The problem in a nutshell

The tragic events of September 2001 and their continuing aftermath have again highlighted the importance of the Islamic world and the Middle East in particular to international stability and to Western security. Since September, we have learned of the many close associations between Islamic groups straddling the vast expanse of the Muslim world, organising themselves with impunity in locations hitherto inaccessible to the international community. The September attacks also highlighted the need for a better understanding of the cultures of the Muslim world, the Islamic civilisation in its broadest terms and the politics and socio-economic structures of Muslim societies. The West has learned since September that despite its continuing involvement with the Middle East and the Muslim world, it in fact lacks the depth of expertise to allow it to interpret and engage with this important part of the world.

More than ever, therefore, government and industry need to understand the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, whether for reasons of national security or commercial interest; but UK institutions concerned with the Middle East and the Islamic world are reaching the point where they will no longer be able to provide the expertise essential to such an understanding. A modest investment in Middle Eastern studies could put this right: £40 million (the amount proposed) is a small sum of money compared with the national interests at stake.

On 18th March 2002, representatives of government, industry and academic communities and research institutions met at the FCO to take stock of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in the U.K. The conclusions were disturbing, namely:

· Government and industry need the services of UK institutions concerned with Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (whether in terms of output of graduates or availability of experts who can be consulted as and when required);
· Neither government nor industry is likely to receive the services it will need in the future, largely because UK institutions concerned with Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies are no longer able or willing to sustain the level of investment needed in these areas without substantial external support;
· Reduced expertise will also affect the information available to the non-government sector, eg the NGOs and civil society in general, including members of the media for whom impartial information is essential if news reports are to be well-informed and balanced;
· Industry currently tends to recruit from overseas to meet language requirements, but this in turn often leads to the necessity to improve the English of employees;
· The security services, which have a nationality requirement, are finding it increasingly difficult to attract candidates with a training in Middle Eastern languages - indeed they are currently experiencing a particular shortage of speakers of Arabic. Recruits with other Middle Eastern languages are also sought urgently.
· Some Middle Eastern languages (including Kurdish) are not being taught at all in the U.K. The absence of these is potentially a huge threat to national security.
· The situation is likely to worsen because of the continuing erosion of expertise, especially through the imminent retirement of a whole generation of senior specialists in the field.
· Universities which were funded to create area studies programmes in the 1960s have to some extent reneged on their undertakings. It is difficult to locate the legacy of support generated through the Hayter and Scarborough initiatives, for example.

Taking stock

Regarding the needs of commerce, industry and other employers, the following requirements were identified:

· The Security Service is currently experiencing a particular shortage of speakers of North African Arabic and urgently needs individuals with other Middle Eastern expertise as well as in-depth knowledge of the geography, historical background and other socio-economic and political trends of the region.
· Security Service and other agencies require linguists to work on counter-terrorism, serious crime and counter-proliferation. Together, these agencies will seek to recruit 15-20 Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Pushtu speakers (with capability in the dialects as well as the "educated" versions of the languages) during the present Financial Year (2002/03). The need is not only for language skills: a good knowledge of the politics and culture of the region is needed as well. All three agencies find it difficult to recruit enough such experts.
· Middle East Studies departments help in ways other than the simple provision of recruitable linguists. For example, for GCHQ, they provide teaching materials and assessment for in-house courses, refresher/language enhancement courses and a community of native speakers who can offer tuition in languages outside the mainstream of university provision.
· The media do not recruit area specialists, but do rely on them on a daily basis for expert input. But a reduced availability of academics who specialise in the Middle East and North Africa means that journalists' ability to write sensibly about the region is also reduced. This is also of interest to government which needs debate on key areas of policy to be informed by knowledge and expert insight.
· Community relations: the intake of British Muslims to Islamic Studies courses can help to generate a more informed debate on Islamic issues within the UK's Muslim communities.
· Businesses operating in/on the Middle East and North Africa and wider Islamic regions can be more flexible than HMG when recruiting specialists, as commercial companies can dispense with the nationality requirement.
· For British executives, however, a working knowledge of Middle Eastern and North African languages (for social interaction, or dealing with customs or road-blocks etc) gives a real advantage. Some acquaintance with the Qur'an and other literature can also help to establish empathy.
· For generalist grades (that is, non-specialist diplomats), the FCO's selection procedures only give preference to those with specialist knowledge of certain parts of the world if there is nothing to choose between candidates, on other criteria. Middle East and North Africa Research Group (MENARG) and other Groups in Research Analysts (RA) working on the Islamic world do, however, need area specialists with relevant language skills. Many applicants for RA posts are not fully equipped linguistically, and require expensive and time-consuming training after recruitment.

