Review of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

R S HumphreysCMES Report-15/18/19

REVIEW OF THE CENTER FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

Submitted by

R. Stephen Humphreys

Professor of History and Islamic Studies

Co-Director, Center for Middle Eastern Studies

University of California, Santa Barbara

July 8, 2002

INTRODUCTION

The following report is based on a review carried out at the University of Chicago on April 14-17, 2002. Before arriving on campus, the reviewer had the opportunity to examine the (successful) Title VI NRC application submitted by CMES in October 1999. Extensive interviews with Center faculty, students, and staff, along with a good deal of printed material supplied during the campus visit, provided a rich fund of additional information. This was supplemented by discussions with the Center for International Studies and a number of university administrators. The reviewer wishes to thank all concerned for their frank and well-informed contributions to the review process as well as for their generosity with their time and resources.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) is justifiably regarded as one of the leading area-studies centers in the United States. The faculty and students affiliated with CMES are extremely able, and the academic programs which it coordinates are wide-ranging and of high quality. Moreover, the University has demonstrated its commitment to CMES in very substantial ways, and current relations between the Center and campus administrators seem positive and constructive. The various fields of Middle Eastern Studies at Chicago are undergirded by one of the most impressive and imaginatively managed library collections in the world. Finally, a crucial intangible is a harmonious and positive atmosphere among the faculty affiliated with the Center, something not always in evidence in the past. Everyone expresses some concern about one point or another, but overall they feel fortunate to be at Chicago. They regard CMES as well run and serving their needs and interests effectively.

CMES is not a degree-granting agency (except for its terminal MA program); it admits no students and makes no faculty appointments. For that reason, it may seem misleading to use this report to discuss a number of issues which do not fall under the Center's authority. However, CMES is in a sense the agency which makes Middle Eastern Studies "happen" at Chicago. It works to coordinate the Middle East offerings in the University's departments and schools, it provides substantial financial aid to students through the FLAS grants which it administers, it mounts a large program of lectures, symposia, and conferences, and it carries out a major outreach mission to the Chicago community. Most crucially, CMES is the agency through which federal support for Middle Eastern Studies is sought and administered. The capacity of CMES to win this support in an intensely competitive environment is totally dependant on the willingness of the Divisions and Schools to devote their resources to scholarship and teaching on the Middle East. CMES's role in all this is simply to bring the needs of Middle Eastern Studies to the attention of the relevant departments, and to ensure that everyone who might be interested in a new appointment or degree program is in the loop.

Precisely because of the overall strength of CMES and the University, it seems most useful to focus this report on a few specific points of concern. Taken together, these points might constitute an agenda for progress by CMES and University administrators during the coming years. In part the problems of CMES stem from its strengths and successes, in part they are a result of changes now in progress but not yet completed, and in part they reflect long-standing structural and financial issues in the University as a whole. All of them can be remedied (or at least ameliorated) through sustained attention and careful planning.

1. There is a significant “generation gap” between the senior faculty who have staffed and guided CMES over the past two decades, and the far younger, often still untenured, junior faculty who will have to take over its direction as the senior members move toward retirement. Among faculty affiliated with the Center (apart from the most senior cohort) there are very few whose careers have advanced to the point where major governance and administrative roles would be appropriate.
2. As a corollary to the above, there is an imminent staffing crisis in Persian-language instruction, and this should be remedied at the earliest opportunity. There are some issues in Arabic and Turkish as well, but they seem more manageable within the constraints of current resources.
3. Financial support for graduate students remains a severe problem, as it has perpetually been for the University of Chicago. CMES has a certain number of federally funded Foreign Languages Area Studies (FLAS) awards to administer, but it has no permanent endowment or other funds of its own to give out. Since the number of available FLASes falls far short of the number of students in the various languages, and since centrally funded student support is badly overstretched, many of the most promising students find it impossible to accept Chicago offers or feel compelled to drop out.
4. CMES appears to be significantly understaffed, and thus finds it difficult to address all the tasks before it, particularly development and outreach to schools and the community. An addition of 1.5 FTE to the Center staff would go far toward addressing this problem.
5. The graduate student workshop in history and theory is many respects a great success, and has indeed acquired considerable national visibility. However, the students involved in it would like to faculty to take a more active interest, in terms of attending panels, intellectual feedback, and the like.
6. There are a few major gaps in the fields of instruction. Modern Arab history may soon fall vacant, and there is really no one to cover what might be called the “Islamic canon” (Qur’an, hadith, fiqh, theology). Obviously these gaps pertain in the first instance to the relevant departments, especially Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC). However, insofar as CMES can use its good offices and devices such as wedge funding (provided through NRC grants) to help fill these gaps, it should try to do so.

