Image: Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, from the Internet. By Duan Jiuzhou
Area Studies is mainly aimed at national-level areas. While paying attention to the commonality of different regions, it focuses on the characteristics of the individual region and compares it with other regions to extensively study its politics, economy, industry, legal system, society, culture and folklore. It is generally believed that the United States is the birthplace of area studies. After the Second World War, the relationship between the United States and the world was strengthened. However, due to the influence of Monroeism, US had a limited understanding of the third world outside of Central and South Americas. Because it needed a lot of knowledge and information to advance its global strategy, it invested heavily in training experts on Asian and African issues. Since the situations in these regions couldn’t be analyzed with simple Western knowledge, in addition to the old geography, economics, law, political science and history, interdisciplinary analytical methodologies, including anthropology and ethnology, were also commonly used.
The area studies at Harvard University is also a product of US’ international strategy after World War II. At that time, the sponsors including the US government, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Foundation heavily invested in area studies. Among them, Rockefeller Foundation alone injected US$8 million into leading US universities to support area studies from 1946 to 1952. As the second group of universities to receive funding, Harvard University established its area studies centers for Russia, East Asia and the Middle East in the mid-1950s. Many major universities in US are known for top-notch expertise in specific area studies, for example, Princeton University for Near East Studies, Yale University for African Studies, University of Texas at Austin for Latin American Studies and Cornell University for Southeast Asian Studies.As the leading comprehensive university in US and after six decades of development, Harvard University has shown a global landscape in area studies and is particularly good at East Asian and Middle Eastern studies.
As a doctoral student of area studies at Tsinghua University, I was fortunate to come to Harvard University for one-year study. Through lectures, trips, discussions and inquiries on the Harvard campus, I subconsciously began to observe the details of Harvard’s area studies, hoping to briefly review what I know from three dimensions of institutions, courses and talents.
Institutions
A post of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, from the Internet. The best way to understand the state of discipline development in a country is to review the history of its key academic institutions. The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University is the leader of Chinese studies in the United States. Not long after I arrived at Harvard, I visited the Fairbank Center, stumbled upon the “50 Years History of the Fairbank Center at Harvard University” at the Central Library and heaped valuable insights.
The Fairbank Center started with Harvard’s China Economic and Political Research Project launched in 1955. Prof. John K. Fairbank was the founder and promoter of the Center. As a leading figure in the study of modern Chinese history, Fairbank almost single-handedly founded the Chinese Studies discipline in US. Enthusiastic about cultivating young talents, he helped them to find faculty positions and publish works, which resulted in the flourishing prosperity of the Chinese studies community in the United States.
Given the fierce competition among academic institutions in US, the Fairbank Center’s position in the field of Chinese studies once lagged behind other institutions, including the Far East Research Center of the University of Washington. After Fairbank’s retirement 1977, the past directors of the Center include Ezra Feivel Vogel, Elizabeth J. Perryi and other world-class scholars, whose development strategies have contributed a lot to the Center’s continued position as an key academic temple. Building academic libraries, publishing research collections, training professionals in the field, holding academic seminars, maintaining academic connections (often known as “local networks”) and developing fundraising friendly groups are all successful experiences of the Fairbank Center. But as an academic institution of Harvard University with a typical liberalism, the Fairbank Center has kept certain independences from public relations and policy advices of the government.
Noticeably, the “Friends of the Fairbank Center” under the Institution includes individuals and companies that care about Chinese studies around the world. Their donations are an indispensable driving force for the survival and development of the Fairbank Center.Currently, the Fairbank Center has its own endowment fund with the total assets of up to US$17 million.Its annual profits are sufficient to cover its operating costs, which makes many academic institutions envy.
Courses
The courses involving Middle East and Islam at Harvard University, provided by author. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the topics of area studies are too complex and difficult to classify.The courses at Harvard University are often closely related to the research interests of the instructors, requiring students to read a lot of literature and participate in intensive discussions in the classroom.We may be able to appreciate the richness of area studies topics in the United States by observing Harvard’s area studies courses.
It is said that in every Harvard stakeholder’s life, there will be such a moment when he or she suddenly realizes the charm of Harvard. I think that the moment for many people is when they receive a thousands-page list of courses and choose their first course at Harvard. In the past month, I have experienced the processes of course selection and attendance since the beginning of the study at Harvard and have a deep feeling about the above statement.
