28 October 2011
I can understand the frustration of the Arab intellectual if he finds himself being engaged in small matters while he sees foreign intellectuals doing ‘academic tourism’ in the field, to go home and be producers of knowledge about revolutions these home intellectuals take part in but find no time nor funding to sit and compose the fieldwork as written knowledge to be passed on to the coming generations. This frustration is justifiable. At the same time, and hoping that the ‘academic tourists’ do their job as faithfully as they can, there is no harm if knowledge produced about ‘us’ is made ‘there’ as long as ‘we’ at home can access this knowledge, and are able to read it and share it with the masses that need it.