By not filling the Edward Said Professorship, Joseph Castro seems to be living up to the very same “Orientalism” that Said first described in his ground-breaking book of the same title. Bowing to pressure from politically-motivated groups of any sort would have been anathema to Said, who was a uniter not a divider. But most especially Castro needs to fill this professorship because the Edward Said Professorship — and Middle Eastern scholarship — represent the only way for America to open closed minds — through learning. Said abhorred closed minds and the limits and limitations that forcibly closed minds imposed. Joseph Castro: Don’t let the loud voices of those who would impose more Otherness on the world deafen you to what Said and what the Said Professorship is all about: breaking down walls and barriers and opening minds. There is no Other, there is no “us” versus “them”. There are only minds too closed to see that we are all truly one and the same, just human beings in the same human skin.