Martin Kramer - Biography

Martin Seth Kramer (b. September 9, 1954, Washington, D.C.) is an American scholar of the Middle East at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Shalem Center. His focus is on Islam and Arab politics.

תוכן עניינים

Education

Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, the late Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History M.A. from Columbia University.

  • Tel Aviv University, 1971-73 – Middle Eastern Studies
  • B.A. Princeton University, 1975 (summa cum laude) – Near Eastern Studies
  • M.A. Columbia University, 1976 – History
  • M.A. Princeton University, 1978 – Near Eastern Studies
  • Ph.D. Princeton University, 1982 – Near Eastern Studies

Career

Martin Kramer is the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. In 2009 Kramer was appointed President-designate of Shalem College.

During a 25-year career at Tel Aviv University, Kramer directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies; taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Georgetown University; and served twice as a fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He is a past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly.

Political involvement

Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East. However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.

He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign.

Critique of Middle Eastern Studies

Ivory Towers on Sand

In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (download). The work criticizes Middle Eastern Studies in the United States for what Kramer argues is a systematic left-wing bias backed with poor scholarship.

Palestinian aid controversy

At the February 2010 Herzliya Conference in Israel, Kramer caused controversy in a speech in which he advocated cuts in what he termed "pro-natal subsidies" to Palestinians in Gaza as a means of discouraging population growth, thus curbing Islamic radicalization. At the time, he was a National Security Studies Program Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and some critics called on Harvard to distance itself from him. Deans at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs rejected these calls, stating, "Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless." They found that Kramer's critics "appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting" and rejected any attempts to restrict "fundamental academic freedom."

Bibliography

Books

Journal Papers

Kramer on American scholars of the Middle East

Kramer on Key Middle Eastern Figures

Kramer on Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies


External links







המאמר מזכיר את האנשים הבאים: Martin Kramer

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