It is a scandal that there is no Thomas Adams professor and that there seems to be no plan to appoint one.

In the 20th century, the Thomas Adams professorship in Cambridge (endowed in the 17th century) was held by some of the most brilliant and famous Arabists in Europe, including Edward Granville Browne, Reynold Alleyne Nicholson and AJ Arberry. James Craig, Arabist and former ambassador, tells me that in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Soas, the professors of Arabic are Syrian, Palestinian, Dutch or German and that of the entire membership of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies barely one-third are home-grown British scholars. The closure of the east Asian studies department at Durham University was condemned, but the decline of Arabic teaching was also a matter of grave concern. In a debate in the House of Lords on 24th March 2004, several peers expressed disquiet at the way oriental studies and the teaching of difficult languages had declined in Britain.

Arabic studies has lost prestige and the resources devoted to it keep diminishing. Orientalism is now a pejorative word and its practitioners have become losers in the politics of knowledge.

Orientalist writings, in the sense of books and articles written by academics specialising in Arab and Islamic studies, currently play a negligible part in informing and shaping public opinion.

For Lust Of Knowing by Robert Irwin