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Martin Kramer
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Martin Seth Kramer (b. 1954, Washington, DC) is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Shalem Center, and Harvard University's Olin Institute. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.
er began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis.
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Encyclopedia
Martin Seth Kramer (b. 1954, Washington, DC) is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Shalem Center, and Harvard University's Olin Institute. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.
Education
Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. in Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History M.A. from Columbia University.
- Tel Aviv University, 1971-73 - Middle Eastern Studies
- B.A. Princeton University, 1975 (summa cum laude) - Near Eastern Studies
- M.A. Columbia University, 1976 - History
- M.A. Princeton University, 1978 - Near Eastern Studies
- Ph.D. Princeton University, 1982 - Near Eastern Studies
Career
During a 25-year career at Tel Aviv University, Martin Kramer directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies; taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; and served twice as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. He is currently the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, and Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard University.
He is a senior and past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly. Primarily a scholar of twentieth century Islamist intellectual and political history, Kramer has also published columns in the National Review magazine and on the websites of the History News Network, martinkramer.org and bitterlemons.org. (Front Page Magazine publishes selected pieces of Kramer's on its website)
Martin Kramer is a Senior Fellow at the at the Shalem Center Institute for International and Middle East Studies.
Political involvement
Martin Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East. However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.
He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign.
Critique of Middle Eastern Studies
Ivory Towers on Sand
In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (). The work criticizes Middle Eastern Studies in the United States for what Kramer argues is a systematic left-wing bias backed with poor scholarship.
Zachary Lockman, Professor of modern Middle East history at New York University, has criticized what he called Kramer's "selective indictment" of Middle East studies.. Kramer in turn accused Lockman of being supportive of academic boycotts for political purposes.
Joel Beinin, professor and former president of Middle East Studies Association of North America, has also criticized Kramer..
Campus Watch
Kramer has supported Campus Watch, an organization which criticizes what it views as flawed and biased scholarship on the Middle East in the United States.
In early 2006, Kramer was criticised in a working paper entitled The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who accused him of a "transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars" in relation to his involvement in Campus Watch.
They subsequently expressed their regret for erroneously attributing a role to Kramer in founding Campus Watch.
HR 3077
Kramer has promoted HR 3077, a bill in the United States House of Representatives designed to reform Middle East Studies in the US. Saree Makdisi argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the bill "poses a profound threat to academic freedom".
"Columbia Unbecoming"
Kramer supported Columbia University students who, in 2005, in a film entitled "Columbia Unbecoming" alleged that they had been intimidated by anti-Israel faculty in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department.
Joseph Massad, Associate Professor at Columbia University, has accused Kramer of attacking him and other professors of Middle East Studies. Massad wrote, "Kramer, Pipes, and co. are angry that the academy still allows democratic procedure in the expression of political views and has an institutionalized meritocratic system of judgment…to evaluate its members. Their goal is to destroy any semblance of either in favour of subjecting democracy and academic life to an incendiary jingoism and to the exigencies of the national security state with the express aim of imploding freedom. Their larger success, however, has been in discrediting themselves and in reminding all of us that we should never take the freedoms that we have for granted, as the likes of Kramer and Pipes are working to take them away."
Bibliography
Books
- Political Islam (1980) ISBN 0-8039-1435-0
- Islam Assembled (1985) ISBN 0-231-05994-9
- Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (1987) ISBN 0-8133-0453-9
- Hezbollah's Vision of the West (1989) ISBN 0-944029-01-9
- Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East) (1991) ISBN 0-8156-2548-0
- Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (1996) ISBN 1-56000-272-7
- The Islamism Debate (1997) ISBN 965-224-024-9
- The Jewish Discovery of Islam (1999) ISBN 965-224-040-0
- Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) ISBN 0-944029-49-3,
Journal Papers
- Azure magazine, Autumn 2006.
- , Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2004.
- , Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2003.
- , Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003.
Martin Kramer on American scholars of the Middle East
Martin Kramer on Key Middle Eastern Figures
- - Article about Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Fadlallah (Oracle of Hezbollah)
Martin Kramer on Adelson Institue for Strategic Studies
- December 2008.
- January 2009.
External links
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