I am often confronted with a dual reality, conveying what I see and learn in the Middle East and what I teach to my colleagues and students in the U.S. The problem is that the Western conceptual framework is, more often than not, a false lens for comprehending the region. Worse, we think we understand what the people, or more accurately, the authoritarian regimes, will accept. These misconceptions lead to false hopes and failed policies.
It all begins with what our future leaders in business, politics, the media, and academics learn as students on U.S. college campuses. We are now 30 years into the transformation of college education from liberal open-mindedness to woke indoctrination and censorship, as university faculty and administrations have squeezed out dissent over the years.
As Eli Lake wrote in the Free Press, according to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar is the largest foreign…
