OH THE IRONY,HOW SCHOLARS SPEAK ABOUT RISE OF PURSUIT OF EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF  NEO ORIENTALISM,AT AN EVENT SPONSORED BY ORIENTALIST CENTRES!!!
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Empire: Humanitarian Intervention and Neo-Orientalism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcXeSQA9LWE

Panel Discussion Featuring: Tariq Ramadan, Glenn Greenwald, M. Cherif Bassiouni, and Jennifer Pitts
The uprisings of the Arab Spring, and the prolonged nature of the internal conflicts in Libya and Syria, have once again sparked debate over the status of international law and the use of military intervention to enforce human rights. However, the discourse over humanitarian intervention has often overlooked the more unsavory aspects of liberal thought and Western power politics. This panel will explore the fundamental problems concerning Neo-Liberalism and its connections to the development of Neo-Orientalist thought. The panel will begin with Professor Pitts providing the historical foundations of liberal thought and its relationship with the colonialist ventures of Western European nations; Professor Bassiouni will then discuss the development of international law in the post-World War era and its use as an instrument to advance the strategic goals of great powers of the Cold War Era; Mr. Greenwald will then contextualize the use of international law and humanitarian intervention to justify U.S. involvement in foreign countries, especially in the Middle East, as well as advance U.S. geo-political strategy in the post-Cold War Era; and it will conclude with a discussion by Professor Ramadan on the academic study of Orientalism, the rise of Neo-Orientalism in conjunction with Neo-Liberalism, and influence of Neo-Orientalist thought in the formation of Neo-Liberalism and political policies towards the Middle East and beyond.

Sponsored by: Office of International Affairs, Dean's Fund for Student Life, Department of Political Science, Center for International Studies, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, Human Rights Program, Student Government at the University of Chicago
Hosted by: Muslim Students Association at the University of Chicago
Produced by: Chicago Multimedia Initiatives Group (CMIG)

[ED NOTES: THE IRONY IS THAT THIS EVENT IS SPONSORED BY ORIENTALIST CENTRES!!! THE CHICAGO UNIVERSITY AND ROCKEFELLER ARE KNOWN SUPPORTERS OF ORIENTALISM,AND TARIQ RAMADAN WHO CAME FROM OXFORD UNIVERSITY,DOESNT KNOW OXFORD TOO IS AN ORIENTALIST CENTRE? LOL

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An Education for Empire: The Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations in the Construction of Knowledge 

http://thepeoplesbookproject.com/2011/10/18/an-education-for-empire-the-rockefeller-carnegie-and-ford-foundations-in-the-construction-of-knowledge/

Between 1934 and 1942, the Rockefeller Foundation contributed $1 million to the establishment of area studies at major American universities. Carnegie followed up with $2.5 million between 1947 and 1951. The Ford Foundation, however, between 1950 and 1973, contributed $278 million to area studies.[11] Area studies came to replace the prevailing study of the non-Western world, which was termed ‘Orientalism.’ Edward Said popularized critique of the concept in his book Orientalism in which he explained that it is not merely a ‘discipline’, but rather “a style of thought” in which the study of ‘the Orient’ – in particular the Middle East and Islamic world – was approached differently from the study of the Western world; that the ‘Orient’ in effect, constituted “the Other,” a place so different from the West that it could not be understood through similar methods that are used to understand the West, itself. As Said articulated:Orientalism developed as European capitalism expanded outwards, defining an ‘us-and-them’ concept of European identity in relation to the ‘Orient’. Orientalism, then, came to embody a specific European superiority in relation to ‘other’ non-Western cultures. The underlying concept of Orientalism was that the non-Western world was inherently and radically “different” from (and inferior to) the West. Hence, as a ‘discipline’ or “style of thought,” Orientalism came to justify European dominance over inferior “others.” Area studies thus took up this mantle, aiming to categorize, study, and ‘understand’ particular non-Western areas of the world with the objective of exerting authority and domination over them.

In 1947, the Social Science Research Council (created with Rockefeller and Carnegie grants) produced a report proclaiming the need for “area studies” in the universities if the schools “are to meet their obligations to the nation.” The concept of area studies was that all scholars from every discipline relevant to a particular region in the world “should work together to produce useful – that is, policy-relevant – knowledge.”[13]

In 1951, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) created a Near and Middle East Committee “to promote the development of social science research and training on the Middle East, just as it created committees to promote the study of other world regions.” In 1955, the Committee began to collaborate with the American Council of Learned Societies (also created with Rockefeller-Carnegie money), and the program was then funded by the Ford Foundation. One member of the Committee, Hamilton Gibb, then went on to become director of Harvard’s new Center for Middle East Studies. These centers began to emerge at all major universities around the United States, heavily funded and organized by the major foundations. The Rockefeller Foundation, itself a pioneer in establishing international studies before World War II, had given over $6 million to universities by 1951 “for the development of international studies.” The Carnegie Corporation also joined the area studies financing bandwagon.[14]

In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation “began spending millions of dollars on overseas development projects, mainly in South Asia and the Middle East, but it also began to fund area studies programs at US universities and fellowships for foreign study and research.”[15] The Ford Foundation “embarked on a program to reorganize the study of politics (political science as a discipline),” as the Foundation began to see the emergence of a crisis in legitimacy, thus, “most of the foundation’s efforts in political science during this time were directed toward developing a realistic understanding of the political behavior of Americans and the construction of a revised democratic theory which could replace the idealistic and seemingly outdated classical view.” This area was soon to become known as ‘behavioralism’, but this soon disbanded as it became clear that “the research paradigms the foundations had so heavily invested in were incapable of explaining events in the Third World – or at home.”[16] Harold Laski, a British political theorist, economist and author, wrote in 1930 that:

[T]he foundations do not control, simply because, in the simple and direct sense of the word, there is no need for them to do so. They have only to indicate the immediate direction of their minds for the whole university world to discover that it always meant to gravitate swiftly to that angle of the intellectual compass.[17]