Topic: Middle East and Arab Cultures
From The Margaret Mead Symposium: Whither the United States in the World?
Commemorating the centennial of the birth of Margaret Mead.
December 2 & 3, 2001
Sponsors: Library of Congress and The Smithsonian Institution
Panelists in this topic consider the Iranian revolution, what America’s role should be in the Middle East, and what history means to different people.
America’s Support of Dictators
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Kipper argues that what we may have perceived of as enforced stability in the Middle East is actually a cancer. Kipper reveals what she has learned through her own conversations with regular citizens in the Middle East, and discusses the importance of the Iranian revolution.
Quicktime (5.44MB)- Windows Media Player (6.49MB)
Importance of Policy in the Middle East
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Kipper says that while it is not our job to improve the lives of people in the Middle East, the United States should have a policy more in tune with realties on the ground.
- Quicktime (1MB)
- Windows Media Player (1.24MB)
Petro-Dollars and Lack of Education in the Middle East
Speaker: Judith Kipper
Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations; Co-Director, Middle East Studies Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, consultant, ABC News
Petro-dollars did not produce decent education, Kipper argues. While new universities were started, graduates are not prepared to take part in the global economy, she says. The lack of education in the Arab world, she continues, leaves people feeling unattached to systems in which they live.
- Quicktime (3.14MB)
- Windows Media Player (3.81MB)
Islamic History and Ideology
Speaker: William Watts
President, Potomac Associates, former Senior Staff Member, National Security Council under Henry Kissinger
Watts discusses the importance of differing conceptions of the idea of history between the Western and Arab worlds, as written about by Bernard Lewis.
- Quicktime (2.74MB)
- Windows Media Player (3.26MB)