In the course of the seminar, participants discussed and highlighted the key problems associated with regional/area studies in Britain and the place of Middle East studies within it. The participants, who had great experience and expertise in their fields, agreed that Middle East studies' core problems were caused by five main factors:

· First, the current HEFCE funding formula does not recognise the difficulties involved in learning non-European languages (labour intensive, small group size teaching, etc). These need to be identified and supported.

· Second, research bodies also seem to fail to support area studies. The ESRC is a case in point. Because of their increasingly 'thematic' approach and funding allocation, the importance of regional studies seems to be down-graded in their research-funding programmes.

More broadly, it was found that:

· The paucity in scholarships and research grants in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies has had a direct and deleterious effect on postgraduate student numbers in the field. This in turn has affected the types of research conducted by home students. All participants agreed that the future of regional studies lay in training the next generation of British nationals. Lack of funding for research has meant that few students are now being trained to take up posts in British universities and think-tanks.

· It was made alarmingly clear that the field is about to face severe staffing difficulties as senior staff retire and institutions fail to replace them with individuals with similar kinds of expertise. It is also clear that scholars are not being trained, even to enter at the junior level.

· The lower priority now associated with language learning is adversely affecting student recruitment and is likely to result in fewer trained linguists with a specialism in the Middle East and Islamic world. This will naturally mean that Middle Eastern studies departments will not have the depth of expertise that they should, with the implicit consequences for national security that this will entail.

Participants in the Workshop identified the need to have the skills, experts and the necessary infrastructure in place so that our current and future leaders may be better placed to collate and interpret information and foresee crises that will continue to emanate from this complex, dynamic and strategic part of the globe. Investment is needed now to secure the current very high standards in the field and ensure that the valuable infrastructures already in place will not perish through inadvertent neglect.

Britain is regarded as a world leader in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. Students from all round the world, including from the Middle East come to this country to take advantage of its considerable intellectual wealth and resources in this area; it makes strategic sense for Britain itself to capitalise on this expertise and to invest in its future.

Summary of the state of the field

· Many senior specialists will be retiring within the next 5-10 years. In many cases, there are no obvious replacements.
· Where academics interested in the region are teaching in universities without Middle East Studies departments, there is no guarantee that, when they retire or leave, they will be replaced by Middle Eastern specialists.
· The trend towards short-term funding for posts means that academics cannot take on PhD students, as the academics cannot be sure that they will be around to see the work through to its conclusion. This is one reason why a younger generation of area specialists is not emerging in the UK to take over.
· Another aspect of funding has a similar effect: in order to maintain cash flow, UK universities have to take a high proportion of fee-paying foreign students - who generally return to their own countries rather than remaining to teach, write and provide expert services here. The universities are currently doing a wonderful job in training research specialists from all around the world except Britain. They are thus training Britain's competitors. Very few home students are emerging with PhDs in the Politics of the Middle East, for instance - a fact seen as being directly attributable to the funding and the funding bodies' procedures which are often perceived as lacking in understanding of what is needed in this field of studies.
· Britain's Middle East/Muslim world experts find themselves in a very competitive international environment. France and Germany may already have the edge over the UK in terms of knowledge of the Middle East, because of the existence of French-funded research institutions working in and on the region (e.g., CERMOC in Amman, CEDEJ in Cairo and CEFAS in Sana'a) There are also French research institutes in Tashkent and Samarkand in Uzbekistan. The Deutsche Morgenlaendische Gesellschaft funded by the German Federal Government (Ministry of Education and Research has institutes in the Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Turkey. Again, this collaboration enhances knowledge of the Middle East. Other European countries are forging ahead of the U.K. in this field.
· Private funding is obtained for research projects, but rarely for teaching posts.
· Private funding for Islamic studies often comes from Muslim sources. This funding has to be accepted, because of the lack of government funding, but there are often strings attached: for example, Sunni funders may dictate that their money cannot be spent on the study of Shi'ism.
· When money is tight, language teaching (a labour-intensive activity) is often the first area to suffer. For example, posts for language assistants may be cut.
· However, the techniques of language teaching have improved - excellent results have been obtained from a new Arabic syllabus which has adopted a new approach to the relationship between spoken and written Arabic. The shift in teaching and learning methods will be beneficial to the policy and business communities. Persian and Turkish are benefiting from a similar revolution in teaching and learning methods.
· The security services are currently experiencing a shortage of speakers of North African Arabic and shortages in other Middle Eastern languages are also anticipated.
· Some subjects of genuine contemporary relevance have simply disappeared from UK universities - Kurdish, Central Asian and some Afghan languages are striking examples.
· There is very little work being done in UK universities on the role of women in Muslim societies and their contribution to the public sphere including peaceful resolution of conflicts.

