Charlie Wilson's War, part 2

I found this article about the Charlie Wilson Chair in Pakistan Studies to be entertaining, to say the least.

And here's my opinion: everyone's wrong.

• "X" Studies:  any so-called discipline that has the word "studies" in its name should be regarded with deep and enduring skepticism.  Women's Studies, Black Studies, Latin American Studies: all code for interdisciplinary mish-mash that doesn't amount to an education.  That goes for South Asian Studies, too. 
  
• As for naming an endowed chair, Charlie may be getting his ego stroked, but the fact is, he would be embarrassed in short order by the kind of professor that would be chosen to fill the chair.  Two sub-points here: Area studies are notorious hot beds of leftist indoctrination.  Islamic area studies are notorious for "clientization," that is, developing empathy for the object being studied at the expense of say, American culture and values.  Exhibit A: read the letter.
• UT is pretty craven about getting money.  The name of Bass Concert Hall was changed when someone came along with a big check.  Now the Basses won't give any more of their big bucks to UT.
• How does Dana Cloud get in on this?  She's basically the resident far-to-the-left-of-Fidel poster child for everything that's wrong with identity politics and affirmative action, but she has nothing whatsoever to do with South Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or the Taliban.  And the people of said countries are one their prayer rugs 5 times a day thanking the good Allah above that this is so.  I would go so far as to say that she is also the poster child for the burka, but that would be mean.

With respect to the letter itself, it is a paean to intellectual dishonesty.  Consider these  fallacies that are simply assumed as fact: The good people of Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been much better off with the former occupied by an unchallenged Soviet Union.  That the "struggle for democracy" is more seriously impeded by American covert assistance to the Mujahadeen than by Soviet cluster bombs, mines, and tanks.   That the mujahadeen targeted the vital civilian infrastructure and sent Afganistan back to the stone age: a very short trip by all accounts.  That the Talib are bad because they use drugs to finance their operations-  like growing poppies wasn't the major economic enterprise before the Soviets invaded. 

Aside: do you think you'll ever, ever hear the university community condemn the FARC for using the drug trade to undermine "the struggle for democracy" in Colombia?  Not holding my breath.  End aside.

And finally: the real point is that the faculty weren't consulted. Ho effing hum.

Comments

[aelfheld]

I'm almost surprised that the letter's authors didn't go on about the peace-loving peoples of the Soviet Union.

Almost.

[OregonGuy]

I live in Oregon.

I hold my breath every day.

Why, exactly?
.