial views – and actively blurring the line between research and teaching. Where we acknowledge the power–knowledge nexus in research, all too often similar dynamics in teaching are left unexplored. In some instances this might mean surrendering some of the power that a teacher holds in the classroom to open up space for student-based and student-led learning. Let students point out the prejudices. Let students decide the discussion topics and actively learn from the sometimes unexpected predispositions that many of them bring to the table. In my case, this meant letting go of the idea that students are predominantly influenced by a simplistic ‘war on terror’ frame and instead acknowledging that their romanticised self-created counter-image had much more effect on their learning. It also meant reckoning beyond my personal approach and pedagogical ideas. Reflecting on students’ choices, I do not

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think they necessarily chose the course because I taught it, but they did consciously select the UvA over other available universities in the Netherlands because of its open-minded, progressive reputation. Mirroring the political landscape in the Netherlands, universities as concrete manifestations of academic diverse thought and practise become more and more polarised. Or at least they do so in students’ perceptions. I do not believe this political self-selection of students is necessarily bad. I think my classes are currently filled with devoted and serious students who, after having critically engaged with the course materials, their fellow students and with me, will walk away with in-depth knowledge, better academic skills and above all a deep appreciation of the complexity of the multiplicity that is the everyday experience of and in the Middle East. The fractured or polarised student population does require from us a critical reflexivity that we usually reserve for our research activities. In congruence with the above, such ethical reflexivity in teaching should obviously conserve questions of representation but should also actively include practices of shared knowledge-making and ongoing decolonial practice in the classroom. Just as the relationship between a researcher and his or her interlocutors is no longer merely hierarchical, neither is the relation between a teacher and students. It should be acknowledged that this relationship is fluid, often personal and shapes the classroom and concurrent learning process. Centralising the power–knowledge nexus in selecting materials such as articles or books, but also in teacher–student relationships, will enable a critical appreciation that each person (teachers and students included) is shaped by localised, ongoing and ever-changing political landscapes. Just as this decolonial approach in the field does not mean that power relations are now obsolete or evened out between researcher and interlocutor, it also does not mean that a teacher and students are now necessarily on equal footing. On the contrary, it is very much the expertise and careful pedagogical approach of a teacher that sets the parameters of the classroom. However, I propose that central to this pedagogical approach should be the appreciation that students bring unique experiences, insights and political subjectivity to the classroom that should be utilised for critical debate and thinking about the complexity that is the Middle East. Building on Orientalism as conceptualised by Edward Said, one should thus acknowledge ongoing and contemporary processes of Othering of the Middle East which are very time and location specific. While post 9/11 students in the Netherlands, for example, have all come of age within the same ‘war on terror’ climate, the content and direction of Orientalist thinking varies widely and requires a nuanced, goal-specific pedagogical approach that challenges both ‘war on terror’ simplifications and Aladdinlike romanticisation. Practically, this means that we should create spaces for

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student-based and student-led learning which deliberately connect theories and concepts with the messiness of everyday experiences. Keeping in mind that the goal should always be to ‘avoid simple answers to complex questions’, the role of both teacher and students can then rotate between being a mentor, a mirror of society, an educator and, at times, a much-needed devil’s advocate.

Notes 1 Full title of the event: ‘The Politics of Cultural Freedom: Omar Barghouti, Eyal Sivan and Anne de Jong’ (23 April 2015), Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, further details available at www.gate48.org/the-politics-of-cultural-freedom-2/ (accessed 15 August 2022). 2 Linkse Indoctrinatie op mijn Universiteit: www.facebook.com/Linkse-indoctrina​ tie-op-mijn-universiteit-317329701730105. 3 While I do consider myself a critical scholar because I pay due attention to power relations behind knowledge and knowledge-making, it should be noted that ‘critical scholar’ in this instance is employed to mean ‘radical’ or ‘non-mainstream’ scholar. This, in turn, functions as an instant disqualification which absolves critics from formulating a critique based on a scholar’s actual work or teaching content. 4 A QARQ is a one-page assignment which can be used for any study material such as an article or documentary book. It is an efficient way to filter and convey the most important argument of said material and how that relates to the bigger structure of a class. See for more information (in Dutch), www.studeersnel.nl/nl/ document/universiteit-van-amsterdam/inleiding-kunstmatige-intelligentie/verpli​ chte-opgaven/richtlijnen-kavv/1110801/view.

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Achcar, G. (2013) The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press). Aktas, V., M. Nilsson and K. Borell (2019) ‘Social scientists under threat: resistance and self-censorship in Turkish academia’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 67:2, 169–86. al-Ali, N. and N. Pratt (2009) What Kind of Liberation: Women and the Occupation of Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press). Allen, L. (2008) ‘Getting by the occupation: how violence became normal during the second Palestinian intifada’, Cultural Anthropology, 23:3, 453–87. Alli, S. (2020) ‘Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: “It is not possible to decolonize the museum without decolonizing the world”’, Guernica, 12 March, available at www. guernicamag.com/miscellaneous-files-ariella-aisha-azoulay (accessed 1 August 2022). Altorki, S. and C. F. El-Solh (1988) Arab Women in the Field: Studying Your Own Society (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Aouragh, M. (2014) ‘Refusing to be silenced: resisting Islamophobia’, in P. Essed and I. Hoving (eds), Dutch Racism (Amsterdam / New York: Brill / Rodopi), pp. 355–73. Arraf, H. and A. Shapiro (2011) ‘The Free Gaza movement’, in M. Hallward and J. M. Norman (eds), Nonviolent Resistance in the Second Intifada (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 153–62. Beattie, P. (2017) ‘Anti-Semitism and opposition to Israeli government policies: the roles of prejudice and information’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40:15, 2749–67. Beinin, J. (2004) ‘The new American McCarthyism: policing thought about the Middle East’, Race & Class, 46:1, 101–15. Bolak, H. C. (1996) ‘Studying one’s own in the Middle East: negotiating gender and self-other dynamics in the field’, Qualitative Sociology, 19:1, 107–26. Choudry, A. and S. Vally (2020) The University and Social Justice: Struggles across the Globe (London: Pluto Press). Crétois, J. (2020) ‘Achille Mbembe accused of anti-Semitism: the German controversy’, The Africa Report, 7 May, available at www.theafricareport.com/27554/ achille-mbembe-accused-of-anti-semitism-the-german-controversy (accessed 1 August 2022). Deeb, L. (2009) ‘Emulating and/or embodying the ideal: the gendering of temporal frameworks and Islamic role models in Shi’i Lebanon’, American Ethnologist, 36:2, 242–57. Deeb, L. and M. Harb (2013) ‘Choosing both faith and fun: youth negotiations of moral norms in Beirut’, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 78:1, 1–22. de Jong, A. (2011) Geen vijanden: 1000 dagen in Israël en de Palestijnse gebieden (Amsterdam: Rainbow Publisher). de Jong, A. (2012) ‘The Gaza Freedom Flotilla: human rights, activism and academic neutrality’, Social Movement Studies, 11:2, 193–209. de Jong, A. (2015) ‘Activism, human rights and academic neutrality: the Gaza Freedom Flotilla’, in K. Gillan and J. Pickerill (eds) Research Ethics and Social Movements: Scholarship, Activism & Knowledge Production (London: Routledge), pp. 57–75. de Jong, A. (2017) ‘Zionist hegemony, the settler colonial conquest of Palestine and the problem with conflict: a critical genealogy of the notion of binary conflict’, Settler Colonial Studies, 8:3, 364–83.

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de Jong, A. (2018) ‘Gaza, Black Face and Islamophobia: intersectionality of race and gender in (counter-)discourse in the Netherlands’, in P. Essed, K. Farquharson, K. Pillay and E. J. White (eds), Relating Worlds of Racism: Dehumanisation, Belonging, and the Normativity of European Whiteness (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 271–98. de Koning, M. (2016) ‘“You need to present a counter-message”: the racialisation of Dutch Muslims and anti-Islamophobia initiatives’, Journal of Muslims in Europe, 5:2, 170–89. Essed, P. and I. Hoving (eds) (2014) Dutch Racism (Amsterdam / New York: Brill / Rodopi). Flood, M., B. Martin and Y. Dreher (2013) ‘Combining academia and activism: common obstacles and useful tools’, Australian Universities Review, 55:1, 17–26. Gadzo, M. (2020) ‘“Anti-Palestinian racism”: appointment row at Toronto university’, al-Jazeera, 20 September, available at www.aljazeera.com/news/​ 2020/9/20/anti-palestinian-racism-appointment-row-at-toronto-university (accessed 1 August 2022). Ghorashi, H. (2014) ‘Racism and “the ungrateful Other” in the Netherlands’, in P. Essed and I. Hoving (eds), Dutch Racism (Amsterdam / New York: Brill / Rodopi), pp. 101–16. Goldberg, D. T. and S. Makdisi (2009) ‘The trial of Israel’s campus critics’, Tikkun, 24:5, 39–94. Gordon, N. (2014) ‘Human rights as a security threat: lawfare and the campaign against human rights NGOs’, Law & Society Review, 48:2, 311–44. Grassiani, E. (2013) Soldiering under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the al-Aqsa Intifada (New York: Berghahn). Haddad, B. and J. Schwedler (2013) ‘Teaching about the Middle East since the Arab uprisings: introduction’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 46:2, 211–15. Hage, G. (2012) White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (London: Routledge). Ismael, T. Y. (2011) ‘Guest editor’s note: academic freedom, ideological boundaries, and the teaching of the Middle East’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 33:3/4, 125–30. Kanafani S., and Z. Sawaf (2017) ‘Being, doing and knowing in the field: reflections on ethnographic practice in the Arab region’, Contemporary Levant, 2:1, 3–11. Khalili, L. (2007) Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Khalili, L. (2010) ‘The location of Palestine in global counterinsurgencies’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 42:3, 413–33. Leeuw, M. D. and S. V. Wichelen (2005) ‘“Please, go wake up!” Submission, Hirsi Ali, and the “war on terror” in the Netherlands’, Feminist Media Studies, 5:3, 325–40. Mahdavi, P. (2008) Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Maussen, M. (2015) ‘Pillarization’, in J. Stone, R. M. Dennis, P. Rizova and X. Hou (eds), The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (Chichester: Wiley). Mbembe, A. (2018) Politiques de l’inimitié (Paris: La Découverte). Medani, K. M. (2013) ‘Teaching the “New Middle East”: beyond authoritarianism’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 46:2, 222–4.

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Moghnieh, L. (2017) ‘“The violence we live in”: reading and experiencing violence in the field’, Contemporary Levant, 2:1, 24–36. Moors, A. (2009) ‘The Dutch and the face-veil: the politics of discomfort’, Social Anthropology, 17:4, 393–408. Russell, B. (2015) ‘Beyond activism/academia: militant research and the radical climate and climate justice movement(s)’, Area, 47:3, 222–9. Said, E. W. (1978) Orientalism (New York: Vintage). Said, E. W. (1979) ‘Zionism from the standpoint of its victims’, Social Text, 1:1, 7–58. Scheper-Hughes, N. (1995) ‘The primacy of the ethical: propositions for a militant anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 36:3, 409–40. Taraki, L. (2006) ‘Even-handedness and the Palestinian-Israeli/Israeli-Palestinian “conflict”’, Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 35:2, 449–53. Tétreault, M. A. (1996) ‘Deconstructing the other: teaching the politics of the Middle East’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 29:4, 696–700. vom Bruck, G. (1997) ‘A house turned inside out: inhabiting space in a Yemeni city’, Journal of Material Culture, 2:2, 139–72. vom Bruck, G. (2016) Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition (London: Springer). Vroon-Najem, V. E. (2014) Sisters in Islam: Women’s Conversion and the Politics of Belonging: A Dutch Case Study (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).

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Part IV

Hierarchies

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10 Knowledge production at a time of pandemic: navigating between Syria and the UK Juline Beaujouan

Introduction Production of knowledge between Europe and the Middle East raises questions about the existence of duality and a relation of power between different forms and sources of knowledge, and the possibility of creating a more interactive and inclusive knowledge that transcends geographical and organisational boundaries. While the process of creating ‘glocal’ and balanced knowledge is ongoing, in February 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic put a strain on physical interactions of scholars and the ability to conduct collaborative research. COVID-19 increased the uncertainty and alienation researchers face when working in foreign territories and which pushes them to creatively adapt to changing landscapes. While volatile environments and safety concerns have been strong inhibitors to researching the Middle East, I argue in this chapter that these challenges can be turned into opportunities to rethink and push for more ethical, equal and sustainable research practices. In other words, COVID-19 may have tilted the balance between European and Middle Eastern researchers towards a fairer, more equally weighted collaboration. Notably, practical constraints and forced immobility highlighted the crucial skills and role of local researchers and communities and created prospects for participatory and inclusive co-production of knowledge. In this chapter, I reflect on my experience of collaborative research as an early career researcher of Peace and Conflict Studies in the Middle East based in the United Kingdom. I use the case of my work during the COVID-19 pandemic in Syria and earlier anecdotes from Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to look at opportunities and challenges to produce new perspectives and avoid the reproduction of dominant epistemologies, methodologies and representations of the Middle East in Europe. While it has the potential to bridge both rims of the Mediterranean Sea, collaborative research is also a place where mutual perceptions interact and where positionalities, roles and relations are constantly (re)negotiated. Most of the

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work that inspired these insights is still ongoing and offers lessons drawn from a learning-by-doing process. As such, this chapter raises questions and makes suggestions on potential methodological approaches to conducting collaborative research that deserve further problematisation at a later point. It hopes to encourage self-reflection on the role and impact of European research on societies of the Global South and contribute to the current trend towards a fairer approach of research and knowledge production in the Middle East and beyond.

British higher education – a story of privileges The need to decolonise knowledge and foster more equal and sustainable ways to do research in countries of the Global South has been at the core of European academic discussions for several decades. While this endeavour is ethically justified, it is particularly complex as it implies the reform of established systems, sets of values and behaviours. Looking back at my own journey, as a student, I was taught about the challenges faced by higher education and academia in Europe; yet it took me about two years of research to realise that I had fallen into the trap of the privileged researcher, and two more years to implement research that would attempt to avoid it. Said differently, as much as we are taught how to conduct good and ethical research in European universities, it is only through experience and constant attention that we can learn not to reproduce the wrongdoings of the system that brought us up as scholars. For me, this process of realisation started when I arrived in the UK as a postgraduate student. Before that, I was educated between France and Germany where education is virtually free and knowledge is often considered a service provided by the state and a right every resident is entitled to claim. I only started questioning the value of knowledge in Europe when I applied for a master’s degree at a renowned English university and, as a result, had to take out a student loan to pay for my education, while my family could afford to cover my living expenses across the Channel. This was a financial sacrifice we were willing to do, a long-term investment. Once enrolled as a European student in the UK, I found myself evolving in a very international and diverse group of learners, or so it seemed. Postgraduate students in the UK fall into two equally weighted categories: home students, from the UK and – at least until early 2021 – the European Union (EU), and overseas students. This division of the student body has a direct impact on the value of knowledge in British higher education. According to a survey published yearly by the Times Higher Education magazine (2020), average master’s degree fees range between £8,500 and £19,500 for home students. The same education

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costs twice as much for overseas students, roughly between £16,000 and £21,800. Further living expenditures amount to £6,000 to £8,000 per year. As a result, financial wealth is a precondition for education in the UK for overseas students coming from the majority of Global South countries  – mainly from China, India, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Hence, even before starting their training as researchers in British universities, candidates are selected based on their privileges and capacity to afford the financial cost of obtaining knowledge. As a postgraduate student in the UK, one of the most valuable lessons I was taught is to think critically: that is, to have my own opinion and create my own knowledge. The key premise of this learning method is to reach a personal conclusion on a specific topic based on the analysis and evaluation of different voices in the form of data, opinions and arguments. In theory, it celebrates the diversity of sources and opinions. Across fields of study and programmes, students in the UK are in fact invited to reflect on different opinions formulated by a rather homogeneous group of authors. A 2019 study showed that the British university reading list remains dominated by white, male and Eurocentric viewpoints (Schucan and Pitman, 2020; see also Bhambra, Gebrial and Nişancıoğlu, 2018, and also the contribution of Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel in this volume). While the impetus to decolonise knowledge at British universities first brought about a change in the diversification and internationalisation of the university body (Donnelly and Evans, 2018), it is only recently that debates focused on the transformation of curricula and reading lists as a necessary step in the reform of knowledge (re)production, towards more balanced and inclusive representation of diversity (Andrews, 2020). The need for financial power to study in the UK and the standardisation of Orientalist teaching materials are two key challenges that face the cosmopolitan British university. The systemic reform of British higher education and the knowledge it (re)produces is under way, but it necessitates a more nuanced debate and self-reflection at the individual level. Beyond the financial value of knowledge, more debate is needed on the ethical value of knowledge in the UK and the Global North in general. For the lucky ones who enrol in British higher education, knowledge abounds and is easily accessible, partly because English has become the lingua franca of the academic world. Besides, British universities provide students with a virtually unlimited pool of knowledge in the form of online access to scientific publications and subscriptions to hundreds of academic journals. Finally, British higher education insists on the added value of ‘the field’ and practical knowledge. During my master’s degree in the UK, I had the opportunity to participate in a ten-day study trip to Lebanon to learn about cross-sectarian reconciliation and political power-sharing after the civil war

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which tore the country apart between 1975 and 1990. We met with countless representatives of military, political and religious movements and local inhabitants. For the first time, I was not just reading about concepts and events, I was learning through experiences and interactions with individuals who lived through these events. This experience triggered an insatiable hunger for learning ‘in the field’. I quickly renewed the experience as a PhD student in Jordan and Lebanon where I went to collect data, a key part of a doctoral thesis and an essential skill of a good researcher. Little did I know that what I saw as a mere step in the process of knowledge production was in fact much more than gathering information. In retrospect, I believe that I unconsciously acted as if this data or knowledge was free, as if I had a right to this knowledge because I had paid to access it and had put great effort into learning Arabic and the culture(s) of the communities I wished to study. It took me several months in the Middle East to realise that I was probably reproducing the flaws of the system in which I had been educated.

Knowledge production or knowledge extraction? The trap of the privileged researcher The right to knowledge – in terms of access and creation – is indirectly recognised in several international covenants through the right to education and the freedom of expression, among other human rights. In return, there are legal and ethical considerations for the use of knowledge. In higher education, for instance, the source of information must be explicitly referred to and sometimes receives financial compensation for the knowledge made available to the public. Despite the existence of thorough regulations, access to knowledge in higher education is not immune to moral considerations. During summer 2018, I was a PhD student in Mafraq, a city located about 25 kilometres from the Syrian border in northern Jordan. I met five sheikhs – tribal leaders – including one Syrian refugee, to discuss their perceptions of the conflicts in Iraq and Syria and the role of the Islamic State (IS). The meeting took place in a small building that a local businessman made available to us to allow confidentiality, and to help participants feel safe and at ease. As often, I was the only female in the room and the youngest by ten to thirty years. I felt quite intimidated; tribal leaders have a high social status in the region and I felt deeply grateful to have the opportunity to meet them. Also, I was fully aware that the topic was a very sensitive one, and I did expect challenges to arise when we started discussing IS. Against my expectations, the interview ran smoothly. But suddenly, the Syrian sheikh started reflecting on his life as a refugee in Jordan. He explained that his living conditions had become so dire that he would sell one of his children

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if he could. He paused and I suddenly realised that he was shedding silent, humble, painful tears. Silence descended on the room and all men avoided eye contact. In a patriarchal and tribal society, men – even more so tribal leaders – rarely show signs of (what is designated as) weakness and it would be disrespectful to act upon the pain of the sheikh. Like them, I lowered my gaze, stared at my note pad with a strong feeling of guilt and shame. After long seconds of embarrassed but respectful silence, my Jordanian colleague gently reopened the discussion while one of the men put his hand on the shoulder of his tearful neighbour as a sign of compassion. This experience prompted me to question my status as an early career researcher and my impact on the people I interacted with. Technically and ethically, I had not committed any major mistake. Participants had all given their consent to discuss the topic, we had ensured their safety and it was not one of the questions I asked that led the Syrian sheikh to reflect on his condition as a refugee in northern Jordan. Yet, on this occasion, the relationship between my interlocutors and I had seemed particularly unfair. While the discussion clearly benefited my research, I could not be sure of its impact on my interlocutor. Did it negatively affect an already vulnerable individual? Or, on the contrary, did the conversation give him the opportunity to release his feelings and maybe even prompted solidarity from his peers who were confronted with his plight? On this occasion, my lack of sustained engagement with my interlocutors – beyond the stage of data c­ ollection – prevented me from being able to assess the impact of my research. I started interrogating the information I was collecting – before even producing new knowledge – and my position vis-à-vis those who share their stories with me. I could not possibly rely on the pain and traumatic experiences of vulnerable populations in conflict-affected countries to potentially become a good researcher in the UK. I also knew that I always felt animated by the quest of oppressed and vulnerable populations for justice and resistance. Yet, there are a number of moral and institutional challenges for ‘conflict scholars’. First and foremost, our immediate mission is to produce knowledge and not to alleviate the suffering of the populations we engage with. In practice, though, the line between the scholar, the activist and the peacebuilder can be blurry (Isopp, 2015; Kende, 2016; Nathan, DeRouen and Lounsbery, 2018). The second main challenge arises from the need to access data to create knowledge about a situation that seems unfair or communities that seem oppressed. I had devoted time and financial resources to study the history, culture and language of local populations, hoping this would give me the legitimacy to conduct interviews without imposing patronising power relations. Yet, after several months spent in Jordan and Lebanon, I feared I was becoming nothing more than a ‘knowledge extractor’. Several individuals I needed to gain access to for my research had already been

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stripped of their rights, agency, land, family, identity. Was I adding to the injury of global theft by taking their stories and thoughts away from them without acknowledging their ownership and agency to change things for the better? Was there an alternative way to conduct research that could create solidarity between spaces and individuals to increase the immediate impact of knowledge production? Being aware of my privilege and positionality and showing compassion was not enough to produce more ethical research and knowledge. I would have to engage in self-reflection and be mindful of my footprint on the geographies and communities I studied. I realised that knowledge was not the aim but the channel to create new awareness, discourses and practices that must benefit the communities European researchers interact with. This is something I had never been taught anywhere before. As a researcher in the making, which I still am as I write this chapter, I had the opportunity to shape the researcher I wanted to be and to mould my research on the lessons I had learned during the early years of my PhD. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic allowed me to put these reflections into practice and experiment with how I could reinvent ways to conduct research and the role(s) I would need to assume.

