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Scroll.in
3 days ago
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Ramachandra Guha: Trump's attack on US universities are a tragedy for the entire world
Growing up in the India of the 1970s, I had ambivalent feelings towards America. I admired some of their writers (Ernest Hemingway was a particular favourite) and adored the music of Bob Dylan and Mississippi John Hurt. On the other hand, I was just about old enough to remember – and never forget – how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had so energetically supported Pakistan against India (and Bangladesh) in the war of 1971. In 1980 I moved to Calcutta, and my ambivalence turned to outright hostility. Under the influence of my Marxist teachers, I became actively anti-American. I expressed private and public disdain for their brashness, their gross commercialism, their imperialist (mis)adventures in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Left to myself I would never have entered the United States of America. However, in 1985, my wife, Sujata, a recent graduate of the National Institute of Design, got a scholarship to do a Masters at Yale University. I could not stand in her way – the Yale graphic design department was reckoned to be the best in the world – but had to find a way to join her. Fortunately, I had come to know the historian, Uma Dasgupta, who then held a senior position at the United States Educational Foundation for India. With Uma di 's advice and assistance, I applied for a visiting lecturership at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which – to my surprise – actually came through. Sujata left for Yale in August 1985. In November of the same year, this confirmed anti-American found himself outside the US Consulate on Ho Chi Minh Sarani. The counter opened at 8.30 am – I was there at seven, partly out of anxiety, and partly because when I accompanied Sujata for her visa interview in Madras there was a long line outside the American Consulate there, curving right around Mount Road all the way to the Thousand Lights Mosque. But here there was just one person ahead of me in the queue. It struck me that the Tamils were not at all anti-American, and produced engineers in far greater numbers than the Bengalis. Besides, I was due to teach from the spring term, when fewer Indians sought to go West than in the autumn. I reached Yale on January 2, 1986, and spent the next year-and-a-half expanding my mind, teaching as well as learning from my students. In retrospect, I am very glad I went to America when I did. Since I had done a PhD already, I was sure of the ground on which I stood. Meeting young Indian historians who had studied in America, I was immediately struck by how driven by fashion their work was. In the wake of Edward Said's Orientalism, post-colonialism and Cultural Studies were all the rage. In the two disciplines I knew best, history and social anthropology, sustained empirical research was not encouraged any more. Rather than spend months in the field or in the archive, these acolytes of Edward Said preferred to take out texts by dead white males from the nearest library and scrutinise them for their departures from what then passed for 'radical politics'. SHALOM COLUMBIA: The Trump Admin, led by @USEDgov and the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (@TheJusticeDept, @HHSGov, & @USGSA), has canceled ~$400M in federal grants to @Columbia over its failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment. — The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 7, 2025 The Indians of my generation who had come to America to study and teach had largely done so for personal advancement. But it was not so much for their opportunism that I shunned them; it was more that their intellectual concerns were not mine. The scholars I was attracted to worked on one or both of my subject fields – the environment and social protest – albeit in cultures and contexts other than my own. At Yale itself, I had long conversations with the environmental sociologist, William Burch, the environmental historian, William Cronon, and the ecological anthropologist, Timothy Weiskel. A senior Yale scholar whom I spoke with regularly was James Scott, who had just published what in my view remains the best of his many books, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Outside Yale, I made contact with the comparativist, Michael Adas, at Rutgers, the sociologist, Louise Fortmann, at Berkeley, and the doyen of American environmental history, Donald Worster, then teaching at Brandeis. These scholars had worked on Africa, Southeast Asia and North America, using techniques and disciplines different from the ones to which I was accustomed. And, unlike established academics in Calcutta or Delhi, these American professors were refreshingly free of hierarchy. Though much older than myself, they were happy to be called by their first names, and happy to have their ideas critically assessed too. Meeting these scholars, and reading their works, expanded my intellectual horizons and enlarged my intellectual ambitions. Like them, I wanted to publish my PhD as a book, and get on to work on a second book, and then a third. Too many Indians I knew had written a fine first book and then rested on their laurels. On the other hand, Adas, Scott and Worster all had an impressive oeuvre, notable for its depth and its diversity. That was the model I wished to follow when I came back home. One reason Sujata and I enjoyed Yale so much is that we knew that when she graduated, we would go back to our homeland. The other Indians at Yale