I was an undergrad at Yale in the Arab and Islamic studies section of NELC and I can attest to Professor Cole's appt at Yale being affected by forces well beyond the NELC/History Depts. Many of the professors in the department were looking forward to his appointment as well as the overhaul of the major to include a modern studies section. Here is a link to a Yale Daily News article about the situation and contrary to Paula Hyman's remarks, his candidacy obviously had majority support of the departments and certainly among many of the students who were looking forward to having a professor who focused on the current region rather than its ancient side. However, when Yale failed to appoint Cole or take serious action to add a modern component to the major, many of the people who focused on modern aspects of the region left not long after (Hala Khamis Nassar, Ghassan Husseinali, just to name a few). I wish they had hired Prof. Cole, Yale's loss!
I was an undergrad at Yale in the Arab and Islamic studies section of NELC and I can attest to Professor Cole's appt at Yale being affected by forces well beyond the NELC/History Depts. Many of the professors in the department were looking forward to his appointment as well as the overhaul of the major to include a modern studies section. Here is a link to a Yale Daily News article about the situation and contrary to Paula Hyman's remarks, his candidacy obviously had majority support of the departments and certainly among many of the students who were looking forward to having a professor who focused on the current region rather than its ancient side. However, when Yale failed to appoint Cole or take serious action to add a modern component to the major, many of the people who focused on modern aspects of the region left not long after (Hala Khamis Nassar, Ghassan Husseinali, just to name a few). I wish they had hired Prof. Cole, Yale's loss!
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2006/06/10/univ-denies-cole-tenure/