Postwar American Middle East studies were born from national-security concerns, not pure scholarship

Evidence

Not the least aspect of this role was “a cultural relations policy,” as it was defined by Mortimer Graves in 1950. Part of this policy was, he said, the attempt to acquire “every significant publication in every important Near Eastern language published since 1900,” an attempt “which our Congress ought to recognize as a measure of our national security.” For what was clearly at stake, Graves argued (to very receptive ears, by the way), was the need for “much better American understanding of the forces which are contending with the American idea for acceptance by the Near East. The principal of these are, of course, communism and Islam.” Out of such a concern, and as a contemporary adjunct to the more backward-looking American Oriental Society, was born the entire vast apparatus for research on the Middle East. The model, both in its frankly strategic attitude and in its sensitivity to public security and policy (not, as is often postured, to pure scholarship), was the Middle East Institute, founded May 1946 in Washington under the aegis of, if not entirely within or by, the federal government. Out of such organizations grew the Middle East Studies Association, the powerful support of the Ford and other foundations, the various federal programs of support to universities, the various federal research projects, research projects carried out by such entities as the Defense Department, the RAND Corporation, and the Hudson Institute, and the consultative and lobbying efforts of banks, oil companies, multinationals, and the like. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 748

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to later Islamophobia readings on how area-studies knowledge production serves state interests; also resonates with Foucault’s power-knowledge and the idea of scholarship as an apparatus.
• DEFINE: Establishes ‘cultural relations policy’ as a key term tying scholarship explicitly to national-security strategy.
• SEED: Essay angle: how the security origins of Middle East studies shape which truths about Islam get funded and repeated.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 748