Take the Middle East studies as an example. This category isn’t of enormous size in Harvard’s overall curriculum. Even so, I was still amazed by the diversity of the curriculum when I started “course shopping”. I just searched for the keywords of “Islam” and “Middle East”, and the course selection website showed more than 70 courses respectively. Excluding the overlapping parts, the total number of courses related to Middle East and Islam at Harvard should exceed 100. In 2013, Harvard’s new undergraduate general education program was formally launched, which involvs many courses related to Middle East and Islam:
Monuments in Islamic Architecture
Understanding Islam and Contemporary Muslim Society
From the Hebrew Bible to Judaism, from the Old Testament to Christianity
Religion, Literature and Art in Muslim Culture
Gender, Islam and Countries in the Middle East and North Africa Regions
An Anthropological Investigation in the Arabian Peninsula
Religion and Politics in the Modern Middle East
Music, Debates and Islam
Harvard’s graduate courses related to Middle East and Islam are more abundant than undergraduate general education courses, and are mainly distributed in the departments of seminary, government, Near East language and civilization, history, economics and anthropology and Kennedy College. Although most of these courses are interdisciplinary in nature, they can be roughly divided into three categories, namely politics, religion and history.
Political courses are usually offered by faculty from the Department of Government and Kennedy College, which usually examine the main topics involved in contemporary Middle Eastern politics from the perspective of comparative politics, such as “Modern State construction”, “Legacy of Western Colonial Empires”, “Islam and Politics” “, “Monarchy and Authoritarianism”, “Politics and Economy”, “War and Conflicts” and “The Transition of Democratization in the Middle East”.
Harvard University has centuries of solid legacy in humanities and Religion began when Harvard was founded. Therefore, religion courses have always been its “signature”. The postgraduate courses related to religions in the Middle East are mainly offered by faculty from the Seminary and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. They mainly involve major Middle Eastern religions such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The topics are extremely diverse, including “Religious Dialogue”, “Gender and Religion”, “Religious Modernity”, “Religious Law”, “Guide to Scriptures and Classics”, “Religious Literature”, “Religious Globalization” and “Religious Immigrant Groups”.
Harvard’s history courses for Middle East and Islamic studies are highly specialized, mainly focuses on “regional dynastic history” and “disciplinary history”, with few general history courses. The courses of “regional dynastic history” are often taught by history experts from a certain region or country in the Department of History. They usually summarize the regional history of a specific historical stage from an interdisciplinary perspective, such as “The State and Society of the Ottoman Empire (1550-1920)” and “The Middle East from 1750 to 1914”.
Instead, the course of “disciplinary history” are distributed in various faculties, including the Department of History. The instructors often review some specific aspects of Middle Eastern history from their professional backgrounds, such as “Modern Turkish History in Literary Works” and “The Body, Sex and Medicine of the Middle East in the Middle Ages”, “Knowledge Community: Science and Religion in the Middle East in the Middle Ages” and “Economic Divide in the Middle East and Europe from the Historical Perspective”.
Talents
Inside the Fairbank Center Library, provided by author. If a worker wants to do his job well, he must first sharpen his tools. Foreign language are the “tools” area studies researchers to obtain first-hand research materials.The American academic training system pays special attention to cultivating the foreign language proficiency of doctoral students in area studies. Usually in US, the mid-term assessment of doctoral students in Middle Eastern Studies will involve oral and written examinations in two Middle Eastern languages and one Western academic language. Most researchers will be proficient in at least one Middle Eastern language during their doctoral study according to their research needs, while people who are proficient in multiple languages abound.
Unlike China’s practice to set up individual majors of foreign languages, Harvard’s language courses are designed to serve research and provide electives for students with research needs. Optional languages for Middle East and Islamic studies include Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian and Urdu. Take the Arabic language that I am familiar with as an example. Generally, beginners will choose “Elementary Arabic” and “Intermediate Arabic” to consolidate their grammar and vocabulary foundation. Then they can choose different types of advanced Arabic courses according to their needs and interests, including “Dialects” (Egypt, Sudan and Lebanon dialects), “Classical Arabic” (Medieval and before), “Modern Arabic” (from modern to contemporary) and “Professional Reading” (history, literature, law and religious literature in Arabic).
Another key feature of area studies in US is that immigrants and their descendants from the target countries have played an important role in the rise and development of area studies. Innate proficiency in regional languages, complex local networks and “ownership” research perspective have all become their huge advantages in studying regional issues. With its free academic atmosphere and abundant academic resources, Harvard has attracted a large number of outstanding scholars to study and teach here. Masters of Middle East and Islamic studies gather at Harvard and at least half of them are from the Middle East or Muslim countries.
For example, Prof. M is Professor of Public Policy at Kennedy College, who is an American citizen and the second generation of Egyptian immigrants. Although it is difficult for minorities in the United States to be admitted to the Ivy League, he not only finished his study in the Ivy League for his bachelor, masters and PhD degrees, but also stayed in the Ivy League to teach after graduation. Integrating wisdom with diligence. He has published two political science books during his PhD study. He has a humble origin. His father came from the eastern countryside of the Nile Delta in Egypt. When he was 9, he was sent to school in the provincial city of Zagazig, 15 kilometers away from home. The education he received there became the starting point for his later immigration to the United States. His hard-working father passed away shortly after Prof. M went to graduate school. He would never have thought that his “American” son would go to Zagazig during his PhD study for a whole year to explore local Islamist political parties and elections.
