Abstracts
Please find below a list of conference participants in alphabetical order following the family name. Some names appear more than once indicating participation in more than one session. Clicking on a name will take you to the abstract or brief description of the session.
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Koc University, Turkey
Locating the Cosmopolitan:
Meanings of American Education in Beirut, Cairo, and Istanbul
This paper analyzes the discourses of a particular variant of elite networks in three countries of the Middle East –the graduates and students of the first three American universities established in Istanbul, Beirut, and Cairo to explore the following questions: How do these social groups articulate their socialization in American educational institutions in the contemporary context? What do these tell us about the multiple ways of defining the “American”? What kinds of potential do these multiple definitions have for reevaluating the values they entail?
The paper is based on field research among graduates and students of Boğaziçi University (Robert College), the American University of Beirut, and the American University in Cairo. Historically, these institutions have been educating the regional elite in English, relying on curricula outside the national education systems. Consequently, the graduates distinguish their identities based on this legacy: they define themselves as the cosmopolitans who have sufficient knowledge of their societies and the world outside because of their socialization in local institutions of American education. I argue this cultural distinction, based on an intimate understanding of values such as freedom, justice, democracy, and capabilities for personal achievement, is experiencing a profound change. Maintaining this distinction used to be made possible by constant guarding of the boundaries of this cultural capital. These practices of boundary drawing, however, are becoming harder.
I plan to analyze the contradictory potentials this tension carries. First, I outline challenges to their claims: in the contemporary production of racialized bodies in global socio-political circuits, these groups find themselves denigrated as ‘the others’ of ‘global citizens.’ This challenge is coupled with another: the increasing availability of their education. Second, I follow their attempts to continue defending their distinctions. Through a number of sites, I document how multiple representations of the idea of the ‘American’ are created; benign and cosmopolitan on the one hand; unipolar and alienating on the other. Third, I explore the repercussions of these negotiations. I discuss whether these attempts can produce a more humble and/or a more exclusive definition for cosmopolitan values with which this education has historically distinguished itself.
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Tishreen University, Syria
Queering the Migrant Female Body
in Etel Adnan’s In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country
This paper exposes the process of queering the migrant female body as developed by Etel Adnan, an Arab-American writer whose perspective cuts across several modes of social, sexual, ethnic, religious, cultural and political relations. In this study, I concentrate on Adnan’s In The Heart of the Heart of Another Country, a gendered memoir that reflects the conflicting body politics, which invade the migrant woman’s consciousness in Diaspora. Using queer, gender, and postcolonial theory, as well as recent historical and cultural studies, I will investigate how Adnan re-imagines relations between the body, the place and the community. Besides, I will discuss the self-Other problematic within intersectional theories using the body as an analytical tool. In this context, I intend to expose the ambivalent relation between the migrant female body and the place of migration, and the dichotomy between ‘Coming Out of the closet of one country’ and ‘Living in the closet of another country’. My main purpose is to show the dilemma of the Arab-American woman writer in the twenty-first century, and to reveal the queer position of the Arab-American lesbian self as undergoing a more complicated type of exile from a former exile. The interaction between the personal and the political is a major issue that needs to be studied in depth to expose how the body becomes the bearer of the culture and the maker of the identity. The questions that need to be answered within the context of this paper are: Can identities and sexual minorities exist apart from relationships in a community? How can the mind-body-heart and body-time-place continuums enable the marginalized migrant self to cross different types of borders?
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Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia
Islamic Law and the Modern State: Conflict or Co-existence?
Can Islamic Law and the Modern State peacefully co-exist or are these institutions inherently contradictory? Ever since legal and political reforms began in the 19th century, when the Nation-State emerged in the Near and Middle East and the Shari'a was largely supplanted by its law, this has been a perennial issue of intellectuals and statesmen; from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to American hegemony, the problem of negotiating religious and legal authority with the State has been of dominant concern. This paper will broadly identify and evaluate how a spectrum of political and religious leaders have attempted to settle this relationship until the present., from the radical rejection of Western legal and political forms, to the outright abandonment of Islamic Law. Moving towards a greater consensus, this paper also offers a nascent solution to the impasse between Shari'a and the Modern State, based upon a new reading of Prophetic tradition, which promises an evolutionary approach to Islamic statecraft; attention will be paid to such concepts as civil society, International law and human rights, especially as they relate to developments in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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University of Jordan,
Jordan
drkhanji@hotmail.com
How Three Moral Problems in Anglo-American
Literature Enter into Teaching American Studies to Arab Students
Although Arab students look upon specializing/majoring in American studies and
English/American literature as an exposure to the world, yet deep inside each
one of them there is the feeling that such literature represents a culture
hostile to Arab causes. Racial remarks as well as a prejudiced spirit against
Moslems in some literary works, among other moral problems, present a serious
impediment confronting both Arab instructors and students.
Two different views are usually expressed towards
sensitive situation: First, those who emphasize the value of teaching any
literary work even if it is in conflict with Arab learners' morality. The other
view opposes such an approach assuming that this type of literature evokes
negative values, and ethical standards that create moral barriers and thus
impede cross-cultural understanding as well as appreciative reading.
The aim of this proposed study is to address this problem which creates
anti-Anglo/Americanism when teaching hostile literature to Arab students
majoring in American studies. The study also aims at suggesting some solutions
to face such moral problems.
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University of Tehran, Iran
American New Middle East Policy and Islamophobia
American State Policy in the Middle East in relation to regional Muslim countries is highly Islamophobiacally oriented. On the one hand “Bad Muslim” or “fundamental Islam” represents as a dominant face of Islam and Muslims in the region. On the other hand the official declaration instrumented by American Liberal Language in the form of ‘human rights’, freedom and ‘democracy’ are displayed as the backbone for all political statements and even war policy in the region. The gap between “Good Liberal American Values” and ‘Bad Islamic Values’ presented in the form of ‘Islamophobia’, legitimize any type of violent policy against Muslim Countries.
American policy plays the political game by presenting minor Islamic countries as a ‘good country’ allied to ‘American liberal values’ whilst labeling many as a ‘bad country’. However, it seems part of the post-September 11th policy, that Islam and Muslims in general are interlinked to terror, violence and fundamentalism.
