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"Someone Named Daniel Pipes"

by Daniel Pipes
June 20, 2003
updated May 17, 2007

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In a collection of interviews with Edward Said called Culture and Resistance, he refers to me on p. 177 as "someone named Daniel Pipes, who is basically a second-rate, unemployed scholar." Which rate I am is a matter of opinion, but my being employed or unemployed is a matter of fact. As it is, I happen to be gainfully employed, with a 10th-floor office and a W-2 form to prove it.

More to the point: think tanks (like the Middle East Forum) have emerged in the last couple of decades as leading actors in the making of public policy, much to the frustration of the academic thought police. University employees moan about our being "grossly misinformed" and call us unflattering names like "policy entrepreneurs", but the fact is, think tankers provide timely analysis and often sensible advice, so they are listened to.

Thus, the University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University has gotten it wrong again-hardly surprising, as biographical accuracy has hardly been Edward Said's strong suit. (June 20, 2003)

June 23, 2003 update: Writing today in Counterpunch, Said refers to "Neanderthal publicists and Orientalists like Bernard Lewis and Daniel Pipes," a phrase which elicits several responses: (1) I much prefer this to his "somebody named Daniel Pipes" formulation. (2) How impressive to be called an Orientalist by the person who transformed this honorable old term into an insult. (3) How complimentary to be called an Orientalist, putting me in the grand tradition of Silvestre de Sacy, Edward Lane, and Max Müller. (4) Said is satisfyingly reduced to writing for whacko-left websites and Egyptian newspapers.

Mar. 1, 2007 update: Martin Kramer writes (in a review in Commentary of Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and its Discontents by Robert Irwin) that "there are no self-declared Orientalists today." I guess he missed this weblog entry.

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