After talking about this, Prof. M smiled self-deprecatingly, “This may be a kind of subconscious. It is the call of my dead father.” An excellent doctoral student with all degrees from a prestigious Ivy League university, who could have sat on the ivory tower and talked about the world’s major events, flight to the capital of Egypt to do fieldwork. It may be the instinct of being descended from the Middle East. Back to the city where his father grew up, speaking a familiar language at home, surrounded by close friends, the research findings produced in this environment must be unique if not top-notch. The effort paid off. In 2009, Prof. M’s doctoral dissertation was awarded the Best Thesis Award in the category of “Religion and Politics” by the American Political Association.
Prof. F is a visiting professor in the Department of History. He was born in an upper class family in Egypt. His father was a famous Egyptian judge in the middle and late 20th century. The professor was an excellent researcher of Middle East economic history in his early years and served as Professor of History at New York University in the late 1990s. In the early 21st century, Egypt faced internal and external challenges. However, under Mubarak’s rule, at least the domestic situation was stable and the economy developed steadily. After 11 years of teaching in the United States, Prof. F felt that he should “return to the roots of the fallen leaves” and serve his motherland. That was in September 2010, four months before the revolution at Tahrir Square.
The outbreak of the “Arab Spring” in early 2011 caught him off guard, who planned to return to his homeland and concentrate on scientific research. However, he was forced to be involved in a series of historical events. Because of his reputation in historical research, he was appointed by the “Supreme Military Council” that took over the power after the revolution as the head of the documentation team to assist the Constitution Drafting Committee. In the process of constitution-making, the second article of the Egyptian Constitution, “Islamic law is the main basis for Egyptian legislation”, became the focus of constant disputes between secular liberal parties and Islamist parties. However, in the process of communicating with all parties, Prof. F found that politicians did not care about the regulations of “Islamic Law” and how it was implemented in history. They only used the abolition of nouns as position labels to blame each other. Extremely disappointed with the political status quo after the revolution, he decided to return to US for teaching again. In the classroom of “Arabic Historical Literature Reading”, he told the students, “Egypt and the entire Arab world will one day discuss the issue of Islamic law seriously. Egypt had the experience of regulating Islamic law in the 19th century. I will use my research findings to tell the truth about their history.”
Conclusion
American universities are the “big power” of area studies, and we can hardly match them in terms of academic resources, talent pool or research perspectives. Such great achievements have benefited from the intellectual accumulation of Western countries in exploring the world since the colonial era. This solid historical “heritage” was extensively transferred from Europe to the United States after World War II.Based on its booming economy, the United States not only inherited the mantle of “Oriental Studies” in Europe, but also carried forward it, allowing area studies to serve the political and economic globalization narrative constructed by the West.US’ combination of area studies and social sciences has created its “scientific” discourse power in developing countries. From Pinochet’s invitation to the “Chicago School” to govern Chile’s economy in the 1970s, to Russia’s invitation to American politics scholars to guide the democratic process after the collapse of the Soviet Union Scientists, the strength and weakness of national power are revealed by the field of knowledge.
Undoubtedly, the prosperity of area studies has underpinned US’ global strategy after World War II, but not everyone in the US cherishes its value. In 2013, Tom Coburn, Oklahoma State Senator Tom, proposed to cut the grants of the National Science Foundation to political science and area studies, citing “they makes little contributions to US’ national security and economic benefits”. This caused a huge backlash of public opinions in the academic community at that time. Nathan Brown, President of the North American Middle East Society, wrote a long article in the Washington Post, “I Defend the US grants of Area Studies”, saying that he was fortunate to receive a special scholarship for area studies from the National Science Foundation during his PhD study, which helped him to complete the dissertation and become a senior Middle Eastern scholar. In his article, he sadly pointed out that “area studies has always been the core of US domestic and foreign policies” and “ironically, the United States is destroying its important national assets”.
Although the “Tom Cobain Amendment” was not passed by the Congress due to the opposition of the academic community and the White House, the “isolationist” ideology in the United States has clearly begun to resurge. At many conferences and events at Harvard and surrounding universities, I have heard Americans questioning their country’s global strategy. When the people have difficulty finding jobs and the national debts are high, whether the United States should still be “responsible” for other regions is indeed a question worth thinking about.
Compared with the United States, which is vacillating about its global strategy, China seems to be making further connections with all regions of the world without hesitation. At an academic event of Kennedy College, I ran into a Lebanese economist who was also visiting Harvard. After knowing I was from China, he was very happy to talk about his experience of working with Lin Yifu, then Vice President of the World Bank. It is at the invitation of Prof. Lin that he will teach at the National Development Research Institute of Peking University next year. I couldn’t hide my excitement and wished him a smooth and happy stay in Beijing. Although China does not lack its own economists, he may be the first economist from the Middle East in a Chinese university, but he is certainly not the last one.