COVID-19: an opportunity for collaborative research and co-production of knowledge The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 reached the Middle East through Iran in mid-February 2020. In a few weeks, governments worldwide closed their borders and imposed a ban on international travel. In the academic world, many researchers installed their office in their homes while distant teaching became the norm. Like many, I faced a dilemma: in a deeply uncertain and volatile context, is my research worth the time, energy, commitment and risk of becoming infected or being a vector of transmission of the virus? Should I take the risk to add a layer of vulnerability to communities that already bear the trauma of protracted violence? And finally, does a negative answer to these two questions necessarily entail the cancellation of my research? On 12 March 2020, I caught one of the last flights from Beirut, where I had participated in an international workshop, and landed in Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Despite alerts that the coronavirus was spreading, I had received approval from the university I was working for to conduct research in Iraq. Two days after my arrival, KRI closed its national and international borders. For several reasons, I did not wish to be repatriated to the UK or France and I eventually stayed in KRI for five months.

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Of course, my initial research plans were cancelled. I was confined to my house and I witnessed the unprecedented impact of the pandemic on the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. But I could not come to terms with passivity, especially when I realised that the virus and the official response to it would have a strong impact on durable peace in terms of political trust, social cohesion and the relationship between the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) and the central government in Baghdad. I discussed research ideas with two colleagues at a local think tank and we quickly received the support of the Minister of Health in KRI. We designed an online survey that was answered by almost 1,000 Kurdistanis in ten days. The research yielded a report that we disseminated in several languages across Europe and Iraq, hoping that it would inform audiences about the impact of the virus in KRI and enlighten policies of the central and regional governments. When I returned to the UK in August 2020, I was fortunate to receive institutional and financial support to participate in an investigation about the COVID-19 peace–conflict nexus. I contacted several colleagues to ask them whether it was worth putting a project together in Syria in the opposition-held areas in the northwest of the country. Their answer was very clear: research in these areas during the pandemic was not only needed, but was a necessity. In fact, several funding bodies in the UK acknowledged this necessity, which led to the multiplication of opportunities to study the impact of the pandemic. In Syrian opposition-held areas, the rationale was that thousands of individuals who had been sentenced to silence by almost a decade of violent conflict lacked a clear voice in the middle of the pandemic. The latter was quickly politicised by the Syrian government and the two de facto opposition governments in the northwest of the country to gain traction on the ground and in the international realm (Beaujouan, Ghreiz and El Hafi, 2021). These official narratives failed to give unbiased accounts of the living conditions of grassroots communities. In this context, researchers have an essential role to play in suggesting alternative representations to open up possibilities for decision-makers. In this sense, there was an ethical imperative for resuming fieldwork quickly in Syria, while adapting it to the constraints imposed by COVID-19. In other words, such research had a strong potential to have a long-term impact that went beyond the scholarship and outcome of the research. It also meant that we had to create a diverse team between the UK and Syria and to create an equal partnership. One of my Syrian colleagues told me to look at it as an exchange of privileges: The research does not exist without you because we (Syrian researchers) have too many constraints. We lack freedom of movement and speech inside and outside our country, we cannot talk to the international community because

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we lack language skills, and we have a bad reputation because we live under so-called revolutionary forces. On the other hand, the research does not exist without us because you cannot access Syria and even if you could, you lack a good command of the local language, cultural values and codes, and it would take years to establish trust and network. In conclusion, we need each other to channel local voices.

This was not the first time I had heard this call to raise awareness of and give space to local voices. In 2018, a colleague and I spent a couple of months in Jordan and Lebanon to investigate the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on host communities. During our meetings and encounters, several individuals belonging to both elite and grassroots communities had asked us to spread their voices – ‘Tell them about us’; ‘Make sure they do not forget about us’ – in reference to our network in academic and policy-making circles in the UK. But to what extent could we channel local voices without appropriating local knowledge we did not create? These local voices were not necessarily academic ones, but they provided thorough analyses. As such, we could only agree to facilitate the process of knowledge transmission from the Middle East to Europe. In this situation, I felt that I had participated in co-producing knowledge about two Middle Eastern countries in collaboration with various authors from Jordan and Lebanon who echoed the voices of local communities, for the benefit of these communities. The resulting edited volume (Beaujouan and Rasheed, 2019) contains the results of the initial collaborative project. Back in 2020, a key challenge of the research we were planning in Syria was to ensure that the distance imposed by forced immobility would not hinder the quality of the knowledge we aimed to produce. In that sense, COVID-19 shed light on the key role of local researchers to provide contextualised insights and research on areas that cannot be accessed by European colleagues. Yet, the same situation could also potentially increase the risk of an exploitative and unequal partnership. This risk generally arises when there is pressure to conduct research ‘at any cost’. How to build participatory, inclusive collaborative research?

The challenge of inclusive research Inclusion may be the greatest challenge to collaborative research (Pohl et al., 2008). Pushing for more inclusive research is not limited to encouraging alternative forms of academic and non-academic expressions; it goes beyond the inclusion of alternative sources of knowledge. Alternative voices embody a set of values and practices that are expressed through different languages, worldviews and work ethics. As such, collaborative research

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must integrate the values, language and practices of those who engage in the research, that can be seen as a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview which we believe is emerging at this historical moment. It seeks to bring together action and reflection, theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern to people, and more generally the flourishing of individual persons and their communities. (Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 1)

At the earliest stage of the research, partners can have very different views on the nature and aim of the research. As an illustration of this, two colleagues and I were supporting civil engagement activities with communities that were engaged in our research project in northwest Syria. We were organising two art exhibitions in Azaz and Afrin to illustrate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on dynamics of peace and conflict in opposition-held areas. My colleagues suggested that we launch the event in Afrin during Newroz festivities that celebrate the arrival of spring and the start of the new year in Kurdish culture. At that time, Afrin was (and remains as of today) under the control of the Turkish army, and the Turkish government had an open anti-Kurdish stance. A few days before the start of the festivities, Turkish authorities closed access to the city and I became worried about the safety of the artists we were working with. I raised my concerns with my colleagues; they answered in their usual fashion: ‘Don’t worry, we have plans B, C, D up until Z. This will happen. The Kurds always find a way to celebrate Newroz in Afrin.’ While I deeply admired Kurdish resilience, I also felt frustrated about my colleagues’ answer. My immediate thought was that we were not trying to make a point but to conduct research as safely as possible. Taking risks in order to stick to the initial project idea and launch the exhibition in Afrin at any cost would not only endanger the local communities we were engaged with, but would also damage the trust we had gained from UK institutions over months of collaborative research. We eventually decided to postpone the exhibition until after Newroz. Today, I still believe that it would have been too risky to organise the exhibition as initially planned. But I had to reassess my instinctive thinking on the notion of collaborative research. As a European researcher, I chose the path of academia and I am supported by several institutions in my endeavour. But for my Syrian colleagues, especially for those who live in opposition-held areas, being a researcher is the constant reaffirmation of their rights and freedom; it is an act of resistance in the face of what is considered a huge injustice, oppression and occupation. Being actively

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engaged in research that will channel the silenced voices of their community beyond Syrian borders is an act of defiance against the conflict and those they perceive as oppressors. Being heard gives Syrian researchers a sense of achievement and ownership of their history. In fact, we must acknowledge that being an objective researcher able to take distance from what we study is a privilege. In Syria, and many countries affected by violence and conflict, research is not just a job or even a vocation, it is resistance (Strega and Brown, 2015). Where do European researchers stand in this reality? Collins and Watson (2018: 108) argue that the very nature of collaborative research that engages with oppressed communities necessarily involves an advocacy agenda where the researcher does not have a fully objective position. In a similar vein, Potts and Brown (2015: 103) make the case for ‘research as resistance’ where researchers ‘[commit] to social change and [take] an active role in that change’. In other words, the co-production of knowledge between Europe and the Middle East – and between the Global North and the Global South in general – must go beyond textbook methodological procedures dictated by the West as they might simply not work in other environments. Integrative research goes beyond navigating different views on events and research itself. When working across Europe and the Middle East, English is often not the frame of reference and linguistic diversity goes hand in hand with engagement with local communities. Hence, special care must be taken when discussing European concepts with non-European partners. Language can also be an important barrier to inclusive research at the stage of dissemination. This is the case when partners do not have a ‘good command of English’, a requirement to publish in international academic journals and participate in international events. In early 2021, the research team in Syria was invited to participate in a renowned European peacebuilding forum. Despite its focus on bringing partnership into action in the field of peacebuilding, the online event only featured presentations in English and did not offer live translation. For our team, it meant that one Syrian colleague was de facto excluded from the debates and that he would not be acknowledged as a key component of the partnership. We eventually agreed with the organisers of the event to record his presentation in Arabic in advance and to insert English subtitles to the video. All these tasks were performed in Syrian opposition-held areas without any kind of support, which was quite ironic considering that the event was held under a title that included the word ‘Translate’. This anecdote, unfortunately, shows that research findings in the Global South remain mainly accountable to European partners and not to the local actors with whom they engage. Finally, while research on the Middle East is dominantly commissioned and funded by Western institutions, it must integrate local research

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­ ractices. Inclusivity in that sense is particularly challenging during data p collection, which must comply with ethics requirements and risk assessments codified by European academia. As a result, only the European partner is required to complete the ethical process allowing the research to move forward. Yet, in the case of collaborative research, the European researcher is often not the one who will collect data and take associated risks. This exclusion not only raises questions in terms of responsibility and accuracy of risk assessment, but it might also be problematic in the event of a violent incident during the research. This is what happened in late January 2021 when a car exploded in Azaz only a few metres from the office of one of my Syrian colleagues. Thankfully, he was not injured but we immediately stopped the research and reported the incident to several individuals and institutional bodies in the UK. Gratefully, we received great support and my colleague was asked to complete an additional risk assessment to take his local experience and knowledge into consideration to assess the feasibility and safety of the research. The latter resumed after a week. As illustrated by this anecdote, it is crucial that all research partners are included before the research is approved and that the experience and contextualised knowledge of local partners are taken into consideration by academic institutions.

Reassess positionality and privileges: shaping the collaborative researcher Collaborative research that aims at creating global forms of knowledge is a continuous challenge for partners – both academics and non-academics – to ‘understand and learn from their positionality with regard to their own privileges and statuses’ (Collins and Watson, 2018: 99) but also to reinvent their role (Pohl et al., 2010). Positions as European and local researchers are often reflected in an unfair division of labour in research. In most cases, research is commissioned, funded and designed in the Global North and local researchers in the Global South act as facilitators, especially during the stage of data collection. When we started our research in Syria, I remember that my Syrian colleagues on the ground in Syria asked me: ‘So, what do you want us to do?’ In fact, it took several weeks and long discussions for them to start feeling that they owned the research as much as I did, and for me to shift from a proactive role to that of a listener. If anybody, they should tell me how the research could or should facilitate the work of local actors by shedding light on their voices, practices and needs. My short experience also led me to reassess my own privileges. In light of recent efforts to decolonise British higher education, I used to look at

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my privileges as something negative, that is, as the fruit of unfair power relations between ‘privileged European academics’ and ‘deprived Middle Eastern communities’. I have often assumed or exaggerated the trauma or vulnerability of those I engage with during the research process. Such an assumption, while having a clear emphatic and protective stance, can foster patronising behaviours and deprive partners and communities of their agency in the face of crises, conflicts or global pandemics. Preconceptions also distort the way we research, the questions we ask and the knowledge we produce or contribute to producing. The truth is that, during the first wave of the pandemic between March and August 2020, I felt less vulnerable than my colleagues and close circles in Europe. Funnily enough, I realised that I had myself become a vulnerable individual for my European counterparts, as they assumed that my life in KRI during a global pandemic could only be traumatic. It took half a dozen calls to convince the French consulate in Erbil not to put me on an ‘expats plane’ to Paris. This is why local communities have a key role to play in the creation of knowledge about their own environment. What may seem extraordinary or a unique experience for non-local researchers can sometimes only be  part of normal life in local settings. But how would we know if we have never experienced this normality, either because we cannot access the area or because we stay there for a short time and live as funded foreign researchers, that is, under very different living conditions than grassroots communities? This also speaks to the importance of including local partners from the early stage of research so that they can trigger debates and discussions about the epistemological premises of the research investigation process. In that sense, collaborative research must be a platform for expression and give space to local voices in public debates. Otherwise, our good intentions and over-care for individuals we assume to be vulnerable run the risk of reproducing pre-existing unequal relationships and biased, exclusive knowledge. Beyond privileges, my collaboration with Middle Eastern partners led me to a situation of ‘divided identity’ (Ravetz, 2001: 391) where I questioned my position as a researcher. I had been taught to be a critical thinker; to extract information and give meaning to personal stories in the framework of complex socio-political theories and historical backgrounds. Yet, I sometimes felt that I was becoming a mere facilitator of a joint learning process or a transmission channel for local voices. When I engage in collaborative research, I also devote much energy to the constant negotiation between language(s), worldview(s), analyses, identities, skills and experiences. I spend on average two hours daily communicating with my colleagues – mostly via instant messaging platforms – to ensure that inclusion infuses all stages of the research and to monitor the situation in terms of safety.

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In other words, collaborative research requires extensive open discussion, a continuous exchange and learning process between diverse yet equal and complementary partners. While the process is longer than non-collaborative research, it results in the multiplication of knowledge and the creation of critical awareness and insights which can form and shape transformative action (Freire, 1970; Habermas, 1984/1987). But I am not the only one in a situation of ‘divided identity’. During the pandemic, my colleagues in Syria and Iraq acted not only as researchers but also as safeguards against the invisible risk represented by COVID-19. In both countries, local norms and measures against the virus provided too little protection for researchers and participants. As I mentioned before, few researchers in the Global South have the privilege of being solely researchers, especially in conflictaffected countries like Iraq and Syria. Most of my colleagues are also activists, members of civil society, students – sometimes all of these. As such, they  had been trained on how to mitigate the risks of contamination of COVID-19 and had participated in several awareness campaigns to inform the grassroots community. Their daily engagement conferred on them a great amount of trust among the local populations we were keen to engage with during our research. Trust is a key component but also a key aim of successful collaborative research. Trust can facilitate the transformation of research partnerships into long-term, sustainable relationships among researchers, and between researchers and the communities they engage with. Building such a relationship requires all partners to be honest and transparent about what they can bring to the research and how they expect to benefit from it. In this process, the price of transparency is often higher for local researchers, especially if they live in a volatile environment dominated by a war economy. There is a clear financial incentive to collaborate in funded research for local researchers. This may lead to situations where they try to secure the collaboration ‘at any cost(s)’, disregarding potential challenges to their effective contribution to the research. On the other hand, European researchers have the power over the use of financial resources allocated to research. Within the constraints of their funding organisations’ fiscal guidelines, this control over financial resources may encourage some to act upon the economical vulnerability of their local counterparts to ‘lower the costs’ of the research, thereby underestimating the financial value of local contributions. To prevent such an event, an open discussion on proper and fair remuneration is a key step in any balanced collaborative research to ensure that hidden tasks for local partners are acknowledged and to lay ground rules for the partnership. Importantly, remuneration also has to reflect the level of risk and the added value of each researcher and changing costs of living due to evolving s­ituations – particularly during periods of crisis. Instead of

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­ ividing tasks based on privileges, a more interesting approach is to involve d all partners in each step of the research, from design through data analysis to the d ­ issemination of outcomes. This comprehensive co-production of knowledge justifies and entails co-authorship and dissemination of outcomes across languages and audiences. As argued by Lassiter, collaborative research must aim at producing texts that are ‘co-conceived or cowritten with local communities of collaborators and consider multiple audiences outside the confines of academic discourse, including local constituencies’ (2005: 16). Realistically, the writing process is particularly sensitive in collaborative research; this is when the results of negotiations between identities, positionalities and worldviews are enshrined. Finally, co-authorship is conditional upon the consent of all authors to be associated with the knowledge created. In collaborative research between Europe and the Middle East, co-authorship remains too often prevented by concerns over academic freedom and personal safety. In an attempt to make our research in Syria sustainable, my colleagues and I partnered with an international network based in the Netherlands. Together, we created ‘Local Voices at a Crossroads’, a series of stories in which local actors of everyday peace (MacGinty, 2014) share their insights about the fragilities and resilience of their societies in the face of conflict. The series aims to accelerate action at the local level by strengthening the voices of civil society at the policy level. While we started the series with several articles on Syria based on our research findings, the aim is to make space for more voices to be heard and expand the scope and coverage of the series to other contexts in order to reflect the mosaic of perceptions and experiences of everyday peace around the world. All stories are published in English, French and Arabic and disseminated among academic and policy-making circles but also across the world via social media platforms. This initiative is only a drop in the ocean, but it greatly contributes to the sustainability of our research and to shift the focus on local partners from objects of research into knowing subjects and beneficiaries of research. The notion of benefit must be an indicator to set the termination of collaborative research and relationship. In other words, as long as one of the partners, including researched communities, benefits from the research, the collaboration is meaningful and should continue. The sustainability of collaborative research depends on the sustainability of the benefit for engaged partners and communities. In addition to creating effective solidarities and relationships and building up research capacities in the Global South, such endeavours enable local agency for peace and help European researchers better identify and support effective initiatives so that peace initiatives can be leveraged in conflict-affected areas rather than prescribed by external actors.

