Brooklyn College is currently hovering under a small, but growing cloud of criticism for requiring its incoming freshmen to read a “polemical” book that “inculcates” students with a particular political perspective. Students have already read Brooklyn College English Professor Moustafa Bayoumi’s How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America.
Publishers Weekly describes Bayoumi’s “absorbing and affectionate book” as “a quintessentially American picture of 21st century citizens ‘absorbing and refracting all the ethnicities and histories surrounding [them].’ However, the testimonies from these young adults—summary seizures from their homes, harassment from strangers, being fired for having an Arab or Muslim name—have a weight and a sorrow that is ‘often invisible to the general public.’”
The cloud recently emerged out of the words of Bruce Kesler, popular blogger and owner of an employee benefits consulting and brokerage firm, who recently pledged to delete his alma mater out of his will. In Kesler’s piece, “I Just Disinherited My Alma Mater,” he wrote:
“What caused the disinheritance is that all incoming freshmen and transfer students are given a copy of a [Bayoumi’s book] to read, and no other, to create their ‘common experience’… . When I attended in the 1960s, Brooklyn College—then rated one of the tops in the country—was, like most campuses, quite liberal. But, there was no official policy to inculcate students with a political viewpoint. Now there is. That is unacceptable.”
Also, the National Association of Scholars recently stated: “We agree with those who find the assignment of this polemical book as common reading troubling. While much of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem? seems a straightforward telling of stories, its central purpose is clear. It aims to establish Arab and Muslim Americans as victims and indict American society for making them so.”
A few BC professors, according to Kesler’s blog, have also come out against the reading of this text.
I have no problem with Brooklyn College assigning this text, just as I’d have no problem with BC assigning a liberal or conservative book on the Arab American experience.
