Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Why has Palestine been ignored by American political science

"But the long freeze and endless repetition suggests another possibility. It might be that for many political scientists, strange as it may sound, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just sort of boring."  A lot of topics that are boring (especially in American politics) are studied over and over again, and many courses are offered about it (talk about Rational Choice Theory for example).  But the real reason is actually political: most political science departments are top schools even avoid the Middle East altogether (Stanford and Yale have ignored the Middle East specialty for decades and Yale's political science department only recently hired a Middle East specialist).  Secondly, people are discouraged from studying Palestine: I know of an anthropologist who was actually discouraged by her adviser from doing research in the Palestinian refugee camps. 3) Many professors are afraid of teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict (and I am talking about progressive colleagues) because they fear this will lead to campaigns against them by Zionists.  I know a new hire at a "top" American university who refused to teach about the Arab-Israeli conflict when asked to do so by her department for this very reason.