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Conclusion ‘How do we foster a pedagogical approach that respects and empowers people to understand, participate in creating, and strengthen appropriate models for working at conflict in their own context?’ (Lederach, 1995: 39). Beyond the field of Peace and Conflict Studies and more than two decades later, this question is of continuing relevance and, yet, it has remained unanswered. This chapter built upon personal experiences and self-­reflections to highlight that the path towards collaborative research is far from being evident and devoid of obstacles. Privileges are deeply entrenched in Western higher education in terms of access and use of knowledge, which has a direct impact on the status and practices of Western researchers in the Global South. It follows that, ‘[t]o come to a real co-production of knowledge, more is needed than tackling power dynamics guiding research and giving voice to those silenced today. Changing existing logics force us to rethink our own position as scholars’ (Vlassenroot, 2020: 5). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the potential for interactive and participative research as a way to circumvent forced immobility for Western researchers and to use research as a transmission channel for the voices of communities which politics and violence have condemned to silence and oblivion. In this collaborative framework, Western researchers, through their privileges, are essential bridges between communities and geographies, but they are only one component in a plural and representative partnership. As such, the impetus to decolonise knowledge does not necessarily entail the removal of Western elements from academic endeavours, nor the renouncement to a certain kind of universalism which is not colonialist. Decolonisation can be an inclusive process aimed at building bridges between space, community and knowledge to offer a more balanced and diverse representation of the world. Collaborative research aimed at the co-production of knowledge is thus a key ally of this endeavour. Yet, it ought not to be considered a mere remedy to the lack of access to certain populations in the Global South. The presence of the ‘local’ should become a prerequisite to any research. More than a methodological option for researchers, collaborative research – especially when it engages with oppressed and vulnerable communities – must become a norm, an act of academic and human solidarity, and a subversive behaviour against the reproduction of the unequal relationship between the knowing subject and the researched object. This chapter also highlighted a number of challenges to collaborative research between Europe and the Middle East, which is no risk-free alternative to remote research. While it is a tool that limits the existing imbalances in global research cooperation between the Global North and the

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Global South, there is no guarantee of success in it, and in fact, collaborative research may be particularly vulnerable to competing worldviews and research practices. Some collaborations are simply impossible, whether for political, ethical or any other reasons. Yet, these challenges do not undermine the overall necessity or legitimacy of the approach. Besides, its ­flexibility – in terms of partners, allocation of tasks, and the possibility to put an end to unsuccessful cooperation – is a valuable asset for the development of equal and inclusive research practices and balanced knowledge. Knowledge that is collaboratively created must not only infuse the findings of academic research but also the ways we see and do research from epistemological and methodological points of view. Collaborative research is a learning-by-doing process that must be constantly adapted to the individuals and contexts involved in the co-production of knowledge. Despite this required flexibility, collaborative research must be codified and institutionalised in order to foster the appropriation of knowledge and scholarship by any individuals and communities that are likely to benefit from the research. Institutionalising collaborative research is an essential step towards the recognition that knowledge, and the systems and structures that produce it, are not immutable and must adapt to the societies they engage with to reflect the evolving interpretations that underpin our worldviews and relations with others. This speaks to the value of academic endeavours as relational matters that can promote a more sustainable, humanistic, universal way to carry out informed research that promotes connections between spaces and individuals to open dialogue and debate among a multitude of voices.

References Andrews, K. (2020) ‘Blackness, empire and migration: how black studies transforms the curriculum’, Area, 52:4, 701–7. Beaujouan, J. and A. Rasheed (eds) (2019) Syrian Crisis, Syrian Refugees: Voices from the Host Community in Jordan and Lebanon (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Beaujouan, J., E. Ghreiz and A. El Hafi (2021) ‘The politics of the COVID-19 pandemic in Syria: how local civil society inherited the COVID-19 file’, Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding, 17 March, available at www. cspps.org/covid-19-syria (accessed 2 August 2022). Bhambra, G. K., D. Gebrial and K. Nişancıoğlu (2018) ‘Introduction: decolonising the university?’, in G. K. Bhambra, D. Gebrial and K. Nişancıoğlu (eds), Decolonising the University (Chicago: Pluto Press), pp. 1–15. Collins, B. and A. Watson (2018) ‘The impetus for peace studies to make a collaborative turn: towards community collaborative research’, in G. Millar (ed.), Ethnographic Peace Research: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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Donnelly, M. and C. Evans (2018) ‘A “home-international” comparative analysis of widening participation in UK higher education’, Higher Education, 77, 97–114. Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury). Habermas, J. (1984/1987) Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Isopp, B. (2015) ‘Scientists who become activists: are they crossing a line?’, Journal of Science Communication, 14:2, 1–5. Kende, A. (2016) ‘Separating social science research on activism from social science as activism’, Journal of Social Issues, 72:2, 399–412. Lassiter, L. E. (2005) ‘Collaborative ethnography and public anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 46:1, 83–100. Lederach, J. P. (1995) Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation across Cultures (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). MacGinty, R. (2014) ‘Everyday peace: bottom-up and local agency in conflict affected societies’, Security Dialogue, 45:6, 213–29. Nathan, L., K. DeRouen Jr. and M. O. Lounsbery (2018) ‘Civil war conflict resolution from the perspectives of the practitioner and the academic’, Peace & Change, 43:3, 344–70. Pohl, C., L. van Kerkhoff, G. Bammer and G. Hirsch Hadorn (2008) ‘Integration’, in G. Hirsch Hadorn, H. Hoffmann-Riem, S. Biber-Klemm, W. GrossenbacherMansuy, D. Joye, C. Pohl, U. Wiesmann and E. Zemp (eds), Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research (Dordrecht: Springer), pp. 3–19. Pohl, C., S. Rist, A. Zimmermann, P. Fry, G. S. Gurung, F. Schneider, C. I. Speranza, B. Kiteme, S. Boillat, E. Serrano, G. Hirsch Hadorn and U. Wiesmann (2010) ‘Researchers’ roles in knowledge co-production: experience from sustainability research in Kenya, Switzerland, Bolivia and Nepal’, Science and Public Policy, 37:4, 267–81. Potts, K. and L. Brown (2015) ‘Becoming an anti-oppressive researcher’, in S. Strega and L. Brown (eds), Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Antioppressive Approaches (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press). Ravetz, J. (2001) ‘Science advice in the knowledge economy’, Science and Public Policy, 28:5, 389–93. Reason, P. and H. Bradbury (eds) (2001) Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (London: Sage). Schucan Bird, K. and L. Pitman (2020) ‘How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK’, Higher Education, 79, 903–20. Strega, S. and L. Brown (eds) (2015) Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-oppressive Approaches (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press). Times Higher Education magazine (2020) ‘The cost of studying at a university in the UK’, 4 May, available at www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/ cost-studying-university-uk (accessed 2 August 2022). Vlassenroot, K. (2020) ‘Can collaborative research projects reverse external narratives of violence and conflicts?’, #PublicAuthority, 8 May, available at https:// blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/05/08/collaborative-research-methods-projectsreverse-external-narratives-violence-conflict-drc/ (accessed 2 August 2022).

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11 Who teaches the Middle East in Europe? A gender perspective Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel

Introduction For the first time in my academic life I began to seriously wonder about my status as a woman when conducting fieldwork, when my friend and colleague Marie Vannetzel told me about her Cairo ‘suitcase’ experience. Even though I had grown up in Istanbul, a liberal and cosmopolitan city, I had some idea about the challenges I might face as a female researcher in other parts of Turkey and soon in Iraq. Working on everyday politics and social action of Muslim Brothers in Egypt under the Mubarak regime (Vannetzel, 2016), Marie had packed two types of clothing in her suitcase, one for her daily life and the other, more conservative, for her interviews and meetings. Our conversation in 2007, at the beginning of our doctoral journey, became the anchor of my personal and then academic and professional interest in the situation of women in the teaching-research profession. I had to wait until 2016 to find the courage to professionally challenge my own position as a woman in the academy, when, together with my colleague Selcen Öner, we conducted research regarding the situation of female academics in Turkey who work in the discipline of International Relations (IR; Özdemirkıran-Embel and Öner, 2017). This introspective work reminded me once again of the peculiarities of the field of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and led me to question myself much more on the manner in which the MENA is taught as well as on the positionality of female academics in the classroom. While women in the United States, Canada and Australia hold nearly half of all tenure-track positions, they hold fewer academic positions than men at a senior level. Women are a minority among senior academics in many European countries too (Catalyst, 2020). In political science as much as in IR, women now receive degrees in record numbers, but female representation among social sciences faculty still lags behind that of many other disciplines. Only 26 per cent of the 13,000 political science professors in the United States are women (Sedowski and Brintall, 2007). In Australia, this

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percentage is 29 per cent (Cowden et al., 2012: 11). While some 40 per cent of students undertaking political science degrees in the UK are women, about three-quarters of those teaching them are men (Akhtar et al., 2005). Only 15 per cent of female academics in the UK are senior (Allen and Savigny, 2016: 4). In France, if women are the majority among students in political science (64.1 per cent), from the doctorate level their share decreases among teachers-researchers (44 per cent) and it also decreases as the hierarchical level increases (30 per cent) (Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, 2019). Although the Nordic gender employment gap is the smallest among OECD members (OECD, 2018), only 30 per cent of Danish, 37 per cent of Norwegian and 39 per cent of Swedish researchers are women, while the percentage of female full professors is 16 per cent in Denmark and 23 per cent in Sweden and Norway (Nielsen, 2017: 296). Despite their increasing number in higher education since the 1960s (Schuck, 1969: 646–7), women continue to face a glass ceiling and other types of barriers (Marina, 2015). For example, in IR, they are systematically cited less than men (Maliniak, Powers and Walter, 2013). Women are also read less than men: 79.2 per cent of texts on reading lists in the UK are authored exclusively by men (Phull, Ciflikli and Meibauer, 2019). As David Lake (2016) argues, IR is still ‘a white man’s discipline’. As this edited volume focuses on knowledge production in higher education with a particular emphasis on Europe and the MENA region, it is worth exploring issues related to teaching and researching specifically through the eyes of women in order to understand how female researchers teach and produce knowledge and to find out, from their own perspective, to what extent gender has an impact on their methodological choices in the classroom and during fieldwork. In this context, this chapter focuses on ‘who teaches’ the MENA in order to take a picture of the current situation of female MENA scholars in their respective institutional structures and in their classrooms. The aim of this chapter is to explore a part of this reality through personal trajectories, narratives and experiences of female academics as expressed during interviews; they can not, however, be understood as an implicit comparison with any male colleagues. This chapter voluntarily and explicitly favours the point of view of female academics to make heard the observations and testimonies of these whose voice has long been neglected in Middle East Studies circles. The chapter is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with twelve female academics from universities and research centres in seven European countries (the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Turkey and the United Kingdom) during August and September 2020.1 All these interviews were carried out online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviewees’ average age was around 40 to 45 years. Seven interviewees

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were mid-career colleagues, four of them were senior and only one was an early career researcher. Eight interviewees were working at universities, two were affiliated with national research bodies in their native countries and the remaining two were working for independent research institutes. Each interview consisted of four groups of questions: on personal motivation of the interviewee in their choice to teach and research the MENA and their educational and professional path; on how they organise their courses; on their research activities and the difficulties they face in the field; and on their professional status and any gender-based discrimination in their professional life. Even if most interviewees gave me the authorisation to mention their real name, in order to keep the anonymity of all my interlocutors I decided to obscure their identities by giving colour names to them instead.

Trajectories: who teaches the MENA in Europe? Interviewees are from the disciplines of political science, IR, geography and anthropology and they work on political mobilisation, social policy, public policy, legitimation of regimes, political competition, political  parties, ethnic nationalism, territoriality, religious groups (such as Sufis), political Islam (such as Hamas, Muslim Brothers), MENA history, non-­proliferation, humanitarianism, system transformation, diasporas (such as Kurds in Sweden, Algerians in France) and gender studies. Most of the interviewees are specialised in one MENA country (sometimes more in a comparative perspective) and with the exception of only one, they rarely work and publish on the entire region (except textbooks and op-ed articles). Egypt is the most popular subject of interviewees: five interviewees are working on its history, politics and sociology. Four of the interviewees are working on Turkey (especially Kurdish politics and late Ottoman history). Interviewees have been trained at European institutions, except two who studied at a US university and one who holds a PhD from Ben Gurion University in Israel. Most of them changed their institutions after bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Institutions from where interviewees predominantly had their PhD degrees were the Institut d’études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po Paris), London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Sorbonne Paris 4, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Paris-based Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO). Many of the interviewees were driven to study the MENA by their personal history. Either they have origins in the MENA or they lived there

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at some point, especially during childhood or adolescence. Knowledge of the local culture and language as well as affinity with the region became a strong source of motivation when choosing their research subject. For example, being bilingual in Arabic and French as well as her observations of Algeria’s experience of (Arab) socialism with reference to Nasser in the 1980s during her childhood in Algeria have driven Red (France, senior) to work on Egypt, while a Hungarian historical novel for children on the Siege of Eger by the Ottomans in 1552, Stars of Eger (‘Egri csillagok’, English title: ‘Eclipse of the crescent moon’; Gárdonyi, 1991 [1899]), sowed the first seeds of curiosity for Purple (Hungary, senior). Yellow (Turkey, mid-career) was annoyed at clichés about the MENA (veiled women, backward countries, etc.) when she was a young female student in California where she brought Levantines together in her Middle Eastern Student Club and discovered an ‘ancient, very colourful and very absorbing culture’. Socialised in the Mediterranean region, Lilac (Germany, senior) expressed her affinity when she went for the first time to Israel-Palestine where she felt at home with the light and landscape. Socialisation has sometimes a more complex effect which leads researchers to question themselves in a more personal way about their own existence: I have Algerian origins and I went to school there. When I started studying social sciences I didn’t want to work on Algeria. At the time I had a formula. Arendt says not to judge, not to forgive but to understand. I didn’t want to understand. I wanted to keep my feelings raw. I didn’t want to objectify what I went through. Not a sociologist, not to measure. Years after, a colleague explained, either you do a psychoanalysis or a thesis. (Red, France, senior)

The second most important source of motivation is found in interviewees’ education path. They were led to wonder and to discover the region by meeting an influential professor such as Gilles Kepel at Sciences Po Paris for Orange (France, mid-career) and by taking a course on the History of the Modern Middle East at SOAS which awakened in White (Czech Republic, mid-career) an interest and desire to pursue the history of the region further. For two interviewees, working on the MENA is a challenge to be overcome in their personal lives or/and in their career path. For example, when Green (Turkey, mid-career) ‘applied for a PhD position at the Institute of Middle East Studies of a leading university in Turkey there was no reference to the Middle East in Turkish society; the EU wind was blowing’. She was never encouraged by her family and close friends in her studies on the MENA as she grew up in a secular environment where working on the region was, at that time, perceived to be an area of study for those having a particular interest in Islam. Pink (Czech Republic, mid-career), who joined a Faculty of Oriental Studies which had just opened at the beginning of the 2000s,

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was not supported by those around her either, as Oriental Studies were considered very exotic without any professional outlet in her country.

In the classroom Although a few studies show that women have higher teaching motivation (Bailey, 1999), female academics, particularly mothers with home caring duties (Misra, Lundquist and Templer, 2012; Toffoletti and Starr, 2016), report spending more time on teaching and advising students than on research and administration compared to their male counterparts (Aiston and Jung, 2015; Donaldson and Emes, 2000; Goastellec and Pekari; 2013; Mandleco, 2010). Despite the progressive ‘trivialisation’ of the presence of women (Marry, 2004), segregation continues to operate in academia. As in all organisations and work structures, despite the declared neutrality of procedures, gender is essential as a structuring principle in the university at many levels: in the unequal division of labour, in the organisation of space, in behavioural standards and finally in the construction of symbols about male hegemony (Acker, 1990: 145–50). Despite the achievements of the last century, feminist struggles still come up against the persistence of inequalities at work (Maruani, 2017). As a workplace like any other, the classroom is not immune to gender issues, thus making the classroom a gendered space. Hence, it is essential to analyse how the classroom is organised and managed by female academics. With the exception of three interviewees who have the opportunity to teach on their own research topic, and one of them who doesn’t currently teach, all interviewees teach both general social sciences and specific MENA courses. More than half of my interviewees teach up to two courses (up to 90 hours) per semester. During interviews I attempted to explore how gender matters in MENA Studies’ classrooms through questions around the following themes: definition of the MENA, approaches to main issues relating to the MENA, curriculum choices and teaching methods.

Defining the MENA: how to address the colonial past in a European classroom? The classroom is where students and professors – consciously or not – ­construct, reconstruct and deconstruct representations through curricula, readings, papers, dissertations and in-class discussions. The classroom is also a political place where the Foucauldian power–knowledge nexus manifests itself in its different forms (Foucault, 2015 [1975]: 288). As Edward Said (1978) argued in Orientalism, the definition of the MENA is firmly

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linked to historical constructions and representations which have always been challenging for scholars. In other words, the classroom is where knowledge on the MENA is produced. Relations between Europe and the MENA have been shaped by political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual, artistic and religious entanglements, and the representations resulting from these entanglements are firmly related to colonial history. Although stereotypes regarding the MENA are less common in European MENA Studies’ classrooms compared to those in the United States (Hantzopoulos et al., 2015; Tétreault, 1996), students join courses with a blurred definition of the MENA which is influenced by Europe’s colonial past. As the status of women in Middle Eastern societies and debates on feminist movements in the MENA are not independent of this colonial past (Abu-Lughod, 1998: 243), for European female academics, the colonial baggage could potentially present a greater challenge when they come into contact with local cultures. The fundamental question is whether being a woman in a European classroom has a particular impact on criticising, deconstructing or reconstructing this colonial past. In other words, how do the syllabi and methods of female academics address the definition of the MENA and how do they consider the weight of this colonial past? A common theme emerges through my interviews: female academics are committed to creating a pluralist understanding of the MENA as well as an inclusive one and in deconstructing beliefs and myths on the MENA. They pay attention to underlining the particularities within the region and push students to question themselves on this plurality. These following quotes are illustrative examples of the above observation: I devoted one introductory session to discuss epistemological issues such as the constructedness of the notion of the Middle East, its shifts over time, the disciplinary politics of area studies, the integral link between power and knowledge production. We criticise and deconstruct the mainstream definition of the Middle East as a discrete geographical area stretching from Morocco to Iran, which is based on the prioritisation of cultural traits; in doing so we refrain from any essentialist definition of the Middle East, adopting a constructivist one instead. (Grey, Italy, mid-career) I find it is so important to deconstruct into different geographical parts, different histories, colonial histories. Of course, you can also do this through different systems. But the most important issue for me was to have the student question each and every topic they choose. (Lilac, Germany, senior) It is not a geographic continent; it is a crossroads. There is a problem of geographical delimitation and the name. When you say the Arab world, how do you deal with the existence of a plurality of Arabic languages dialects,

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l­inguistic plurality of Kabyle, Berber, Kurdish, etc. Israel, Turkey?! You also have the problem beyond the language there is no sign of cultural particularity, art, symbolic institutions, religious practices, gastronomy. So, we put the Arab world in the plural to emphasise pluralities. It is therefore also a fairly strong pedagogical choice! (Orange, France, mid-career)

Female academics, as reflected upon by Tétreault (1996), highlight individuality and the human identity of the people who live in the MENA. They do this by using many anecdotes and examples from their fieldwork and personal trips to the region. They all present the Middle East and its people as political agents and as a living system rather than as a stereotype of immutable, exotic otherness. They are committed to ‘mythbusting’  which,  according to Kirschner (2012), is much of the task in introductory courses on the region. This attitude is clearly seen in the way they organise their courses in a transversal perspective rather than through the lens of Middle Eastern exceptionalism. The transversal approach – which refers to navigating among various disciplines of social sciences and among multiple case studies within the same discipline (see for instance Bourdieu and Gros, 1989) – allows researchers to reflect upon (traditional) area studies and ways in which these can help educators to go beyond Orientalism. In order to overcome constructions and offer a broader vision to their students, all interviewed women follow a comparative approach. They focus on fundamental themes of political sociology and share with students many examples and case studies from different continents. They compare also various national cases in the MENA. In short, with a few exceptions, my interlocutors define themselves first of all as a sociologist, a political scientist or an anthropologist rather than a specialist in Middle East Studies. In spite of this positionality, interviewees’ disciplinary affiliation/engagement does not overshadow their specialisation on the MENA: rather they offer specific empirical knowledge from the MENA as a valuable contribution to debates within their discipline. This is actually also linked to their position in the debate on the ‘culture-blind Disciplines, and culture-blinded Area Studies’ (Valbjørn, 2004: 52; see also Jung, 2014; Tessler, 1999; Teti, 2007; Wasby, 1997). With two exceptions, interviewees are committed to studying particular cases through general concepts without referring to MENA exceptionalism: ‘The Arab world has an Arab mentality’ – we must deconstruct these culturalist visions! You have to see what is circulating, similarities, spaces of recognition, of solidarity etc. I’m not really talking about the ME. I am talking about national cases, historical situations of a particular moment. I can move from Tunisia and arrive to Yemen. When we talk about clientelism, we

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Who teaches the Middle East in Europe? 221 must not stay in Egypt, I take students to Lille, to Corsica. There is nothing Mediterranean in Lille, it is raining! You have to over-trivialise your object in order to deconstruct the exotic. (Blue, France, early career) There is nothing specific to the MENA, I build my courses on deconstructing these perspectives. I don’t consider fundamental concepts as given and essentialist, they are outcomes that have been developed under historical, economic and sociological circumstances. The MENA is not a separate planet. (Brown, UK, mid-career)

The use of universal terms and concepts in explaining the MENA is a common practice among female academics interviewed. Besides that, the transversality was more clearly expressed and underlined by colleagues from France. This attitude could be explained by the impact of the French political sociology school (Jansen and Scot, 2019: 692) and the criticism of Oriental Studies and its epistemology by Berque, Bourdieu and Rodinson in the 1960s (see the contribution of Timo Behr in this volume).