THE GENERATION GAP

One of Chicago’s great strengths is the extraordinary stability of its senior faculty, many of whom have served for a quarter-century and more. Quite apart from their durability, they are effective teachers and scholars of great distinction. In addition, Chicago has been able in recent years to make a number of outstanding junior appointments. However, key members of the senior faculty (Profs. Dankoff, Perry, and Moayyad) are moving toward retirement, and the current director, Prof. Woods, will want to step aside after completing his current term. The junior faculty are really not in a position to take over the burdens of running a major center at this phase of their careers. Their most important contribution for some years to come will lie in teaching and scholarship—which is, after all, what they were hired to do. The University therefore needs to think about making a few mid-career hires, perhaps at beginning or early full-professor rank. Such hires should obviously have high professional visibility as scholars and teachers (Chicago’s usual criteria for faculty appointments will see to that), but in addition they should exhibit some evidence of political and administrative skills. Selected appointments of this kind will be crucial not only for the University’s academic stature, but also for the effective governance of CMES and related programs.

LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

The Center’s continued success in obtaining NRC funding from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) is crucially dependant on the range and quality of language instruction offered by the University. Chicago offers an unusually full array of Middle Eastern languages: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew, and Uzbek. However, there appear to be some significant disparities in the quality of instruction among these languages. Moreover, there is some tension between the text-based traditions of the University of Chicago and the expectations of DOE, which are focused on active proficiency training—the tension between training scholars who can analyze poetry or theological treatises and training “experts” who function easily on the streets of Cairo or Istanbul. This tension will never be fully resolved, by Chicago or anyone else, and overall Chicago seems to be managing it reasonably well. Its continued success in this arena will depend heavily on the kinds of scholars who are chosen to replace Profs. Dankoff and Moayyad when they retire.

Some years ago, a decision was made to move to a professionalized model of language instruction. In this model, elementary and intermediate instruction (the first two years) would be handled by lecturers (supported by graduate teaching assistants) rather than professors. In principle this is a sound idea, since language teaching is both a special and time-consuming craft; it allows foundational skills to be imparted by experts in language pedagogy, while permitting professors to focus on their own areas of scholarly expertise—literature, history, social organization, etc. However, it does require a substantial extra investment by the university.

Mellon challenge grants, requiring a 2:1 commitment by the University, allowed the establishment of endowed lectureships in Arabic and Turkish. These endowments have assured the teaching of three years of Arabic and two of modern Turkish, after which students transition into the advanced literature and subject-matter courses. It would of course be highly desirable to offer a third year of modern Turkish, which is an easy language to speak badly but quite a difficult one to use fluently. Advanced-level Turkish at Chicago focuses on Ottoman, a language not in current use since 1928. Overall, however, both Arabic and Modern Turkish appear to be solidly grounded and effective programs. Modern Hebrew is not supported by any dedicated endowment fund at this time, but it attracts good enrollments and appears to be ably taught at four levels (i.e., to a high level of proficiency). Finally, Uzbek is being offered by a lecturer with a three-year term contract, though there are prospects of renewing that; enrollments are modest, but the importance of the language for Turkic and Central Asian studies should encourage its continuation.

Persian, in contrast, is having its troubles. The effort to meet the Mellon challenge grant fell short here, rather to everyone’s surprise. Even worse, Prof. Perry, who has overseen elementary and intermediate instruction for many years, has now moved to half-time status. All this means that the burden of basic Persian-language instruction has fallen to graduate assistants. Although Persian does not attract the enrollments of Arabic, it is a language of fundamental historical and contemporary importance for Middle Eastern studies. It is therefore a matter of urgency to provide the necessary funding to support a lecturer for the first and second year (ideally the third year as well). Fortunately, the Dean of the Humanities Division has agreed to support such a lecturer for two years from her funds, and this time can be used to renew the search for funding to endow a Persian lectureship.

GRADUATE STUDENT SUPPORT

The University of Chicago has long been noted for its ability to do much with little. This is an admirable trait in many areas, but the limited funding for graduate student support seriously undermines the University’s capacity to attract and retain students of appropriate quality. This area must be addressed as a problem of the highest priority. The situation has admittedly been ameliorated (on a temporary basis at least) by the decision of Congress to increase funding for FLAS fellowships for 2002-03; CMES will be able to award 11 instead of the current 8. Whether this favorable climate will endure is known only to the countless deities of the Oriental Institute. Perhaps more important for the long run is the decision by the central administration to lay down a line item of $90 million for graduate student support in the new capital campaign. These funds do not belong to and are not controlled by CMES, of course, but they will do much to assist CMES in allocating its FLAS funds in the most rational way.