To explain why this policy has been initiated, one can argue that Islamophobia is used as a policy of ‘war legitimating’ when necessary. Islamophobia is also a ‘demonization policy’ to create wide opportunities for ‘new Middle East Policy’ of the United States.
This paper is an attempt to examine such a policy in official US declarations and amongst US media and it explains how and why such policies have been constructed.
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Boston University, USA
The Influence of Liberal Education on the Intellectual and Political Movements at the American University of Beirut (AUB)
In the beginning of the 1897-1898 academic year, the Syrian Protestant College (SPC) formally instituted the American liberal educational structure; its successor, the American University of Beirut (AUB), has maintained this program since 1920. In the 2003-2004 academic year, an AUB Task Force found that, at AUB and back in America, “The expressions ‘liberal education’ and ‘general education’ are often used interchangeably. The adjective ‘liberal’ places the emphasis on freedom of choice and expression, critical analysis and critical thinking, and the exercise of independent judgment. The adjective ‘general’ places the emphasis on acquiring a broad base of knowledge in a wide range of subjects, in contrast to knowledge that is confined to a narrow or specialty domain.” The Task Force recommended that AUB maintain its commitment to this American liberal educational system despite pressures to focus more exclusively on professional training, a model used more frequently in Europe and in the majority of the universities in the Middle East.
My paper examines the influence this liberal educational structure has had on the students who passed through the Main Gate of the university. I will analyze some of the major intellectual currents that emerged at different junctures in AUB’s history as a way to examine how the students themselves articulated the benefits and limitations of the liberal educational space they found at AUB. By studying the movements of pacifism and internationalism in the 1920s, Arab nationalism in the 1940s and 1950s, and the “New Left” of the late 1960s and 1970s, I plan to show how the students defined the role – both positively and negatively – that AUB had played in their intellectual development.
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Eastern Mediterranean University,
Cyprus
Jan.asmussen@emu.edu.tr
Poppies, Pistols and Intelligence : US Policy towards Human Rights and Democracy in Turkey
Since the 1950s Turkey has played a major role in U.S. strategy both in respect to the Warsaw pact and MENA.
Especially following the declaration of the Nixon doctrine U.S. tried to transfer the responsibility for Nato’s interest in the region to local actors like Turkey and Israel. American intelligence installations in Turkey proofed vital for the validation of SALT I. Moreover, they were the only reliable installations of this kind after the U.S. had lost its facilities in Iran. Following the collapse of the Soviet Empire those installations didn’t loose their importance. Now, Turkey was seen as major western barrier against unstable and unreliable states of the MENA.
One major result of these strategic considerations was that U.S. human rights policy towards Turkey appeared most of the time, to say the least, “cautious”.
While the Council of Europe, EU’s Court of Human Rights and the EU Commission almost constantly hinted towards human rights deficiencies, U.S. Governments from Nixon to Bush avoided any antagonising statements toward this topic.
This presentation aims to analyse U.S. human rights policy towards Turkey especially during the 1970s. Based on newly released NARA files it will be seen that there was a big difference between officially proclaimed U.S. Human Rights policies of the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations and reality.
For example, the Ford administration did fail to lift arms embargoes against Turkey. Turkey was accused of human rights violations in Turkey and Cyprus. In addition, poppy production in Anatolia became a constant matter of concern for U.S. - Turkish relations.
However, the embargo was lifted under Jimmy Carter, who had a proclaimed human rights agenda. Apparently, this agenda did not include Turkey.
This and other contradictions of U.S. diplomacy towards Turkey will be explained during the presentation.
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Zeina Mouneer Barakat
Al-Quds University,Palestine
zeinabarakat_8@hotmail.com
Studying American Studies in a Hostile Environment
In October 2003,
the report by the State Department's Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the
Arab and Muslim world offered valuable suggestions for how the United States
could improve its ailing image in the Arab world, in an objective and balance
manner. One of its recommendations was to establish an American–sponsored study
centers or university programs or libraries. This effort receives more urgency
when one considers the anti-American trend in Palestine where there is lack of
trust and understanding among Palestinians of US policies. Anti-Americanism is
widely spread within the Palestinian community. As a result, no other major
would raise questions of identity and loyalty in Palestine as American Studies
would. Like any other nation that view itself as victimized, the Palestinians
have a simple view of the world; to them, it is divided into two camps; those
who support their cause, and those who support Israel. The United States support
Israel, thus it is perceived in the enemy camp. Thus, Palestinians look at the
American Studies program at al-Quds University with suspicion and view its
founder as having fallen under American spell. Under such conditions, what lures
a Palestinian to study a major that would put him/her under suspicion of being
unloyal to the Palestinian cause? What motivates a Palestinian join a major in
which his/her peers would view him/her as having fallen under American hegemony?
What job opportunity would such a major provide? Is such a program sustainable?
The question “why do we study American studies” is problematic and carries more
connotations and poses more challenge to a Palestinian than it does to any
student of other nationality. This paper will examine the identity crisis of the
Palestinians joining American studies programs and the peer pressures they are
exposed to. The methodology employed in this paper will be interviews and
questionnaires.
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Amy
Bartholomew
Carleton University, Canada
Rightlessness and Legality in the Age of Empire’s Law: Toward a Neo-Conservative Globalization?
Human rights, democracy and legality are under attack in the ‘global war on
terror’ that is led by the United States even as they are mobilized to justify
it by neoconservatives (e.g. PNAC) and liberals (e.g. Michael Ignatieff) alike.
What role does law play in the war on terror, in general, and the Bush Doctrine,
in particular? This is a crucial question for humanity and especially for those
who bear the most direct brunt, those in the Middle East and North Africa and
Muslims across the world. A persistent claim made by critical scholars of law
ranging from Philippe Sands to Giorgio Agamben is that the primary sites in the
‘global war on terror’ have been rendered ‘legal black holes’, resulting in a
‘lawless world’ or a ‘global state of exception’. But what is the character of
this ‘state of exception’? I will ask whether there is a more profound
challenge being posed than even global illegality or lawlessness, avoidance or
rejection of law. On the basis of the argument that the United States functions
as the sole empire today ruling through other states, I will consider whether
the American Empire’s stance signals a possible challenge to legitimate
legality as a ‘medium of regulation’ at all levels – domestic, transnational and
international -- and whether this may be constitutive of another form of
rule, one that is divorced from legitimate legality but which threatens to
constitute a different form of rule/law, one that I call ‘empire’s law’. If this
is so, are we also moving from ‘neo-liberal’ globalization to a form of
‘neo-conservative’ globalization, an authoritarian form of globalization which
demotes rights and the legal subjectivity which is their necessary groundwork
while it transforms law? Does this indicate that the global war on terror may be
a long-term trend, imbricated in a new form of rule, resistant to change?
