Many scholars are stunned that Georgetown University is denying tenure to Samer Shehata, widely seen as a significant figure in Arab studies. But there is no one theory about why he was denied a permanent spot within the university's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Some say he's being punished for his politics, and his views on the Middle East in particular. Others blame the politics of political science, and say he's being punished because his work is ethnographic and not full of the theory popular within the discipline. Whatever the reason, a fight is brewing. Even at a univer...