The Obama administration is undercutting its own ambitious agenda, by signaling that the United States has lost some of its weight in world affairs. The “post-American” rhetoric of liberal internationalists and realists is setting off a scramble for advantage among the “middle powers” of the Middle East. Originally a lecture delivered on November 16, 2009, to the Columbia University International Relations Forum (CUIRF).

Hamas is often presented as an variety of Palestinian nationalism. This underestimates its Islamic and pan-Islamic dimension.

The Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts have been transcended by the Israeli-Islamist conflict. The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war may be the first such conflict of many.

American support for Israel isn't only based on shared values and a sense of mutual obligation. It has a firm foundation in interests, in the most realist calculation.

An argument against inclusion of Islamist actors in liberalizing settings in the Arab world.

An inquiry into the views of the late Elie Kedourie on the relationship between academe and the making of foreign policy.

For the past twenty years, Middle Eastern studies in America have been factories of error. The academics, blinded by their own prejudices and enslaved to the fashions of the disciplines, have failed to anticipate or explain any of the major developments in the Middle East. Within the field, hardly a voice dares to protest, but beyond it, each debacle chips away at academic's credibility. Middle Eastern studies have failed--at a time when understanding the Middle East has become crucial to America. In this iconoclastic exposé, Martin Kramer surveys the ruins of Middle Eastern studies, to ask how and why they went wrong. Ivory Towers on Sand is the most thorough critique of Middle Eastern studies ever published in the United States--and a necessary step toward their reconstruction.

A short account of the life and career of Elie Kedourie, historian of the Middle East.

A study of Muhammad Asad, a European Jewish convert to Islam, who played a prominent role in mid-20th-century Muslim intellectual life, as a thinker and Qur'an translator. The study places him in his political context, with some emphasis on the impact of his Jewish origins.

Jews figure prominently in the history of the modern European encounter with Islam. The similarities between Hebrew and Arabic, the parallels between two faiths grounded in law, and the relative tolerance of Muslim rule toward Jews--all these are said to have permitted many Jews to approach Islam with an understanding and sympathy once uncommon in Europe. Was there a "Jewish discovery of Islam," distinct from Europe's discovery? Is there some unifying characteristic to the approach of these Jewish "discoverers"? In this original volume, contributors assess the approaches to Islam of some of the most famous European Jewish travelers, writers, and scholars.

Is Islamism driven by religious fervor, social protest or national xenophobia? Is the rise of Islamism a threat to stability, tolerance, and order, or is it the first step toward reform, participation, and democratization? These and other questions are debated by nine authors - leading protagonists in the Islamism debate - from the United States, Britain, France, and Israel.

Over the past decade, the political ground beneath the Middle East has shifted. Arab nationalism the political orthodoxy for most of this century has lost its grip on the imagination and allegiance of a new generation. At the same time, Islam as an ideology has spread across the region, and "Islamists" bid to capture the center of politics. Most Western scholars and experts once hailed the redemptive power of Arabism. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival is a critical assessment of the contradictions of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and the misrepresentation of both in the West.