Rashid Khalidi's talk at UCLA, "Government Attacks on Area Specialists Called Disservice to U.S. Middle East Policy," is absolutely essential reading. Khalidi covers the group-think at the Pentagon, the exclusion and intimidation of State Department Middle East experts, the willful disregard by the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith crew of Middle East expertise generally, and the recent attempt to muzzle academic Middle East specialists. Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor at Columbia University and the author of an important recent book,
Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon Press, April 2004).