A few years ago the Egyptian government appointed a committee of historians with a mandate to re-write the history of Egypt, making it commensurate with current needs. Those who opposed the plan raised indignant cries of ‘revisionism’ on the one hand, to be countered by equally heated accusations on the part of those who were in favour of the undertaking that much of the works of the past had been mostly white-wash attempts, or panegyrics addressed to the royal family and the old regime, and that the history of Egypt needed to be properly written. The reactions that the project aroused made it demonstrably clear that Egyptians had become keenly interested in their own history, in the manner in which it was written and in the people who were writing it. It should therefore come as no surprise to note that the number of Egyptians writing on the history of Egypt has multiplied rapidly within the last two decades.

Five years ago, on the occasion of the first annual meeting of this Association at the University of Chicago, the Presidential address was delivered by our departed and lamented colleague, Gustave von Grunebaum. It was a distinguished occasion, but to tell the truth, it was also a somewhat trying one. For an hour or two before dinner, the cocktails had flowed freely; we were then served an enormous meal, enough to put some of us to sleep on the spot; the room was rather crowded and terribly overheated, and as the dinner plates were pushed away, the air grew thick with cigar smoke. As we struggled to regain our sobriety or at least to stay awake, perspiring and gasping for breath, Professor von Grunebaum arose in our midst and delivered a characteristically learned, intricate, and rather lenghthy discourse on the Islamic concept of sin. It was, of course, a brilliant performance, and it endowed the Middle East Studies Association with the necessary academic credibility to get off to a successful start. Upon reflection, I felt that it was also well suited to the locale of the city of Chicago, and as I pointed out to Gustave afterward, all in all it had been the very model of a Chicago convention: lots of booze before dinner, and lots of sin afterward.

I welcome this opportunity to speak about the U.S. energy outlook and its implications for domestic and foreign policy. Recent events provide persuasive evidence that energy problems, in all their many ramifications, will rank high on our list of national priorities for at least the next two decades.

My remarks will be divided into three parts. First, I will summarize the facts with regard to the U.S. energy outlook. Second, I will outline some of the economic and political implications of those facts. And third, I will suggest some of the priorities and constraints which the facts will impose on our domestic and foreign policies in the years ahead.

Similar to other fields, Middle East Studies are at a stage where scholars have begun to reexamine their efforts within the framework of the modern university and science in general, with regard to both research and teaching. It is being realized that for a long time these studies have been directed towards area specialization and self-perpetration while efforts at keeping up the communication with other fields of scholarship and, more important perhaps, with the disciplinary approaches and theories that are or ought to be applied in Near Eastern studies have been very much neglected. Communication of our field with other fields and with the various disciplines is invariable dependent on translation from translations of individual pieces of literature to ‘translations’ of the entire field and the range of problems related to it. Translators from one European language into another can rely on a vast amount of secondary data and a general knowledge of the overlapping cultural settings. Translators of Middle Eastern literary output have first to overcome a basic public ignorance about the area on, or, if not ignorance, then a view and presupposition that our field is still largely exotic. There is moreover little expectation on the side of non-specialists that the literary output of the Middle East can have any wider impact on or be of any importance for the various humanistic or social disciplines and comparative studies.

Research possibilities and resources in Israel are so rich and varied that it is difficult to encompass all of them in the type of brief survey articles that have appeared in previous issues of the MESA Bulletin. Israel has developed a broadly-based European type of educational system culminating in a rapidly growing group of universities and technical research institutes. In addition to the base of scholars who immigrated to pre-1948 Palestine and helped found the educational system, there are now two newer elements in the scholarly community : native-born Jews and Arabs who have received their training in Israeli schools, often supplemented by graduate or post-doctoral study abroad, and a still newer element of Jewish immigrant scholars from Western countries such as the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and Latin America, as well as a growing number of Jewish scholars, including some distinguished Orientalists, from the Soviet Union. This diversity of educational backgrounds adds stimulation to the Israeli academic scene. Perhaps more than in any other Middle Eastern country, cooperation with local scholars is recommended, not only for reasons of politics or politeness but because of the advisability of avoiding duplication of effort and because of the assistance that these scholars can give in the use of the research facilities. Furthermore, Israeli scholars can be of assistance to their foreign colleagues in such matters as arranging guest lectures, visiting professorships, or help in finding housing or schools for one’s children, all of which are more easily handled through personal contact.