Teaching methods A recent study on pedagogical trends in MENA Studies shows that professors report incorporating the use of more data and diverse pedagogical tools in their instruction. Influenced by technological developments and increasing accessibility to them, many turn to teaching methods that are more hands on and provide exposure to the region first hand (Aydemir, 2017). Watching and reading documentaries and first-hand accounts helps students effectively examine their beliefs (Kirschner, 2012). In line with these findings, interviewees prefer using interactive methods and encourage students to participate, ask questions and debate. Depending on the type of course and on the number of students, they use pre-assigned materials, give long-term works (such as fieldwork, broadcasting) and assign projects. As Kirschner argues, allowing students to step back from their own opinions and consider the question at hand from others’ perspectives also helps students focus on arguments, rather than on myths and preconceptions. Interviewees try to give autonomy to students in order to push them to question their own relation to the region: I tell them, if they took this course they had to put their prejudices outside. We’re talking about Israel for example, there are ultranationalist students, they do not like to hear that Israel is trying to build its own nation state. I let them talk. These are challenges for me. I have seen students changing and letting go of their prejudices. Indeed, it depends on how you present it. When the course is accompanied by my own fieldwork experiences, it becomes ­different. (Yellow, Turkey, mid-term)

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The above-mentioned study by Aydemir (2017) on new pedagogical trends in MENA Studies further indicates that geopolitical developments have resulted in shifts in the professors’ curriculum. They have begun to place more emphasis on the refugee and migration crises, the Arab uprisings, domestic surveillance, IS (Islamic State) and other current events in courses ranging from history to anthropology. The Arab uprisings have particularly driven academics to diversify in-class methods and materials such as Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos covering protests and other contentious politics but also all manner of arts and even mundane videos of people (Haddad and Schwedler, 2013: 214). This trend is also followed by most of my interviewees: Last year I asked the students for a non-academic project, it’s a colleague who does that, it inspired me, it’s a creative work which must be related to the subject of the course. They wrote news, campaigns for NGOs, they made installations, they prepared podcasts etc. […] They did fieldwork. It was related to their own personal story. (Beige, UK, senior)

Despite their desire to diversify teaching materials, weekly readings are still the main pedagogical tool for many interviewees. However, they take great care in how the readings are selected. The choice of texts again reflects the transversal approach. The objective is to lead students to look from the perspective of a sociologist or a political scientist. By giving readings on the same axis from different fields and different countries, the interviewed female academics introduce students to central themes of political science, sociology and anthropology while leading them to ask questions about the specificities of the MENA: I give to students readings in political sociology, to show for example very similar steps of union activism in France and Tunisia. These articles contain concepts to support the arguments, it is an ‘analogous and not identical’ approach, you must adopt it to your object of study of course. This is the basis. It’s the idea of mixing articles from different areas. Latin America, Asia, Scandinavian countries, not only ME and Europe. It is better to adopt a common political sociology. (Orange, France, mid-career)

In fact, there is only one academic who goes definitively beyond traditional teaching methods (readings, class debate, etc.). This interviewee has been personally involved in the science of education and she regularly tries to implement new methods and techniques. She underlines that young academics are much more involved in these new methods: With my young colleagues we are doing teaching observation activities, we participate in each other’s class. I finished a master’s programme called Teaching in Higher Education. I try to give freedom to students in the classroom, I plan

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Who teaches the Middle East in Europe? 223 group activities, the goal is to include each student in the activity and discussions. It is about collective learning, peer conversation. I bring big blackboards in the class, they discuss with these materials sitting on the floor and I give feedback. I won teaching prizes. I like to keep permanent contact with some of my students, to be consciously a part of their career path. (Brown, UK, mid-career)

Talking about women in the classroom To find out about teaching particularities of female academics, talking about women in the classroom was hypothetically the most relevant issue. In this perspective, interviewees were asked if they devote an analytical frame based on gender awareness or one or more session to the situation of women in their courses. Three groups of answers could be identified. In the first group, there are female academics who are aware of gender issues in MENA Studies classrooms and they explicitly include a gender perspective. They do this in two ways. First, they provide a specific analytical frame, for example in Grey’s class of history, gender constitutes an important analytical frame; however, she does not have a specific session on women’s history (Italy, mid-career). Second, they dedicate one or more sessions to questions related to gender issues in the ME: I have devoted particular sessions to women’s history but my overall preference is to try and actively weave women into my regular sessions. (White, Czech Republic, mid-career) There are a lot of prejudices, there is a perception that there is no woman in the ME. Even in Saudi Arabia and Yemen there are women’s movements, in Iran women are always on the streets and they are very strong. In Tahrir, harassment became a tool to exclude women from the revolutionary space. I give visual materials and contemporary readings, I am talking about today’s women. (Yellow, Turkey, mid-career)

Furthermore, there are two interviewees who are personally interested in gender studies and their current research topics fall under this field of study. They consequently integrate gender studies theories and concepts into their MENA courses: Since 2013–2014, as I started to work on gender, I went several times to Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq and worked with INGOs there. As the frequency of my fieldworks increased, it had an impact on courses. Working on gender in the ME has widened my horizons. (Brown, UK, mid-career) When you work on social policy you mostly meet women. The people who wait for social aids are mainly women. It was an experience during the fieldwork. I have become more and more aware of gender studies. So I started training in it, I even started teaching gender studies! (Red, France, senior)

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In the second group, there are academics who are aware of the need to integrate a feminist perspective into their courses but they do not do it explicitly by adding specific sessions. Along the same lines as the findings of Colgan (2017), who notes that on average female instructors assign significantly more research by female authors than male instructors do, interviewees pay great attention to their choice of texts: I pay attention to the texts. I organised the course by theme, we have subjects like public space, the house, where we talk about gender. (Beige, UK, senior) I’m not very feminist in the classroom. There is no specific session on women. I think this is a problem. I don’t do this because I don’t have a theoretical background on gender. I haven’t been trained in. But, I make my students read, for example, I use a lot Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety, and Judith Butler in order to understand Salafi women in Egypt. (Orange, France, mid-career)

And finally, there is a third group of female academics who are not interested in a gender or feminist perspective to the study of the MENA and who keep a conscious distance from gender studies in their courses: No. I only mention when I am talking about demography. Frankly speaking I am not into gender studies. (Purple, Hungary, senior) I often do fieldwork in Iran. The main issue is the veiling imposed on women. Students are curious about this. I am against saying that women are oppressed in Iran, it is a cliché. They have similar problems to those of women in other countries. I do not think that gender issues have to be specifically included in the courses. While I am talking about the ME, I don’t have any specific emphasis on my gender, so although talking specifically about women seems to support the women’s movement; it is in fact an approach that pulls the gender issue from the whole and diminishes the importance of women. (Green, Turkey, mid-career)

In the field As many interviewees enthusiastically confirmed (for example, Yellow, Turkey, mid-career; Blue, France, early career; Lilac, Germany, senior), the experiences of professors during field research in the MENA animate the courses on the region more than all teaching techniques. Clark (2006) argues that the greatest challenges to conducting qualitative research in the MENA are those related to the authoritarian political conditions prevalent in most of the countries of the region. The political climate affected researchers’ choice of countries for study, their interview techniques, and the ethical dilemmas they encountered in the field. In short, conducting fieldwork in the MENA is a complex process and can even be dangerous,

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as many tragic cases confirm.2 The same survey indicated that 14 per cent of female researchers unequivocally stated that gender was an asset and 17 per cent stated that gender was a mixed bag: that it could work to your advantage or disadvantage. Significantly, 31 per cent of female respondents did not mention gender at all (Clark, 2006: 421). I asked all my interviewees to speak about their fieldwork experiences, first because I find it crucial in order to understand the position of the academic and her relation to the region – it is actually much more dependent on our specific identities (Townsend-Bell, 2009) – and second, because fieldwork has important consequences in knowledge production in the classroom, particularly for the perceptions of students. Students learn about the MENA not only through texts but also through how the region is presented by educators. As Clark (2006) and also Schwedler (2006) have shown, being a woman in the field in the MENA is sometimes difficult to explain and presupposed ideas on being female or male are not adequate for bringing answers to questions related to gender issues. As Clausen (2020: 160) indicates, what appear to be binary categories, such as the male–female gender bias expected to shape conservative society, may be more nuanced at the interplay of gender and nationality. Where different elements of the researcher’s and her interlocutor’s identity intersect, her positionality as ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ may be less clear cut than assumed (see for example Oriola and Haggerty, 2012). The experiences of my interviewees are mostly in line with previous studies’ results. One third of the interviewees are convinced that being a woman is often an advantage during fieldwork. As noted by Schwedler (2006: 425), in most cases the ‘cost’ of entry is the same for female and male scholars: advanced language skills, extensive knowledge of the subject and region under examination, and, at least at a minimum, social skills. What is often surprising, however, is that many female scholars actually enjoy more access than male researchers, because the latter are usually unable to meet privately with women in the region, particularly in the informal and casual settings that are essential for ethnographic research (Schwedler, 2006). Moreover, government officials, local elites, business leaders, Islamist activists and all manner of opposition actors routinely agree to be interviewed by female scholars: The fact that I am a woman has played a role. These are pretty macho circles, sometimes they are happy to talk to a foreign woman, just a woman. Sometimes they have an interest in answering because I am a woman. (Beige, UK, senior)

This is explained by my interlocutors in two ways. First, female researchers have more access because they are not seen ‘as dangerous as men’

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­ olitically; they are ‘naive and easy to handle’ during the interview. Second, p for ethnographic research female researchers can more easily access private spaces: The woman, she is naive, less likely to be a spy, politically dangerous. I work on social policies. My gender is an advantage, in expert circles an overwhelming majority are women. For me, it’s great fun being a girl! Sociologically we can have informal discussions. The second advantage, to do the ethnographic part and stay with families, I can be in the household for a long time, in the family, in the house economy, I can stay for hours talking in the house with the girls. And also with men, they tell things they are not going to tell a man. In gendered spaces, an Egyptian woman and a European man cannot stay in a room for hours but the opposite is possible. One of my interviewees cried in front of me but he will never do that in front of a man. (Orange, France, mid-career).

This cannot only be explained by the easier access of women in the field. The characteristics of female researchers matter. Therefore, age and being a white European woman with the appearance of being an uninformed foreigner are key factors: There is an inverse correlation between gender and age. When I was younger, gender was an issue in different terms, gender was an issue with men trying to pick me up and the extent to which people took me seriously. One example, I got an interview with the Algerian interior minister. I had finished my PhD but he kept referring to me as ‘the student’. He was in his seventies and I was in my late thirties, even early forties, but for him I was still a student. So, he gave me information that my male colleagues didn’t have a chance to get. Because  she  is ‘naive’, it does not hurt to play that role actually. […] And when you have grey hair I find a different kind of respect, there is not the naive anymore but this respect comes more as the French say with ‘méfiance’.3 […] Women with experience have more respect but at the same time they are less threatening, men compete with men. (Lilac, Germany, senior) In Yemen being a woman is a chance, I have access to women and men, my male colleagues do not. We are a third gender.4 We can cross sexual barriers. Karima, Leïla […] Arab and Muslim women they do not have access to certain spaces. Me, my name is (Name-Surname), French and white. I can go for lunch with the chairman of the parliament group or the speaker of the parliament. My position with the same people in France would be different. (Blue, France, mid-career)

In spite of the advantages, there are also some difficulties on the ground in the MENA. Although it is not specific to the MENA (see e.g. Kloß, 2017; Løvgren, 2019), harassment remains a concrete issue. It manifests itself mainly in two forms: sexual and radical. Women very often face men who try to seduce them and they are also, though rarely, victims of more severe

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forms of harassment. As Fine (1993) writes, attempts at sexual acquaintanceship are part of the territory in a sexist world and the MENA is no exception: There are some interviewees very present, they deliver things, gifts… One of them tried to kiss me, it was someone at a very high position, a very important interviewee, he was a gate keeper. I kept my distance and continued my fieldwork. It wasn’t easy to overcome, I was having nightmares. But these are very common examples for a woman who works with dominant interlocutors. (Blue, France, early career)

Women are more vulnerable to the violence of radicals. It is another form of harassment that female academics face during fieldwork: I didn’t really have problems on the field. I met always nice, intellectual and helpful people. I had problems only with radicals. I have been attacked at Qubbat al-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock), it was June, I wore sandals and an old Palestinian saw my foot toes and provoked people around him, Jordanian guard and Palestinian secret police controlled the situation! I had a very similar experience in a radical Jewish neighbourhood. It is about radicalism, not about being woman, Muslim or Jew. (Yellow, Turkey, mid-career)

None of these forms of challenges, even violence, dissuades female researchers from achieving the fieldwork. On the contrary, their awareness about their weaknesses and advantages mentioned above makes them less fragile and more persistent during their fieldwork experience.

Conclusion This chapter explored female interviewees’ trajectories and analysed the manner of teaching (definitions, academic materials and methodological tools, etc.), their fieldwork experiences and specific precarious experiences of female academics working in the field of MENA Studies at European institutions. By doing so, it sought to shed light on some potential explanations as to whether gender has a particular impact (or not) on teaching and researching the MENA. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with twelve female academics from European universities and research centres, this study makes the following (tentative) conclusions. Interviewees teach both general social sciences and specific MENA courses. In their courses they prefer a broad definition of the MENA; they try to deconstruct existing definitions and to emphasise pluralities in the region. They lead students to navigate among various disciplines  of social sciences and among multiple case studies by proposing readings about neighbouring disciplines and case studies from other regions.

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They o ­ rganise their courses in a transversal perspective and refuse to be driven by MENA exceptionalism. Except one interviewee who had a specific interest in and knowledge of new pedagogical tools, interviewees mostly use relatively traditional pedagogical tools such as weekly readings, in-class debates and presentations. However, they are all committed to diversifying their teaching methods; for example, many of them recommend that students carry out fieldwork or prepare broadcasting pieces or a project. The data collected from personal narratives of interviewees are not sufficient for concluding that gender is an explanatory variable in definitions and teaching materials. Although all interviewed academics are careful to deconstruct definitions and challenge Europe’s colonial past in the ME in their syllabi and in the classroom, they have never mentioned that being a woman has a particular impact on how they define the MENA. On this particular issue further research (particularly research reinforced through interviews with male colleagues) is needed. However, gender matters in teaching activities when it comes to integrating readings from female authors in the syllabi, to discussions about women’s situation in the ME and to the inclusion of gender studies in the course composition. With the exception of only two, all of the female academics interviewed devote an analytical frame based on gender awareness or one or more sessions to the situation of women in their courses. They offer students selective readings from female authors or from authors who have a feminist approach to MENA Studies. Gender also has a significant impact on fieldwork. Along the same lines as the conclusions reached by Schwedler (2006), a third of the interviewees argued that being a woman was often an advantage during fieldwork. They emphasised seniority and being a white European woman as additional advantageous factors. This advantage of being a female researcher in the various fields of the ME does indeed stem from a kind of (positive) discrimination. It is anchored in the perception of men who don’t feel any discomfort or threat from female researchers. Of course, female researchers are endowed with a particular advantage in the field that opens doors as they immerse themselves deeply in the smallest details whilst in the field. But this is essentially at the cost of being considered naive or even secondclass subjects. Personal narratives and experiences of interviewed female academics assuredly offer some clarity on the positionality of female academics in the classroom and in the field. This study highlights how gender has a particular impact on researching when compared to teaching practices, as gender has significant consequences during fieldwork. In conclusion, gender influences the production of knowledge about the ME at European universities long

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before this knowledge enters the classroom, from the very first moment that female researchers come into contact with their research subjects in the field.

Notes 1 As its educational system is firmly integrated in the European educational system and as its history is rooted in the colonial past of the MENA, Turkey is classified as a European country in this research. For general information and numbers about the situation of female academics in Turkey, see O’Neil et al. (2019); see also the contribution of Aylin Güney, Emre İşeri and Gökay Özerim in this volume. 2 Such as the assassination of Giulio Regeni, Italian PhD student, in Egypt in 2016 or the arrest of Fariba Adelkhah, French researcher, in Iran in 2019. 3 A kind of mistrust, suspicion but not in a pejorative way. 4 The term ‘third gender’ is used here in the meaning suggested by Jillian Schwedler (2006: 425): Western female scholars are a ‘third sex/gender’ in the MENA since they have access to both men and women.

References Abu-Lughod, L. (1998) ‘The marriage of feminism and Islamism in Egypt: selective repudiation as a dynamic of postcolonial cultural politics’, in L. Abu-Lughod, Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 243–69. Acker, J. (1990) ‘Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: a theory of gendered organizations’, Gender and Society, 4:2, 139–58. Aiston, S. J. and J. Jung (2015) ‘Women academics and research productivity: an international comparison’, Gender and Education, 27:3, 205–20. Akhtar, P. P. Fawcett, T. Legrand, D. Marsh and C. Taylor (2005) ‘Women in the Political Science profession’, European Political Science, 4:3, 242–55. Allen, N. and H. Savigny (2016) ‘Experiencing gender in UK Political Science: the results of a practitioner survey’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 18:4, 997–1015. Aydemir, S. (2017) ‘Pedagogies and content in the classroom: new trends in Middle Eastern Studies’, Maydan Teaching & Learning, 18 November, available at https://themaydan.com/2017/11/pedagogies-content-classroom-new-trends-mid​ dle-eastern-studies (accessed 2 August 2022). Bailey, J. G. (1999) ‘Academics’ motivation and self-efficacy for teaching and research’, Higher Education Research & Development, 18:3, 343–59. Bourdieu, P. and F. Gros (1989) Principes pour une réflexion sur les contenus de l’enseignement. Rapport de la commission présidée par P. Bourdieu et F. Gros (Paris: Imprimerie nationale). Catalyst (2020) ‘Women in academia: quick take’, Catalyst, 23 January, available at www.catalyst.org/research/women-in-academia (accessed 2 August 2022).

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Clark, J. A. (2006) ‘Field research methods in the Middle East’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 39:3, 417–23. Clausen, M. L. (2020) ‘Positioning in an insecure field: reflections on negotiating identity’, in B. De Guevara and M. Bøås (eds), Doing Fieldwork in Areas of International Intervention: A Guide to Research in Violent and Closed Contexts (Bristol: Bristol University Press), pp. 159–70. Colgan, J. (2017) ‘Gender bias in International Relations graduate education? New evidence from syllabi’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 50:2, 456–60. Cowden, M., K. McLaren, A. Plumb and M. Sawer (2012) Women’s Advancement in Australian Political Science (Canberra: Australian National University), available at https://genderinstitute.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/imce/Womens Advancement_Report_0.pdf (accessed 2 August 2022). Donaldson, E. L. and C. G. Emes (2000) ‘The challenge for women academics: reaching a critical mass in research, teaching, and service’, The Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 30:3, 33–56. Fine, G. A. (1993) ‘Ten lies of ethnography: moral dilemmas of field research’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 22:3, 267–94. Foucault, M. (2015 [1975]) ‘Surveiller et punir’, in M. Foucault (ed.), Oeuvres II (Paris: Gallimard), pp. 261–613. Gárdonyi, G. (1991 [1899) Eclipse of the Crescent Moon (Budapest: Corvina). Goastellec, G. and N. Pekari (2013) ‘Gender differences and inequalities in academia: findings in Europe’, in U. Teichler and E. Höhle (eds), The Work Situation of the Academic Profession in Europe: Findings of a Survey in Twelve Countries (Dordrecht: Springer), pp. 55–78. Haddad, B. and J. Schwedler (2013) ‘Editors’ introduction to teaching about the Middle East since the Arab uprisings’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 46:2, 211–16. Hantzopoulos, M., Z. Zakharia, R. Shirazi, M. Bajaj and A. Ghaffar-Kucher (2015) ‘New curricular approaches to teaching about the Middle East and North Africa’, Social Studies Research and Practice, 10:1, 84–93. Jansen, S. and M. Scot (2019) ‘Les relations internationales à Sciences Po: la naissance du CERI et l’essor d’un champ disciplinaire (1945–1968)’, Revue historique, 691:3, 669–704. Jung, D. (2014) ‘The “Ottoman–German jihad”: lessons for the contemporary “Area Studies” controversy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 41:3, 247–65. Kirschner, S. (2012) ‘Teaching the Middle East: pedagogy in a charged classroom’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 45:4, 753–58. Kloß, S. T. (2017) ‘Sexual(ized) harassment and ethnographic fieldwork: a silenced aspect of social research’, Ethnography, 18:3, 396–414. Lake, D. (2016) ‘White man’s IR: an intellectual confession’, Perspectives on Politics, 14:4, 1112–22. Løvgren, R. (2019) ‘How to have better discussions about gender, sexuality and  safety in field research: a guide to research institutions’, DIIS Working  Paper  3 (Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies), pp. 1–29, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10419/204628 (accessed 2 August 2022). Maliniak, D. R., R. Powers and B. Walter (2013) ‘The gender citation gap in International Relations’, International Organization, 67:4, 889–922.

