Bowdoin Middle East studies dismal

Only Charcoal to Defend: Time to trade in your iPod for a boombox

iPod advertisements would be more accurate if they depicted a solitary figure walking around, hands in pockets and head down.
Throughout the day I see a multitude of students ambling across campus with earphones dangling out of their ears. Like them, music accompanies me to class in the morning. I can control the soundtrack of the moment, and feel rejuvenated by the rhythm and verse. Music is genuinely what keeps me going on particularly difficult days. But this bliss comes at a loss.
Listening to an iPod with headphones disconnects us from our external reality by replacing natural auditory inputs with electronic mesmerizing musical ones. We enter our own world—and it sounds great—but we do it by exiting another one. Wearing headphones around campus discourages other people from talking to you and discourages you from facing them.

Only Charcoal to Defend: Make the global local: community engagement makes a difference

My mind is still readjusting to Bowdoin. Soon the thoughts and concerns of summer will no longer feel so relevant, and before I am aware of it, I will be consumed with school life. I will have to solidify a major and satisfy requirements.
Events happening in faraway places will lose their immediacy when the leaves begin to change and when the lampposts glint like golden stars while I walk across campus late at night. But, if I lift my eyes from the microscope of one week to the next, what I see distracts me.
The world feels like it is changing dramatically. Civil wars, coup d’états, and social unrest permeate the Middle East; from the Occupy Movement to demonstrations against genetically modified food, people around the world are making their anger and dissatisfaction with current conditions apparent.

Only Charcoal to Defend

Bowdoin Middle East studies dismal

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

May 2, 2013

In April 2007, the Orient’s editorial board called upon Bowdoin to “find and hire professors who will be able to give students the instruction in Middle Eastern culture and language that they both want and need.” At the time, only one Bowdoin professor, Shelley Deane, specialized in the Middle East.

The following year, a group of students dissatisfied with the lack of Arabic instruction organized informal Arabic classes taught by fellow student Jamil Wyne ’08.

In 2008, the College responded to the growing demand for Middle Eastern studies classes by hiring Russell Hopley as a lecturer in Arabic and Robert Morrison as a religion professor. According to Professor of Religion Jorunn Buckley, hiring Morrison finally satisfied the religion department’s request for specialists in Islam and Judaism that stretched back two decades.
But despite the progress, Bowdoin continues to suffer from a deficiency of classes focusing on the Middle East.

Morrison and Hopley are the only professors currently at Bowdoin who specialize in the Middle East. Susan Tananbaum occasionally teaches a class on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but her specialties are European and Jewish history.

In terms of offering classes on the Middle East, Bowdoin remains behind many liberal arts colleges. Middlebury offers a major in both Arabic and Middle Eastern studies. Next semester, Williams is offering six classes on Middle Eastern culture and history to complement its stellar Arabic program. Swarthmore offers classes on both Arabic and Islamic studies. Meanwhile, Bowdoin’s syllabus next year contains three classes focusing on the Middle East: Middle Eastern Ensemble, Elementary and Intermediate Arabic.

Enrollment in introductory Arabic classes remains high every semester, but the Arabic “department” is composed of Hopley. He is left to struggle with how to teach the growing number of Arabic students, by himself. Arabic is also not offered as a minor, even though the 12 credits of Arabic many students will have by the time they graduate would satisfy almost any major at Bowdoin.

The lack of classes on the Middle East does not reflect a lack of interest on the part of students.
This year marked the chartering of J-Street U and Students for Justice in Palestine, two new student organizations addressing the Israeli occupation of Palestine in different ways.

The Shannon Room was packed in February when J-Street U brought Uri Zaki, the director of Israeli human rights organization B’tselem USA, to campus. In April, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Slam Poets Society invited Palestinian slam poet Remi Kanazi to Ladd House for an evening of spoken word. The level of snapping, clapping and knee-slapping at Kanazi’s performance was testament to the popularity of the show. Before the end of the year J-Street U will host the general director from the Palestinian mission in Washington D.C. and Students for Justice in Palestine will screen the Oscar nominated Palestinian documentary, “5 Broken Cameras.”

Ignoring the Middle East—a region significant in current events and the intellectual and historical development of the world—is academically reckless.

Arabic is the sixth most spoken language in the world, according to the Encyclopaedia Britanica, offering instruction in the history, culture and language of the region is already indispensible for any competitive college.

It is clear that students are insisting that the Middle East have a greater place in College discourse. Like Jamil Wyne’s informal Arabic classes five years ago, Bowdoin students are once again taking the initiative to fill the gap in class selection. But the responsibility for satisfying the academic demands of the student body ultimately falls on the College.

The Orient’s call to find and hire professors who will be able to give students the instruction in Middle Eastern culture and language is just as relevant today as it was in 2007.

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