Martin Seth Kramer (Hebrew: מרטין קרמר; born September 9, 1954, Washington, D.C.) is an American-Israeli scholar of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His focus is on the history and politics of the Middle East, contemporary Islam, and modern Israel.
Kramer began his undergraduate degree under Itamar Rabinovich in Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University and completed his BA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. He earned his PhD at Princeton as well, under Fouad Ajami, L. Carl Brown, Charles Issawi, and Bernard Lewis, who directed his thesis. He also received a History MA from Columbia University.[1] He gained a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1982.[2]
Kramer is a senior and past editor of the Middle East Forum's Middle East Quarterly.[3] Primarily a scholar of twentieth century Islamist intellectual and political history, Kramer has also published columns in the National Review magazine[4][5] and on the websites of the History News Network.[6]
Kramer was an early advocate of attacking Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, arguing in December 2001 that regardless of a possible involvement, he posed a threat to the entire Middle East.[7] However, he was critical of the shifting rationale for the war in October 2002, questioning the United States' "tools of social engineering" needed to promote an eventual democracy process in the Arab world.[8]
He was a senior policy adviser on the Middle East to the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign in 2007.[9]
In 2001, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published Kramer's book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.[10] In the book (as reported by the New York Times), Kramer argued that Middle East experts "failed to ask the right questions at the right time about Islam. They underestimated its impact in the 1980s; they misrepresented its role in the early 1990s; and they glossed over its growing potential for terrorism against America in the late 1990s."The book was given positive mentions in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post[11]
John L. Esposito accused Kramer of trying to discredit the entire Middle East establishment.[12] Zachary Lockman, professor of modern Middle East history at New York University, admits that Kramer's criticism of Middle East scholars' general failure to anticipate the rise of Islamist movements in the 1970s is well-deserved but maintains that "[o]verall, Kramer’s approach is deeply flawed as a history of Middle East studies as a scholarly field."[13]
Kramer was one of the most vocal supporters of HR 3077,[14] a bill in the United States House of Representatives designed to reform area studies in the US.[how?] Saree Makdisi argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the bill "poses a profound threat to academic freedom".[15][16]
At the February 2010 Herzliya Conference in Israel, Kramer caused controversy by advocating for the elimination of Western aid in what he termed "pro-natal subsidies" to Palestinian refugees in Gaza in order to discourage population growth and Islamic radicalization:[17][18]
Aging populations reject radical agenda and the Middle East is no different. Now eventually, this will happen among the Palestinians, too. But it will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status. Those subsidies are one reason why in the ten years, from 1997 to 2007, Gaza’s population grew by an astonishing 40%. At that rate, Gaza’s population will double by 2030 to three million. Israel’s present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim, undermine the Hamas regime, but they also break Gaza’s runaway population growth and there is some evidence that they have. That may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.
At the time, he was a National Security Studies Program Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and some critics called on Harvard to distance itself from him. Deans at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs rejected these calls, stating, "Accusations have been made that Martin Kramer's statements are genocidal. These accusations are baseless." They found that Kramer's critics "appear not to understand the role of controversy in an academic setting" and rejected any attempts to restrict "fundamental academic freedom."[19] Kramer later referred to the speech as "experimental" and deliberately "provocative."[19]