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Mandleco, B. (2010) ‘Women in academia: what can be done to help women achieve tenure?’, Forum on Public Policy, 6:5, 1–13. Marina, B. L. H. (ed.) (2015) Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critique (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books). Marry, C. (2004) Les femmes ingénieurs: une révolution respectueuse (Paris: Belin). Maruani, M. (2017) Travail et employ des femmes (Paris: La Découverte). Ministry of Higher Education, Rechearch and Innovation (France) (2019) Vers l’égalité des femmes hommes? Chiffres clés (Paris: Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation). Misra, J., J. H. Lundquist and A. Templer (2012) ‘Gender, work, time, and care responsibilities among faculty’, Sociological Forum, 27:2, 300–23. Nielsen, N. W. (2017) ‘Scandinavian approaches to gender equality in academia: a comparative study’, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 61:3, 295–318. OECD (2018) Is the Last Mile the Longest? Economic Gains from Gender Equality in Nordic Countries (Paris: Organisaton for Economic Cooperation and  Development), available at https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issuesmigration-health/is-the-last-mile-the-longest-economic-gains-from-genderequality-in-nordic-countries_9789264300040-en#page1 (accessed 2 August 2022). O’Neil, M. L., B. Aldanmaz, R. M. Quirant Quiles, N. Rose, D. Altuntaş and Hilal Tekmen (2019) Türkiye’de yükseköğretimdeki: Cinsiyet eşit(siz)liği 1984–2018 [Gender (in)e quality in higher education in Turkey 1984–2018] (Istanbul: Kadir Has University Gender and Women’s Studies Research Center), available at https://gender.khas.edu.tr/sites/gender.khas.edu.tr/files/ inline-files/Turkiyede%20Yuksekogretimdeki%20Cinsiyet%20Esitsizligi.pdf (accessed 2 August 2022). Oriola, T. and K. D. Haggerty (2012) ‘The ambivalent insider/outsider status of academic “homecomers”: observations on identity and field research in the Nigerian delta’, Sociology, 46:3, 540–8. Özdemirkıran-Embel, M. and S. Öner (2017) ‘Türkiye’de kadın uluslararası ilişkiler akademisyenlerinin profili: Marmara bölgesi’ [Profile of female International Relations academics in Turkey: Marmara region], Fe Dergi: Feminist Eleştiri, 9:1, 97–112. Phull, K., G. Ciflikli and G. Meibauer (2019) ‘Gender and bias in the International Relations curriculum: insights from reading lists’, European Journal of International Relations, 25:2, 383–407. Said, E. W. (1978), Orientalism (New York: Pantheon). Schuck, V. (1969) ‘Women in Political Science: some preliminary observations’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 2:4, 642–53. Schwedler, J. (2006) ‘The third gender: Western female researchers in the Middle East’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 39:3, 425–8. Sedowski, L. and M. Brintall (2007) ‘Data snapshot: the proportion of women in the Political Science profession’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 40, 1–3. Tessler, M. (1999) ‘Introduction: the Area Studies controversy’, in M. Tessler, J. Nachtwey and A. Banda (eds), Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. vii–xxi.

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Teti, A. (2007) ‘Bridging the gap: IR, Middle East Studies and the disciplinary politics of the Area Studies controversy’, European Journal of International Relations, 13:1, 117–45. Tétreault, M. (1996) ‘Deconstructing the other: teaching the politics of the Middle East’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 29:4, 696–700. Toffoletti, K. and K. Starr (2016) ‘Women academics and work–life balance: gendered discourses of work and care’, Gender, Work & Organization, 23:5, 489–504. Townsend-Bell, E. (2009) ‘Being true and being you: race, gender, class, and the fieldwork experience’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 42:2, 311–14. Valbjørn, M. (2004) ‘Towards a “Mesopotamian Turn”? The study of Middle Eastern International Relations within International Relations and Middle East Studies’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 14:1/2, 47–76. Vannetzel, M. (2016) Les Frères Musulmans Égyptiens. Enquête sur un secret public (Paris: Kathala). Wasby, V. (1997) ‘Cross-cutting the subfields: learning from our colleagues’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 30, 747–51.

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12 ‘In between’ the academic and policy communities: the position(ality) of think tank(er)s in knowledge production in and on the Middle East and Europe Daniela Huber Introduction Situated in between the academic and policy communities, think tanks are also engaged in knowledge production on Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) which influences how these geographical entities are imagined in their respective societies. Indeed, they perform a particular function in this knowledge production, as they feed academic knowledge into the policy world and policy knowledge into the academic world. In these tasks, think tanks are also political institutions. As Diane Stone (2007: 274–5) points out, much academic research that has policy relevance is not in a format suitable for government use. Think tanks are very effective organizations for translating dense ideas or abstract theory into ‘sound bites’ for the media, blueprints for decision makers and understandable pamphlets and publications for the educated public. […] However, neither knowledge production nor knowledge exchange is apolitical. (own omission)

More specifically, knowledge production and exchange are situated in a specific zeitgeist in which they evolve. This can perhaps be best evidenced by going back to the period when think tanks first emerged. The concept of ‘think tank’ – typically portrayed as a confined space for independent analysis and free and informed exchange of ideas under ‘Chatham House rules’ – was born in the Anglo-American context during the time of the Paris Peace and San Remo Conferences. At the Paris Peace Conference (1919/20), the victorious allied powers (France, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) set up the League of Nations (LoN), while the San Remo conference (1920) brought the allied powers together to discuss the future of Syria, Palestine and Iraq through a mandate system – arguably a form of colonialism in disguise – which was then to be implemented by the

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LoN. In the charter of the LoN, the principle of ‘racial equality’ proposed by Japan was never included; instead, ‘there was a hierarchy among the various “races”’ (Kamel, 2019: 10). It is precisely in this zeitgeist and particular moment of history that the first think tank emerged. At the height of British colonial power in the MENA, the British Institute of International Affairs (today’s Chatham House) was founded in London, in parallel with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Their ‘inspirational’ founder, Lionel Curtis, had ‘delivered a brainstorming speech to the British and American delegates at the Paris Peace Conference’ championing the idea ‘for an organization whose purpose would be to foster mutual understanding of and between nations through debate, dialogue and independent analysis’, according to Chatham House’s self-description on their website.1 Curtis had directly influenced Jan Christiaan Smuts – member at the time of the British Imperial War Cabinet who has been ‘credited’ with developing the idea of the m ­ andates – as he had propounded ‘the necessity for some civilized control over politically backward peoples’ (Thakur and Vale, 2019).2 Curtis’s ‘recipe’ directly translated into policy; his ideas flew in this particular zeitgeist. Shortly after Chatham House was established, the think tank concept spread to other countries in Europe. In 1934, the Italian Institute for Political Studies (ISPI) was founded ‘by a group of young scholars from the Universities of Milan and Pavia who decided to create a research center – in Fascist Italy –, inspired by the examples of London’s Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs and New York’s Foreign Policy Association’.3 After the Second World War, think tanks in the West concentrated on liberal institutionalism and super power competition (Chatham House, 2018), while they began to spread globally. In 1965, for example, the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) was founded in Rome on the initiative of Altiero Spinelli, one of the EU founding fathers. In the MENA, the first think tanks arose in the process of independence, such as the Egyptian al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS), founded in 1968 by Muhammad Hassanein Heikal, editor-in-chief of al-Ahram newspaper and close to then President Gamal Abdel Nasser (Völkel, 2008: 175–6), and which largely focused on the Arab–Israeli conflict (Ibrahim, 2004: 5). After the Cold War, think tanks themselves began to be seen as a ‘force for democratisation’ and have been ‘exported’ through Western democracy assistance (Stone, 2007) as donors supported their set-up and running. Many new think tanks also emerged in the MENA, such as the Institute Tunisien des Études Stratégiques (ITES), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), the Gulf Research Center (GRC), as well as the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), the latter having its headquarters in Paris.

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Parallel to the growth of think tanks worldwide, a literature has evolved which focuses on whether think tanks have actual policy impact. Typically, the literature provides three models. As Bertucci, Borges-Herrero and Fuentes-Julio (2014: 65) argue, there is the ‘trickle-down model’ where innovative academic ideas trickle into policy-making without a particular effort by researchers in this respect. Stephen Krasner (2009) developed a  more detailed model that looks at the conditions under which such knowledge might trickle into the policy process and focused on the three streams of policy recognition (recognition of a condition as a problem), policy alternatives (set up by experts) and politics (national mood, administrative or legislative turnover etc). Second, in the ‘scholars-cumpractitioners’ model, academics such as Henry Kissinger directly worked in US administrations, bringing academic ideas with them. Finally, there is the ‘transmission belt’ model whereby typically think tank(er)s are seen as acting as transmission belts between academia and politics (Stone, 2007). Much of this literature, however, focuses on the United States, rather than Europe or the MENA which is the focus of this contribution. As a result, this literature has somewhat ignored the autocratic/democratic context in which the knowledge production of think tanks takes place, which funding conditions they work in and which impact think tank(er)s can have in the first place. As this chapter argues, conditions relate in particular to the diverse political democratic/autocratic environments, a tough competition for funding, and particular structures of occlusion and exclusion/inclusion. The chapter proceeds as follows: first, it elaborates on the politics of knowledge production within think tanks. It then delves into a personal account of how think tanks impact on researchers working within their confines, but also which agency and impact researchers can have within these contexts. Methodologically, the first part of this chapter is based on qualitative research on the current funding and political landscapes in which think tanks work in Europe and the MENA, with a focus on international affairs institutes (rather than institutes working on other issues of public policy: health, education etc.). The second part is based on my own personal experience as a researcher working in one of Europe’s leading think tanks. This approach aims at observing think tanks as subjects of study in EU–MENA relations through an immersed view, exploring their role and responsibilities in this relationship. In particular, I highlight how the impact of think tanks in authoritarian contexts is highly constrained, but there are also several constraints in democratic contexts, including tough competition for funding, structures of exclusion/occlusion, and an increasing polarisation (at times even co-radicalisation) within societies. What emancipatory potential can think tanks have in such a context? I conclude by suggesting that rather than seeing themselves as ‘in between’ the academic and policy

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communities, think tanks need to be immersed in between the public sphere and marginalised communities which are often silenced.

The politics of knowledge production in European and MENA think tank spheres Think tanks can be classified according to their funding structure (stateor privately funded). Both types are differently impacted by three factors which condition knowledge production in today’s think tank world, that is, the authoritarian/democratic context; the competition for funding in a globalised world; and structures of occlusion and exclusion/inclusion.

State-funded institutes in democratic and autocratic contexts State-funded institutes include think tanks such as the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP; German Institute for International and Security Affairs) in Berlin which is entirely funded under the budget of the German Chancellery (2019: €15.5 million).4 The European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) in Paris was set up as an EU agency, funded by the member states. Its ‘mission is to assist the EU and its member states in the implementation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), including the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) as well as other external action of the Union’.5 Similarly, ITES has been associated with the Tunisian presidency. Like the EUISS, it aims at providing policy advice.6 It had originally been founded in 1993 under then President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. After the 2010–11 revolution, it announced that for decades, the ITES was an instrument to serve the dictatorship – ­producing reports which were the work of an eclectic group of national experts and which provided fallacious arguments for a regime whose only strategy was to preserve the privileges of the ruling class. (quoted in Morillas, 2013: 4)

The Egyptian al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo is funded by the state-owned al-Ahram Foundation. As Dina Shehata (2018) points out, the creation of the Al-Ahram Centre was particularly significant because it was linked to a desire to make more informed foreign-policy decisions after the defeat of 1967 in the war with Israel and to rely on experts rather than those close to the regime in the making of these decisions.

It then broadened out its research areas and continues to be rated comparatively high in the Global Go To Think Tank Index (see below), namely

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as the third most influential think tank in the MENA. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, at the initiative of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Center for International Strategic Partnerships (SCISP) was set up in 2017, seeking to build networks in strategically important areas, including Europe. Other state-funded think tanks in the Gulf include the Emirates Center For Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), established in 1994, and directly connected to Muhammad bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE armed forces. As its homepage points out, the ‘establishment of the ECSSR was in line with the wise leadership of the UAE’s vision to consolidate the foundations of a modern state with institutions that offer valuable contributions to research and scholarly activities around the world’.7 State-funded think tanks in democratic contexts work comparatively freely in pursuing their research, even though the political establishment of a state might set the particular themes on which this research is pursued. This cannot be assumed to be the case in highly autocratic systems, as is currently the case in Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. In these latter cases, there is hardly space for autonomous think tanks which are not related to the state and its agenda(s). Autocrats tend to place relatives or individuals from their close entourage in leading roles in think tanks and NGOs (nongovernmental organisations), and think tanks in such contexts are often one-man shows led by influential individuals who usually have a genuine political interest behind their work. Research produced within such think tank environments is most likely to rubber-stamp certain political agendas. At the same time, many think tanks in democratic contexts might similarly justify governmental policies, as shown by the example raised in the introductory section of this contribution, where an early think tanker from presumably ‘democratic’ colonial Britain influenced ideas of colonialism in disguise, so similarly helping oppressive government policies to be pursued outside of Britain, rather than critically assessing these.

Privately funded institutes and the rules of the market Privately funded independent institutes mainly flourish in democratic or semi-democratic contexts. They are typically funded by various donors, as is, for example, the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) which is supported by international agencies such as USAID, the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), the Open Society Foundation (OSF), as well as the EU, the UN and the World Bank.8 The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is funded by European governments, and a broad range of foundations and companies such as Microsoft, Nokia and others.9 Similarly, the International Crisis

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Group (ICG) is funded by the OSF, governments and the EU, as well as private companies and individuals.10 The Palestinian think tank al-Shabaka, with offices in both Ramallah and Washington, is funded by Palestinian individuals as a conscious effort at keeping the Palestinian struggle for selfdetermination authentic – as far as possible – as well as the OSF, the Swiss Development Cooperation, Rockefeller Brothers, the Hassib J Sabbagh Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the Foundation for Middle East Peace.11 What also becomes clear here is that American and European funders are dominant in both Europe and the MENA, but there are efforts too towards localisation of think tanks, as the case of al-Shabaka shows. Furthermore, many US and European think tanks have offices in various countries. There is, for example, Carnegie Europe in Brussels and Carnegie Middle East in Beirut; the German Marshall Fund (GMF) offices in Ankara, Brussels, Berlin, Paris or Warsaw; the Brookings Doha Center; the French Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (IRMC) in Tunis; or the German Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB). All of these are highly prestigious institutions which hire local scholars and give Western scholars the opportunity to pursue research in the MENA. There is no equivalent to this, however, from the MENA to Europe. No think tank exists, to the knowledge of the author, which has its core in the MENA and a satellite in Europe. Thus, there is a structural difference which enables the West to ‘gaze’ towards the MENA but not vice versa and which echoes patterns of colonial knowledge production in which the MENA is studied and exhibited in Europe (Mitchell, 1989), but not Europe in the MENA. This structural difference repeats itself in how think tanks are funded and structured in terms of programmes (see below). However, this Western gaze is ‘diverted’ or ‘redirected’ when it comes to the Gulf and the many Gulf-sponsored research institutions in universities, particularly in the UK and the US. MENA foundations are moving into think tank funding, as well. For example, the Moroccan OCP Foundation – the foundation of the OCP Group (Office Chérifien des Phosphates)12 – has moved into the European think tank landscape by funding projects of various European think tanks, mainly focusing on issues such as agriculture, environment and food security, economic development and so on. Whilst it broadly sets research themes, as all funders do, projects do need to be careful about how they deal with the issue of the Western Sahara. Its associated centre – previously the OCP Policy Center, now called the Policy Center for the New South – has also become part of EuroMeSCo, the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission.13 Similarly, regarding funding from the Arabian Peninsula, in a study of research produced by Gulf-funded centres, Jonas Bergan Draege and Martin Lestra (2015: 25) found ‘a bias in the selection of research topics […] Gulf-funding of UK Middle East

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Studies research institutions is associated with less focus on democracy and human rights than non-funded comparable institutions’ (own omission). Furthermore, there are examples of donors trying to intervene directly. As a critical report in Middle East Eye highlights, in 2014, a Wikileaks cable showed how Saud Al Faisal, Saudi’s Foreign Minister, had written to the then Qatari Prime Minister, Shiekh [sic] Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al Thani, complaining about an article by Roberts [who was heading the British think tank RUSI’s office in Qatar] which apparently criticised Saudi Arabia. Al Faisal called for Roberts to be thrown out of Qatar. (DelmarMorgan, 2016, own addition)

Highlighting this dimension is important, because donors may influence the topics think tanks pursue research on. Whilst less intrusive, topics are also set when it comes to the European Commission’s Research and Development Programme (FP7, Horizon 2020) which is crucial for many think tanks. In the last round of Horizon 2020 funding, for example, the calls mainly focused on security (understood in the realist sense as state security) and migration (typically placed in the socalled ‘security’ calls), rather than, for example, on trade patterns in North– South relations or the arms trade. As a result, knowledge production funded through the European Commission then goes in that particular direction, strengthening programmes on migration and security-related matters. This ultimately means that knowledge is produced on what policy-makers and donors need in the short term, instead of focusing on the long term and on what marginalised, often silenced/excluded communities such as migrants need. This tendency is augmented by the tough and globalised competition for funds in which privately funded think tanks find themselves. Being participants in this competition, think tanks are governed by the laws of the market. A good example in this respect is the Global Go To Think Tank Index produced by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. It plays a particular role in monitoring the performance of think tanks. The index has been set up in response to a ‘series of requests from donors, government officials, journalists, and scholars to produce regional and international rankings of the world’s preeminent think tanks’ (McGann, 2020: 10). Donors do consult the index, even though it might not be decisive in determining their decision to grant funds. Nonetheless, the index socialises think tanks into its standard parameters through its survey in which all think tanks are involved in evaluating each other, rather than having this carried out by external evaluators of think tanks globally.14 This is not only a skewed procedure, but it also directly regulates the conduct of think

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tankers by participating in the peer ranking of the survey. This is problematic since crucial issues, for example gender representation or diversity, play no role in the ranking criteria of the index (as opposed to quality, reputation, elite scholars, media presence, etc). It then lists the ‘centres of excellence’, all predominantly in the US and Western Europe. In the MENA, the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) comes first, followed by Carnegie Middle East based in Lebanon, the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) in Egypt, the al-Jazeera Centre for Studies (AJCS) and the Brookings Institution, both in Qatar. It is notable that none of these think tanks is rooted in local civil society, but all of them are either close to governments or to major sponsors (this also applies to some European think tanks such as the EUISS which is an extended arm of the European Commission, see above). Indeed, think tanks in the MENA have also been locally ‘attacked for their foreign style, outside connections, and lack of authenticity’ (Ibrahim, 2004: 12). This is also a growing trend in Europe. Specifically, populist nationalist-ethnocentric forces are seeking to counter the work of the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation (OSF). This is pursued on a particularly aggressive level if populist forces are in government, most notably in Hungary where the Central European University (CEU) had to move from Budapest to Vienna in Austria. Think tanks connected to such forces are increasing their weight, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in the UK (Lawrence et al., 2019), Steve Bannon’s Dignitatis Humanae Institute, or the Alternative for Germany (AfD)’s very own Desiderius Erasmus Foundation. Repressive contexts have also increased in the MENA. The privately funded Egyptian Ibn Khaldun Center, founded in 1985 by Egypt’s widely known sociologist, author and leading human rights and democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a strong critic of former President Hosni Mubarak, had been closed by Mubarak in the year 2000, arresting Ibrahim and his colleagues (Ibrahim, 2004: 6). Today, independent initiatives such as the Egyptian Academy for Democracy or the journalistic outlet Mada Masr are subject to serious state harassment, including forcible disappearances (Egyptian Streets, 2016; Middle East Eye, 2019). This also applies to the UAE: the Gulf Research Center (GRC), for example, founded in 2000 by the Saudi businessman Abdulaziz Sager, had to move its offices in 2011 from Dubai to Geneva (maintaining an office also in Jeddah) (Arab Today, 2011).