were all desperate to stay on – which meant that they were anxious to take the right courses to get the right job that might get them a work visa and in time a Green Card. Because we had no such anxieties, we could take full advantage of all that this great university had to offer. And we made some close American friends, with whom we are still in touch. TRUMP: 'Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are and they're getting their a** kicked.' — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 28, 2025 In the four decades since we returned from New Haven, I have been back to the US many times. Most trips have been short – a week or two – but occasionally I have spent longer spells at universities on the East and West Coasts. I have the happiest memories of a semester spent at the University of California at Berkeley, where – at this great public university – the students were as intellectually sharp yet of far more diverse backgrounds than at Yale or Stanford. I was teaching a course on Mahatma Gandhi, and the interest shown in the man and his legacy by my Burmese, Jewish and African-American students convinced me that it would be worth my while to spend the next decade (and more) researching and writing about Gandhi. I was myself entirely educated in India, and have spent the vast bulk of my life living and working in India. Yet, I owe an enormous debt to the scholars and students I have spent time with in America. And to the libraries and archives in that country too, which often contain priceless documents on the history of India unavailable in my homeland. I therefore feel a deep sense of anguish and anger at what Donald Trump is doing to wreck the American university system. Whether conducted out of ideology or personal spite, Trump's campaign is causing enormous damage to a country he leads and claims to love. It is true that in recent decades, the American higher education system has committed some self-goals. Of these, two stand out – the capitulation to identity politics, which has greatly inhibited free discussion and constructive debate on campuses; and the decision to do away with the retirement age, so that scholars in their eighties and nineties are still there to teach (smaller and smaller) classes, maintain large offices, and retain voting rights over future appointments. That said, most of the best universities in the world are still in the US. By educating and influencing scholars from all over the world, they have enormously enhanced the country's soft power. And, perhaps more pertinently, they have nourished an apparently unending stream of scientific creativity, which has played an incalculable role in making America the most economically and technologically advanced country in the world. Before I went to Yale in 1986, I had been for some time a critic of American foreign policy. In the years since, I have retained my strong scepticism of its government's intentions abroad. All through my life, the foreign policy of the US has been characterised by a mixture of arrogance and hypocrisy. Yet its universities are another matter altogether. They are an adornment to humanity, and motivated or ignorant attacks on them should be mourned by thinking people of all nationalities.
Arab News
27-05-2025
- General
- Arab News
Arab media has 'biggest role' in showing Gaza injustices, says Al-Azhar's grand imam
DUBAI: Arab media has the 'biggest role' in showing injustices in Gaza, said the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayeb on Tuesday. 'Thousands of journalists in Gaza are being martyred and more injured and lost their homes and families. This deliberate targeting of journalists aims to silence the truth and to stop the reality of the atrocities in Gaza being broadcast to the world,' he said. 'I call on all media professionals to establish a joint Arab media strategy that will be a shield to protect the truth and our Arab identity,' he said. Al-Tayeb said Arabs and Muslims suffer from media misinformation and disinformation in the West. 'We as Arab and Muslims have suffered from media damage after being accused of terrorism and being unfair to women and linking Islam to these extremist ideologies,' said Al-Tayeb. Al-Tayeb said the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said had demonstrated convincingly how Western cultural production is used to vilify Arabs, Islam and Muslims. He added: 'The destruction happening in Gaza is being criticized by all people of the world but it has been ongoing for 19 months. 'The Arab media has the biggest role in disclosing and showing how the people in Gaza are being treated and keeping the Palestinian cause at the front of everyone's minds.' 'We are witnessing the change of stances in many EU countries for the Palestinian cause and standing up for the atrocities that Gaza is facing. I would like to thank the efforts of the Arab governments in facilitating the delivery and providing of aid to the people in Gaza,' he said. Al-Tayeb said many have refused to speak out about the atrocities in Gaza. 'Those who criticized us and claimed to care about human principles stayed silent to the injustices in Gaza,' he said. Al-Tayeb said Al-Azhar had discussions with the late Pope Francis and the Vatican to create an artificial intelligence project that protects the interests of the public. 'The project was almost finalized, however, the pope passed before we had finished and now we are in communication with the Vatican to hopefully finalize the work,' he said. 'The use of AI should be regulated and practiced with morality and ethical considerations in order to avoid it turning into a monster,' he said.
