los angeles | Israel advocates have often complained of a pro-Arab tilt in Middle East programs at American universities, but now academics at UCLA are doing something about it.
The International Institute at UCLA — prodded by a concerned political scientist — is launching an Israel studies program, which its creators hope will be “the most comprehensive and systematic” program for the study of the Jewish state in America.
While Israel is often the focus of academic scrutiny, until now there has not been a teaching and program at an American university focusing solely on the state in all its multiple facets.
Already in place are two undergraduate courses, appearances by prominent Israeli and American scholars, and a community lecture program. In the works is a major international conference on Israeli democracy.
By 2007, the program expects to have assembled an interdisciplinary faculty and to have created a prestigious academic chair and library — and hopes to be poised to offer an undergraduate degree.
Whether or not the UCLA program becomes a model for other universities remains to be seen, but Israel studies programs have the potential to transform a part of the academic landscape some Jews have long seen as troubling.
While well-established Jewish and Middle/Near East study centers already exist at American universities, “Israel itself doesn’t get focused attention and tends to get lost as an appendage to other programs,” said UCLA political scientist Steven Spiegel, one of the backers of the idea.
Aside from academic considerations, there is a strong feeling among many professors — and certainly within the Jewish community — that Near East departments on many campuses, though not UCLA, are dominated by pro-Arabists.
“Professorial posts in too many Middle East centers on too many American campuses are funded and occupied by pro-Arabists, and when they invite Israeli speakers, these are often more hateful of Israel than are the Arabs,” Yuval Rotem, who recently left his post as Israeli consul general after five years in the Western United States, said in a phone interview from Jerusalem.
“This situation, plus pro-Palestinian student movements on many campuses, can’t be changed by the occasional seminar on Israel’s plight or discussions among Jewish organizations,” he said. “It’s a long-range problem. Knowledge is a cumulative process and only a permanent study program on Israel can provide it.”