"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action." —Albert Einstein

The Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) is committed to defending academic freedom on the American campus. As Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in 1957, a free society depends on free universities. Our members view with grave concern recent efforts by some legislators, interest groups, partisan think tanks, media, and individuals to interfere in university procedures with the object of influencing who teaches and what is taught.

MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) has long been a champion for Middle East studies scholars world-wide. In 2005, alarmed by threats to the free-flow of information and scholarship on the Middle East, CAF inaugurated a new-sub committee devoted exclusively to the situation of scholars and teachers located in North America (CAF-NA). The Academic Freedom Fund was established to underwrite CAF-NA's activities that alert both MESA members and the general public to these threats. Both groups have a stake in countering efforts to undermine the independence of universities and subordinate freedom of inquiry to the agendas of partisan or parochial politics. [read more]

Threats to academic inquiry and academic independence come in various forms. One form involves threats to, or attacks on, the financial structures supporting Middle East studies. This includes threats to withhold or condition Federal funding for university programs in area studies and student language learning (Title VI of the Higher Education Act) on political grounds [read more]; efforts to intimidate private foundation funding sources [read more] and threats by individuals to withhold future donations to universities [read more]. Another form involves campaigns to harass individual academics and to discredit their scholarship [read more] because of their actual or alleged political views. This has included accusations of bias in the classroom or intimidation of students [read more], attacks on scholars for statements they made as private individuals outside the classroom [read more], and just plain smear tactics. Young and untenured scholars are especially vulnerable targets [read more read more]. These attacks are generally accompanied by accusations or insinuations that scholars and academic programs are anti-American, unpatriotic, disloyal, anti-Semitic, or are excessively sympathetic toward Arabs or Muslims. By advancing such allegations, outside individuals and organizations have attempted to insert themselves into university governance, interfere with university policies and procedures, undermine university traditions of open debate, and dictate what goes on in classrooms. Ironically, these efforts threaten to undermine the very traditions of university autonomy, scholarly peer review and academic freedom that have made the US system of higher education the envy of the world and the backbone of our democratic system.

For an extensive reading list on this topic, please go here.

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