PSU Magazine Winter 1987

No "hidden political agendas" for PSU's returned Middle East Studies Center by John Kirkland G rant Farr plucks on an Afghan musical instrument while talking about his plans for the new Middle East Studies Center. As if on cue, he gets an important phone call regarding his travel plans. He leaves tomorrow for Pakistan to study Afghan refugees. He's excited about the trip, but also a little con– cerned because he will cross through a part of the world that is never out of the headlines and is home to violent quarrels centuries old. Depending on where you are, American citizenship can be a major health hazard. Whatever is said on the other end of the line puts Farr's mind at ease for the moment; events in the Persian Gulf are not dangerous enough to warrant a flight change. Yet that call illustrates the world's interest and co·n– cern for the Middle East and a big reason why, earlier this year, the Mid– dle East Studies Center was reinsti– tuted at Portland State University. Farr, head of the Department of Sociology and coordinator of the uni– versity's Middle East Studies Certificate Program, wants people to understand the Middle East, saying that interna– tional cooperation can only come about by learning the cultures, lan– guages, philosophies, histories and politics of this complex region. The Middle East Studies Center, with Farr as its director, will offer no classes of its own, but will be a research and outreach component of the Department of International Studies. It will offer workshops (for example, to help h igh school instruc- tors teach about the Middle East), sponsor speakers, be a resource for businesses that want to trade in that part of the world, give scholarships in Middle Eastern Languages and spon– sor faculty travel and research. The center is buying a computer that will read and write in Arabic and Persian, and is linking up with various Middle East data banks. "It's a service to the university, but in a larger sense it is a service to the community. We work a lot with the business community because they really see a need for it," said Farr. A case in point is Ed Niedermeyer, president of Niedermeyer-Martin Co. and a member of the Middle East Studies Center advisory council. His company has been doing business in the Middle East-Iraq, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates - for the last 30 years, and many of the Saudis he deals with are PSU graduates. He said the center will be good for the business climate, "but it's not just a matter of dollars and cents. I'd like people to know more about the culture of the region, both of the Arabs and the Israelis," he said. PSU MAGAZINE PAGE6 Grant Farr, director of the Middle East Studi.es Center, has a collection of musical instruments including this Afghan rabab. T his resurgence of the center is the beginning of a new era in Middle Eastern studies at PSU, following a slump in what had been for two decades a very active Middle East Studies Center on the PSU campus. The first center was founded in 1960 by historian Fred Cox, whom Farr described as one of the leading Middle East experts in the nation. It was one of the first centers of its kind in the United States, funded with the help of the federal government, which at the time decided that the country needed to know more about that part of the world. Unlike the dozen or so other Middle East centers throughout the United States, PSU's concentrated on under– graduate rather than graduate studies. "We reached many, many more people than the graduate curricula; we had much more impact," Farr said. For the next 19 years, the popularity of Middle Eastern studies grew, not only at PSU, but around the nation. As a result, the competition for federal funds became more competitive. Separate federal funding for under-