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Wake Forest University, USA
Wasatiyya Notions of Justice and Liberty in the Age of American Empire
The Islamist movement has long been criticized for lack of specificity of political thought coming out of their movement. However, a number of Islamic intellectuals, associated with what has come to be called the moderate or centrist (wasatiyya) trend and consisting primarily of Egyptians, such as Muhammad al-Ghazali, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fahmi Huwaydi, Kamal Abu al-Majd, Muhammad al-‘Imara, and Muhammad Salim al-‘Awa, claims to be filling that intellectual vacuum in Islamist discourse. While only recently garnering the attention of western scholars, the careers of these individuals span several decades and the origin of this turn to moderation dates at least to 1981, when the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat by the Islamic Jihad group led many of the leading theorists of the Islamic revival (al-sahwa al-islamiyya) to seek to clarify their position from the political turmoil and the extremist forces that contributed to its emergence. Historical consideration of these figures permits study of the development of such central political notions as justice and freedom in what some have termed the “American period” in the Middle East and amidst claims (chiefly by American scholars) about the global triumph of liberalism.
The aim of this paper is to critically analyze the writings of the wasatiyya trend since 1981, during a period where these individuals have had to grapple with the persistence of authoritarian regimes, lack of progress in liberating Palestine and other territories occupied by Israel, and renewed foreign military intervention in the region, undertaken by the US, purportedly in name of freedom and democracy. What my study reveals is that wasatiyya intellectuals have developed notions of freedom and justice less tied to notions of community in an exclusively Islamic sense and, thus, created a space for accommodation of seemingly liberal notions such as democracy, pluralism, freedom of thought, and the rights of women and minorities. But this has been done at the same time that the country many associate with liberalism has lost whatever credibility it might have once had in the region. Thus, my study pays particular attention to the role negative constructions of American injustices, illegalities, and violations of the rights of people in the region have played in the development of these ideas.Omar Chakaki, Mark Gonzales, and Nizar Wattad
The Human Writes Project, USA
Brooklyn Beats to Beirut Streets: Hip Hop and the Language of Liberation
An "energetic, informative and often startling presentation" in spoken-word and rhyme by three artists (one Mexican- American and two Arab-American) that traces the artists' development alongside the birth and growth of hip-hop. It is a reading of the world through their words. This poetic performance is an intersection of cultures sharing space on a stage that gives voice to marginalized histories, challenges the audience to re-examine worldviews, and indicts individuals for historical atrocities committed in the name of democracy. Following the performance the artists will invite the audience to participate in a discussion of how an art form once considered to exist on the margins of society can grow to become the most popular musical genre amongst youth around the world, what this means to hip-hoppers whose cultures remain on the margins, and what problems and concerns face the rest of society in realizing, accepting and ultimately utilizing this shift.
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Helena Cobban, Boston Review, USA, hcobban@gmail.com
Evan Montgomery, University of Virginia, USA, ebmontgomery@virginia.edu
Stacie Pettyjohn, US Institute of Peace, USA, spettyjohn@virginia.edu
Robert P. Saldin, John Hopkins University, USA, saldin@jhu.edu
William Quandt, University of Virginia, USA, wbq8f@virginia.edu
How We Got Here and Where We're Going:
American Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East at the End of the Bush Years
As the Bush administration nears the end of its term, it provides an opportunity to evaluate the impact of its policies in the Middle East, and to speculate about what sort of approach the next president will take towards this region. The centerpiece of Bush’s foreign policy was a seemingly revolutionary policy of democracy promotion, which was advocated by the neoconservative movement. Promising to break with the immoral Realpolitik tradition, Bush claimed that by spreading freedom the U.S. would create a safer and more just world. Unfortunately, Bush’s commitment to this policy proved to be tenuous at best; he promoted democracy when it was believed to strengthen allies, rejected it when it was expected to weaken allies, and sought to overturn elections which disempowered allies.
This roundtable seeks to place the Bush administration in the broader context of U.S. democracy promotion, and to consider if the next president will continue to emphasize this particular theme. To do so, it will provide an overview of previous U.S. efforts to encourage the spread of liberty, background on the neoconservative movement, and an examination the Bush administration’s reaction to democratization in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Then turning toward the future, it will discuss the presidential candidates’ positions on foreign policy with respect to the Middle East, and ideally, what the next administration should do to truly bring liberty and justice to the region.
Evan Montgomery will discuss American exceptionalism and provide a brief overview of previous U.S. efforts to spread liberty and justice. Although the U.S. has historically claimed to encourage self-determination for all, in practice, its actions have fallen short of these lofty goals, as pursuit of its national interests usually prevailed over moral and ideological ideals.
Rob Saldin will discuss the ideological roots of the Bush Administration’s policy of democracy promotion which stems from the neoconservative movement. He will explain how a movement characterized by skepticism came to embrace the concepts of freedom, liberty, and democracy, and became a leading proponent of overthrowing Saddam Hussein.
Stacie Pettyjohn will discuss two recent examples in which the Bush Administration subordinated its democracy promotion agenda to other interests. In both Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, elections empowered groups hostile to the U.S., leading the Bush Administration to attempt to reverse the electoral results. In an effort to do so, the U.S. either contributed or acquiesced to a policy of collective punishment which was intended to generate public anger towards Hezbollah and Hamas, and eventually result in their ousting.
William Quandt will provide an overview of the policies toward the Middle East each presidential candidate will likely adopt, and how much of a role the promotion of democracy will play.
Helena Cobban will consider what policies the new American administration should implement in order to truly promote liberty and justice in the Middle East.
