Bassam Frangieh (Arabic: بسام فرنجيه) is a scholar of contemporary Arabic literature and culture. He is best known for his pedagogical innovations in the study of the Arabic language, as well as his translations of modern Arabic poets and novelists. Frangieh also lectures on the society and culture of the Arab world. A language professor as well as a scholar and writer, Frangieh has achieved moderate fame in the American academic world of Middle Eastern Studies for his engaging educational methods. He is married to former State Department employee Aleta Wenger, who also currently works at Claremont McKenna College.
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Frangieh was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon in 1949.[1] His family, Palestinians who had owned an orange grove in Yaffa, had been relocated there due to the conflicts associated with the creation of the state of Israel. His family is distantly related to the famous Frangieh family of Lebanon, including former Lebanese president Suleiman Frangieh, but the Palestinian Frangieh family tree diverged from the Lebanese family tree several generations ago. Frangieh eventually moved to Syria to attend university, earning a B.A. from Damascus University in 1976. While in Syria, he earned fame as a boxing champion and professional soccer player. Frangieh attended graduate school in the United States, and received a Ph.D. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University in 1987. After receiving his doctorate, Frangieh taught Arabic at Georgetown for several years before accepting a position at Yale University. After his resignation from Yale in 2007, Frangieh joined Claremont McKenna College as a full-time Arabic professor and the head of the Arabic Department for the five Claremont Colleges while writing and researching new Arabic books. He is the head of the Middle East studies department.
In April 2010, The Claremont Independent, the right-leaning campus news magazine, wrote an article critical of Frangieh's signature on a petition by Workers in the Public Cultural Sphere in Lebanon.[2] The petition described Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon as part of a "Zionist killing machine", called for a boycott of Israel and Israeli academics, and called Hezbollah, a terrorist organization according to the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, among other countries, the "legitimate" "national resistance" of Lebanon.[3] The petition [4] said that signatories agree with the following statement from a flier promoting the petition: "We are all Hizbullah... Boycott Israel."[5] For these reasons, Noah Pollak of the pro-Israel[6] Commentary Magazine described the petition as "anti-Israel, pro-Hezbollah."[7]
The petition included some "well known names" in the preface, Norman G. Finkelstein whom the Anti-Defamation League accused of Holocaust denial.,[8] and Tariq Ali, who has argued that suicide bombings attacks in Britain were instigated by Britain's support of the Iraq war.
The petition that Professor Frangieh signed was also signed by 455 other intellectuals, including professors at Oxford University, UCLA, Boston University, MIT, Yale, and Princeton, many of whom are critical of Israel and some of whom are anti-Israel.
In December 2010, The Claremont Independent published a subsequent story that detailed Frangieh's support for Hamas, which he views with "great enthusiasm" as well as his view that a planned partition of Iraq into three autonomous regions was part of a "Zionist plot" to undermine Iraq.[9]
Frangieh is a prolific author in both Arabic and English on contemporary Arabic literature. This is a list of some of his most prominent books and articles.
