U.S. experts dismissed the Middle East’s cultural importance in official 1967 reports.
Evidence
One index of this is the report “Middle Eastern and African Studies: Developments and Needs” commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1967, written by Professor Morroe Berger of Princeton, also president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). In this report Berger asserts that the Middle East “is not a center of great cultural achievement…and therefore does not constitute its own reward so far as modern culture is concerned… [It] has been receding in immediate political importance to the U.S.” — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 384
Categorization
- FICTION: The head of the Middle East studies body publicly declaring the region culturally worthless reads like a dystopian bureaucrat’s briefing.
- SEED: Angle: how ‘declining strategic relevance’ justifications in expert documents function as self-fulfilling policy scripts.