The University of Chicago relies on its faculty to do most of the undergraduate teaching, and this means that the supervised teaching opportunities used (and occasionally abused) by many universities are not available to graduate students here. This policy is deeply ingrained in the University’s academic culture. However, it might be worth asking whether more assistantships (with proper training and supervision) should be awarded at least in language classes. Since a TAship would replace a fellowship, the net cost to the University should not be any greater than it now is. Obviously this is a delicate issue, and the direct role of CMES in it is uncertain, but it should be placed on the table.

A number of issues were raised during my visit about the procedures and criteria for the allocation of fellowships. However, these issues could not be followed up in detail, so they are mentioned here simply for reference and discussion:

1. Is there adequate coordination between NELC and CMES in the awarding of FLAS and campus-wide fellowships?
2. Is there a tendency in NELC to emphasize the ancient as opposed to the “modern” fields when fellowship candidates are ranked and nominated? If so, does this represent a problem which needs to be addressed?
3. Is there a tendency to favor students for FLAS or other awards who are quick language-learners over those whose strengths are analytic and conceptual?

CMES STAFFING LEVELS

Currently CMES has a highly competent but very small staff. Apart from the Assistant Director (Rusty Rook), the only full-time staff person is Dina Rabadi, who serves as Project Assistant. In addition, Hosein Rashied contributes (pro forma) 15 hours per week as Outreach Coordinator, and Irving Birkner about 10 hours in support. Both the Assistant Director and the Director believe that the Center needs another 1.5 staff positions, and this number seems reasonable. Ms. Rabadi provides clerical support for all the operations of the office (including website development), and also serves as receptionist and traffic manager. Outreach to the public schools is a formal mandate laid down by the Department of Education, and as the EELIAS reports from this spring demonstrate, the outreach demands during the past year have been extraordinary. Mr. Rashied has by all reports done a superb job in preparing materials and directing the energies of faculty and graduate students. However, his availability has been the result of a happy accident more than long-term staffing. He has worked far more than his nominal 15 hours per week this year, and he plans to return to full-time graduate study in the near future. Mr. Birkner also works with the Center for International Studies and the Center for South Asian Studies; in this way he is a very valuable point of contact between these three groups. Finally, Mr. Rook has been more than fully engaged in trying to prepare grant proposals (especially the crucial NRC applications), manage the office, supervise the budget, and oversee the progress of the twelve students in CMES's MA program. He has only done this by working exceptionally long hours.

The exact distribution of time and tasks among an expanded staff is of course a matter for CIS and CMES. Prof. Woods recommends that Mr. Rashied's job as Outreach Coordinator be expanded to a full-time position, that Ms. Rabadi be upgraded to Administrative Assistant, and that a half-time clerical appointment be made to assist her. That would free Mr. Rook to spend more time on the MA program and to focus on grants and contracts which would benefit the Center greatly in the long run. Staffing is traditionally one of the areas where universities try to economize, to be sure, but excessive frugality inevitably winds up imposing heavy costs in terms of inefficiency, missed opportunities, and poorly allocated faculty time.

THE HISTORY AND THEORY WORKSHOP

Here little needs to be added to the statement at the beginning of this report. Students welcome the opportunity to design and run and workshop in which they can define and pursue their own interests, and in which they can test their work in a critical but supportive peer setting. The History and Theory Workshop is well-known among Middle East graduate students across the country, and there is always considerable interest in coming to participate in the spring conference. However, graduate students would like the faculty take a more active role in providing critiques of papers while they are being developed and in attending meetings of the workshop. It is a matter of knowing that your work outside the classroom is valued as an integral part of your intellectual and scholarly development.

PROGRAMMATIC NEEDS

Here too brevity seems appropriate, since these decisions belong first and foremost not to CMES but to the relevant departments and schools. However, there was a widespread feeling among the affiliated faculty that Chicago lacked a scholar who could teach, at a research level, the traditional Islamic canon--Qur'anic studies, Prophetic tradition, jurisprudence, theology, etc. This is the arena in which formal Islam was articulated, and even in our populist age, these traditional formulations retain enormous prestige and influence. They are, in a sense, the mechanism through which Islam has linked together a host of local customs and usages and maintained a remarkable sense of coherence and common identity over many continents and centuries. A second area of concern is a possible gap in modern Arab history; the importance of this field hardly needs to be emphasized. In general, the Middle East program at Chicago is diverse and wide-ranging. In contrast to many other programs, it gives extensive coverage to Iranian and Ottoman and modern Turkish studies. In a program of this kind, it is especially important not to permit weaknesses and gaps to creep in through inattention.