I just finished watching Bush’s press conference on Thursday. At one point Bush said (and this is paraphrased a bit from memory), “It’s like I tell Condi. Look at who is the c-student and look at who is the Ph.D. . Now, look at who is the President and who is the advisor.” This was followed by lots of laughter from the press corps. Leaving aside that George W. Bush seems to think he could have attained the presidency as a c-student if he was not a DKE, a millionaire, and the son of a president I am tired of hearing higher education derided by people in power.

I think we need to defend the concept of the Ph.D., especially with regard to the study of Islam. Doing course work, studying languages, performing research, writing a major piece of scholarship and defending it before other scholars are valuable endeavors. People with Ph.D.s who teach and write about Islam are currently under attack from characters like Robert Spencer and David Horowitz as “apologists” who can’t be trusted to tell the truth. We see tenure decisions being influenced by outsiders to the process on highly political and emotional rather than scholarly grounds. Meanwhile non-Ph.D.’s like Irshad Manji and Ian Buruma are given academic positions without writing dissertations and proceed to elaborate on issues related to the Islamic world using their academic appointments as evidence of their “Orientalist” expertise. In Buruma’s case his kandidat was in East Asian studies. Now however he comments in print about the rise of Islamism, Tariq Ramadan and the Arab-Israeli situation not as an admittedly talented writer and opinion journalist but instead as the Henry Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College

I am not arguing that only academics have important things to say. And I certainly am not arguing that the Ph.D. imparts the “Orientalist” right in the manner of Bernard Lewis to act as the all-knowing expert who can “explain” “Islam” to “the West.” But surely a doctorate shouldn’t be derided as a worthless piece of paper. And it certainly shouldn’t make us immediately suspect. Speaking as a Professor and a Ph.D., I think we need to find ways to defend our profession against the continuing attacks against it.

Vernon Schubel
Kenyon College