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Al-Quds University, Palestine
&
Munther S. Dajani
Al-Quds University, Palestine
msdajani@art.alquds.edu
Western and Islamic Conceptions of Justice
American values of liberty and justice are strongly
contested by many Islamic scholars. As the United States attempts to promote its
own concepts of liberty and justice in order to create its own vision of a new
Middle East, the issue raised is whether such concepts mean the same to Western
and Islamic people. American political thought proclaimed that “all men are
equal,” however, in practice, for quite some time in American history, all men
and women were far from being equal. Similarly, Islam proclaimed that “there is
no difference between men except in faith,” however, on the ground, many
differences existed between men and between men and women. The question this
raises is: Why? Is it that the text is not clear enough?
The classical definition of justice is formulated by Plato, Aristotle, Saint
Ambrose, and Saint Augustine of Hippo, as expressed in a single phrase: “suum
cuique”, or "to each his own." Aristotle has maintained that the prevalence of
injustice makes clear the meaning of justice. The word justice as explained in
Scripture: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do to them."
It supposes an exchange of one good deed for another good deed. Justice is
described In the Romans: "Render to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is
due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor; owe no man
anything but to love one another." Many verses in the Quran express its concept
of justice.
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Liam Kennedy, The Clinton Institute for American
Studies
University College Dublin, Ireland
Panelists
John Hillis, University of Bahrain, jhillis@arts.uob.bh
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, University of Tehran, Iran, mmarandi@ut.ac.ir
Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, Al-Quds University, Palestine, mohddajani@hotmail.com
Patrick McGreevy, AUB, Lebanon, pm07@aub.edu.lb
Hani Ismael Elayyan, University of Jordan, hanimoh@yahoo.com
Osama Abd El-Fattah Madany, Menoufiya University, Egypt, osamamadany@yahoo.com
Mounira Soliman, Cairo University, Egypt, mouniras@yahoo.com
Paul Jahshan, Notre Dame University, Lebanon, odin@dm.net.lb
Sirene Harb, AUB, Lebanon, sh03@aub.edu.lb
Session 20: American Studies in the Middle East: An Open Discussion
This session is a follow-up to
a workshop on American Studies in the Middle East held at CASAR's first
conference in December of 2005. Panelists are scholars and teachers of American
studies working in the Middle East. Some represent specific American studies
programs and centers in the region. The panelists will briefly discuss the
challenges and prospects they face in their work leaving most of the allotted
time for open discussion with the audience.
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American University of Beirut
Can Islam and Democracy Work?
In the post- 9/11 era, the discourse of the war on terror has hinged, for the most part, on the “dichotomy” and the possible “irreconcilability” of the worldviews of Islam and Western ideals of democracy. This position is reinforced by the fact that until very recently, no openly Islamic state has considered or named itself a democracy.
What I intend to investigate over the course of my paper are some of the underlying “causes” of such an understanding of Islam and its relationship to democracy. My work is grounded primarily in Jacques Derrida’s analysis of this issue, which he outlines in Rogues. I use Derrida’s work as a starting point to interrogate the validity of the perceived irreconcilability of Islam and democracy. To do this, I briefly define the modality of democracy that I will using, and identify it as being perceived as Judeo-Christian. This perception puts Islam and a Judeo-Christian conception of democracy on opposing sides.
The claim that Islam is the other of democracy will be the main focus of my paper. In order to critique such a claim, I first investigate its validity, and then provide my own objections to this view. These objections are grounded in the socio-historical, the theoretical, and the practical. In so objecting, I hope to shed light on the constructedness of this relationship of othering.
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Northwestern University, USA
bedwards@northwestern.edu
Moroccan Engagements with American Culture and Circulation
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Technical University of Dresden, Germany
Encountering Liberty and Justice: The Old New Move of Constructing the MENA
In his speech before the National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, President George W. Bush commended the Moroccan King Mohammed VI for having “a diverse new parliament” and “extending rights to women.” On August 31, 2007, a week before the Moroccan parliamentary elections, Morocco was rewarded with a five-year $700 million grant through the Millennium Challenge Account (a development program of the Bush administration’s “freedom agenda”). In its turn, Morocco, that is the monarchy and the politico-economic elite, has proven its total conversion to the US’s particular construction of the economy: for instance, its implementation of the structural adjustment programs in the 80s and currently its highly self-conscious attempts to show the US that it is “ruling justly and pursuing sound economic policies.” This paper proposes to articulate a discursive critique of the language and assumptions that inform and frame discussion of foreign aid, development economics and the Bush administration’s revolutionary scheme of creating the conditions necessary to replicating the US’s values in the Muslim world. In fact, I will argue, by focusing on the example of Morocco, that the MENA is still being produced by a variety of discourses and practices: one can clearly see the overlap of colonial, developmentalist, and neoliberal regimes of representation, all of which, as postcolonial theory has amply demonstrated, aim at enforcing forms of governmentality that ensure domination and control. Moreover, Moroccan young people, half of whom dream of leaving their country, recognize the cost of being “citizens” in an executant state that submits to the incessantly interventionist USA. They see American power and their total lack of it as the main problem. Accordingly the latter part of the paper will be devoted to the narratives of young people with a special focus on the charismatic Nadia Yassine, representative of the popular but banned Islamic ‘Adl wal Ihsane (Justice and Spirituality movement).
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University of Jordan, Jordan
Taha Hussein and American Literature: Culture and Justice
This paper is a review of an introduction to an Arabic translation of a book entitled Studies in American literature (published in Cairo, no date of publication). The importance of this introduction stems from the fact that it was written by Taha Hussein, one of the pillars of Arab culture in the 20th century. This review is a very early example of Arab intellectuals engaging American culture and exploring the possibility of an alliance between Arabs and America as a way of achieving justice under an unjust colonial rule. Hussein’s views express an optimistic vision of the United States as a force of justice in the world and an antidote to the colonial influences of the British and French Empires.
Known as the “Dean of Arabic Literature,” Taha Hussein is credited for applying the principles of modern criticism to classical Arabic poetry and to Arab culture in general. The result of that transfer of knowledge was a revolution and a shock to many of his contemporaries.