The way forward

There is little disagreement that better understanding of the Middle East and Islamic world is of great importance to Britain's national interest. The highest levels of government have already strongly underlined this fact. Britain needs a national strategy in order to understand the forces and the players shaping the strategically vital Middle East region. With the United States now limiting access to its universities, think-tanks and other resources for Middle Eastern and Muslim country nationals, it seems to make very good sense for the United Kingdom to capitalise on its historic and recognised links with the Middle East to intensify its relations with the Middle East and Muslim worlds and encourage educational and broader Track Two contact with individuals and institutions of this area. The United States has already recognised the need for a better understanding and is making more intensive investment in the development of expertise in the languages, societies and polities of the Middle East and the Muslim world.

As reported in the Times Higher Education Supplement of 8th March 2002, in the United States, Congress and the White House have agreed to increase government funding for formal language programmes in minority Middle Eastern languages by 26 per cent, from $78 million (£55 million) to $98.5 million. This will double the number of fellowships for study of languages such as Arabic, Persian, Pashtu, Uzbek and Urdu, and increase the stipend per fellowship by nearly 20 per cent. In addition, four academic centres will be opened at American universities to study the Middle East, Central and South Asia in their totalities. Study of Russia and other nations of the former Soviet Union will also benefit from this programme. Three new language centres will also be created, and more money is being earmarked for overseas language study. The Defense Department has agreed to finance 200 undergraduate and graduate fellowships for the study of non-Western European languages including Chinese, Arabic, Persian and Russian. The military also plans to set up language institutes at ten universities, each of which will get $1 million a year. Foresight and investment of equivalent magnitude are needed in the UK if we are to maintain our comparative advantage in the volatile period ahead.

The United Kingdom must complement any extra provision for languages and the religions of the region with new funding for posts in a broad range of social science and humanities related fields. Politics and international relations, geography and geopolitics, economics and Islamic finance, history, gender and anthropological studies are the vital disciplines in which Britain has already distinguished herself and must therefore continue to support. The deep-rooted understanding that UK experts have accumulated of the politics, geography, geopolitics, economies and societies of the region must therefore be protected and nurtured.

The United Kingdom, for its own future interests, should follow the American model outlined above with regards to provision of extra resources. The extra funding should be ring-fenced and overseen by a national committee comprising academics and the policy and business communities. It should be the case that the funds are endowed in such a fashion as to ensure that institutions become guardians of these posts in perpetuity, thus guaranteeing a national spread of expertise. The funds should be divided into three categories, endowed in the following fashion:

· Tenured posts
· Research and post-doctoral fellowships
· Studentships and scholarships

The posts and scholarships should be based in those academic institutions with proven expertise in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and the extra resources should go to underpin their existing strengths. Recipient institutions would be required to guarantee the continuation of their Middle Eastern and Islamic studies interests. The Fellowships should be divided more widely, enabling virtually every academic or research institution in the country to call on this fund to attract quality researchers to contribute to their own programmes. The spin-offs of such a funding strategy are great as several institutions would then be simultaneously invigorated and together enable a national renaissance in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. This would be supported by the vitally important link up the chain to government and business and down the chain to the student body.

Under this proposed scheme, institutions with Middle East departments would be invited to bid for a maximum of two endowed posts in areas which will contribute to their existing programmes. They would become the partners of the BRISMES initiative. The strategy would be to maintain the 'critical mass' of expertise currently in place in the United Kingdom.

The research and fellowships programme would not only allow for mobility of staff and expertise amongst British universities and research institutions, it would also ensure that Britain could take its rightful place amongst other European countries in better formalising research links with the Middle East and the Muslim world. The Fellowship scheme would not only allow for UK experts to visit and interact with colleagues in the Muslim world, it should also allow traffic in the opposite direction. In our experience, this would deepen understanding and make a fundamental contribution to research and analytical skills of both staff and students of UK institutions. It is also hoped that funding would allow for the creation of the badly needed regional studies centres as well which would provide particular focus on the key parts of the Middle East and North Africa region.

In relation to the distribution of extra resources, a one-off sum of approximately £40 million would be required as an endowment. £20 million (supporting two new posts in each of the designated institutions) would inject considerable investment into existing structures. £10 million would be allocated to studentships and scholarships, translating into 10 MA studentships per year and 15 PhD scholarships annually (assuming disposable income from the endowment of £350,000 per year).

The income from the remaining £10 million would be allocated to Fellowships and postdoctoral posts. This would translate into approximately 10 postdoctoral positions every year.

An endowment would be preferable to annual payments as this would offer greater value and sustainability would be guaranteed.

June 2002, Professor Anoush Ehteshami, Vice-President and Chair of Council and Director of IMEIS, University of Durham