Gulf Today
26-05-2025
- Gulf Today
Gaza, from prosperity to below the poverty line
For millennia Gaza served as a commercial hub and bridge between Egypt and the Eastern Arab World. Palestinian writer and activist Edward Said wrote about travelling from Cairo, where his family resided, through Gaza and Jerusalem en route to the Lebanese mountains to escape Egypt's sweltering summers. Palestinian friends said their relatives living in Jerusalem would travel to Cairo via Gaza in winter to escape the cold. Israel's war in 1948 put an end to Gaza's strategic geography and commanding role in commerce and travel. For most in the Arab world, the 72 per cent of Palestine Israel occupied as a 'black hole' and the Palestinians who remained were snubbed. The large Gaza district was reduced to the narrow coastal strip. The population of the strip swelled to 80,000 due to the expulsion of Palestinians from the conquered areas of the district and of 200,000 refugees from elsewhere. Although Israel first occupied the strip for six months between October 1956 and March 1957 due to the Anglo-French-Israeli war on Egypt, the territory was administered by Egypt the rest of the time until mid-1967. Gazan farmers grew vegetables and fruit and tended livestock. Foreign visitors lodged at Mrs. Nassar's Marna House. A train linked Gaza to Cairo and the wider world. Flour, rice, fertilizers, clothes, cement, equipment, cars, trucks and belly dancers were imported from Egypt. Gazan educators, engineers, and medics travelled via Cairo to the Gulf for work. Gazan businessmen carried on a lucrative trade with Egypt and students flocked to universities in Cairo and Alexandria. The Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA sheltered, fed, educated, and trained refugees and employed thousands in its administration. After conquering the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in June 1967, Israel rendered the strip dependent, de-developed its economy and employed Gazans to work in mainly menial jobs in Israel at low rates of pay and without social insurance. Gaza's dependence increased after Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers in 2005 but retained air, land and see control of the territory. Hamas seized control in mid-2007 from Fatah, dividing Gaza from Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) enclaves in the West Bank. While the PA boycotted Hamas, Israel waged war on Gaza in 2008-2009, 2014, and 2021, and severely restricted the flow of food, building materials, medical supplies, and commercial goods into Gaza which never recovered from each bout of warfare. Gazans opened a brief window of independence and economic normalcy by digging more than 1,000 tunnels at Rafah beneath the border with Egypt. Through the tunnels Gazans freely imported everything, including cars, livestock, clothing, food, and fuel while Gazans could enter and leave Gaza. A tunnel economy emerged, creating tunnel millionaires. Hamas collected taxes on imports, businesses, and the wealthy. However, tunnel independence ended in 2013 when the Egyptian military closed the tunnels after the 2011 fall of Egypt's 30-year president Hosni Mubarak. Since then, Israel has exerted full control over supplies entering Gaza. Gazan consumption has been kept at a minimal level. Today Gaza has 2.3 million people of whom 1.6 million are of refugee stock. An estimated 81 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the UN. Since the ongoing war began in October 2023, the International Labour organisation reported the economy has shrunk by 85 per cent and unemployment has risen to 80 per cent. In consequence, the ongoing 19-month war and repeated periods of blockade have taken a heavy toll on the population, depriving Gazans of nutritious food and essential medicines and lowering their resistance to starvation and disease. Israel's recent authorisation for 90 trucks to enter Gaza last week is castigated by UN and aid agencies as being totally incapable of meeting Gazans' needs which are enormous and enduring. While aid agencies boost supplies during ceasefires and blockades are not in force, they cannot store enough to meet needs when supplies cease. This year, supplies began to run out at the end of April but there was no relaxation of the blockade. The situation at present is dire, forcing bakeries and communal kitchens to close and hospitals and medical facilities to ration medicines and dressings for wounds. Disrupted aid deliveries of water, food, medicine, and fuel and the lack of imports of fresh fruit and vegetables have left most Gazans in want and malnourished. Like all the other peoples of the coastal region, Gazans are used to the "Mediterranean diet" which includes fresh salads, vegetable stews, vegetables stuffed with meat and rice, yoghurt, milk and cheese. Gazans are not used to relying on uncertain meals of rice and tinned vegetables when they can access these ingredients. They are not only being starved of the food they are used to consume but meals which provide what is needed for balanced diets and nutrition. The UN children's agency UNICEF has reported that 9,000 children have been treated for malnutrition this year while hundreds more could not reach medical centres due to insecurity and displacement. The US-Israeli creation of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, set to become operational at the end of this month, has been rejected by the UN and aid agencies as a solution for Gaza's starving Palestinians. This mechanism will provide supplies for only a portion of the population at the outset before expanding. Not all Gazans will be covered. This mechanism will vet recipients, the six hubs for distribution are to be in the south, forcing Gazans living in the north to be displaced to the south or starve. US mercenaries and Israeli troops – who are seen as enemies by Palestinians – will impose security. The situation is desperate and getting worse. The UN Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last week that at least 244,000 Gazans face Phase 5 classification for 'extreme deprivation of food. Starvation, death, destitution, and critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident." All Gaza is in Phase 4, characterised by "large food consumption gaps and excess mortality," IPC said.