The historic appearance of the social sciences as an intellectual activity seeking to be scientific is directly tied to the birth and development of industrialization in Europe and in other areas taken over by Europeans, notably North America. If one opens a treatise on sociology, for example, one sees that all the founding fathers of the discipline are men of European culture. It is true that in the last few years Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) had often been cited as one of the forerunners of scientific thought, but he is a forerunner, and not a founding father like Conte, Durkheim, Marx, etc. The principal preoccupations of these figures were obviously those of their society, which at that time was going through a phase of upheavels connected with industrialization. But with the colonial expansion, which is one of the principle concequences of that industrialization, the curiousity of European scholars in social sciences overflowed the limits of their own society; thus was born ethnography, ethnology, and later, anthropology.

Although the Democratic Republic of Sudan has been an official member of the League of Arab States virtually since independence, the country has been frequently bypassed in studies of the Arab World—and for that matter, of Subsaharan Africa as well. And while successive Sudanese regimes have spoken of their country as a “bridge” between the Muslim Arab world and non-Muslim Black Africa, the foreign scholarly community has ironically treated this geographically largest country in Africa and the Middle East only in the most marginal terms.

The Turkish Government began applying February 17 new regulations governing foreign-sponsored research. The new procedure involves the submission of a project outline together with a new application form through the Turkish Embassy in Washington to the Foreign Ministry in Ankara for review and decision. Applicants should request forms from the Cultural Office, Turkish Embassy, 1606 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C.

Both public opinion and planners have generally emphasized and in some cases overestimated the importance of industrialization in the Middle East. Yet the needed research for sustained industrial development has lagged behind the desire for and interest in that sector and such research and literature are still in only the beginning phases.

Literature on Middle East industrial development has been constrained by, (1) modern industrialization is a relatively new phenomenon in the region. (2) Analysis of industry and its related sophisticated technology is heavily dependent on quantitative measurements and data, the inadequacy of which is still a major obstacle to researchers and writers. (3) Even with the dominant feature of Middle Eastern economics--oil--authors have tended to deal with the region overwhelmingly as a raw material producer rather than as a center for refining and processing. These difficulties have led to two approaches in literature on the Middle East's industrialization.

The Tehran Center of the American Institute of Iranian Studies will move to new and better quarters on or about 15 October. The address there is no. 9 Kh. Moshtaq (just off Kakh), and the new phone number is 42488. The new building provides more ample accomodation for both the Institute and the director and his family. It is also a location that is far quieter and more convenient than the present one.

This is another article in the series of teaching materials. This list is by no means inclusive and forthcoming issues of the Bulletin will include additional material, as they become available or as we leamof them. Members’ attention is drawn to A Provisional Survey of Materials for the Study of Neglected Languages, Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC, 1969, which was of great use in compiling this list. Note that a few of the books listed may not presently be in print and are therefore of limited accessibility. Correspondence courses listed, however, are all presently available.

The Board of Directors met for its fourteenth meeting at New York on 16 February 1973. The Board approved the Association’s co-sponsorship of Hamline University’s summer project on the Middle East as an encouragement to small institutions and new programs to undertake the kind of activity proposed by the Image Committee and Center Directors. The Board decided to hold the 1974 annual meeting in Boston under the sponsorship of universities in the area, coordinated by Harvard, and also to look into the possibilities of Madrid and New York City for later meetings. The Board approved a proposal to Be submitted by the University of Michigan to the National Science Foundation for an automated data project on the Middle East, as originally envisaged by the Library Committee. The Board also approved the proposal for a translation project submitted jointly by MESA, the University of Texas and AUC to the Office of Education. In accordance with the current Ford grant, the Board designated visiting scholars and alternates to be invited to attend the 1973 annual meeting and to remain in the country for 3 to 6 weeks travelling and lecturing at American and Canadian institutions. The Board reviewed the matters of federal funding of non-academic markets for graduates in Middle East studies and of the State of the Art Conference. It appointed the following Nominating Committee: Professor John Masson Smith, University of California, Berkeley, Chairman, and Professors Frank Tachau, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, Carolyn Killean, University of Chicago, Michael Lorraine, University of Washington and President Issawi.