University President Henry Bienen stressed individual leaders’ impact on Middle East politics in his keynote address Wednesday night for a two-day conference at Northwestern examining the historical context of current Jewish-Arab problems.
“The paradox of the Middle East is that leaders stay in power, often a long time, but they are also hemmed in by their own history,” Bienen told more than 100 people assembled in Fisk Hall.
Bienen, who is also well known for his work with the U.S. Department of State and in foreign policy circles, warned that the United States must use its military power “in a very sensitive way” because the country needs other nations’ economic help to reconstruct states.
Bienen went on to criticize the Bush administration’s unilateral approach to foreign policy and warned against trying to impose U.S. ideas on reformed states, including Iraq, a place where Bienen said reconstruction efforts soon will be under way.
“There can always be something worse,” Bienen said. “And that can sometimes be something you bring about inadvertently.”
Other speakers at conference sessions earlier in the day focused on “historical narratives” of the long-standing conflict between largely Jewish Israel and the mostly Muslim Arab states around it.
The conference, titled “Imagining the Other in the Middle East: Jewish and Arab/Muslim Narratives,” featured many prominent Israeli and Palestinian leaders who put the region’s current conflict in the context of how the two sides historically have talked about, written about and looked at each other.
The day’s first speaker, Ross Brann, set the tone of the conference with a folk tale about two neighbors separated by a wall that is painted white on one side and black on the other.
The two men disputed the color of the other side and eventually killed each other, said Brann, the author and chairman of Cornell’s Department of Near East Studies.
“Neither had ever thought to look at the other side of the wall,” he said.
By carefully examining how Muslims are treated in Jewish literature, Brann attempted to show the more than 100 attendants at least one “side of the wall.”
Jacob Lassner, who organized the conference along with Elie Rekhess, the director of the program on Arab politics in Israel and a Crown Family Visiting Professor from Tel Aviv University, also spoke at a conference session about Arab anti-semitism and its common misrepresentation.
“It has been difficult to see such significant issues discussed on campus by people that don’t have firsthand experience,” said Lassner, the director of NU’s Jewish Studies Program, adding that if the area in crisis is going to see any advancement, many of the conference’s panelists will be key members of that movement.
With the war in Iraq, the Middle East again has become the focal point of news coverage and public opinion, but for one of the conference’s attendants, the Jewish-Muslim issue always has been central.
“It’s the most important issue in the world right now,” said Annabel Levine, an Evanston fabric artist who “cleared her schedule” when she got an e-mail about the conference. “The more information we have about other people, the more our understanding of them will increase.”
The conference will continue today with sessions on Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, negotiating with those who possess other points of view and narratives for a possible future for the region. The sessions will be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Scott Hall 201. Previous RSVP required for attendance.