Professor Taha Hussein was born in 1889 and died in 1973. He graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris and was one of the major figures who absorbed French culture and used it to revive Arab culture. Thus, the introduction that is being reviewed here is a rare document in that it shows his awareness of American literature and culture at a time when they were little heard of in the Arab World. Such views would help scholars nowadays place the claims of Arab animosity towards America in a historical framework rather than seeing it as a universal fact. The Arab grievances against America started when the US supported the Belfor Declaration, and increased in the aftermath of World War II. Before that, some Arabs pinned great hopes on America’s idealism and rationalism to lend a helping hand to the Arabs in their fight for independence. In hindsight, such hope sound naïve and uninformed about the assumptions that shaped the enlightenment project which America shared with its allies across the Atlantic.
The United States, Great Britain, and France
Hussein argues in his introduction that the British and the French were eager to control not only the natural resources of the Arab World but also the hearts and minds of Arab youth. As a result, these two powers promoted their literatures at the expense of local culture, but also at that of other European languages and literatures, including other literatures written in English and French. As a result, American culture was virtually unknown in the Arab World. Arabs knew the material achievement of the United States only: its cars, factories, industries, weapons, etc. Hussein here explains that such advancement was explained by some Arab intellectuals as the result of the American obsession with materialism. However, he points out that no nation in the world could boast great achievements in the material arena without having a strong basis in ethics, culture, philosophy and literature.
Hussein adds that he has been trying to convince his fellow citizen of the importance of familiarizing themselves with the achievements of America as a civilized nation. The example he quotes is America’s role in the two World Wars. He finds in American isolationism a good example of its disinterest in material gain:
“I have always sought to convince some educated Egyptians that North Americans have a sublime spiritual life that was behind their involvement in the Great World War. Their only motivation was to safeguard the very same values that have enlightened civilized nations since time immemorial. After the end of the war, they refused to share with Europe in the spoils, and they even detached themselves from the League of Nation, which they helped establish. All of these decisions prove beyond doubt that Americans did not put material achievements first, but their ideals which are the continuation of the best that the Old World could offer.” (p. 110, my translation).
Hussein then discusses the American involvement in World War II and draws similar conclusions about American idealism and ethical existence. He argues again that material success is a sign for success at all levels of life, especially cultural and ethical.
It’s noteworthy that Hussein did not read English. Rather, he read French translations of American literature. But he says that he admired it a lot and noticed its influence on European literature. His studies motivated him to promote this literature and encourage Egyptian to study it as a way of combating European cultural hegemony. Hussein, however, did not call for replacing one literature for another; rather, he wanted the Egyptians and Arabs in general to be open to all kinds of world literature. From American literature, he argues, Arabs could learn a lot of great things such as seeking perfection in life and idealism.
Hussein also encourages Americans to promote their literature and translate it into other languages. He says to them:
“You cannot make yourself known to the world through economic, political, or military power only. Nations will be known through their intellectual achievements. If you choose to impress the world with your military might only, you will cut the figure of a monster who is to be feared, not a nation to be loved, for material power is a means of spreading fear not love, and fear calls for repugnance and doubt.”
Hussein adds that it is incumbent upon the United Sates to understand the rest of the world to be able to sell its technology to it. Hussein in the above quotes shows great belief in America as a force for justice and peace. He believes that American literature and culture could teach the rest of the world respect for democracy.
Thus, Arab intellectuals’ views of America underwent a sea change in the second half of the twentieth century. The beginning of American involvement in the Middle East, together with the surge in Arab Nationalism contributed to the changes.
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Arab Center for Development and Future Research, Cairo, Egypt
Kefaya and the Bush Democratization Efforts
During its first term, the Bush administration made clear it was serious about democratizing the Middle East. Strong statements critical of long-time allies like Egypt were more frequent and blunter than ever, and pressures on authoritarian Arab regimes more generally were mounting in public. However, despite the American calls for greater justice and liberty for the peoples of the region, when democratic elections brought to power Hamas in Palestine and added to the gains of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt’s parliament, the Bush administration toned down both its rhetoric and pressure.
This shift in American policy raises important questions about how the Bush administration’s stance was received by the democratic forces in the region, i.e. those forces that advocate liberty and justice for their citizens in a democratic order. And what impact, if any, did the change have on those democratic forces. The answers to those questions are important both in terms of the prospects of democracy in the Middle East and in terms of the future relationship between the US and democratic forces in the region.
My paper will study how the Egyptian Movement for Change- Kefaya reacted to the Bush project of democratizing the Middle East and to the collapse of that project. Kefaya’s birth, which quickly reverberated across the Arab World and beyond, coincided with the Bush administration’s initial phase of active support for democratizing the Middle East. The heyday of the movement also occurred during the peak of that American, pro-democracy position.
The paper will argue that the Kefaya experience tells us a great deal about the potential for the United States to positively influence political developments in the Arab world. The American policy reversal and its consequent effects also have cautionary lessons. In its own terms, the significance of Kefaya lies in its transformative potential as a broad political force of a new type that is uniquely suited to the needs of the moment in Egypt, including not only a critique of the existing system of rule but also progressive political and social demands for change. It is a cross-ideological force that has the potential, in the long run, and with careful nurturing of creating a new mainstream. This very nature of the movement makes Kefaya’s adamant resistance to the American empire a manifestation of a phenomenon that goes beyond the movement itself and runs deep across the political spectrum in Egypt.
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Paris X (Nanterre) University, France
According to Matthew Bernstein in his Introduction to Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (1997) “many of the American cinema’s most popular or ideologically resonant films” used North African and Asian cultures to express Otherness. In the horror film it is “Islam” as a constructed religious Other that appears at a transformative moment of the genre’s history.
The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) is a key film in the history of horror film: its unprecedented economical success introduced the use of gore elements into mainstream Hollywood cinema turning horror into one of the most important genres of the last 30 years. Yet, the opening sequence of this film takes place in Iraq, in a geographical space depicted as “ancient” and “Muslim” as opposed to “modern” and “Christian” USA. A demon that comes from the “Muslim” world will immigrate to Washington and alienate the identity of a young American girl by possessing her and thus depriving her from her liberty. It is the church and Christianity, through the figure of a priest who, by performing an exorcism, will “liberate” the young girl from the demon.
