talking back to the NYT

The New York Times Book Review has published a special section of letters in response to some of its recent books coverage on Iraq, including the egregious piece by Robert Worth that I wrote about here. I am reassured to see the responses, pleased that they published them, and delighted to note that among the letter writers (y'all kick some lazy orientalist ass!) are John Kearney, a reader of this blog with whom I've corresponded about this issue, and my very first Turkish language teacher back in Seattle, Selim Sirri Kuru. I had written to John that I sometimes feel too frustrated to write letters to the editor, etc., but he rightly replied that we need to fight every instance of this problem, whether or not we feel like we're having an effect. The letters were mentioned in today's panel, incidentally, as a small victory in the campaign that people in our field are increasingly engaged in: to combat the misrepresentation of the area we study, and defend our own academic freedom in the face of ever more frequent politically-motivated attacks on the field.