Jihad is synergies

For the year I lived in Beirut, I was in the employ of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Abdulaziz al Saud, one of the many members of the Saudi royal family who, while enjoying no official political power, have amassed enormous fortunes through their connections to the Ibn Saud dynasty. Prince Alwaleed is presently the nineteenth richest person in the world, and since 2002, he was put his wealth to work, endowing centers of higher learning at elite academic institutions in the US, Britain, and the Middle East. He has sponsored Islamic Studies centers at Oxford, Harvard, and Georgetown; in the Middle East, he has funded the development of Centers for American Studies at the American University of Cairo and the American University of Beirut.

I was not, of course, actually part of the Prince's retinue, but he was somebody that I spent a certain amount of time thinking about, if only because I was continually reevaluating my purpose and my presence in the Middle East, all too acutely aware of the history of American Studies as an instrument of American soft power. Although the discipline of American Studies has generally skewed left, internationally, it's most important benefactor has been the US Department of State; during the Cold War, international American Studies programs were in the vanguard of the struggle against Soviet Communism, and since the beginning of the war on terror, they have taken on new relevance as outposts of American empire.

Given the history of this very nebulous relationship to power, I spent a great deal of time pondering the institutional and political relationships that overdetermined whatever we were trying to do at the Center for American Studies and Research. For the most part, at AUB, our chair had managed to fend off the almost perpetual advances of the American Embassy in Lebanon, always with the argument that the legitimacy of the center as an institution of academic inquiry hinged upon its independence--or, at least, the perception thereof. And even when Embassy people showed up at events, or obnoxiously pro-American speakers managed to slip through the screening process and into our speaker series, they were easy to spot. Their interests were obvious. What was more difficult to divine, however, was the Prince, and just what interest he had in our endeavors.

Perhaps he had no agenda; perhaps he just liked having his name on our stationery. Somehow I doubt his support was that disinterested or unconditional. I could never quite shake the notion that his interest in CASAR was--in some roundabout way--largely commercial. Not, of course, that we were going to be making him any money anytime soon, but that we were, in our own small way, working to ensure congenial commercial relationships between the US and the Arab world. In the US, Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism have, on occasion, become barriers to the valorization of capital, just as anti-Americanism in the Arab world has occasionally manifested itself in calls for Arab regimes to undermine the US economy by dumping the dollars they hold in their currency reserves on the international market. Although the Prince would seem to have little reason to worry, a change in American policy toward the Saudi regime--or a change in Saudi policy toward the US--could be disastrous to his larger financial interests.

I just play at macroeconomics, so perhaps I'm taking this a bit far; these are, however, just a few of the thoughts I've been having since attending the Abd el-Kader Education Program forum in Elkader, Iowa, last week. On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to spend the better part of the day with a delegation of American officials, entrepreneurs, and consultants escorting Abdallah Baali, the Algerian ambassador to the US, on a tour of Elkader, before settling down to a dinner with the ambassador (at an Irish pub--ponder that) and the forum itself. The forum was an engaging mix of entrepreneurs and academics come to pay honor to Abd al-Qader, and to celebrate the achievement of those students from Elkader's high school who participated in the local Abd al-Kader Essay Contest. The program opened with a bluegrass jazz band and closed with the local community theater troupe staging a brief scene from their upcoming production. They chose the song "Friendship" from the musical "Anything Goes."

There's a lot to say, there's a lot that will be said, but the question that sticks with me, the question that I spent most of the day considering last Wednesday, was the same question that I spent my time pondering in Beirut. Why? What is the reason for this relationship? What are people hoping to get out of it? When the crackers are outlawing Ethnic Studies in Arizona and blowing up mosques in Florida, it's difficult to find fault in a program that seeks to promote "relationships and knowledge" between the US and the Arab world. At the same time, I'm not convinced that the ostensibly "value-neutral" entrepreneurialism at the heart of the Abd el-Kader Education Project gets us any closer to an actual engagement with the Arab world. If anything, it might help to improve the Arab world's brand identity. When it comes to foreign policy, however, that is not a worthy goal. As much as I respect the people involved in the Abd el-Kader Education Project--and I do believe in their sincerity--I'm not yet a convert.