After The Exorcist, a sequence which is located in the MENA will appear in six other horror films released between 1976 and 2006. In all of these films the aim of this sequence is to explain the origins of the demon who will, in every case, try to invade the USA by possessing one of its “free” citizens. The Exorcist will thus generate a new cycle of religious horror in which “Islam” is depicted as the “evil” satanic double of Christianity.
Through analysis of the recurrent iconographical and narrative elements that depict “Islam” as a stereotypical constructed Other, this paper examines the discourse around the notion of “liberty” in contemporary horror film. A discourse underpinned by evangelist-fundamentalist Christianity and its belief in the alienating nature of Islam.**************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
University of Akron ,USA
“Vying for America?” Perceptions of American Lifestyle and Democracy among Kuwaiti and Lebanese University Students
This paper is based on a questionnaire survey
distributed among two university campuses in Kuwait and six in Lebanon. A total
of 866 students, male and female, were asked inter alia to answer a set of
questions pertaining to the way in which American democracy and culture –
represented by a wide range of lifestyles – are acquiring legitimacy (or not) in
the repective students’ countries.
The paper argues that differences among Kuwaiti and Lebanese students are less
about differences between Kuwait and Lebanon and more about diversity among the
student population specifically within Lebanon. This demonstrates that intra-state
cultural, religious, and gender differences, as well as students’ experiences
and knowledge about America, are key to understanding the diversity of opinions
among Arabs pertaining to the US. Based on statistical analyses of the survey,
for example, students of the Lebanese University in the two campuses of Al-Sanayia’,
Beirut, and Tripoli, have more in common and perhaps share cultural values with
their Kuwaiti counterparts where issues related to American lifestyle and
democracy are considered. Religion appears to be the unifying factor among
these students, even across national boundaries. At same time, these same
students’ opinions are markedly different from students at other Lebanese
universities that were surveyed (namely AUB, NDU, and the Lebanese University
campus in Jel ad-Dib). Interestingly, students’ responses at Saint Joseph
University (SJU), the sixth Lebanese university surveyed and which has
historical ties both linguistically and culturally to France, appear to share
certain values with Kuwaiti students rather than with their peers in Lebanon.
This finding suggests that although religion as a cultural identity is
recognized as a traditional factor in shaping perceptions, cultural and
linguistic factors are equally significant and can dilute the importance of the
religious component.
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American University of Beirut
“Another Brick in the Wall”: The US-Mexico and Israel-West Bank Borders
Much controversy has arisen over the (border) walls erected along the United States-Mexico and Israel-West Bank “borders”. According to both the United States and Israel, their respective walls are coming up in an effort to “protect” themselves: in one case from the influx of “illegal” immigrants, and in the other from the threat of “terrorism”. Interestingly enough, while both states are trying to keep “the wrong sort of people” from getting on their “right” side of the border, the arguments in favor of the respective wall(s) operate using broad, over-arching terms like liberty, justice, and freedom.
This paper operates on two levels: first, it briefly explores the specific contexts in which these walls are being built, showing they have much in common. Second, it identifies the metaphors of borders inherent in the language and discourse used to defend the existence of these walls. Finally, it suggests that while these walls may help serve the US and Israel’s purposes, they will ultimately play a major part in interrogating the very borders they were meant to protect.
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University of Washington, USA
America’s Last Taboo: Rethinking Orientalism and the End(s) of Civil Rights
The upcoming thirtieth anniversary of Edward W. Said’s path-breaking Orientalism and the recently-passed fortieth anniversaries of both the June War and the widespread legibility of U.S.-based race-conscious anti-colonial movements mark an opportune moment to reconsider the constitutive relation between the two. In the aftermath of the so-called “civil rights revolution” in the U.S., ethnic studies scholars agree that worldly movements for universal substantive social and political equality and an end to structural racisms were in great part eclipsed by the celebration of the liberal legal discourse of individual rights, precisely at the time when the emergent prison-industrial complex on the one hand and the dominant support for Israel’s post-June War occupation on the other revealed such celebrations to be a ruse.
An excerpt of my doctoral dissertation, entitled “Racing the Question: Israel/Palestine and U.S. Imperial Culture,” this paper constructs a genealogy of Orientalism shaped by a post-civil rights critique of liberalism, particularly in response to an emergent shift in U.S. imperial formation after the June War. Orientalism, I argue, is crucially framed not only by Said’s deployment of Foucault’s concept of “discourse” and Gramsci’s “hegemony,” but also by Said’s own self-described “contrapuntal” public intellectual and political forays in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. These forays offer a prescient critique of liberal rights discourse as they recast social struggle through the rubric of war and occupation, a rubric whose intellectual lineage returns us, albeit in a radically different way, to Orientalism’s far more inchoate Gramscian and Foucauldian imprint. In this way, I argue that if Orientalism is to be understood as a central text for critical empire studies, then we must account for its historical emergence as part of broader Arab exilic social movement and cultural production, and in counterpoint to U.S. and Israeli settler-colonial exceptionalisms and shifts in post-civil rights anti-colonial practice.Independent Scholar, USA
The Real Roots of American Foreign Policy in the Middle East
A recurrent theme in debates on U.S. foreign policy is the impact and influence of the Israel lobby. It is often maintained that were it not for the lobby U.S. policy in the Middle East would be governed by traditional American values such as liberty and justice. The salience of this debate has become more pronounced in the wake of the U.S.’s illegal attack on Iraq and the ensuing debacle, blame for which has been pinned on the Israel lobby.
In this paper I will propose a distinction between on the one hand broad U.S. policy in the Middle East, which bears on fundamental U.S. concerns such as oil and accordingly is shaped by elite calculations of the “national interest,” and on the other hand U.S. policy specifically on the Israel-Palestine conflict, where no fundamental U.S. concerns are at stake and accordingly U.S. policy would probably favor a just settlement were it not for the Israel lobby.
To argue my case I will use as a foil John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: 2007). This controversial study consists of a series of interconnected theses going to prove that the Israel lobby has distorted U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East generally and was responsible for the Iraq debacle in particular. The components of their argument are:
I will demonstrate that whether taken separately or together, these theses do not withstand close scrutiny. Nonetheless I will concur with Mearsheimer and Walt that the lobby blocks rational debate on the Israel-Palestine conflict and concomitantly U.S. support for a just settlement of it.