Forbes
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Will Donald Trump Change The Middle East?
PARIS, FRANCE - APRIL 10: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrives at Elysee Palace ... More on April 10, 2018 in Paris, France. Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, is on a three-days official visit to France. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) It is likely that many of the people protesting for Palestine in US universities will have read Edward Said's book 'Orientalism', or at least will have an idea who he was. It is also likely that they will have heard of Donald Trump, whose ire at these protesters has led to an unexpected fiscal crackdown on many prominent US universities including Columbia, where Said used to teach (see our recent note 'University Challenge'). In brief, the tack of Orientalism was to criticise the construction of a superior, Westernised view of the Middle East (the term was coined by navigators in the US Navy), that is then internalised by members of the Middle Eastern elite. At this broad level the theory was attractive, but runs into many practical difficulties such as Said's downplaying the role of women, and the failure of many Middle Eastern countries to develop economically and to nurture the kinds of open society that Said liked to live in. As with many facets of the debate around the Middle East, 'Orientalism' has become a badge of honour for many, and a contentious identifier for others, and there is a risk that many people who hold the 'Orientalist' view, have not updated their outlook for say the rise of Al Qaeda in the broad region and the effective domination in the last decade, of Palestinians by Hamas. I doubt that Donald Trump has read 'Orientalism' (I think his speechwriter might have though) but in the light of the Western perspective of the Middle East, his visit to Saudi Arabia was striking in two respects. First, like any clever politician, he confirmed the view that several countries in the region want to have of themselves – 'this great transformation has not come from Western interventionists … giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called 'nation-builders,' 'neo-cons,' or 'liberal non-profits,' …instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought about by the people of the region themselves' To a degree, Trump's view is not correct. The economies of the UAE and KSA were built on Western know-how (see David Mulford's 'Packing for India' for example), and many of the financial institutions at least have mimicked those in the US and UK. Also, a large number of army officers from the region have been trained in imperialist bastions such as Sandhurst. At the same time, the miraculous growth of these countries can be ascribed to local vision and leadership, on a scale only matched by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore. And, consistent with the 'Orientalism' thesis, many people in the West do not acknowledge the rising institutional role that Abu Dhabi plays in the region, or the extent to which Mohammed bin Saman has become a hero for the youth in his country. In that regard, we might say that the model the Middle Eastern countries have followed is the 'Sinatra Model' ('do it my own way') with a slight American twist. The President's address struck a chord because in the Emirates and the KSA in particular, there is a growing pride and independence in what these countries have achieved economically, and on my last visit there a few months ago, I found that there was little patience on the part of government officials to for example, have EU regulatory standards imposed on joint investment projects. In a note I wrote at the time I flagged how locals had developed their own acronym of the West (W.E.N.A.), surely proof that the ideas in 'Orientalism' are dated. Trump's speech will be a big disappointment for those who believe in institutions and the idea of nation-building, and in that regard will turn on its head the efforts of so many in the State Department and other institutions. Neither does it augur well for current day American institutions. The speech also brings into focus what Prof. Afshin Molavi refers to as the existence of 'two Middle Easts', namely a geopolitical one (sustained by American defence agreements) and an economic one. Chillingly in the context of the annihilation of Gaza, the Trump speech has tilted the momentum towards the economic version, and I feel that many people in Europe vastly underestimate the focus that governments in the region have on the economic prize, as opposed to the humanitarian catastrophe. Various countries in the region from Qatar to Syria, may now find themselves the beneficiaries of Mr Trump's lack of attachment to history and the democratic model, and it is very likely that the region known broadly as the Middle East will be one of the very few in the world to profit from his presidency, and will spearhead a move towards a model of materialistic, technocentric non-democracies, that some of Mr Trump's supporters have in mind for the USA. The emergence of the 'Fourth Pole', a prospective multipolar zone that will become the beneficiary of trade tensions between the 'older' multipolar zones (US, EU, Asia), is still very much on track, but as it develops it will increasingly need institutions, markets, rules and means of binding people to the region, none of which Mr Trump can help with.
