About Bernard Lewis

Jay Nordlinger

"is an American journalist. He is a senior editor of National Review, the conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. He also writes a column for the magazine’s website, "National Review Online," called “Impromptus.” Nordlinger covers a wide variety of topics, including human rights. He has a special focus on China and Cuba.

In the last month and a half of the 2000 presidential election campaign, Nordlinger took a leave of absence from National Review to write speeches for George W. Bush."

Here are some of his comments on the august scholar of the Middle East, Prof. Bernard Lewis, which I found via the incomparable resource website: Martin Kramer's Sandbox:

"Another guest was Prof. Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Middle East. You always learn a lot from Lewis — just being in the same room with him, you feel wiser. He was born in 1916, six years after his king, George V, assumed the throne. In America, Wilson was president — in his first term. We had not yet entered the war.

I had about 45 minutes with Lewis, upon the stage. What I mean is, we had a little conversation, before our passengers. We talked about Turkey, Iran, the Palestinians, Israel, the Islamicization of Holland and Belgium — many things (as time allowed).

I’m tempted to think that there will never again by anyone like Lewis — that he is the last of a certain type of scholar. The last of the first-class scholars. But this cannot be true. I will give you an analogy from music. In every generation, there are those who say that we’ve seen the last — heard the last — of the greats. “Oh, Nikisch! Oh, Hofmann! Oh, Caruso! Conducting, piano playing, singing — all of that has come to an end. Boo hoo hoo.” And it’s never true. It’s always bunk. There are always others.

Last night, at a Chinese restaurant, my companions and I saw James Levine — a man who is in the pantheon of conductors, an immortal. And there will be others . . .

I’m sure that, in the time of Thucydides, and shortly thereafter, people said, “That’s it — history-writing has come to an end. There will never be another one who is up to the job.” And it wasn’t true.

Nonetheless, I can’t imagine another scholar — another scholar of the Middle East — like Lewis. The MESA crowd long ago took over Middle East Studies. As Lewis once told me, this was similar to the takeover of Chinese Studies by Maoists."

Let's repeat: "The MESA crowd long ago [taking] over Middle East Studies... was similar to the takeover of Chinese Studies by Maoists."

We owe this academic progress to the inexorable exploits by another Professor, Edward Said, who hated Lewis and singled out as: "perfect exemplification" of an "Establishment Orientalist" whose work "purports to be objective liberal scholarship but is in reality very close to being propaganda against his subject material".

Enough said.