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University of Tehran, Iran
US Cultural war in Iraq: Case of Educational Reforms
Thinking of war in Iraq in the current situation, the first things that spring to the mind are military invasion, US troops in Iraq, bloodshed, and civil conflicts. Here among, US “cultural war” is not obviously visible and is hardly perceived. The deeper aspect of US strategy in Iraq or generally in Middle East focuses on the process of culture construction or cultural regime change that has mostly targeted culture, value and religion transformation and modernization. This is considered to be the greatest thread to the Middle Eastern identity.
United States has designed various short-term and long-term plans such as curriculum reforms in schools and universities, establishment of new radio and television channels with liberal thoughts, financial support for feminist movements and controlling school teachers and activities. The concept of “preemption” in the US cultural war resembles its military policies; therefore the best solution to wage the cultural war is to commence the task from schools and textbooks.
To carry out the cultural war and the imperceptible exercise of these policies to diverge the religious and ideological tendencies in Iraq, US administration has no other choice but to plea for assistance from civic organizations that seem independent while the US federal government allots a mount of money to each and they do the groundwork of their major policies with the consultation and advise of the different section in US government.
This paper studies the US objectives and cultural efforts in Iraq in the post- Saddam era in the realms of civil rights, media and specifically education reforms. This will be conducted by an overview of the concept of cultural war, institutions nourishing it and an analysis of education reforms and media innovations in Iraq in post-Saddam period.
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Bloomfield College, USA
Discrimination by Design: Data Mining in the US Government’s ‘War on Terror’
In December 2005, The New York Times exposed a secret governmental program designed to wiretap telephone and email communications of people living in this country in an effort to track individuals affiliated with Al-Qaeda. In May of the following year, The USA Today reported that the government was actively collecting, with the cooperation of major telephone companies, the call records of millions of US citizens and residents in an effort to detect patterns of terrorist behavior. These stories highlight the central role that surveillance, and a particular type of surveillance named data mining, is playing in the United States government’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The revelation of these clandestine programs sparked outrage throughout the country, as well as anxiety that the government was violating individuals’ privacy, a central element of liberty in US political life. Relatively absent in the discussion of these programs however has been justice, namely the possibility that the government’s surveillance programs will affect certain groups more than others. The concern is hardly unfounded. From the police sweeps that rounded up over twelve hundred noncitizens following September 11 to the National Security Entry/Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which required visitors from certain countries (most of them Middle Eastern and Northern African) to register with the Department of Homeland Security upon their arrival to the country, profiling on the basis of ethnic and national categories has been central to the federal government’s response to the September 11 attacks. Drawing upon surveillance studies, law and society research, and science and technology studies (STS), this paper attempts to de-center the privacy-focused debate on the government’s use of surveillance technologies by considering its justice. Specifically, the paper raises questions concerning the ways in which data mining technologies code the social to discriminate between different groups, the different uses of racial profiling by the US government in the context of counterterrorism over the last 5 years, the legal status of racial profiling in the United States, and the potential for a new politics by MENA immigrants in the country to resist government surveillance.
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University of Balamand, Lebanon
Infinite Justice: Ethics, Politics, and Transcendence in Post-9/11 Novels
Operation Infinite Justice, the term chosen for the official military response to 9/11, was hastily changed on 25 September 2001 to Operation Enduring Freedom. The irony of responding to Islamist terrorism with such theological rhetoric was obvious, but what happens to that rhetoric when it is downgraded into more material terms? Is it severed from its theological origins? Or does it remain theologically rooted, putting at risk the political achievements of secular modernity? Must we carefully excise such theological language from our politico-juridical procedures? Or do those procedures depend on notions of infinity and transcendence? Indeed, does such language crucially denote an ethics that exceeds our politics? To complicate these questions, this Pentagon-speak bears strange echoes of Derrida’s quasi-transcendental concepts, which point in the direction of a justice that lies beyond the reach of deconstruction.
In this paper, I explore the way in which contemporary US novelists have understood justice in (non)relation to the politico-juridical procedures of the nation state. Through brief readings of three post-9/11 books, Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, and John Barth’s The Book of Ten Nights and a Night, I will explore how these writers disfigure and dissolve national borders at a time when those borders are being violently reconstituted to create a ‘homeland.’ In doing so they ask: what lies beyond the borders of the nation? And what forms of connection are possible with what may lie beyond? A precursor to Operation Infinite Justice was 1998’s Operation Infinite Reach, in which Arab and Muslim nations were put on notice that they lay within striking distance. As a literary response to 9/11, Barth’s appropriation of A Thousand Nights and a Night, in particular, figures a very different form of relation to Arab and Muslim worlds. What kind of infinite justice does such literary worldliness evoke?
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Tufts University, USA
Cluster Munitions, International law, and Perceptions of Justice
US based arms manufacturers supplied the vast bulk of cluster bombs fired into Lebanon during the July 2006 War. Approximately 90% of these 4 million cluster sub-munitions were used during the last 72 hours of the war - between August 11 and August 14, 2007. This came after United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 announced the formal “cessation of hostilities” but before the resolution entered into effect. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had already termed the violence in Lebanon “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” and had rejected calls for a quick ceasefire.
What impact have US-made cluster munitions had on the ground in Lebanon? What arguments/counterarguments have been put forth to justify/condemn their use? How have US-made cluster munitions informed perceptions of US hegemony in the region? How does this encounter between America and the Middle East square with international standards of justice and humanitarian law? What legal regulations – if any - restrict the use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions? Domestically? Internationally? What prospects for accountability might be found in each of the following: the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, the Cluster Victims Civilian Protection Act, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, The Geneva Conventions, The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, The Cluster Munition Convention? What legal channels or advocacy avenues might lead to corporate accountability for US based cluster bomb manufacturers? What are the primary challenges to such efforts? Which human rights organizations have addressed the threat of cluster munitions, and how have they prioritized their work in this area?
These and other questions will be explored in a paper (perhaps presented in a non-traditional format/workshop) developed for AUB/CASAR’s interdisciplinary conference, Liberty and Justice: America and the Middle East.