CairoScene
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
‘All Eyes on Her!': Reclaiming Egyptian Womanhood in This London Show
'All Eyes on Her!': Reclaiming Egyptian Womanhood in This London Show In 'Orientalism', Edward Said claims that, 'From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the Orient could not do was to represent itself.' Said's words continue to ring true today, where a Western person's imagination of an Egyptian immediately conjures up a pharaoh, or perhaps a vague sense of chaos. The image of an Egyptian woman, more specifically, is either that of exotic eroticism or heartbreaking oppression. The stolen Egyptian artefacts on display in their museums only reinforce these ideals; pharaonic statues and belly dancers' attire and yashmaks. These images are as far as can be from the life of the Egyptian woman. Heba Abd el Gawad, a senior curator of Anthropology at the Horniman Museum and Gardens and Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College of London (UCL), is intent on shifting that narrative. For the past four years, Abd el Gawad has been working on creating a space where the Egyptian woman can come as she is, with all that she is. The result is an exhibition at Horniman Museum and Gardens with a singular demand: 'All Eyes on Her!' 'All Eyes on Her!' is dedicated to resisting the stereotypical orientalist image of Egyptian women by honouring what they refer to as the everyday activism of these women. To put it together, Abd el Gawad used the Egyptian artefacts already existing in the museum (statues, clothes, etc.) as well as new acquisitions from women in Egypt. 'We wanted to show people the living Egypt,' Abd el Gawad tells CairoScene. 'The spirit, stories, street signs, soundscapes and even WhatsApp stickers that make up Egypt today - instead of the ancient frozen culture it is often portrayed as. It's not just an empty landscape with the pyramids as the backdrop.' The exhibition is split into three sections: resist, revolt and reclaim. All three sections are fed with initiatives from Egyptian women performing these respective actions, often unknowingly. In the resistance section, there's a display of eight women consistently showing up for their population, including Gehad Hamdy, the founder of feminist initiative Speak Up, and Namees Amrous, the founder of woman-centred community E7kky. The resist section also features the personal journal of Mai Zayed, the writer and director of 'Ash Ya Captain', a movie chronicling the trials and tribulations of Olympic female powerlifters. 'All Eyes on Her!' is Horniman's first-ever bilingual exhibition. Some installations in the exhibition are even only in Arabic, with no English translation. 'For the first time in my life, I stood in front of an exhibition window and could see myself,' says Abd el Gawad. Everything in 'All Eyes on Her!' centres Egyptian women - including the visual identity and wallpaper, which were the responsibility of Egyptian illustrator Dina Zaitoun, commonly known as Artopathic. 'We used the wallpaper as an opportunity to integrate elements that could widen people's understanding of the Egyptian woman,' Zaitoun tells us. 'In lieu of traditional feminism, with its rallies and petitions, we wanted to portray the normal woman, the woman on the street selling vegetables, or the woman taking her kids to school.' Zaitoun's illustrations gave the exhibition life; she set the stage for every element of the exhibition. She illustrated individual frames for each of the eight influential women in the resist section, based on their work and their character. She illustrated a wall of eyes (all on her, of course) that tell the story of Egyptian heritage, including the eye of Horus, as well as the evil eye, and the tearing eye Egyptian women often wear around their necks. She also illustrated iconic Egyptian women, close-up. 'Someone we featured a lot is Abla Kamel, who is featured at the centre of the display, standing on a balcony,' says Abd el Gawad. 'She's a representation of the average Egyptian woman, in all her vulnerability and equally all her strength.' In the revolt section, Abd el Gawad and Zaitoun spotlighted an Egyptian woman the Western audience typically forgets about: the women of the 1919 revolution. Here, Zaitoun illustrated images of the revolting women of that time, clad in all black, on roller skates, with phrases from the revolution floating above. 'When faced with images of faceless Arab women, the West regards them as oppressed. But we're way more than that image. We're not victims, we're revolutionary,' Abd el Gawad says. The revolt section also features images of photographer and graffiti artist Hanaa El Degham's work, whose graffiti took centre stage in representing women in the 2011 revolution. In 'Orientalism', Edward Said continues to say that 'Our role is to widen the field of discussion, not to set limits in accord with the prevailing authority.' This is the very responsibility that 'All Eyes on Her!' undertakes in the reclaim section of the exhibition. The reclaim section is where the Egyptian artefacts that are already part of the museum's collection reside, with phrases like 'take me back to my country' illustrated above them in Arabic. Another installation features a glittering dress from the 19th century, one typically worn by belly dancers at the time. Instead of catering to the orientalist view of belly dancers as erotic, the dress is shown alongside a profile of Asmaa Halim, a dance movement therapist reclaiming belly dancing as the intergenerational method of empowerment it originated as. 'It's still a priority to return these historical artefacts to their home,' Abd el Gawad emphasises, 'but that doesn't undo the damage done. Creating a conversation around our culture, showing people a new, perhaps shocking perspective on it, is what enables us to reclaim our heritage and our narrative as our own. We're no longer being narrated by foreigners - we're speaking for ourselves.'
