There are other problems here

Submitted by Peter Herz (United States), Oct 6, 2012 at 23:04

"One reason for that, Martin Kramer points out to me, is the 40 percent reduction in federal funding for area studies under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which reduced Middle East studies both for university administrators and the general public. This reduction originated in efforts to reduce the overall deficit but it also reflects dissatisfaction at the political level in Middle East studies dues to its poor work."

This is actually bad news. Congress will defund Title VI programs, through which most training in what the State Department used to call "hard languages" is funded, not because the enemy has infiltrated Middle East Studies Departments, but because nobody will raise the ire of a large constituency and lose a Congressional seat if so many profs are out of work.

America needs more people who have skills in a wide variety of languages apart from Arabic and Farsi--such as Chinese, Russian, etc.--but not many of our honorable representatives in Congress can see that far.

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