America’s Dream Palace is a thoughtful, well-researched treatment of how the Cold War and the U.S. national security apparatus influenced the development of Middle East expertise at universities both in the United States and in the Middle East. Khalil’s archival work provides a rich foundation of stories and personalities, but it does not lose sight of the overarching themes and patterns.
Although Chapter 1 looks at U.S. interests in the Middle East during and just after World War I, the bulk of the book covers the 1940s through the 1980s. Chapter 8 and the epilogue add coverage of the 1990s through the Arab Spring to the present. U.S. national interests and a persistent belief in the superiority of Americans and the inferiority of Middle Eastern peoples drove government–university relations. At first, the U.S. government and universities were well-suited partners. As a post–World War II superpower with a growing interest and...