Martin Kramer

Martin Seth Kramer (Hebrew: מרטין קרמר; born September 9, 1954, Washington, D.C.) is an American-Israeli scholar of the Middle East at Shalem College in Jerusalem. His focus is on the history and politics of the Middle East, contemporary Islam, and modern Israel.

Education

Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History M.A. from Columbia University.[1]

  • Tel Aviv University, 1971-73 – Middle Eastern Studies
  • B.A. Princeton University, 1975 (summa cum laude) – Near Eastern Studies
  • M.A. Columbia University, 1976 – History
  • M.A. Princeton University, 1978 – Near Eastern Studies
  • Ph.D. Princeton University, 1982 – Near Eastern Studies[2]

Career

Martin Kramer was the founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, where he continues to teach the modern history of the Middle East. He is also the Walter P. Stern fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Kramer earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, where he prepared his thesis under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. He then spent twenty-five years at Tel Aviv University, where he directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. Kramer has taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Georgetown University, and The Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He has also served as a visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.

Kramer is a senior and past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly.[3] Primarily a scholar of twentieth century Islamist intellectual and political history, Kramer has also published columns in the National Review magazine[4][5] and on the websites of the History News Network.[6]

Political involvement

Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East.[7] However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.[8]

He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign in 2007.[9]

Critique of Middle Eastern studies

Kramer is a critic of Middle Eastern studies programs in the United States which he thinks are left-wing and backed with poor scholarship.

Ivory Towers on Sand

In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.[10] In the book (as reported by the New York Times), Kramer argued that Middle East experts "failed to ask the right questions at the right time about Islam. They underestimated its impact in the 1980s; they misrepresented its role in the early 1990s; and they glossed over its growing potential for terrorism against America in the late 1990s."The book was given positive mentions in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post[11]

John L. Esposito, accused Kramer of trying to discredit the entire Middle East establishment.[12] Zachary Lockman, professor of modern Middle East history at New York University, admits that Kramer's criticism of Middle East scholars general failure to anticipate the rise of Islamist movements in the 1970s is well-deserved but maintains that "[o]verall, Kramer’s approach is deeply flawed as a history of Middle East studies as a scholarly field."[13]

HR 3077

Kramer was one of the most vocal supporters of HR 3077,[14] a bill in the United States House of Representatives designed to reform area studies in the US. Saree Makdisi argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the bill "poses a profound threat to academic freedom".[15][16]

Palestinian aid controversy

At the February 2010 Herzliya Conference in Israel, Kramer caused controversy by advocating for the elimination of Western aid in what he termed "pro-natal subsidies" to Palestinian refugees in Gaza in order to discourage population growth and Islamic radicalization:[17][18][19]

Aging populations reject radical agenda and the Middle East is no different. Now eventually, this will happen among the Palestinians, too. But it will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status. Those subsidies are one reason why in the ten years, from 1997 to 2007, Gaza’s population grew by an astonishing 40%. At that rate, Gaza’s population will double by 2030 to three million. Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim, undermine the Hamas regime, but they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth and there is some evidence that they have. That may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.

At the time, he was a National Security Studies Program Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and some critics called on Harvard to distance itself from him. Deans at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs rejected these calls, stating, "Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless." They found that Kramer's critics "appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting" and rejected any attempts to restrict "fundamental academic freedom."[20] Kramer later referred to the speech as "experimental" and deliberately "provocative."[20]

Bibliography

Books
  • Political Islam (1980) ISBN 0-8039-1435-0
  • Islam Assembled (1985) ISBN 0-231-05994-9
  • Shi'ism, Resistance, and Revolution (1987) ISBN 0-8133-0453-9
  • Hezbollah's Vision of the West (1989) ISBN 0-944029-01-9
  • Middle Eastern Lives: The Practice of Biography and Self-Narrative (Contemporary Issues in the Middle East) (1991) ISBN 0-8156-2548-0
  • Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (1996) ISBN 1-56000-272-7
  • The Islamism Debate (1997) ISBN 965-224-024-9
  • The Jewish Discovery of Islam (1999) ISBN 965-224-040-0
  • Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2001) ISBN 0-944029-49-3, download
  • The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East (2016) ISBN 1-4128-6499-2

Journal Papers

Kramer on interpreters of the Middle East

Kramer on Key Middle Eastern Figures

Kramer on U.S. and Israeli Policy

Kramer on the Zionist legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

References
  1. Martin Kramer/Juan Cole: Oppo Research
  2. "Martin Kramer, CV and List of Publications" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2017-10-29.
  3. MESA Culpa, by M. Kramer, Fall 2002
  4. Hijacking Islam, by M. Kramer, National Review, September 19, 2001
  5. From Afghanistan to Araby, by M. Kramer, National Review, December 10, 2001
  6. Is Sharansky Right? Does Everyone Want to Be Free?, by M. Kramer, History News Network, June 22, 2005
  7. From Afghanistan to Araby by Martin Kramer, National Review, December 10, 2001
  8. When I Hear "Arab Democracy," I Reach for My Seat Belt by Martin Kramer, October 11, 2002
  9. Rudy's Man in the Middle East, "New York Observer", August 21, 2007.
  10. download
  11. Bevis, Teresa Brawner (2016-05-12). Higher Education Exchange between America and the Middle East in the Twenty-First Century. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-56863-2.
  12. "Experts on Islam Pointing Fingers At One Another". The New York Times. November 3, 2001. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  13. "Behind the Battles Over US Middle East Studies".
  14. Seteney Shami; Cynthia Miller-Idriss (15 November 2016). Middle East Studies for the New Millennium: Infrastructures of Knowledge. NYU Press. pp. 370–. ISBN 978-1-4798-3285-9.
  15. Makdisi, Saree (May 4, 2005). "Neocons Lay Siege to the Ivory Towers". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
  16. Osama University?, by Michelle Goldberg, reprint from Salon.com, 2005
  17. Savarese, Katharine M. (2010-02-04). "Weatherhead Fellow Incites Controversy". The Harvard Crimson.
  18. "Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births". Electronic Intifada. 22 February 2010. Retrieved 13 March 2010.
  19. Walt, Stephen M. (February 28, 2010). "Kramer versus Kramer". Foreign Policy. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  20. Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS, Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar, Indiana University Press, pages 151-155
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