Structures of occlusion and exclusion/inclusion Finally, both state-funded and privately funded think tanks are also influenced by more hidden structures of occlusion and exclusion/inclusion.

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This can be exemplified in the programmes think tanks run, as well as the people they employ. Regarding programmes, there is an interesting pattern to note, namely that all major European think tanks have programmes on the MENA, besides programmes on all other world regions, including Europe. At the same time, it is notable that the think tanks in the MENA usually study the respective country and the region, but not Europe or the US. In Lebanon, for example, Carnegie Middle East and LCPS work on Lebanon and the region, but have no research programmes on Europe or the US. This is notably different for the non-Arab powers in the region.15 Thus, European think tanks research and represent countries in the Arab world, while Arab research institutes do not have similar programmes on Europe. This does not mean that they do not research European policies in the region, but Europe itself is occluded. Thus, despite Europe’s rather pervasive historical-colonial and economic presence in the region, it remains somewhat invisible in the region from a think tank perspective. Whilst this does resemble a colonial gaze, as mentioned, one also needs to ask how we can explain this apparent Western ‘fascination’ with the study of the MENA, while the MENA does not seem to have the same interest in studying Europe, even though there might be specific foci on former European colonial powers. One interpretation of this dual phenomenon might be that Europe has never dealt with (if not ignored) its colonial past in the region (Pace and Roccu, 2020), as a result of which it cannot ‘move on’, whilst the MENA is either turning its back to Europe in resistance or is turning its gaze towards Asia as a signal that Europe is no longer a relevant external actor in the region. It should be borne in mind that the people think tanks employ directly impact knowledge production. As Balfour et al. (2020: 2) have pointed out, think tanks are key influencers of public policy and their research, analysis, and engagement in public debate should reflect the diversity of the societies they are part of […] As long as they do not renew their composition and capacity for innovation by bringing in fresh ideas from a more diversified mix of genders, ages, nationalities, and social, educational, and political backgrounds, they run the risk of being seen as ‘elitist’ and out of touch with society as they do not reflect their diversity. (own omission)

However, it is difficult to analyse this issue coherently as there is a lack of data, which indicates a lack of awareness on diversity issues on the side of think tanks. Only a few think tanks are as transparent as, for example, Brookings16 or the Stimson Center17 on publishing the gender, ethnic diversity, class and age background of its workforce. No comparable transparency exists for think tanks in Europe or the MENA and only on gender are data increasingly collected. In Europe, at the time of writing, women are directors of some think tanks, such as IAI, DGAP, Carnegie Brussels,

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Providus Center and Clingendael; most think tanks surveyed in this chapter are, however, directed by men (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs [CIDOB], Institut français des relations internationales [IFRI], ISPI, EUISS, Chatham House, Centre for European Policy Studies [CEPS], SWP, etc.). The same applies to the MENA, where at the time of writing women headed Carnegie Middle East and al-Shabaka, for example, but most of the MENA think tanks surveyed were headed by men (IPC, EDAM, INSS, Brookings Qatar, LCPS etc.). As a GMF study has highlighted for Europe, all presidents and three quarters of directors are men, for senior positions 36 per cent, and for non-senior level 48 per cent are women (Balfour et al., 2020: 5). The Brussels Binder found that ‘36 percent of speakers at events organized by 14 European think tanks in 2019 were women and 46 percent of the panels organized had at least 40 percent female speakers’ (Horst and Langeby, 2021). When it comes to ethnic diversity, no quantitative data are available, but a qualitative assessment does show that the European think tank sphere still has a long way to go. In the US – sparked by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement – there has been a push for more diversity in think tanks, evident in an action statement signed in 2020 by more than 300 current and former think tank employees. The statement proclaims that These organizations, historically founded as white spaces, have perpetuated a non-inclusive organizational culture since their inception. As long as the boards, leadership, and research fellows at think tanks remain overwhelmingly white, the work they produce is a product of the white experience alone, along with the very fabric of these organizations themselves.18

No similar statement has yet been organised within the European think tank sphere, even though the BLM movement and efforts to decolonise the university are present in Europe. Nonetheless, recently the debate has begun to enter the European think tank environment, triggered by a contribution by Hans Kundnani (2021) who pointed out that the ‘narrative of the European project is silent about the history of European colonialism and its implications’ and that there ‘was a continuity of sorts between European colonialism and the “European project”’ which becomes particularly concerning with the civilisation turn of the European project today as whiteness might become more central to European identity. In a response to Kundnani, Mark Leonard (2021) rejected the argument that ‘Europe’s “Other” is the non-white population’, suggesting that ‘to the founders of the EU – and people like myself – Europe’s primary “Other” is its own past’. While this debate has been rather short so far, it does show that more diversity in European think tanks (Kundnani and Leonard not by accident point out their positionalities in their contribution to the

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debate) would certainly benefit the issues which are discussed, as well as how they are discussed in the think tank sphere.

A personal reflection These politics of knowledge production in the think tank sphere condition the knowledge production of think tanks, but how do they impact researchers and how, vice versa, can researchers make a difference in this context? This section represents a personal reflection on this issue. As such, I should note that I can only speak about, first, my experience in a privately funded think tank which might be very different from a state-funded think tank where, in particular, the tough competition for funding is less pressing. Second, I can only speak about my work in a democratic context while also referring to experiences of colleagues working in autocratic contexts. Third, while being a woman and originally from a working-class family propelled by extensive state funding into higher education, I now belong to a privileged minority.

Impact of the politics of the market on the Self The impact of the politics of the market is perhaps the most immediate and decisive one which goes right to the substance of researchers as persons who are under continuous pressure to secure external funding for our own positions. This task has become so central that research often needs to take a back seat. It is difficult to find the time to engage in what one could refer to as ‘slow research’, where one has the time necessary to go into all the theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical details, instead of being under constant time pressure to deliver fast.19 Often, new funding needs to be found when running projects come to an end, that is, exactly in the period in which such projects are most labour intensive. Furthermore, as projects are limited to particular time periods, contracts are often project based; this constant pressure directly weighs on the personal, psychological, financial and employment situation and leads to much anxiety, as well as physical and mental health issues, among researchers. Getting no funding can in many cases mean no job. This puts younger researchers in particular in a precarious situation, while more senior researchers carry an enormous responsibility to find funding to guarantee their younger colleagues’ jobs. Besides finding funding, pursuing one’s research and getting it published, there is also a constant need for think tanks to be present in the public sphere, either through parliamentary briefings or public conferences, newspapers, social media or television. On television especially the presence of

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the think tanker/researcher is requested at any time of the day/evening, whether weekday or weekend, and on any issue that is related to one’s actual research. This has led to the impression of the ‘vanity syndrome’: experts who deliberate on TV on anything ranging from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean to the Strait of Gibraltar. Several academics in the MENA have pointed out to me that they were often taken aback when witnessing this vanity/expert syndrome of their European colleagues, perceiving them at times as producing banalities in the European discourse about issues that concern their daily life realities (see also Whyman, 2020). The most important antidotes for these developments are threefold. One is to have a strong team of colleagues who relate to each other as friends, not as competitors. It is extremely hard to sustain a community of likeminded and supportive colleagues when structures push us to work in competition with each other. However, it is also true that once these bonds are lost, think tanks won’t be able to sustain themselves in the tough competition for funding either. It is, therefore, necessary that persons in positions of power in think tanks work to maintain external bonds with other research institutes and also make sure that internally within think tanks there are incentives for cooperation rather than competition. The second antidote is to screen the funding landscape for calls for projects on topics one is passionate about. Furthermore, even if topics are set by donors, researchers can decide how they want to research them; I usually try to use as much scope for manoeuvre as possible to be able to make a decisive difference. Finally, it is also important that Europeans reflect on what authorises them to speak about the realities that counterparts in the MENA live. Rather, we need to improve in giving more voice in the public space to our colleagues in the region by inviting them as speakers in conferences and webinars and providing their contact details to the media or international organisations who are searching for consultants. Furthermore, more reflection is needed on what European policies might be (de)legitimised by interventions of think tankers in the public discourse. Whilst they are just one voice in a full choir of people counselling politicians, they do bring opinions into the public discourse which ‘can also help legitimise the workings of an institution and substantiate particular policy positions while undermining others’, particularly by ‘legitimating particular courses of action’ (Bertucci, BorgesHerrero and Fuentes-Julio, 2014: 57). Ideas of scholars are always contested in academia, but policy-makers might ‘find excuses and justification for rejecting those studies that do not fit their own policy orientations and rely instead on those that do’ (George, 1994: 150). A tragic example is how the democratic peace theory translated into a political conviction which drove US neo-conservative policies in the MENA (Ish-Shalom, 2006).20 Similarly problematic are prescriptive ideas emanating from think tankers ‘for which

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there is no empirical evidence’ (Bertucci, Borges-Herrero and Fuentes-Julio, 2014: 63). In view of this, scholars and think tankers alike should apply the ‘do no harm’ principle and be explicit on normative assumptions of their research and how this might influence findings, as well as constantly reflect on the range of possible negative consequences their ideas might have if translated into policies. Particularly crucial in this reflection is the building of communities of practice with local stakeholders to give them a central voice in sharing their experiences, thoughts, ideas, expectations and needs when it comes to European foreign policies towards the MENA.

The larger political context and keeping the space of political imagination open The larger political landscape in which a think tank is situated also plays an enormous role for our lives as researchers. The Arab uprisings have acted as eye openers and made a decisive difference here. While think tanks in Tunisia have grown with civil society at large since the transition, in other states authoritarianism has become increasingly entrenched, such as Egypt or the UAE. In such contexts, think tankers need to be extremely careful about what they say in the first place. Often, the leadership of think tanks in such contexts is chosen from those close to the government, but from personal experience and exchange with colleagues working in think tanks in authoritarian contexts, researchers often do not agree with official positions, but do need to move very carefully in expressing their thoughts. This implies an element of self-censorship which is also evident in cases where democracy is deteriorating. In the case of Turkey, for example, in the wake of Erdoğan’s purge in 2016, many academics and also think tankers have been arrested or dismissed (Acar and Coşkan, 2020; Aktas, Nilsson and Borell, 2019). Also here there is a degree of self-censoring in relation to some issues, in particular the Kurdish issue or the president himself and his family when accused of corruption. Nonetheless, it should also be pointed out that many researchers risk much in still voicing their opinion freely in extremely oppressive contexts. The Arab Forum for Alternatives (AFA), for example, founded by former oppositionist parliamentarian Amr Elshobaki, had to close its Cairo office and move to Beirut after al-Sisi took power. In Europe too, there is a deterioration of democracy and the democratic rules of the game, not only in Hungary or Poland, but also in what is often framed as ‘established democracies’ such as Germany or France. In 2019, for example, UN officials including the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression sent a letter to the German government expressing their concern that a motion adopted by the parliament on the ‘Boycott, Divestment and

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Sanctions’ (BDS) movement ‘sets a worrying trend of unduly limiting the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and of ­association […]. Accordingly, the motion unduly interferes with the right of people in Germany to engage in political speech, namely, to express support for the BDS movement’ (UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, 2019, own omission). Several German academics and think tankers had also voiced their serious concerns in this respect (Die Zeit, 2019). This is situated within a larger polarisation of the public sphere in Europe where one can observe increasing instances of co-radicalisation of Islamophobic and Islamist forces (Kaya, 2020), as for example recently in France (Barlas, 2020). This polarisation – or at times even co-radicalisation – is highly divisive for societies and shrinks the public space, as well as the space of political imagination which can facilitate alternatives (Harrebye, 2016), particularly also in relation to EU–Middle East relations on which increasing Islamophobia impacts directly. In this situation, think tankers have the crucial task of keeping the public space open through their work (in similar ways through which NGOs keep open the civic space, academics keep open the academic space, etc.). Think tanks, however, as highlighted above, represent specific groups of society and mainly see their function as being one ‘in between’ the academic and policy communities. However, in increasingly polarised societies, their approach also needs to be more immersed within the larger public space and marginalised communities whose voices are often silenced. They can do this by providing forums, vehicles and platforms for discussion across political, civic and academic society from both Europe and the MENA, such as protesters during the Arab uprisings, the Palestinian resistance, or the #BlackLivesMatter protests. Including such voices also means taking a political stance which will often be uncomfortable for donors, funders and larger audiences of think tanks. It is, however, an area where think tanks can make a difference, introducing marginalised views about the past, present and future of EU–MENA relations which push audiences out of their comfort zones and open up the space for political imagination. As Arundhati Roy (2003: 127) has argued, we ‘must tell stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe […] Remember this: another world is not only possible, she is on her way’ (own omission).21

Conclusion This chapter has looked at the politics of knowledge production and the impact researchers in think tanks can have within this context. I have done

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this from a contextualised and also personal view rather than focusing on the political-bureaucratic process, as most of the extant literature on think tanks does. The impact of think tanks in authoritarian contexts is a highly constraining one, but there are also several constraints in democratic contexts, including tough competition for funding, structures of exclusion/ occlusion, and an increasing polarisation (at times even co-radicalisation) within societies. This larger context impacts on individuals working in think tanks, but they can still make a difference. In particular, I have highlighted that it would be important for think tanks to see themselves not only as ‘in between’ the policy and academic communities, but also as immersed within the larger public space and marginalised communities whose voices are often denied access, be they from Europe or the MENA. This contribution adds a think tank perspective to this volume which focuses in the main on higher education. Specifically, it shows that think tanks, as knowledge producers, also have particular roles and responsibilities to play, especially in times of crisis. Like universities, think tanks are not apolitical institutions, but are crucial actors in the political sphere in which they are directly situated. Whilst calls to decolonise think tanks as we can find them in academic institutions are less pronounced, it is in the interests of think tanks themselves to reflect on these issues if they want to remain relevant actors and give relevant policy advice in a world in which the Global South is rising.

Notes  1 See www.chathamhouse.org/about/history (accessed 3 August 2022).   2 In the same time period, the discipline of International Relations (IR) emerged with the founding of a respective department at Aberystwyth University in which Curtis was also involved. Somewhat similar to the mission assigned to the new think tanks, the discipline of IR at the time was designed as a policy science ‘to solve the dilemmas posed by empire-building and colonial administration facing the white Western powers expanding into and occupying the so-called “waste places of the earth”, as the Global South was commonly referred to by contemporaries’ (Anievas, Manchanda and Shiliam, 2014: 2).  3 See www.ispionline.it/en/institute/history (accessed 3 August 2022).  4 See www.swp-berlin.org/en/about-swp/funding (accessed 3 August 2022).  5 See www.iss.europa.eu/about-us (accessed 3 August 2022).  6 See www.ites.tn/about/presentation#vocation (accessed 12 August 2022).  7 See www.ecssr.ae/en/ecssr-at-a-glance (accessed 3 August 2022).  8 See www.lcps-lebanon.org/partners.php (accessed 3 August 2022).  9 See https://ecfr.eu/donors/funding (accessed 3 August 2022). 10 See www.crisisgroup.org/how-we-work/financials (accessed 3 August 2022).

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11 See https://al-shabaka.org/about (accessed 3 August 2022). 12 The OCP Group also exports phosphates from Western Sahara and is experiencing related political problems in Europe. Danske Bank, for example, has excluded the OCP Group from its investments due to its involvment ‘in importation of natural resources sourced in conflict with human rights norms’ (see https://danskebank.com/-/media/danske-bank-com/file-cloud/2017/1/excludedcompanies, accessed 3 August 2022). 13 See www.euromesco.net/institute/policy-center/ (accessed 12 August 2022). 14 As the report points out, ‘(a)s part of the nominations process, all 8,248 think tanks catalogued in the TTCSP’s Global Think Tank Database were contacted and encouraged to participate in the nomination and ranking process. […] Finally, a group of peers and experts was asked to help rank and review the list of public policy research centres of distinction for 2019’ (McGann, 2020: 10, own omission). 15 The Israeli INSS has research programmes on the US, Europe and China (besides the Middle East); the Turkish Istanbul Policy Center (IPC) has a particular focus on EU–Turkey relations while the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (EDAM) produces research on NATO; and the Iranian Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), amongst others, has programmes on all world regions, including the US and Europe. 16 See www.brookings.edu/interactives/inclusion-and-diversity (accessed 3 August 2022). 17 See www.stimson.org/about/transparency/diversity-equity-inclusion (accessed 3 August 2022). 18 See the statement at www.thinktankdiversityaction.com (accessed 3 August 2022). 19 This applies to both academic and think tank environments, see Berg and Seeber (2016). 20 On the role of conservative think tanks in US foreign policy, see Thunert (2003). 21 For an excellent example of how to tell different stories and radically reimagine, see Hawari (2020).

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Arab Today (2011) ‘Gulf Research Centre to relocate to Geneva’, 3 June, available at www.arabstoday.net/en/248/gulf-research-centre-to-relocate-to-geneva-afterfailure-to (accessed 3 August 2022). Balfour, R., C. Hörst, P. Hüsch, S. Shevchuk and E. del Vecchio (2020) ‘Absent influencers? Women in European think tanks (Washington, DC: German Marshall Fund), available at www.gmfus.org/publications/absent-influencerswomen-european-think-tanks (accessed 3 August 2022). Barlas, A. (2020) ‘On freedom of speech and “Islamist separatism”’, al-Jazeera, 11  November, available at www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/11/11/on-free​ dom-of-speech-and-islamist-separatism (accessed 3 August 2022). Berg, M. and B. K. Seeber (2016) The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Bertucci, M. E., F. Borges-Herrero and C. Fuentes-Julio (2014) ‘Toward “best practices” in scholar–practitioner relations: insights from the field of inter-American affairs’, International Studies Perspectives, 15:1, 54–72. Chatham House (2018) ‘A history of think-tanks: 12 things you should know’, Medium, 22 November, available at https://medium.com/chatham-house/ahistory-of-think-tanks-12-things-you-should-know-4283b76b2da3 (accessed 3 August 2022). Delmar-Morgan, A. (2016) ‘Beware the Gulf stream?’, Middle East Eye, 29 January, available at www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/beware-gulf-stream (accessed 3 August 2022). Die Zeit (2019) ‘Israel-Boykott: Im Kampf gegen Antisemitismus hilft das nicht’, Die Zeit, 4 June, available at www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-06/israel-boykottbds-antisemitismus-meinungsfreiheit-bundesregierung (accessed 3 August 2022). Draege, J. B. and M. Lestra (2015) ‘Gulf-funding of British universities and the focus on human development’, Middle East Law and Governance, 7:1, 25–49. Egyptian Streets (2016) ‘CEO of Egyptian Democratic Academy NGO barred from travel’, Egyptian Streets, 29 February, available at https://egyptianstreets. com/2016/02/29/ceo-of-egyptian-democratic-academy-ngo-barred-from-travel (accessed 3 August 2022). George, A. L. (1994) ‘The two cultures of academia and policy-making: bridging the gap’, Political Psychology, 15:1, 143–72. Harrebye, S. F. (2016) Social Change and Creative Activism in the 21st Century: The Mirror Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Hawari, Y. (2020) ‘Radical futures: when Palestinians imagine’, al-Shabaka, 24  March, available at https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/radical-futureswhen-palestinians-imagine (accessed 3 August 2022). Horst, C. and L. Langeby (2021) ‘On diversity, European think tanks can learn from the Biden administration’, GMF, 25 January, available at www.gmfus. org/news/diversity-european-think-tanks-can-learn-biden-administration (accessed 3 August 2022). Ibrahim, E. (2004) Arab and American Think Tanks: New Possibilities for Cooperation? New Engines for Reform? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution), available at www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/ibrah​ im​20041001.pdf (accessed 3 August 2022). Ish-Shalom, P. (2006) ‘Theory as a hermeneutical mechanism: the democratic-peace thesis and the politics of democratization’, European Journal of International Relations, 12:4, 565–98.

