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PARTICIPANTS*
BENJAMIN BARBER
PETER SINGER
ORLANDO PATTERSON
AKEEL BILGRAMI
VLADIMIR TISMANEANU
MARTHA NUSSBAUM
BREYTEN BREYTENBACH
GUITY NASHAT
JAMES MILLER
CAROLYN FORCHÉ
ROBERT BOYERS
* THlS IS THE EDITED TRANSCRIFT OF A PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM CONDUCTED AT SKIDMORE COLLEGE IN 2004.
Session One
ROBERT BOYERS:
Not long ago, Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Muslim societies are undergoing a general crisis of adaptation to modernity and to the West." This fact, if it is a fact, inspires some thoughtful people to believe that the crisis will not soon disappear, and that we are already engaged in a clash of irreconcilably opposed civilizations. Others contend that the genuinely important conflicts unfolding before us are occurring within Islam and within the cultures of the West. These observers cite as evidence-to take but a single example-recent developments in Iran, where reformers, backed by young, educated elites, began to challenge the authority of the mullahs. But those who are determined at all costs to prosecute the clash of civilizations or, more simply, to make war on "evil" typically acknowledge only one kind of "evidence" and are not at all inclined to think seriously about the role of the West, most especially the United States, in creating conditions that breed terrorism.
The facts of the global situation we hope to confront in this conference are not easy to get into focus-and that's an understatement. But let me, very briefly, set out a handful of suggestive items that will inform our discussions here:
One: According to Amy Chua, in World on Fire, the "top 20% of those living in high income countries, that is principally the U.S., Japan and western Europe, account for 86% of all of the world's private consumption expenditures." We can differ on what is to be made of this statistic, but surely it is one of many such factors we cannot ignore.
Two: Economic and cultural stagnation in many parts of the world, especially in the Islamic world, is such that in spite of trillions of dollars pouring into the Gulf states, unemployment in a number of the larger countries in the region is now between 30 and 40 percent, while illiteracy rates for the adult population in countries like Egypt and Yemen are between 40 and 50 percent.
Three: Some...