to collaborative research in Arabic letters;
to the study of Arabic letters and culture as living and significant
phenomena;
to the purposeful transgression of disciplinary boundaries;
to the presentation and interpretation of Arab culture beyond the narrow
horizons of the academy;
to the removal of all academic privilege from the accepted literary and
linguistic canon, along with the parallel
exploitation of "obverse canons";
to the establishment and maintenance of intellectual and academic
channels between Euro-American and Asio-Middle Eastern cultures;
to the deliberate avoidance of jargon and obscurantism;
to the development and deployment of a critical and revisionist stance
toward earlier scholarship;
to the avoidance of dichotomies as basic structures of analysis;
to the proposition that nothing ever happens for only one reason: no
effect has only one cause;
to the establishment and preservation of an ecologically balanced earth;
to never taking ourselves or others too seriously
