Destroyers of Civilization: Daesh and the 21st-Century University
-
Eva von Dassow
Abstract
While Islamic State jihadists demolish antiquities and persecute their curators, Western educational institutions decapitate programs for the study of the very civilizations that produced the cultural heritage under attack. Every academic year brings more cuts or threats to departments, faculty positions, and curricula in the history, languages, and cultures of the ancient and modern Middle East, although the need for such knowledge keeps glaring the West in the face. Our political leaders scorn humanistic disciplines as lacking economic value (read: no one makes a profit from anyone’s humanistic knowledge). They consider education to serve no purpose but getting jobs and making money – not making knowledge or, heaven forfend, developing citizens. So universities downsize programs in the humanities out of existence, and undermine academic freedom to boot, as if they mean to compete with Daesh in the endeavor to destroy civilization along with knowledge of it.
Preliminary note
Documentation of information and quotations is given in a section appended to this essay, organized topically in the same order as the essay itself, in preference to burdening sentence after sentence with long footnotes.
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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- Frontmatter
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- ‘I Took You Up, Ḫukkana, the Lowly Dog...’
- The Middle Assyrian Letter Order VS 1, 105 (VAT 5385)
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- Sumerograms and Akkadograms in Hittite: Ideograms, Logograms, Allograms, or Heterograms?
- Cuneiform Texts in the Creighton University
- Zur phonologischen Rekonstruktion von „Schin“ (‹Š›)im frühen Akkadisch (sargonische bis altbabylonische Zeit)
- The Goldsmith Zuzu(l)li and the Find-spots of the Inventory Texts from Ḫattuša
- Workshop
- Die Zukunft der Altorientalistik – The Future of Ancient Near Eastern Studies
- Einführung
- Destroyers of Civilization: Daesh and the 21st-Century University
- Wege der Vermittlung: Schulen und Museen
- Why Mesopotamia Matters
- Der Alte Orient in der Schule: Erfahrungen (und Perspektiven?) beim Verfassen von Geschichtslehrbüchern
- Wedge-shaped Bridges: A Museum Perspective on Communicating Assyriology
- Wege der Vermittlung: vor Ort und im Spiel
- Community Engagement and Near Eastern Archaeological Collections: The Syrian-Australian Archaeological Research Collaboration Project
- Bringing Assyria to the Stage
- The Assyrian Empire as a Board Game in Arabic and Kurdish: Using Strategy Board Games to Connect the Iraqi People with their Heritage
- Ausblick
- How Design Thinkers Could Help Ancient Near Eastern Studies
- Zusammenfassung der Abschlussdiskussionen und Ausblick
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- KBo 20.64: A Hittite Invocation Ritual Mentioning the Thunder
- ‘I Took You Up, Ḫukkana, the Lowly Dog...’
- The Middle Assyrian Letter Order VS 1, 105 (VAT 5385)
- On the Initial Function and Subsequent Evolution of Some Hurrian Affixes and Constructions
- Sumerograms and Akkadograms in Hittite: Ideograms, Logograms, Allograms, or Heterograms?
- Cuneiform Texts in the Creighton University
- Zur phonologischen Rekonstruktion von „Schin“ (‹Š›)im frühen Akkadisch (sargonische bis altbabylonische Zeit)
- The Goldsmith Zuzu(l)li and the Find-spots of the Inventory Texts from Ḫattuša
- Workshop
- Die Zukunft der Altorientalistik – The Future of Ancient Near Eastern Studies
- Einführung
- Destroyers of Civilization: Daesh and the 21st-Century University
- Wege der Vermittlung: Schulen und Museen
- Why Mesopotamia Matters
- Der Alte Orient in der Schule: Erfahrungen (und Perspektiven?) beim Verfassen von Geschichtslehrbüchern
- Wedge-shaped Bridges: A Museum Perspective on Communicating Assyriology
- Wege der Vermittlung: vor Ort und im Spiel
- Community Engagement and Near Eastern Archaeological Collections: The Syrian-Australian Archaeological Research Collaboration Project
- Bringing Assyria to the Stage
- The Assyrian Empire as a Board Game in Arabic and Kurdish: Using Strategy Board Games to Connect the Iraqi People with their Heritage
- Ausblick
- How Design Thinkers Could Help Ancient Near Eastern Studies
- Zusammenfassung der Abschlussdiskussionen und Ausblick
