The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

About the MESH blog

When I first saw that Harvard had launched a blog that allowed Middle East experts to debate the issues of the day, I thought, good for them. But after reading it for several months, I am finding that most of the time it's full of the most right-wing drivel and venomous attacks on mainstream Middle East Studies academia you'll see outside of Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes' sites. And on top of it, it is reliably ultra-Zionist and unquestioning of Israel. It also features some reasonable people, mostly middle-of-the-road think tankers from Washington, but mostly it really appears to be the sort of folk who attend JINSA and WINEP conferences. Just check out this piece for instance.

Does anyone know why this is so?