| Biographical Sketch
Although my parents introduced my sister and me to traveling
outside the US when I was still in elementary school, until
college, my concern with things Middle Eastern was limited to
what I would describe as a general Protestant interest in Bible
stories.
I headed to Georgetown University in the fall of 1974 with a
real love for languages and a desire to double-major in French
and Russian. Shortly after my arrival, however, I was told that
the pedagogic style used in the first year Russian class was
akin to that of an Eastern bloc army boot camp, an approach
which I was sure would not tap into my best academic abilities.
So, it was a confused freshman who entered the office of her
academic advisor, Pierre Maubrey, the director of the French
program, in search of guidance regarding which second language
to study. Coming from Cincinnati, a heavily German city, I
thought perhaps German would be a wise choice, until he asked me
if I was planning to spend the rest of my life there. I had to
admit to not having thought that through, and in the
conversation that followed, this native of Dijon who had served
with the French army in North Africa made a case to me for
Arabic. “Don’t ever forget your English,” he admonished me, “but
if you can become good at Arabic, it will open many doors for
you.”
So, I took his advice, and with a handful of other French
majors, signed up for first year Arabic with Wallace Erwin. At
the time, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself
into. No idea of the stark difference between fusha and
‘ammiyyah, no idea of the vastly diverging dialects, and no idea
that this was the beginning of what is now approaching a
thirty-year love affair with this awe-inspiring language.
I was privileged to receive a fellowship to study Arabic in
Cairo on CASA, that marvelous program run for so many years by
Ernest McCarus, in the summer of 1977 and then again for a full
year, 1978-79. Beyond their impact on my Arabic, these
experiences in Egypt, my first trips to the region, engendered
in me a deep interest in and willingness to open up to
challenges of other parts of the Middle East. The 1978-79 year
also introduced me to a number of terrific graduate students,
several of whom were instrumental in teaching me to think
differently about the region and about the nature of US
involvement in it. This constituted the beginning of my
political awakening, my first attempts to come to terms with the
prejudices and misconceptions my mid-west American upbringing
had implanted in me regarding the Arab world.
Subsequent trips to the region as part of my master’s and
Ph.D. program led me from an interest in questions of economic
and political development – my initial idea for a Ph.D. thesis
had been to write on some aspect of the reconstruction in the
Suez Canal area – to an interest in Palestinian communities in
the Middle East and what became my second passion, inter-Arab
politics. I owe J.C. Hurewitz, my thesis advisor at Columbia, a
debt of gratitude for pushing me to take on a swath of
Palestinian politics far broader than my initial interest in the
Egypt-based Palestinian Students Union. As others before me have
noted in their presidential biographies, working on Palestinians
was long a recipe for post-graduate unemployment. However, I was
fortunate to land safely, initially at the Institute for
Palestine Studies, where I had the great privilege of working
for more than four years with Walid Khalidi, Constantine Zurayk,
and at times Edward Said (who had also sat on my dissertation
committee).
In the fall of 1988, I interviewed at and was hired by the
School of International Relations at the University of Southern
California. The absence of a Middle East center at USC initially
appeared to me as a drawback. However, with people who
specialized in regions and theoretical issues far different from
those I studied, my department’s political and intellectual
pluralism has certainly enriched my work. It has also been a
supportive environment for my academic and political activities.
I am particularly grateful to the USC College and university
administration for standing their ground against attempts to put
an end to my anti-war activism during my sabbatical in spring
2003.
I could not have known sitting in that Georgetown French
department office in fall 1974 what a momentous decision
choosing to study Arabic would be for me. As others in this
field have learned, engaging in Middle Eastern studies in the
United States means often finding one’s self at best frustrated,
and at worst furious, with the political and intellectual
climate in which we work. Given the current situation in the
region, especially, but far from exclusively, in Iraq and
Palestine/Israel, and the US’s role in these conflicts, I cannot
remember when I have been more continuously outraged. Yet, I
also cannot imagine having chosen another career path, and I am
grateful to all those, both here in the US and in the Middle
East, who have guided me along the way. It has rarely been easy,
but given the chance to do it all over again, I would not change
a thing.
This page was last updated on
04/06/2006. |
