The media's favorite Arab expert

Scholar Fouad Ajami has garnered more prime-time airplay than any other commentator on Arab-Muslim issues. But critics say he's far from a representative voice.

By Eric Boehlert

Dec 21, 2001 | Once content to ignore foreign affairs, the American public has been trying to play catch-up since Sept. 11, eager to learn more about the Middle East, its politics, its people and its potential threat to the West.

Helping lead that collective teach-in has been the ubiquitous Fouad Ajami, esteemed professor of Middle Eastern studies at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The master of the trenchant sound bite, Ajami is also a prolific and poetic writer, author of such books as "The Dream Palace of the Arabs," "The Arab Predicament" and "The Vanished Imam," as well as a contributor to several influential American magazines. "My jaw drops when I read his writing," says Mort Zuckerman, publisher of U.S. News & World Report, where Ajami's work has appeared for years. "I think he's the most brilliant authority, with the greatest insight and greatest historical knowledge of the Arab mind-set, in this country."

Ajami has also become that academic oddity: a serious scholar who has crossed over into the mainstream. An electronic database search on Nexis-Lexis retrieves more than 150 Ajami news mentions since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

It's Ajami's TV appearances that have catapulted him to prominence. Signed on as a news consultant for CBS in the mid-'80s, Ajami has been a constant presence on the network, appearing with Dan Rather and others to comment on all things Middle Eastern. Over the years he's also been a regular guest on PBS's "Charlie Rose" as well as "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." It's safe to say no other Arab scholar has accumulated as much prime-time airtime as Ajami.

"I find him to be a walking encyclopedia of knowledge," says Al Ortiz, executive director and director of special events for CBS News. "He's articulate and versatile. He can discuss religion, politics, economics." (In 1982, Ajami won a MacArthur Fellowship, or so-called genius award.)

But Ajami's ubiquity irks many colleagues in the world of Muslim and Arab studies, who have long criticized his views as highly unrepresentative of the field. These critics see him as a distinct outsider whose dark vision of the contemporary Arab world and tendency to avoid criticizing Israel are not shared by many of his colleagues. (Ajami did not respond to several phone requests for an interview.)

As the Los Angeles Times pointed out in 1998, "No Arab intellectual has made himself so cordially disliked by his peers" as Ajami.

That cordial dislike has been exacerbated in recent months simply because the stakes have been raised, as has Ajami's profile. While network and cable bookers have expanded their Rolodexes to find much-needed Arab and Muslim commentators, Ajami still seems to dominate the media landscape, sounding at times more like a CIA operative than a student of Arab literature. ("We want to go into this campaign, mop it up, and get out as early as we can," he told CBS News last month.)

In his writings, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim, who came to America in his youth, routinely paints an unflattering picture of a shadowy, almost decrepit, Arab world. It's one where hatred, or "poisonous rage," for America runs deep because "of our success, of our secularism, of our movies." It's where post-World War II intellectuals, embracing pan-Arab nationalism, failed to lead their culture to modernity, or embrace the idea of peace.

More recently, Ajami has stressed American leaders shouldn't waste their time or resources trying to engage Arab public opinion, because the Arab street is "just a con," unwilling to change its ways.

While his critics acknowledge that Ajami is a serious scholar and his unflattering take on the Arab world is not without merit, they take issue with what he chooses to emphasize -- and, in a larger sense, with the fact that his perspective is given pride of place over others. "I think most of the time what Fouad Ajami does is tell an American audience, and very often a Jewish American audience, what it wants to hear about Arabs," says Hussein Ibish, national communications director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. "Much of the American media knows what it wants to hear and it's very reassured to hear confirmation of received wisdom."

"What he is, is somebody who doesn't quite like the [Arab] region, and the people, and the politics," says James Zogby, head of the Arab-American Institute, adding that "he's entitled to his opinion."

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