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Institutional
Affiliations
Project
for the New American Century: Signed the Sept. 20, 2001
letter to George W. Bush urging the president to target Iraq
as part of the war on terrorism (8)
American
Enterprise Institute: W.H. Brady Fellow in Science, Politics
and Culture, with work concerning the role of religion in U.S.
democratic life as well as contemporary politics in the Muslim
world, 1998-2001 (1), (2)
Committee
on Social Thought, University of Chicago: Professor, history
of political and religious, 1987-1998 (1), (7)
Lynde
and Harry Bradley Foundation: Vice President, 1988-1998;
Senior Program Officer, 1986-1988 (7)
National
Council of the National Endowment on the Humanities: Member,
1988-1994 (1)
Department
of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University: Assistant
Professor, 1979-1986 (1), (2), (3), (7)
John
M. Olin Foundation: Program Officer, 1983-1986 (1), (3),
(5), (7)
Yale
University: Visiting Instructor, Department of Political
Science, 1977-1979 (1), (2)
University
of Maryland: Assistant Director, Project on Islamic Thought,
1977-1979 (1), (2)
Government
Posts/Panels/Commissions
U.S. Department
of Education: Member of the Advisory Committee on International
Education (2)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Benador
Associates: Expert Speaker (2)
Education
Cornell
University: B.A., Government
University of Chicago: Ph.D., Islamic and Jewish Thought
and History
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Highlights
& Quotes
Fradkin
is a specialist in Islamic studies and a Straussian
scholar with a long track record working for major neoconservative
outfits -- including the American Enterprise Institute and the Ethics
and Public Policy Center -- and overseeing key conservative grant
making institutions such as the Olin and Bradley foundations.
In a 2001 article
for the American Enterprise Institute entitled “Why They Hate
Us,” Fradkin wrote: “Muslim teachings envision a world
united under Islam, but in modern times the previously great cities
of the Arab and Ottoman Empires have become weak and the Muslim
world has diminished politically, militarily, and economically when
compared with the progress of European civilization. It is therefore
no wonder that Muslim radicals want to destroy the West ... .The
Islamic world itself has stopped improving; Muslim leaders have
not appropriated those aspects of modernity that made their rivals
strong. Worse still, Muslims have intermittently tried to adopt
defective forms of modernization -- especially various types of
socialism. What they have not lastingly tried is democratic capitalism.
Almost all Muslim countries are still ruled by some form of autocracy
-- some softer, some harsher -- and most of their autocrats are
corrupt. The Muslim world has a truly glorious past -- not only
politically and militarily but also intellectually and spiritually
-- and a diminished and humbling present. The natural consequence
is disappointment, shame, even despair. The contrast with life in
today's powerful advanced democracies like the United States is
stark and often embittering. (6)
Fradkin is
also associated with Benador Associates, the New York-based publicity
firm that has played a central role in publicizing the voices of
several neoconservative figures in recent years. Headed by Eleana
Benador, Benador Associates clients include Richard Perle, James
Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and several other prominent
neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions, writes journalist Jim
Lobe, “proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news
talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the
past 20 months. Also found among [Benador’s] client list are
other major war-boosters, including former executive editor of The
New York Times and now New York Daily News columnist
A. M. Rosenthal; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer;
the Council on Foreign Relations' resident imperialist Max Boot;
and Victor Davis Hanson, a blood-and-guts classicist and one of
Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite dinner guests.” (9)
Fradkin is
the author of With All Your Heart, Soul, and Might: Freedom,
Morality, and Politics in the Hebrew Bible; "Religious
Liberty and the Integrity of Piety" in Religious Liberty
and Secularism, 1998; "Philosophy or Exegesis: Perennial
Problems in the Study of Judeo-Arabic Philosophic Authors"
in Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations III, 1997; and "A
Word Fitly Spoken: The Interpretations of Maimonides and the Legacy
of Leo Strauss" in Leo Strauss & Judaism: Jerusalem
and Athens Critically Revisited, 1996. (7)
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