US-area-studies funding framed the Middle East solely as strategic, not cultural, value

Evidence

After surveying the strategic, economic, and political importance of the region to the United States, and after endorsing the various United States government and private foundation projects to support programs in universities—the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (a directly Sputnik-inspired initiative), the establishing of links between the Social Science Research Council and Middle Eastern studies, and so on—Berger came to the following conclusions: … The modern Middle East and North Africa is not a center of great cultural achievement, nor is it likely to become one in the near future. The study of the region or its languages, therefore, does not constitute its own reward so far as modern culture is concerned. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 732

Categorization

• XREF: The NDEA 1958 as Sputnik-inspired strategic funding directly connects to the reader’s scaffold on how state interests shape which knowledge is produced — the Cold War genealogy of area studies.
• SEED: The Berger conclusion that the region’s study lacks ‘its own reward’ outside strategic value is a clean quotation for an essay on how national-security funding pre-shaped academic fields.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 732