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A potential paradigm shift in knowledge production: some concluding reflections Michelle Pace and Jan Claudius Völkel

Research and teaching as core elements in European-MENA knowledge production What does the world ‘beyond the canal’ look like?, was a driving question for the young Taha Hussein (see our introduction to this volume). The knowledge produced about Europe, as well as about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), became a lasting matter of his professional and personal life. It has also been the core focus of this edited volume which nuances how such knowledge has been produced, why it was produced at the time that it was and with which (political, ideological) intentions it was produced. As Timothy Mitchell’s (1989) article ‘The world as exhibition’ emphasises, the ‘Western’ world is obsessed with representation. In this edited volume we therefore also shed light on how the ‘rest’ represents the Western world in return. We thus shifted between the ‘European gaze’ in the production of knowledge on the MENA and the ways in which European reality (especially in the form of its colonial history) is constructed in the MENA. We did this with a core focus on knowledge production in higher educational and similar establishments, including think tanks. What has been important for us is the necessity to move beyond binarisms in the ways in which Europe is represented through a MENA lens and the MENA through a European lens. This led us to pertinent issues relating to educators’ positionality, their inherent biases, their own notions of truth (as effect of discourse achieved through dispersed power; Foucault, 1980), amongst others. The edited volume therefore shows that the manner in which knowledge is produced tells us a lot about the way in which specific messages about the ‘Other’ are conveyed in an educational context. Moreover, it reveals how – in all its attempts at bringing the MENA under its control – Europe itself is immersed in the MENA’s world. In Homi K. Bhabha’s (1991) conceptualisation, this ‘third space’ through a ‘double vision’ or ‘double consciousness’, in the sense of an awareness of how Europe has been impacted by the MENA (its history, culture, politics, economy, society), is what this book delved into.

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Academic knowledge production consists of two major steps, research and teaching, and the chapters collected in this volume have discussed both elements. The conditions in which research and teaching happen differ, depending on temporal as well as spatial dimensions. The severity of these conditions was particularly highlighted in the chapter by Juline Beaujouan. Her analysis of conducting field research in Syria discussed the challenges of academic work in authoritarian/dictatorial settings, combined with the additional difficulties brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic – which has largely moved international cooperation from conventional fieldwork onto the internet. Hannah Arendt’s (1978) famous call for ‘worldly education’ and ‘nothing but dialogic’ knowledge production has thus suffered a serious blow. However, the author argues that this limitation of European researchers’ presence in Syria (and more broadly in the whole MENA) due to global travel restrictions also bears a positive aspect, namely the chance for more equal cooperation between European and MENA scholars as a positive solution in this emergency situation: it has, for far too long, been the case that MENA colleagues have been employed as ‘local partners’ in research projects mainly funded and directed from Europe, with overall little recognition and reward. The pandemic has opened the opportunity for a break-up of this traditional hierarchy towards more shared and equal research tasks’ responsibilities instead. If Europeans/Westerners are unable to dominate the ‘field’ any more, then local scholars can act as truly equal, independent and acknowledged academics/educators. This point is also highlighted in the case of Germany where, as Sonja Hegasy, Stephan Stetter and René Wildangel argue, academics with a migration background are underconsidered when filling research chairs and professorships in Middle East Studies and related disciplines at universities. As many of the contributions in this edited volume highlight, in European-MENA knowledge production, language is another central issue. Too often English is the basis of scholarly collaborative projects, excluding researchers with insufficient proficiency of this language. This issue affects both sides of the Mediterranean: in particular, scholars from francophone countries often struggle to express their views and compete in English, and hence remain in their ‘known territories’ of France, the Maghreb and Lebanon. Likewise, anglophone scholars without sufficient French skills face a similar fate and focus mainly on the Mashreq or Arab Gulf countries. Among European scholars, rudimentary skills in Arabic (or any other MENA languages) remain an additional shortcoming. The (definitely necessary!) opening of the starkly linguistic-oriented Oriental Studies, as it used to be in the beginning (‘scholarship without people’) towards more ‘worldly’ approaches – with elements included from political science, economics, history, sociology, cultural studies, anthropology and

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other disciplines – has made a recalibration necessary between regional competence and global aspirations in Middle East Studies. This shift from an Area Studies perspective to a more disciplinary gaze on the MENA was an evident feature in our contributors who investigated developments in European countries through a historical lens: Denmark, France, Germany and Italy. Here, our contributors highlighted the ‘clash of methodologies’ which contributed to the ‘Area Studies controversy’, as well as the question about the necessary competences of Middle East Studies educators – which has become increasingly urgent. In other words, the pertinent question here is: can European scholars claim to be ‘Middle East experts’ without sufficient local language skills? Looking at the question of language in the MENA region we find that this issue is often politicised: English and French are frequently considered imported languages from former colonial, dominant experiences and have been and continue to be rejected by those who lobby for Arab self-­ determination and independence. This nahda movement (‘the awakening’, also referred to as the ‘Arab renaissance’ or ‘enlightenment’) has been a strong factor in those countries that went through liberation and state-building in the mid-twentieth century, as illustrated by Bassant Hassib and Jan Claudius Völkel for the case of Egypt. Up until now, the struggle between Arabic or English/French as appropriate teaching and research languages is ongoing. Indeed, the imbalance is glaring: which MENA scholar would demand doing field research in Europe in Arabic, while European scholars often have no thought to research the MENA in English or French instead of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Amazigh, the Kurdish languages or Urdu? Here, European versions and interpretations of Middle East Studies need to highlight much more the importance of language training among their students and staff. In any case, more consciousness, willingness and budgets should ideally, and in the best interest of knowledge production, be spared for language acquisition and translation activities within higher educational establishments. While languages remain contested issues, the overarching political parameters are of no less importance for academic research and teachings in European-MENA contexts. Authoritarian limitations are but one constraint which shines through almost all chapters, notably in the MENA countries. Here, Alaoui and Springborg (2021: 2) attest, The ‘supertanker’ of Arab education, long steered toward creating civil servants and acquiescent citizens disempowered politically and economically, with ever more students on board, has not managed even a small course correction, much less charting a radically new trajectory to fulfill the stated, grandiose ambitions of Arab rulers to create knowledge economies, to say nothing of realizing the long-frustrated hopes of Arab populations for improved ­economies and polities.

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Knowledge production: concluding reflections 255

But in Europe too, recent developments give reason for concern: not just that Russian president Vladmir Putin was starting a war in Ukraine at the time we were finalising our concluding thoughts here in this chapter; but already for many years before, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has shown how endangered academic freedoms have become within EU member states (Enyedi, 2018). Tendencies in Poland and other post-communist European countries have been quite similar, and even within an alleged showcase of democracy such as the Netherlands, university lecturers face limitations through on-campus pressure for ostensibly ‘inappropriate’ teaching content, as illustrated by Anne de Jong. While legislation provides for academic freedom, social media-based student groups manage to orchestrate opposition against ‘unwanted assertions’ which can trigger major psychological anxiety and also real-world job consequences through sparked headwinds from colleagues, superiors and principals. This trend is increasingly observable in other European countries that pride themselves on being liberal democracies, as the case of Denmark corroborates (Nedergaard, 2020). Educators’ personal perspectives on the Israel–Palestine question, combined with the matter of whether to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement or not, is an important – but certainly not the only – challenge for many academics working in the field of EuropeanMENA Studies. The issue of positionality affects scholars’ work on a number of levels which can be subdivided into three categories, and which often overlap: namely, structural (origin/nationality, socio-political situation), professional (qualification, institutional affiliation) and personal (gender, personality/character, socio-economic context). Structural conditions are usually thought of as the prevailing level of academic freedom in a certain country and political conditions more broadly. An important structural factor is a researcher’s own origin. Much has been written about the overarching injustices between the Global South and the Global North in academia, an issue that appears throughout the contributions of this edited volume. Three contributions specifically discuss a key factor that impacts upon scholars’ positionality: that is, the issue of liminality. James Sater (on Malta) and Aylin Güney, Emre İşeri and Gökay Özerim (on Turkey) discuss specific patterns that result from their respective country’s geographic location ‘in between’ Europe and the MENA. While Malta, through its EU membership, Catholic identity and overall ‘Northern orientation’, feels unquestionably European, cultural, economic and also political influences from the MENA region are – at the same time – tangible as well. Much of Malta’s identity results from self-distancing from the idea of Maltese society ‘being Arab’; in Turkey, its geographic liminality has regained relevance since the current government of President Recep Tayyib Erdoğan engaged in pushing back European influences promoted since the time of Atatürk

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(Yavuz and Öztürk, 2019). Academics, who were massively affected by the government’s purge in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup, have to navigate their teaching and research activities under these limiting conditions. The third case in this edited volume, Palestine, is liminal not in geographic but constitutional terms. As Asem Khalil shows, universities have played an interesting role in Palestine’s state-building process: they were formally largely independent from the Palestinian Authority and the ministry of higher education. However, not least through European funding, they were expected to contribute to the ‘normalisation process’, that is, promoting the two-state solution and accepting Israel as an ordinary neighbour. Apart from political conditions as important factors in academic know­ ledge production processes, the question of socio-economic conditions is also a powerful one. Every scholar working on limited part-time contracts or with the obligation to attract additional, external research funding can relate to what Daniela Huber highlights from an insider’s perspective of researchers working at think tanks. As she argues, many think tankers – while working on one project – already find themselves applying for new funding for their next project, in a similar fashion to many academics in the neoliberal university context. This leads in many instances to a competitive run on the often limited available research grants, distracting the researcher from her/his proper core competence: conducting nuanced research. But it also leads to ‘politicised research’ insofar as scholars are tempted to submit research proposals that are deemed politically apt, hoping that they have a higher chance of acceptance of their proposals and granting of funding. This likely reduces research to less profound, more en vogue topics. A notable pressure arising at the professional level with regard to academic positionality affects young scholars in particular who are striving to advance their career. Giulia Cimini and Claudia De Martino show how, in the case of Italy, unconducive structures and insufficient career perspectives can hamstring the motivation and research drive of academics. Against this backdrop, the Italian academy is trying to shake off its traditional dependence on political power. The success of these first timid attempts, however, clashes with the shortage of funds that guarantee autonomy, as well as with a forced, self-imposed disciplinary rigidity of the academic system. Similar conditions prevail in many other countries, both in Europe and the MENA. Thus, scholars’ professional positionality is limited at both ends of the ‘incentives spectrum’: either overcharged with securing revenues for sustenance and academic activities in the ‘neoliberal university’, or stymied by a lack of opportunities in decrepit structures and inert systems. Finally, Merve Özdemirkıran-Embel discusses gender as another positionality factor for scholars at the personal level. Although women are in

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Knowledge production: concluding reflections 257

many aspects also discriminated against in academia – including in terms of appointments and salary levels – they have advantages in MENA research over their male colleagues: while male scholars often lack the chance to conduct interviews with women, female scholars have privileged access to both women and men in the MENA, which is reflected in Jillian Schwedler’s category of ‘third gender’ (2006).

Europe–MENA knowledge production: the effect matters! Are research and teaching the core elements of knowledge production about the MENA and Europe in higher education or are these elements a goal in themselves? The contributors to this edited volume conclude that what matters is the perceptions held by students, educators, decision-makers and the general public and what they ‘make’ with this knowledge (and the manner in which it is disseminated). Communication Studies teach us that it is the receiver who matters as well in successful transmissions of messages, not only the sender: how receivers obtain information constitutes the value of this information (Lasswell, 1948; McLuhan, 1964). Our contributors have concluded similarly in the context of mutual Europe–MENA knowledge production. The information gathered in research and extended through teaching is one thing, but its reception another. This edited volume therefore asks: does academic knowledge production help educators and (the manner in which they communicate their knowledge to) the general public overcome stereotypes, correct misperceptions, foster critical thinking and stimulate ‘transformative education’ (as formulated in the contribution on Egypt)? We believe that yes, it can, if researchers and educators are able and willing to produce credible, nuanced, reflexive and critical knowledge that is open to further dialogic encounters. But it also depends on the receiver’s ability and readiness to apply such knowledge in a productive way. And both, senders and receivers, depend on the overarching circumstances they act in. For the cases of Denmark and France, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen and Timo Behr illustrate how ‘fascination’ has marked the perception of the Orient in former centuries, a phenomenon that similarly yielded in other European countries and, in the case of Protestant Prussia, while less so in Catholic Italy and Malta, led to a profound interest in finding commonalities between ‘East’ and ‘West’. This self-reflective looking at ‘the other’ evolved in the MENA countries during their processes of independence: what do MENA societies have in common with Europe, and where do they differ? Today, on the one hand, European perceptions are less marked by fascination than suspicion: of Islamic extremism, Muslim immigrants

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and conservative norms (Gündüz, 2007). On the other hand, MENA ­perspectives on Europe are far too often informed by alleged non-Islamic values when it comes to gender equality, sexual behaviour, growing xenophobia and atheist attitudes (Schlipphak and Isani, 2019). Researchers and educators working on and in Europe and the MENA have a responsibility here to help deconstruct and eventually improve such mutual destructive perceptions; not in the sense of sugarcoating or whitewashing, but in the sense of finegraining and differentiating facts and truths from falsehoods and misrepresentations. Yet likewise, and probably even more, the responsibility lies with political decision-makers to abstain from populist abuses of scientific research and allow for critical reflection not only at universities as ‘intellectual spaces’, but also at schools, at the workplace, in the media and in public life. Here, worrying trends exist in Europe and the MENA, but also trends that nourish hope. In the introduction to this edited volume we wrote: ‘Institutions of higher education provide the space for such encounters’ between Middle Easterners and Europeans. What arises from such encounters, however, is not only the responsibility of such institutions. It is the responsibility of us all.

References Alaoui, H. and R. Springborg (2021) The political economy of education in the Arab world (Introduction), in H. Alaoui and R. Springborg (eds), The Political Economy of Education in the Arab World (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner), pp. 1–14. Arendt, H. (1978) The Life of the Mind (New York: Harcourt). Bhabha, H. K. (1991) ‘The third space: interview with Homi K. Bhabha’, in J.  Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 207–21. Enyedi, Z. (2018) ‘Democratic backsliding and academic freedom in Hungary’, Perspectives on Politics, 16:4, 1067–74. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon). Gündüz, Z. Y. (2007) Europe and Islam: No Securitization, Please! (Berlin: Friedrich Ebert Foundation), available at https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/04966. pdf (accessed 3 August 2022). Lasswell, H. D. (1948) ‘The structure and function of communication in society: the communication of ideas’, in L. Bryson (ed.), The Communication of Ideas: A Series of Addresses (New York: Harper and Brothers), pp. 37–51. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill). Mitchell, T. (1989) ‘The world as exhibition’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31:2, 217–36. Nedergaard, J. (2020) ‘Scientists on the run: “They said that I was spreading propaganda and homosexuality at the department”’, University Post,

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25 November, available at https://uniavisen.dk/en/scientists-on-the-run-theysaid-that-i-was-spreading-propaganda-and-homosexuality-at-the-department (accessed 3 August 2022). Schlipphak, B. and M. A. Isani (2019) Muslim attitudes towards the European Union (London: Routledge). Schwedler, J. (2006) ‘The third gender: Western female researchers in the Middle East’, PS: Political Science & Politics, 39:3, 425–8. Yavuz, M. H. and A. E. Öztürk (2019) ‘Turkish secularism and Islam under the reign of Erdoğan’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 19:1, 1–9.

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Index

9/11 (terrorist attacks) 33, 40, 51, 68, 122, 128, 177, 180, 181, 189 Abdel Nasser, Gamal (Nasser) 3, 11, 33, 162, 164, 217, 234 see also Nasserist Africa 5–6, 7, 44, 49, 50, 53, 62, 66, 73, 75, 94, 113, 139, 140, 142, 144, 185 African 63, 142 Union (AU) 113 al-Beblawi, Hazem 66 ‘Ali, Mohamed 157, 170 Algeria 23, 25–26, 27, 29, 30, 67, 139, 145, 216, 217, 226 al-Husayni, Amin 46, 56 Amin, Samir 31–32, 36 Annales School 27, 49 Anti Arab 86 British 46 cleric(al) 24, 37 colonial(ists) 30, 44, 88, 142, 157, 169, 171, 173 communist 127 fascist 47, 50 immigrant 150 imperialist 4, 46, 49 Islam 180, 186 Islamist 3, 36 Israel 185 Kurdish 205 Muslim 86, 152

Semitic 43, 50, 54, 112, 114, 184, 185, 186 Zionist 46 anthropology 11, 22, 29, 91, 92, 95, 98, 142, 177, 178, 216, 222, 253 Arab countries 3, 45, 109, 112, 153 heritage 9 revolutions 142 Spring 3, 33, 64, 69, 76, 128 uprisings 52, 134, 150, 222, 245, 246 world 1, 2, 12, 13, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 46, 49, 89, 90, 98, 159, 162, 219, 220, 241 Arabists 35, 47 archaeology 41, 90, 92, 93, 142, 149 area studies 4, 6, 49, 52, 53, 61, 66, 72, 113, 123, 124, 149, 219, 220, 254 Arendt, Hannah 2–3, 172, 217, 253 arts 25, 51, 83, 84, 85, 89, 94, 99, 108, 222 Asia 7, 14, 22, 23, 26, 40, 46, 49, 51, 113, 123, 139, 140, 142, 222, 241 assimilation 25, 27, 31, 33, 36 Austria 55, 86, 240 Authoritarianism 3, 24, 50, 52, 66, 108, 127, 157, 158, 161, 170, 173, 224, 235, 236, 245, 247, 253, 254 Baath Party 3 Balfour Declaration 112, 115 Barcelona Process 67, 68, 116, 166, 172 Bayat, Asef 64

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Index 261

Beirut 2, 202, 238, 245 Ben Ali, Zine el Abidine 236 Berbers 26, 27, 220 Bible 147 Biblical 40, 42, 54, 90 Birzeit University 103, 104, 108, 110, 111, 112, 118 Bologna Process 48 Bourdieu, Pierre 30–31, 32, 34, 36, 220, 221 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) 88, 114, 171, 183, 245–246, 255 Britain 8, 24, 44, 127, 237 British 2, 8, 9, 28, 40, 41, 45, 46, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 112, 127, 142, 145, 146, 157, 168, 170, 171, 198–199, 207, 234, 239 Cairo 1, 2, 14, 46, 148, 153, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 171, 173, 214, 234, 236, 245 Campus 89, 107, 108, 161, 255 Watch 184 capitalism 32, 50, 164 capitalist 31, 32, 141 Catholicism 1, 8, 23, 28, 67, 86, 143, 255, 257 Christianity 25, 28, 40, 42, 54, 86, 91, 94, 97, 143 Church 8, 28, 42, 60, 61–62, 67, 69, 74, 87, 91, 94, 143 civil rights 164 Civil war 49, 97, 134, 199 civilisation 23, 25, 26, 31, 40, 41, 54, 68, 89, 157, 158, 168, 170, 216, 242 civilisational 6, 39, 42, 43, 54, 114, 139 clerics 24, 37, 48 Cold War 9, 10, 39, 48–50, 51, 66, 125, 127–128, 234 colonialism 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 51, 53, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 74, 75, 83, 84, 87,