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American University of Beirut
Human Right Watch
Critical Assessment of Discourse and Agenda in the Middle East
This paper will examine the human right discourse
and agenda adopted by Human Right Watch (HRW) and its implication on the context
of the Arab Israeli conflict. Then I will compare this agenda with that of the
Amnesty International. Two aspects HRW agenda will be assessed: the
politicization of the agenda although its using to legal-bureaucratic language,
and its disregard to the collective rights.
While the different categories of rights emerged successively in a historical
sequence, the problem of rights is often posed in international discourses as
series of oppositional dichotomies: universalism vs. cultural relativism;
individual vs. collective; civil and political rights vs, economic social and
cultural rights; North vs. South.
Concerning the dichotomy between individual and collective rights, the body of
formal human rights law deals primarily with the relationship between individual
citizens and their governments. Its initial doctrinal inspiration is the concept
of civil liberties founded, as Freedman argues, in the Western legal system,
which, in turn, is derived largely from liberal political and economic theory.
This theory, in its classical formulations, embraces an ideology of
individualism that has been the lightning rod for much of the criticism of
rights discourse. By privileging the political and civil rights over other
rights, its conception is closely associated with the theory and operation of a
capitalist free market economic system: liberal individualism views people
abstractly, as self-made, self-contained, separate individuals, isolated from
others, pitted against the collective, pursing their economic self-interest
without a reliance on the state.
The dichotomy universalism vs. cultural relativism raises other relevant issues.
The global agenda on human rights presents itself as universalistic, timeless
truths blurring the social and political construction of this agenda.
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Johns Hopkins University, USA
The essay presents a critique of American post-9/11 efforts to promote political and economic reform (through trade, aid, and war) across the Middle East by contrasting recent US policy to a selected set of approaches and attitudes towards modernizing the Middle East articulated in the early Cold War era. It argues that the recent American efforts followed from the view that the peoples and states of the Middle East have failed to embrace globalization and modernity. I refer to this view as the notion of Arab exceptionalism. The paper then traces how and why the US abandoned its initial post World War II strategy of promoting the modernization of the region's economies and supporting Arab claims for decolonization and independence.
In the 1950s, guided by modernization theory and seeking to distance itself from colonial European approaches to geopolitics, many American policy makers sought to advance socioeconomic development and political decolonization within the region with the expectation that the rise of a new middle class would bring political stability and foster societies with interests that were closely aligned with those of the United States, which would be viewed as vehicle for helping them attain liberty, justice, and modernity. While these attitudes did not usually determine the course of American policy, they found expression in many programs and have been recorded in memoirs, archives, and declassified government documents.
Such approaches were eventually marginalized and abandoned in the face of Cold War geopolitics, regional conflicts and the rise of nationalist movements that viewed the American presences as a threat to their security and challenge to their national interests. American strategy in the Middle East soon shifted towards bilateral ties driven by realpolitik balancing and containment through the projection of power. The result has been to perpetuate authoritarian regimes and economic systems that have since produced the effect of Arab exceptioanlism.
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Middle Tennessee State University, USA
Our Ideals/Their Ideals, Our Realities/Their Realities: U.S. and Arab Writers Confront Injustice
At a talk on “Islam and the West” delivered this past spring at Middle Tennessee State University, John Esposito submitted that many misunderstandings between the U.S. and the Arab world have resulted from a tendency for cultures to compare their ideals with others’ realities. Certainly this has been the case as the U.S. looks at the Middle East. Instances of political violence, gender inequalities, or authoritarianism in the Middle East are rarely seen in relation to prevalent social or religious ideals of justice in the region. What is more, we in the U.S. all too often fail to acknowledge or appreciate forces of moderation or resistance to injustice in Middle Eastern societies. Both Arab and U.S. writers have unmasked injustices within their own societies, and decried moral outrages in the conduct of foreign policy. The purpose of this paper is to bring Arab and U.S. writers concerned with political, social, and economic justice into dialogue with one another. In so doing, I will point to explicit and implicit notions of justice while being attentive to particular instances of injustice addressed by specific writers (e.g., poverty, war, women’s rights, occupation, racial discrimination). Among writers whose works and ideas I will discuss are Henry David Thoreau, Nawal Al-Saadawi, Toni Morrison, Adonis, Leslie Silko, Haydar Haydar, Upton Sinclair, and Ghassan Kanifani.
Studies and discussions of Arabic and American literature have, for the most part, remained insulated from one another. When they have intersected, discussion has most often centered around questions of influence, travel literature, Orientalism, imperialism, or the development of genres. A focus on how writers from both regions have addressed manifestations of injustice will allow a productive, comparative approach that underscores a strong fundamental common current: a concern for justice. It will also, I hope, promote a movement toward what many recently have termed “global civil society.”
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Notre Dame University,Lebanon
Secularism and Freethought in the Middle East: The American Model
Despite the state- and self-enforced ban on freethinking in the Middle Eastern world, scholars, philosophers, and lay people alike have fought a mainly underground battle to erect humanistic/secular/atheist barriers against what they perceived as the encroachment of religion on reason, and the interference of the former in the day-to-day affairs of the polis.
This paper traces the influence of American models of freethought, of church and state separation, and of humanism from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, to what has been called by Susan Jacoby the “Golden Age of Freethought,” to the contemporary period, on Middle Eastern intellectuals from the turn of the twentieth century until the present. Figures such as Ameen Rihani, Ibn Warraq, Edward Said, Ziauddin Sardar, As’ad Abu Khalil, and other “dissident” voices in exile, will be put in the context of American secularist movements.
Yet it is with the internet revolution that old and new—as well as private and public—voices have been allowed to be heard on web sites such as the Arab Non-Religious Network, the Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society, the Rational Revolution Net, the Arab Atheists Network, Faith Freedom International, the Secular Islam Summit, Muslims for Secular Democracy, and the numerous concomitant blogs, and to engage, from the relatively safe haven of cyberspace, in an ongoing attempt to secularize the Arab mind.
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Patrick McGreevy, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, pm07@aub.edu.lb
Panelists
Djelal Kadir, Pennsylvania State University, USA, kadir@psu.edu
Stanley Katz, Princeton University, USA, snkatz@princeton.edu
Khouri, Rami, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, rk62@aub.edu.lb
Scott Lucas, Birmingham University, UK, w.s.lucas@bham.ac.uk
Melani McAlister, George Washington University, USA, mmc@gwu.edu