Thoughts on Reading Roger Cohen's Article

Source: "An Egyptian for UNESCO," The New York Times, September 6, 2009.

Cohen starts with the premise:

Having an Arab lead the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for the first time since its establishment in 1945 would, on the face of it, be good. Nowhere are the cultural chasms Unesco is supposed to bridge greater than between the Muslim world and the West.

I don't quite understand why he thinks that chasm is worse than the chasms in Africa where five million people have been killed in conflicts in recent decades. Or why he is more worried about that chasm than the chasms between India and Pakistan or North Korea and the United States or Russia and NATO. Thus the chasm between Muslim and Hindu resulted in a million deaths at the partition of British India, has continued to this day, and now the two sides are armed with weapons of mass destruction. I would hate to see UNESCO neglect the rest of the world and focus only on the Arab-Israeli conflict!

Cohen recognizes that there are shadows over Hosny, but the only ones he mentions are related to his history of anti-Israeli comments. How about his history of cultural leadership in a regime famous for its censorship or the conviction on charges of corruption of some of his top aids? Are those problems so trivial as not to be worthy of consideration when choosing a UNESCO chief. Or how about some consideration of his qualifications to lead the United Nations system's lead agency for education, for science, and for communications? Indeed, how about his qualifications to lead an agency that promotes respect for cultural diversity?

Cohen seems to have been quite impressed by Hosny's apology for his book burning remarks, an apology made in the French journal Le Monde. He seems unaware that the same journal revealed that the Henri Guaino, Sarkozy's speech writer, seems to have ghost writen the piece.

"Hosny, within a grim and repressive Egyptian political spectrum, has shown some openness" so Cohen is "also in the not-opposed camp". What a ringing endorsement. There are eight active candidates including strong contenders from Austria, Ecuador and Lithuania. The question is not whether Cohen opposes Hosny, but who does he support, and why? Showing "some openness" is not much of a qualification!

Cohen concludes his op-ed piece:

But there’s also something evasive about the alternatives. Hosny stands at the crux of the cultural challenges confronting us. Let’s get him inside the tent rather than stoke the old anti-Western, anti-imperialist flames — reminiscent of what led the United States to abandon Unesco between 1984 and 2002 — by rejecting him.

And then, with the big U.S. contribution to the Unesco budget as leverage, let’s press him relentlessly to fight the anti-Semitic bigotry poisoning young Arab psyches; favor dialogue; open Arab minds to science and education; and embrace the peace that Unesco was set up to foster by draining the poisonous well from which his own now-regretted venom was drawn.

Cohen seems not to understand the history of American relations with UNESCO. We were notably unsuccessful in pressing Amadou M'Bow to do the right thing. We are at latest notice some $90 million in arrears on our contributions to the organization, and that fact reduces our influence. Think also of our opposition to the Cultural Diversity Convention which saw the United States as the lone vote against the Convention and against the UNESCO budget that would implement that Convention. The other 192 member nations each have a vote in UNESCO's governance equal to that of the United States, and if 71 year old Hosny gets into office with a majority of their support, how much influence does Cohen think we will have.

I am disappointed that the New York Times would publish so poorly reasoned an opinion piece.

It may be that Farouk Hosny is indeed the best of the current candidates. It is certainly the case that he is a serious candidate both in terms of his support among Arab, Islamic and African nations and in terms of his high-level service for many years in his country's government. Indeed it may be that he will be elected independent of what the New York Times says about the election. I do hope for an editorial endorsement from the paper on its choice for the best of the eight active candidates, and I expect that endorsement to be better reasoned than Cohen's piece!