Arabic instruction in Israeli government schools in the Jewish sector is unsatisfactory by both subjective and objective measures. The general consensus among educators, academics and other interested parties, most notably the security apparatus—the main employer of Jews with knowledge of Arabic—is that not enough students study Arabic, and that those who do fail to achieve proficiency in the language (Uhlmann 2010, Ben-Rafael and Brosh 1991, Spolsky and Shohamy 1991, Spolsky et al. 1995, Lustigman 2008, State Comptroller 1996:367). Dissatisfaction with Arabic instruction has been an integral feature of the field since the very inception of the modern, secular, public Hebrew school system in the days of the British Mandate over Palestine (see especially early papers in Yonai 1992 and Landau 1961). This enduring educational fecklessness is remarkable given the available resources and the powerful stakeholders that drive for deepening and broadening Arabic instruction in Jewish schools.

Previous analyses of the problems of Arabic instruction have focused on language ideology and Jewish pupils’ attitudes towards Arabic and Arabs (e.g. Ben-Rafael & Brosh 1991, Ben-Rafael 1994, Kraemer and Olshtain 1994, cf. the comprehensive overview by Spolsky et al. 1995). However, language ideology is but one aspect of the broad political and institutional structuring of Arabic instruction in Israel, and it is this complex as a whole that is responsible for the state of Arabic instruction.

The most frequently asked questions regarding the phenomenon of American universities in the Arabian Gulf are: how good are they and how likely are they to endure? Already one of the first to enter the arena (George Mason University in 2005) was forced to close its Ras al-Khaimah campus in October of 2009 “after reaching an impasse with our partner over budget and control issues” (http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsrooms/740). GMU’s former students were directed to its American campus and seven other institutions within the UAE with whom GMU had teach-out agreements. One of these seven institutions has now closed as well: on 6 July 2010 Michigan State University (MSU) announced it was closing its undergraduate programs in Dubai. Its former students were offered a special package to attend the MSU campus in Lansing. As reported in the Lansing State Journal, the reason given was that the Dubai campus had “failed to attract sufficient numbers of students and was no longer financially sustainable.” It had just eighty-five students. However, MSU still had to pay between $1.3–1.7 million in “wind-down costs” (http://lansingstatejournal.com/article/20100706/NEWS01/307060031/MSU-to-close-programs-at-Dubai-campus).

“Water,” wrote the mayor’s council late in the nineteenth century, “is the only thing holding Algiers back from expanding its glory as the queen of African cities.” Paris uses 240 liters of water per person per day, it reported; New York, Philadelphia and Chicago 400 liters. Algiers could only muster a meager 60 liters per day per person, far below the levels necessary to feed a population, fill wells, and scrub a city of its toxins. For over half a century, the council reported, Algiers had thirsted after the clean water necessary to make it a great city. If the French were to make Algiers truly modern, they would need to solve this vexing problem of water.

Thus the council summed up one of the ongoing challenges in continuing settler colonialism in Algeria. Environmental projects—battling epidemic disease, drought, locust invasions, and providing/establishing hydraulic control—became important factors in the rise and expansion of the colonial state. In the midst of a crippling environmental disaster, water—access to fresh water for drinking, controlling agricultural infrastructure, and ensuring cities were “hygienic”—became a site of contention in the creation of the modern state. In this paper I will briefly examine how the physical control of water resources, along with discourses about modernity and modern governance, contributed to the expansion of the colonial state by the end of the 1860s.

Fewer than fourth months after De Gaulle stood in Algiers and enigmatically declared “I have understood you,” he was once again in Algeria, now in the city of Constantine, where he unveiled a development plan that seemed to reaffirm his commitment to French Algeria. On 3 October 1958, amidst the ravages of war, De Gaulle proposed the Plan de Constantine, proclaiming that “all of Algeria must have her share in what modern civilization can and must bring to men.” The Plan de Constantine (hereafter “the Plan”) was an ambitious development program that intended to lessen the economic, social and political disparity between l’ Hexagone (metropolitan France) and French Algeria.

In the years immediately following the imposition of mandatory rule in Syria in July 1920, French administrators declared their intention to develop the region in accordance with the ideals of progress and scientific rationality. Among the areas targeted for special attention and improvement was the field of agriculture. The first French agricultural counselor for the mandate, E. Achard, emphasized that attention to the mise en valeur (enhancement and development) of this sector could not only serve France’s need for specific commodities but would also make French mandatory rule a vehicle through which progress and scientific rationality would be imparted to what he depicted as an underdeveloped Syria. However, fifteen years later, it seems, little had changed. In 1935, Mohammed Sarrage, a Syrian student at Toulouse University, wrote a dissertation that soundly criticized the mandate government for its failure to institute the reforms necessary to advance or significantly increase Syria’s agricultural production. A closer examination of Sarrage’s critique and his proposed program for reform not only reveals the incoherence between French official discourse and actual policy, but suggests an alternative narrative to that of French officials regarding the sources of progress and modernity.

This essay discusses the music of the Maronite Church, a Christian church based in Lebanon. It provides an overview of the chants used in religious services and examines their transmission and performance practice. The Maronites have always faced challenges to maintain their identity and preserve their heritage while adapting to their cultural milieu. Their religious music reflects the dichotomy between safeguarding tradition and accepting contemporary trends. Since the late nineteenth century, Maronites looking for better opportunities and political freedom have increasingly immigrated to the New World, where they face new challenges to preserving their religious identity while assimilating to the culture of their new homeland. Therefore, this essay reaches beyond the traditional geographic boundaries of the Maronite Church in Lebanon to examine issues in the transmission of Maronite music in the diaspora.