Posted on 11/13/2005 9:45:34 PM PST by mykdsmom
The center's primary focus will be undergraduate education, international outreach
Durham, N.C. -- Duke University will create an Islamic studies center that will focus on undergraduate education and expand partnerships with universities in Muslim-majority countries, Provost Peter Lange announced Wednesday.
“The Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC) will seek to advance interaction and understanding between citizens of American and Muslim cultures,” said Lange, the university’s top academic official. “The center’s ultimate objective is to provide interdisciplinary learning with a humanistic approach to the world’s future western and Muslim leaders. This complements many of the university’s top priorities, including advancing the undergraduate experience and promoting the internationalization of scholarship.”
A $1.5 million gift from James P. and Audrey Gorter for an endowed professorship in Islamic studies will enable Duke to take the first step toward establishing the center, Lange said. The Gorters are the parents of two Duke alumni and two other children.
Robert J. Thompson Jr., dean of Trinity College and vice provost for undergraduate education, said the center will be an important addition to the undergraduate curricular offerings, “not only in terms of a focus on the Muslim world but also because of the interdisciplinary perspective, the emphasis on the development of language skills and the study abroad component in a Muslim country, all of which are integrated into a coherent curricular experience.”
The center’s principal focus will be undergraduate education, said Bruce Lawrence, the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke. Lawrence, an Islamicist, will serve as inaugural director of DISC; associate professor of Islamic studies Ebrahim Moosa will be the center’s director of research.
“What does not exist right now is a depth and breadth of courses that accurately reflect the Muslim world,” said Lawrence, who joined the Duke faculty in 1971. “This is almost a dream come true for me.”
DISC will offer a four-year, interdisciplinary and integrated curriculum that includes a first-year course on Islamic studies, at least a semester of study abroad, foreign language studies (in Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Urdu) and a senior thesis course. Students who successfully complete the requirements will earn a certificate.
“The new professorship in Islamic studies, together with DISC and the certificate program in Islamic studies, charts a cutting-edge and innovative approach to the study of Muslim societies,” said Moosa, director of the Center for the Study of Muslim Networks (CSMN) at Duke. “It examines Islam as a civilization akin to any other.”
CSMN will be folded into DISC and no longer operated as a separate center, but DISC will maintain the approach of studying Muslim societies as networks, Moosa and Lawrence said. DISC also will continue to support the “Islamic Civilizations and Muslim Networks” book series, which is co-edited by Lawrence and published by the University of North Carolina Press. Books in the series include “Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop” (edited by Lawrence and his wife Miriam Cooke, who is a professor of modern Arabic literature and culture at Duke) and “Ghazali and the Politics of Imagination,” authored by Moosa.
In conjunction with the certificate program, the center will seek to enroll undergraduates and recruit visiting scholars from Muslim-majority nations. It will also offer fellowships in Islamic studies to graduate students.
“The international outreach -- through collaborative conferences with scholars from abroad, residential fellowships and study-abroad programs -- will enable a stimulating intellectual traffic to pass through the Duke campus,” Moosa said. “Hopefully this will contribute to the debates centered on Islam and Muslims for students, faculty and the Duke community at large.” The center’s advisory board will hold its first meeting on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 11 and 12, at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies. Advisory board members include James Gorter, who will convene the board; Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen Interiors; Farhan Nizami, director of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies; Eboo Patel, director of Interfaith Youth Corp.; Bettye Musham, president of GEAR Holdings; Nemir Kirdar, CEO of Investcorp International Inc.; Eugene V. Fife, interim director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia; and Seham Freih, former dean of Kuwait University.
For more information, contact: Blake Dickinson | 919-668-6114 | blake.dickinson@duke.edu
I read this in the paper this week and couldn't believe it. Apparently the "Islamic Seminar" Duke held last year was so successful they decided to create an entire studies center on Islam.
I have linked on a Militant Islam Monitor.org site that describes one of the advisory board members history. Just click on the name Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen Interiors toward the end of the article. Nothing of interest turned up on a simple Google search on the other board members. I admit I didn't take a lot of time on this though, I'm getting ready to go to bed and I'm tired but wanted to get this posted first.
MKM
Recruiting center aimed at the leftist elite.
NC Ping Worthy?
This whole idea is insane.
I'm sure they will soon be sporting some of the worst anti-American leftists around, promoting what David Horowitz has aptly termed the "unholy alliance" of western academic leftists and terror-loving Islamists. They each think that by trying to work together to bring down freedom, democracy, and evil capitalism that their own vision will ultimately win out, but of course leftists and Islamists are always busy killing each other when there are not enough evil capitalists around to bash.
I once knew well a product of the PC-environment of Duke's Trinity College, and she was the dumbest POS academic I've ever known, and that's saying a lot. Yet, she had been lauded by Duke and several other supposedly "elite" schools...... I'm certain they will do well with their new center for defense and promotion of terrorism, er, I mean Islamic studies.
Topics include "Beheading an Infidel with a Rusty Knife", "How to make Couscous in the skull of a Christian Baby", "Infiltrating the Great Satan through the University System".
I think that this is a good thing. One of our weaknesses in the current war is our inability to gather accurate and timely intelligence from the Arab/Muslim world. The more people who study Islam, Arabic, Farsi, Pashtu, and study Arab culture (and Iranian and Pakistani culture, etc), the better off that we will be in the long run.
Islamic studies at Duke.......just waht we need....NOT !!!
BTW....Have you signed Jeff Head's petition yet?
Please ping your FRiends to this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1516992/posts
A Petition to Oppose the "Crescent of Embrace " Proposal for the Flight 93 Memorial
Please tell everyone you can to go here to sign:
http://new.petitiononline.com/NOCRSCNT/petition.html
MKM
I recently saw the TV special on Flight 93, shown near 9/11 I believe. These heros DO NOT deserve to be memorialized like this.
What will it take to stop this PC pandering by the libs in this country? I fear for the future of my children and my country. May God have mercy on us in spite of the stupidity of some.
MKM
You're assuming that an academic program at an ultra-PC place like Duke will contribute much useful knowledge for America, as opposed to leftist PC garbage and propaganda. I doubt anything of value to us (as opposed to terrorist-lovers) will come out of this program, and the students will surely be indoctrinated by the kinds of leftish academics who dominate at Duke.
If there were enough real, objective knowledge sought by this program then I'd be applauding it, but for the past 30+ years the campus left has tried hard to control every department and especially new programs in such sensitive areas as Middle Eastern and Islam....... they will make a dangerously bad PC-hash of this, we can be sure.....
If the Alumni have any ba-- they can stop this.
Of course with tuition, room and board rate over $40,000 per year only the best, brightest, and well funded terrorists need apply.
MKM
I suppose with this new degree you could at least become and imam and try to destroy Israel and the west.
I'll bet Saudi money is behind this, perhaps hidden.
You assume good intentions on the part of Duke. It will not prove to be what you expect but a center for subversion. One can study foreign languages without an Islamic center. Mark my word, this will be a disaster. I'm sorry to say that I am a Duke graduate. I despise and loathe the place.
IED (creative arts), Suicide Bombmaking (technical education), Suicide Bombing (physical education), Decapitation (arts/psychology/journalism), Honor Killing (home economics), etc.
Another way to bring more mohamed attas here. Only a liberal could have dreamed this up..
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