Imagine the horror I felt this week when I read about the planned closure of my study abroad alma mater’s 500-year-old Arabic studies department. As a result of a €5 million deficit in the humanities budget and spending cuts to higher education from the Dutch government, Leiden University will no longer be offering bachelor degrees in African and Latin studies, which includes my adopted department of Middle Eastern Studies.
Although, unfortunately, it probably shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. While the study of humanities has been subject to a much broader attack by funding cuts and the right-wing political establishment, the study of the Middle East has fared particularly badly, both at home and abroad. UCL, for all its postulating about its world-leading historical research across every continent, is equally as guilty.
Like all Oxbridge rejects at UCL, the ecstasy of the UCAS offer only followed after a few months post-January rejection reflection that, actually, surely, hopefully, I would be much more suited to life at UCL than at some pokey college no one had ever heard of (sorry Corpus Christi…). As my entry to the University drew closer, I came to accept that for at least two reasons this was true: I had a year abroad secured, and I could finally study some alternative history.
In my first year, this certainly rang true! It was here that I was introduced to the study of the history of the modern Middle East. This might not sound too alternative to some, but as a student of Tudor and Nazi history at school, it was certainly alternative for me. It cannot be understated how privileged I feel to have taken this course so early on in my development as a writer.
This professor and his severely under-appreciated PGTAs instilled in me vital knowledge about the colonial history of the region and an enduring love of its study. They, and the professors and TAs who have worked with me since that first course, worked tirelessly to destigmatise topics like political Islam, which even amongst academics remains demonised and misunderstood. They sought to recontextualise issues like modernity, liberalism, and Islam along lines which don’t pigeonhole a diverse group of beliefs and people into a supposed Western ideal. Most importantly, they have always encouraged civil debate and discussion, especially about topics that most people are either all too eager to rant and rage about, or would rather just avoid altogether.
So why is it that, upon my return to UCL this summer, I flicked through the module catalogue to find a dramatic reduction in the number of courses being offered on topics that I, and others, so benefitted from in previous years? In my second year, all of my chosen modules were, in some way or shape, about the Middle East. Now, in my final year, I am lucky that my dissertation supervisor is understanding enough to let me stray from the module curriculum to do something that could somewhat count as a culmination of three years worth of study of the region.
The Cheese Grater reported last academic year on the mass redundancies of history teaching staff who had been brought on during the Covid years to deal with a bloated cohort. But the reduction in teaching staff alone cannot be the cause of the Middle Eastern-sized hole in the module catalogue. In the Jewish and Hebrew Studies department, for example, modules on the Israel-Palestine conflict which ran in previous years no longer exist, seemingly for no reason.
What worries me is that part of the reason courses on the Middle East, especially modules on the topic of the Arab-Israeli conflict, have been all but wiped from the module catalogue is that they would simply be too risky to teach.
And to some extent, I can understand why. My third year was spent abroad studying at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Leiden is renowned for many things, one of them being its stellar Middle Eastern and Arabic studies department. But here, contrary to the rose-tinted, ultra-liberal Holland we often picture, the suppression of student protests was brutal. From undercover security spying on and following students and professors, to riot vans in response to a protest of 50 people, there was seemingly nothing that Leiden University wouldn’t do to prevent any kind of disorder.
Inside the classroom, discussions on the war in its immediate aftermath got just as heated. Like UCL, Leiden is a diverse and particularly international university, which often meant clashes between Israeli and Arab students. Without a doubt, if these were classrooms in UCL they would have gotten equally heated and, at times, uncomfortable.
But to the Departmental Big Cheeses in charge of module selection, this should be a welcome challenge! If UCL is truly committed to Provost Michael Spence’s Disagreeing Well campaign, then modules which challenge its students’ preconceptions and misconceptions, instigate difficult discussions, and give people the facts to make up their own minds should be offered in abundance. The fact is that disagreeing well is as much dependent on one’s attitude or “mindset of epistemic humility” as it is on one’s basic knowledge of the subject.
I regret the loss of these modules from UCL, and mourn for the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed freshers who, like me, came to UCL hoping for a breath of historical fresh air. For now, they will have to make do with learning about the Nazis and America’s Boom and Bust years, even if it’s for the hundredth time. But hopefully, UCL will heed Leiden’s warning and put the Middle East back on the academic menu.
