Bernard Lewis, FBA (born May 31, 1916) is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.
Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and Intelligence Corps during the Second World War before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.
Lewis is a widely read expert on the Middle East, and is regarded as one of the West’s leading scholars of that region.[2] His advice has been frequently sought by policymakers, including the Bush administration.[3] In the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Martin Kramer, whose Ph.D. thesis was directed by Lewis, considered that, over a 60-year career, Lewis has emerged as "the most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East."
Lewis is known for his public debates with the late Edward Said, concerning the latter's book Orientalism (1978), which criticized Lewis and other European Orientalists.
[edit]Bernard Lewis was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Stoke Newington, London. He became interested in languages and history while preparing for his bar mitzvah.
Lewis graduated in 1936 from the School of Oriental Studies (now SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies) at the University of London with a B.A. in history with special reference to the Near and Middle East; and earned his Ph.D. three years later, also from SOAS, specializing in the history of Islam.[8]Lewis also studied law, going part of the way toward becoming a solicitor, but returned to study Middle Eastern history. He undertook post-graduate studies at the University of Paris, where he studied with the orientalist Louis Massignon and earned the "Diplôme des Études Sémitiques" in 1937. He returned to SOAS in 1938 as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History.
During the Second World War, Lewis served in the British Army in the Royal Armoured Corps and as a Corporal in the Intelligence Corps in 1940–41,[9] before being seconded to the Foreign Office. After the war, he returned to SOAS, and in 1949, at the age of 33, he was appointed to the new chair in Near and Middle Eastern History.[10]
In 1974, aged 57, Lewis accepted a joint position at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study, also located in Princeton, New Jersey. The terms of his appointment were such that Lewis taught only one semester per year, and being free from administrative responsibilities, he could devote more time to research than previously. Consequently, Lewis's arrival at Princeton marked the beginning of the most prolific period in his research career during which he published numerous books and articles based on the previously accumulated materials. In addition, it was in the U.S. that Lewis became a public intellectual. Upon his retirement from Princeton in 1986, Lewis served at Cornell University until 1990.
In 1966, Lewis was a founding member of the learned society, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), but in 2007, he broke away and founded Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) to challenge MESA, which the New York Sun noted as "dominated by academics who have been critical of Israel and of America's role in the Middle East."[12] The organization was formed as an academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies, and related fields,[13] with Lewis as Chairman of its academic council.
In 1990 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Lewis for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. His lecture, entitled "Western Civilization: A View from the East," was revised and reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly under the title "The Roots of Muslim Rage."[15] His 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture, given to the American Enterprise Institute, was published as Europe and Islam.
In the mid-1960s, Lewis emerged as a commentator on the issues of the modern Middle East, and his analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the rise of militant Islam brought him publicity and aroused significant controversy. American historian Joel Beinin has called him "perhaps the most articulate and learned Zionist advocate in the North American Middle East academic community".
With this being said the following comments made in an interview broadcast on Ontario public television might strike some by surprise:
You have been very- I don’t know- careful about … adamant in
making the point that not all Muslims are fundamentalists, not all
fundamentalist are terrorists but that the terrorist that we are experiencing
today the al-Qaidah the Usamah bin Ladin
form of terrorism does have its roots in the basic philosophy of Islam that the
history the philosophical underlying tenets of that religion explain that
Bernard Lewis; “No it does not have its roots in the basic
philosophy of Islam ...
…These terrorist movements certainly arise within Islamic civilization
In the same way that Hitler and the Nazis arose within Christian civilization
but that dosn’t mean to say that they have their roots in basic Islamic philosophy
I would say quite the contrary.”
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