96, 98, 99, 107, 108, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 127, 131, 132, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 152, 154, 158, 159, 160, 169, 170, 171, 172, 188, 211, 218, 219, 228, 229, 233, 234, 237, 238, 241, 242, 247, 253, 254 see also anti-colonial, decolonial, postcolonial colonisation 29, 30, 63, 87, 110, 117, 153, 157 communist 3, 49, 67, 127, 255 conflict 3, 31, 49, 61, 67, 68, 69, 75, 85, 90, 91, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113, 114, 116, 124, 125, 127, 131, 150, 151, 179, 183, 185, 197, 200, 201, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 234, 248 Constantinople 25, 144 Copenhagen School 150 COVID-19 11, 51, 100, 121, 197, 202–204, 205, 209, 211, 215, 253 crime 61, 63, 67, 75, 180 crisis 2, 11, 13, 75, 97, 122, 127, 130, 159, 160, 204, 208, 209, 222, 247 Damascus 2, 153 decolonialism 3, 53, 189 decolonisation 7, 11, 22, 29, 30, 52, 53, 55, 64, 67, 91, 96, 139–143, 148, 152, 153, 154, 159, 163, 211 decolonised 2, 5, 6, 132, 163, 198, 199, 207, 211, 242, 247 democracy 26, 35, 69, 106, 107, 110, 112, 114, 163, 171, 184, 234, 239, 240, 245, 255 democratisation 106, 115, 173, 234 democratised 146 Denmark 7, 10, 11, 41, 85, 139–156, 215, 254, 255, 257 dependency 31, 47, 55, 60, 61, 62 theory 31, 141, 149 despotism 24, 26, 37, 114

262

Index

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development 1, 6, 9, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33, 44, 49, 55, 60, 68, 71, 84, 86, 88, 94, 98, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 122, 123, 125, 127, 140, 141, 146, 147, 148, 152, 153, 154, 163, 166, 167, 170, 188, 212, 221, 222, 238, 239, 244, 254, 255 Dutch 41, 178, 180–188 Eastern Europe 3, 14, 170 economics 66, 72, 111, 167, 253 ecumenical 22, 28 Egypt 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 14, 24, 33, 40, 41, 47, 49, 55, 61, 66, 125, 127, 134, 146, 148, 149, 153, 157–176, 214, 216, 217, 221, 224, 226, 229, 234, 236, 237, 240, 245, 254, 257 Egyptian School 160, 161, 172 emigration 47, 62 England 143, 144 Enlightenment 11, 22, 23, 26, 36, 37, 42, 45, 117, 144, 154, 177, 186–188, 203, 254 epistemology 28, 30, 53, 83, 95, 178, 182, 197, 208, 212, 219, 221 Erasmus (programme) 90, 94, 95, 96, 97, 110, 118, 157, 166, 169, 173 ethnology 30, 44 Eurocentric 31, 35, 199 Eurocentrism 13–14, 83, 139 Euro-Mediterranean 7, 67, 68, 118, 158, 160, 165, 166, 167, 238 European Commission 67, 68, 71, 76, 94, 99, 110, 129, 239, 240 European Union (EU) 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 14, 48, 64, 67, 68, 71, 85, 86, 94, 95, 99, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127– 133, 134, 158, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 173, 198, 217, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 242, 246, 248, 255 exceptionalism 52, 96, 99, 122–127, 220, 228 extremism 34, 257

fanaticism 25, 27, 34, 36 fascism 47, 50, 56, 60, 62, 63, 65, 234 feminism 5, 12, 218, 219, 224, 228 field work 53, 61, 70, 182, 203, 214, 215, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 253 research 55, 64, 70, 163, 224, 253, 254 France 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 21–38, 44, 64, 114, 125, 127, 132, 135, 143, 144, 147, 159, 162, 173, 198, 202, 215, 216, 217, 220, 221, 222, 226, 233, 245, 246, 253, 254, 257 French 1, 5, 9, 21–38, 40, 41, 45, 49, 53, 62, 93, 125, 127, 142, 144, 145, 147, 150, 154, 157, 160, 163, 164, 165–166, 208, 210, 217, 221, 226, 229, 238, 253, 254 Revolution 23, 24 fundamentalist 31, 33, 36 Gaza 107, 134, 148, 179, 182 gender 5, 11, 12, 74, 87, 127, 142, 151, 169, 171, 178, 179, 214–232, 240, 241, 255, 256, 257, 258 genocide 45, 47 Germany 4, 7, 9, 14, 26, 39–59, 83, 85, 94, 103, 111, 114, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 154, 166, 173, 185, 198, 215, 236, 238, 240, 245, 246, 253, 254 Global North 4, 6, 199, 206, 207, 211, 255 Global South 4, 5, 53, 55, 113, 140, 198, 199, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 247, 255 globalisation 21, 34, 35, 51, 146, 149, 164, 236, 239 Gramsci, Antonio 66, 75 Great Britain see Britain Greece 7, 25, 26, 40, 42, 53, 131, 134, 148



Index 263

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Gulf 69, 83, 95, 99, 127, 139, 234, 237, 238, 240, 244, 253 Cooperation Council (GCC) 113 War 67 Hamas 106, 108, 216 Hanafi, Hassan 13, 158, 159, 161, 163, 172 hegemony 55, 66, 127, 141, 163, 218 heritage 9, 27, 35, 41, 54, 63, 87, 93, 157, 159, 160 hierarchy 6, 9, 11, 43, 73, 98, 123, 189, 215, 234, 253 Holocaust 2, 47, 56, 112 homosexuality 166, 169 humanism 37, 39, 40, 54, 212 humanities 5, 50, 53, 93 Hussein, Saddam 97, 127 Hussein, Taha 1–3, 5, 8, 13, 159, 162, 252 Ibn Khaldun 1, 23, 26, 52 Center 240 identity 11, 27, 29, 51, 55, 60, 61, 64, 68, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 104, 123, 124, 130, 131, 133, 157, 159, 170, 182, 202, 208, 209, 210, 216, 220, 225, 242, 255 ideology 26, 33, 36, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 62, 139, 141, 162, 168, 181, 252 imams 46 immigration 11, 69, 140, 151, 152, 153, 154, 163, 169 imperialism 6, 9, 29, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 50, 54, 113, 126, 139, 140, 142, 143, 145, 147, 170, 171, 234 imperialists 46, 49, 143, 147, 170 independence 2, 8, 29, 32, 37, 43, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 87, 104, 110, 112, 113, 117, 118, 139, 140, 142, 152, 165, 171, 185, 216, 219, 233, 234, 237, 240, 253, 254, 256, 257

intellectuals 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 25, 29, 33, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 60, 62, 63, 67, 69, 74, 111, 141, 147, 161, 162, 163, 185, 219, 227, 258 intelligence 43, 46, 49, 51, 55, 157 international cooperation 157, 167, 253 law 49 relations (IR) 4, 5, 10, 45, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 110, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 214, 215, 216, 247 internationalisation 48, 164, 199 Iran 33, 37, 49, 64, 127, 128, 148, 179, 202, 219, 223, 224, 229, 248 Iraq 11, 28, 49, 67, 97, 98, 122, 127, 128, 151, 197, 200, 202, 203, 209, 214, 223, 233 Islamic law 26, 48 State (IS) 33, 122, 134, 152, 200, 222 studies 39, 43, 44, 47, 48, 51, 54, 55, 65 world 32, 33, 35, 36, 45, 46, 55, 66, 68 Islamism 22, 25, 32–34, 36, 37, 150, 163 Islamist 33, 34, 35, 36, 160, 161, 225, 246 Islamophobia 177, 180, 181, 185, 246 Israel 7, 10, 42, 47, 50, 61, 66, 67, 68, 75, 90, 91, 97, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 125, 127, 133, 134, 148, 169, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 216, 217, 220, 221, 234, 236, 240, 248, 255, 256 Italian 9, 60, 86, 87, 93, 163, 229, 234, 256 Italy 4, 7, 9, 60–79, 85, 86, 87, 89, 115, 135, 143, 144, 166, 215, 220, 223, 229, 233, 234, 254, 256, 257

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Index

Jean Monnet (Programme) 129, 132, 166 Jerusalem 2, 46, 67, 97, 109, 134, 143, 179 Jewish 42, 45, 47, 55, 67, 97, 112, 147, 182, 183, 185, 186, 227 Jews 42, 43, 44, 56, 63, 91, 112, 143, 171, 186, 227 jihad 11, 33, 34, 53 Judaism 40, 45, 47, 54 Justice 24, 61, 75, 88, 105, 114, 182, 185, 186, 201 and Development Party (AKP) 134 Kabyle 26, 30, 220 Kepel, Gilles 33, 36, 217 Khomeini, Ruhollah 33, 152 Kurds 89, 134, 152, 205, 216, 220, 245, 254 Kurdistan 11, 202, 203 lawfare 182, 183, 184, 186 League of Arab States (LAS) 111, 113 League of Nations (LoN) 112, 115, 233, 234 Lebanon 7, 49, 83, 97, 99, 114, 151, 179, 197, 199, 200, 201, 204, 223, 237, 240, 241, 253 legitimation 62, 216 legitimacy 34, 61, 201, 212 legitimisation 62, 163 Levant 13, 33, 46, 122, 134, 144, 217 liberal 33, 45, 60, 62, 63, 65, 83, 171, 172, 185, 214, 234, 255 isation 163 ism 114 liberation 1, 2, 3, 27, 49, 88, 107, 117, 139, 254 Libya 3, 5, 64, 74, 75, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 95, 99, 115, 122, 125, 134 Maghreb 5, 10, 14, 29, 62, 238, 253 Malta 7, 9, 83–102, 125, 126, 255, 257 market 94, 150, 161, 167, 237, 239, 243 isation 165 place 22

Marxism 34, 49, 50 Marxist 31–32, 36, 49, 63, 66, 67, 149, 161 Marzouki, Moncef 14 Mashreq 11, 253 Mbembe, Achille 185 media 14, 70, 74, 91, 97, 98, 100, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153, 169, 171, 173, 181, 185, 187, 210, 233, 240, 243, 244, 255, 258 Mediterranean Sea 67, 76, 91, 197 memory 65, 74, 75, 157, 180 Middle Ages 25, 42, 61 Middle East Quartet 103 migration 61, 69, 74, 76, 91, 94, 95, 98, 115, 122, 129, 143, 151, 222, 239, 253 migrants 54, 69, 73, 76, 100, 151, 152, 153, 168, 169, 181, 239 military 10, 11, 26, 30, 42, 43, 46, 48, 65, 75, 88, 97, 108, 122, 139, 145, 146, 147, 153, 154, 159, 163, 177, 178, 200 mobilisation 3, 162, 216 mobility 98, 110, 166 modernisation 1, 34, 145, 148, 154, 162, 170 modernity 9, 22, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 42, 69, 141 moral 2, 45, 62, 139, 170, 179, 200, 201 Morocco 8, 27, 53, 99, 115, 144, 146, 153, 181, 219, 238 mosques 46, 88 Mubarak, Hosni 163, 214, 240 Mufti of Jerusalem 46, 56 multiculturalism 33, 65, 123, 180, 181 Muslim 9, 13, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 54, 56, 66, 69, 73, 86, 87, 91, 95, 97, 115, 126, 133, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 150, 152, 161, 169, 170, 179, 180–181, 182, 183, 186, 226, 227, 257



Index 265

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Brotherhood (MB) 134, 214, 216 world 13, 28, 32, 42, 46, 47, 50, 51, 83, 88, 91, 95, 96, 151 nahda (Renaissance), nahdawis 1–2, 8, 36, 254 Napoleon 24, 145, 157 Nasser see Abdel Nasser, Gamal Nasserist 162, 172 nation 1, 29, 31, 47, 99, 109, 112, 115, 142, 143, 180, 233, 234 building 3, 9 state 30, 39, 40, 142, 221 nationalisation 172 nationalism 29, 33, 34, 36, 139, 163, 216 nationalist 3, 43, 49, 63, 161, 162, 165, 169, 170, 171, 180, 181, 183, 221, 240 nationality 225, 255 Nazi 2, 9, 39, 40, 43, 45–48, 50, 54, 55, 114 neoliberal university 165, 188, 256 Netanyahu, Benjamin 56 Netherlands, the 7, 11, 41, 86, 143, 177–193, 210, 255 NGOs 55, 222, 223, 237, 246 Niebuhr, Carsten 41, 144, 149 Normative Power Europe (NPE) 104–106 occident 13, 30, 41, 158, 178 occidentalism 117, 158, 159, 161, 172 occupation 9, 23, 27, 106, 108, 109, 112, 148, 161, 179, 205 oil 45, 89, 141, 152 opposition 27, 29, 62, 134, 148, 182, 203, 205, 206, 225, 245, 255 oppression 171, 205 Orbán, Viktor 163–164, 169, 255 Orient 9, 13, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 50, 51, 60, 62, 66, 114, 140, 141, 145, 158, 159, 178, 238, 257

Orientalism 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30, 32, 43, 45, 48, 51, 60, 127, 140, 141, 147, 154, 158, 159, 177, 178, 189, 218, 220 Orientalist 12, 24, 26, 28, 29, 31, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 52, 62, 63, 141, 143, 145, 146, 155, 159, 162, 170, 178, 189, 199 orthodox 3, 28, 42 Oslo Accords 67, 68, 103, 104, 107, 108, 110, 117 othering 39, 42, 43, 44, 47, 54, 177, 178, 185, 189 Ottomans 13, 23, 25, 26, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 86, 99, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 144, 157, 216, 217 Palestine 7, 10, 47, 83, 88, 91, 99, 103–121, 127, 139, 146, 150, 151, 167, 179, 184, 185, 186, 217, 233, 255, 256 Liberation Organisation (PLO) 67, 88, 107, 117 Palestinian 10, 67, 88, 94, 95, 103–121, 127, 133, 134, 161, 179, 180, 182, 183, 185, 227, 234, 238, 246, 256 Authority (PA) 103, 108, 109, 110, 115, 117, 118, 256 pandemic 11, 12, 51, 100, 197, 202, 203, 205, 208, 209, 211, 215, 253 Paris 1, 23, 166, 208, 216, 217, 233, 234, 236, 238 patriotism 62, 89, 170 pedagogy 13, 54, 84, 95, 96, 98, 177, 180, 187, 188, 189, 211, 220, 221, 222, 228 philological 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, 54, 55, 60, 63, 74, 141, 149, 154 philologist 24, 25 philology 23, 28, 30, 35, 47, 49, 72, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148, 149, 154 philosopher 2, 56, 117, 158 philosophical 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 53

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266

Index

philosophy 40, 53, 72, 92, 93, 147, 159 polarisation 177, 235, 246, 247 political Islam 22, 33, 34, 36, 37, 160, 216 science 4, 6, 66, 110, 116, 118, 126, 143, 160, 161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 168, 214, 215, 216, 222, 253 scientists 47, 50, 73, 129, 220, 222 populist 158, 169, 172, 240, 258 positionality 4–5, 9, 51, 83, 97, 98, 177, 197, 202, 207, 210, 214, 220, 225, 228, 242, 252, 255, 256 positivism 28, 146, 152 postcolonialism 3, 6, 7, 13, 14, 51, 52, 53, 64, 65, 67, 94, 98, 140, 141, 142, 154, 155, 169, 170 propaganda 45, 46, 47, 50, 86, 177 Prophet (Muhammad) 32, 145, 151, 152 Protestantism 32, 40, 42, 143, 144, 146, 257 Qadhafi, Muammar 3 Qur’an 24, 32, 48, 147 schools 46 Qutb, Sayyid 33 racism 34, 43, 44, 45, 54, 55, 140, 152, 180, 188 reform 33, 42, 55, 65, 69, 140, 143, 146, 164, 198, 199, 234 refugees 69, 115, 139, 150, 151, 153, 154, 161, 200, 201, 204, 222 Regeni, Giulio 61, 69, 229 regimes 3, 52, 62, 65, 97, 106, 107, 115, 127, 134, 142, 157, 158, 162, 163, 165, 170, 171, 172, 214, 216, 236 resistance 47, 72, 139, 142, 145, 147, 160, 161, 171, 179, 182, 201, 205, 206, 241, 246 revolution 2, 23, 24, 29, 30, 33, 37, 49, 52, 142, 148, 153, 162, 166, 179, 236 revolutionary 22, 24, 50, 69, 83, 164, 204, 223

Roman 13, 26, 62, 87, 143 Rome 12, 25, 26, 61, 62, 63, 73, 234 Russia 7, 25, 41, 44, 45, 54, 73, 97, 125, 135, 255 Sadat, Anwar 49 Said, Edward W. 10, 21, 51, 114, 140, 141, 142, 146, 154, 158, 159, 177, 178, 189, 218 Saidian 8, 48, 55, 152 Salafism 159, 224 School 27, 46, 65, 88, 96, 98, 117, 139, 151, 165, 169, 181, 217, 221, 258 of Rome 63 School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) 146, 154, 178, 180, 182, 216, 217 secularism 33, 34, 36, 61, 62, 91, 95, 159, 161, 217 secularists 34, 36, 159 securitisation 51, 83 security 45, 91, 104, 115, 127, 131, 134, 150, 151, 157, 161, 236, 238, 239, 240 self 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 13, 31, 33, 42, 51, 60, 63, 64, 74, 75, 85, 86, 91, 106, 145, 149, 152, 154, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 172, 184, 186, 188, 189, 198, 199, 202, 211, 234, 238, 243, 245, 254, 255, 256, 257 semitic 23, 26, 39, 43, 44, 45, 47, 55, 62, 87, 147, 148, 185, 186 sexuality 2, 34, 142, 169, 171, 178, 179, 226, 227, 258 Shoah 50, 56 Sicily 8, 9, 87, 91, 143 Six Day War 49, 236 social sciences 4, 5, 29, 30, 39, 41, 43, 48, 53, 55, 72, 91, 93, 124, 149, 158, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, 214, 217, 218, 220, 227 scientists 29, 30, 160, 165

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Index 267

socialism 32, 48, 49, 50, 88, 139, 161, 171 sociology 22, 29, 30, 50, 143, 161, 162, 163, 216, 217, 220, 221, 222, 226, 240, 253 Somalia 64, 75 Soviet Union; USSR 40, 46, 48, 49, 50, 139 Spain 7, 91, 115, 131, 143 Spanish 54, 87, 92, 93 stability 27, 30, 52, 115 stereotypes 29, 51, 96, 147, 152, 158, 169, 173, 177, 219, 220, 257 stereotypical 167, 170 stereotyping 40 structuralism 30, 52 Sudan 44, 52 Suez 13, 127, 171 superiority 139, 160, 169 Syria 3, 5, 11, 12, 24, 97, 115, 122, 125, 134, 146, 150, 151, 197–213, 233, 253 terror 11, 22, 33, 51, 69, 96, 122, 151, 153, 177, 178, 182, 186, 188, 189 terrorists 33, 151, 161 theology 8, 40, 41, 42, 44, 49, 60, 62, 92, 93, 147 think tank 12, 52, 84, 86, 203, 233–251, 252, 256 Third World 2, 37, 67, 142, 159 tolerance 27, 33, 42, 111, 112, 180–181, 185 Tunis 2, 144, 238 Tunisia 5, 7, 8, 14, 62, 94, 95, 153, 220, 222, 234, 236, 245 Turkey 7, 10, 122–136, 146, 181, 214, 215, 216, 217, 220, 229, 245, 248, 255 Turkish 24, 44, 54, 89, 122–136, 143, 144, 145, 147, 149, 152, 205, 217, 248, 254 Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) 36 United Kingdom (UK) 4, 7, 8, 11, 84, 85, 86, 87, 125, 127, 128, 132,

141, 171, 172, 173, 197–213, 215, 233, 238, 240 United Nations (UN) 52, 67, 106, 112, 117, 134, 165, 167, 237, 245 United States (US, USA) 4, 10, 51, 54, 55, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 74, 85, 94, 103, 105, 115, 116, 122, 125, 127, 128, 132, 134, 135, 139, 141, 143, 165, 214, 216, 219, 233, 235, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 244, 248 Vatican 28, 62, 86 violence 6, 33, 34, 87, 89, 95, 108, 113, 178, 179, 182, 202, 203, 206, 207, 211, 227 War on Terror 22, 122, 177, 178, 186, 188, 189 West, the 5, 9, 10, 22, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 73, 114, 117, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 170, 179, 206, 211, 229, 234, 238, 240, 241, 247, 252, 253, 257 West Bank 104, 108 Western Sahara 49, 238, 248 westernisation 34, 159, 161 workers 49, 50, 67, 76, 88, 181 World Bank 167, 237 World War I 2, 40, 43, 63, 83, 87, 139, 146 World War II 2, 29, 40, 46, 55, 63, 64, 65, 117, 130, 139, 148, 234 Yad Vashem 47 Yemen 5, 41, 98, 144, 220, 223, 226 youth 29, 34, 148, 166, 167 Zionism 46, 50, 107, 114, 115, 171, 179, 183