Was there an elephant in the room they had missed? What was the subtext of the op-ed?Īt last, one student moved in the direction of the missing elephant. I coaxed my students, asking them directly to explore if David Brooks had an axe (or more than one) to grind. Not surprisingly, this critique had not yet sunk in. In my previous class, while discussing Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, I had discussed how knowledge is suborned by power, how it is perverted by tribalism, and how Western writers had crafted their writings about the Middle East to serve the interests of colonial powers. Why had he decided to brag about Jewish achievements, a temptation normally eschewed by urbane Jews. One student even spoke of what was not in the article or in the history of Jews – centuries of Jewish ‘struggle’ to create a Jewish state in Palestine.īut they offered no insights on Brooks’ motivation. They recalled David Brooks’ focus on the singular intellectual achievements of American Jews, the enviable record of Israeli Jews as innovators and entrepreneurs, the mobility of Israel’s new class of innovators, etc. My students recalled various parts of the NYT article but no one explained its substance. I sent my students the link to this article, asked them to read it carefully, and come to the next class prepared to discuss and dissect its contents. It so caught my eye, I decided to bring its conservative author to my class on the economic history of the Middle East. On January 12, the New York Times, carried an article by David Brooks on Jews and Israel.
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