Fouad Ajami
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Fouad Ajami (b. September 9, 1945) is a Lebanese-born American university professor and the Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University. Ajami was a 1982 winner of a five-year MacArthur Prize Fellowship in the arts and sciences. He is arguably one of the most politically influential Arab-American intellectuals of his generation, and has been an advisor to United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as a friend and colleague of Deputy United States Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Ajami is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Board of Advisors of the journal Foreign Affairs. Ajami also sits on the editorial board of Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the Middle East Forum think tank.
In recent years, Ajami has been an outspoken supporter of the push for democracy in Iraq, which has drawn some criticism from others in academia.
Early life
Ajami was born on September 19, 1945, in Arnoun, a rocky hamlet in the south of Lebanon. His Shiite family had come to Arnoun from Tabriz, Iran in the 1850s. In Arabic, the word "Ajam" means "Persian".Ajami arrived in the United States in the fall of 1963, just before he turned 18. He did some of his undergraduate work at Eastern Oregon College (now Eastern Oregon University) in La Grande, Oregon. He did his graduate work at the University of Washington, where he wrote his dissertation on international relations and world government. In 1973 Ajami joined the political science department of Princeton University, making a name for himself there as a vocal supporter of Palestinian self-determination.
Works
Ajami's most recent work: The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, The Arabs and The Iraqis in Iraq (2006), offers a portrait of the struggle for Iraq.In "The Fate of Nonalignment," an essay in the Winter 1980/81 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, he outlines how the Third world has fared in a context of nonalignment in post Cold war politics. In 1980, he accepted an offer from Johns Hopkins University to become director of Middle East Studies at their international relations graduate program in Washington, D.C.: the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He holds an endowed chair as the Majid Khadduri professor.
A year after arriving at SAIS, Ajami published his first book, The Arab Predicament, which analyzed what Ajami described as an intellectual and political crisis that swept the Arab world following its defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. Ajami became the recipient of the five-year MacArthur Prize Fellowship in the arts and sciences in 1982.
Later works
Subsequently, Ajami has written several other full-length books: The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey (1998), Beirut: City of Regrets (1988), and The Vanished Imam: Musa Al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (1986). Ajami is a frequent contributor on Middle Eastern issues and contemporary international history to The New York Times Book Review, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, and other journals and periodicals, as well. He frequently appears on PBS and CBS News.View of Huntington's \"Clash of Civilizations\"
One notable contribution Ajami made in the September October 1993 issue of Foreign Affairs was a rebuttal to Samuel Huntington’s "The Clash of Civilizations?", regarding the state and future of international relations after the Cold War. Ajami's critiques of Huntington had a resounding effect on views of the East-West dichotomy, offering an important alternative assessment of future relations.[[Citing sources citation needed]]Huntington presents a world divided at the highest level into eight civilizations, and includes a number of countries that are “torn” between two civilizations, arguing that these civilizational divides are far more fundamental than economic interests, ideology, and regimes, and that the world is becoming a smaller place with increasingly close interactions. He further claims that the pre-eminence of a so-called "kin-country" syndrome will provide a civilizational rallying point that will replace political ideology and traditional "balance of power" considerations for relations between states and nations, resulting in a division between the West and "the rest" creating a backlash against Western values (which supposedly "differ fundamentally" from those prevalent in other civilizations).
In his article “The Summoning”, Ajami criticises Huntington for ignoring the empirical complexities and state interests which drive conflicts in and between civilizations. Ajami believes that states will remain the dominant factor influencing the global framework and interaction. He also argues that civilizational ties are only utilized by states and groups when it is in their best interest to do so and that modernity and secularism are here to stay, especially in places with considerable struggles to obtain them, and he cites the example of the Indian Middle class. Ajami also believes that civilizations do not control states, rather, states control civilizations.
Dream Palace of the Arabs
In The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation’s Odyssey, Ajami surveyed the intellectual landscape in the Arab world and Iran, in what was in some ways an autobiography as well as a sequel to "The Arab Predicament." Two of his more memorable lines in "Dream Palace" were original takes on two highly contentious subjects. On Middle Eastern politics, he wrote of "a world where triumph rarely comes with mercy or moderation." On Pan-Arabism, he described the ideology as "Sunni dominion dressed in secular garb."Political influence
Ajami is arguably one of the most politically influential Arab-American intellectuals of his generation. Some argue this is because unlike many Arab-American leaders and intellectuals, he is an unabashed supporter of the government of George W. Bush, and generally avoids comment on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Another reason is that he writes in a lyrical style, avoiding academic jargon. Condoleezza Rice has been known to summon him to the White House for advice, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a friend and former colleague at SAIS, has paid tribute to him in speeches on Iraq. Ajami has been an outspoken supporter of the push for democracy in Iraq, which has drawn some criticism from others in academia.View of Iraq War
In an August 2002 speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, US Vice President Dick Cheney sought to assuage concerns about the anticipated US invasion of Iraq, stating: "As for the reaction of the Arab "street," the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, August 26, 2002.However, Ajami also cautioned the United States about the likely negative consequences of the Iraq War. In a 2003 essay in Foreign Affairs, "Iraq and the Arabs' Future," Ajami wrote,
"There should be no illusions about the sort of Arab landscape that America is destined to find if, or when, it embarks on a war against the Iraqi regime. There would be no "hearts and minds" to be won in the Arab world, no public diplomacy that would convince the overwhelming majority of Arabs that this war would be a just war. An American expedition in the wake of thwarted UN inspections would be seen by the vast majority of Arabs as an imperial reach into their world, a favor to Israel, or a way for the United States to secure control over Iraq's oil. No hearing would be given to the great foreign power." Ajami, Fouad. Foreign Affairs January/February 2003.
Criticism
Ajami has been accused of being a propagandist who tells those in power what they want to hear, thus helping justify their policies. Throughout his career, Ajami has variously espoused Nasserism, Shia sectarianism, the Palestinian cause, the Israeli government cause, and the US invasion of Iraq. Shatz, Adam. The Nation, April 28, 2003.He has been classified by some on the left as a neoconservative. [link]
References
External links
- [Johns Hopkins SAIS Page for Fouad Ajami]
- [The Native Informant], assessment of Ajami by Adam Shatz
- [Rude Arab Awakening], assessment of Ajami by Martin Kramer
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