I will share some thoughts on the current state of knowledge production within the social sciences and history in the Gulf Arab States. Particularly, I will focus on what I perceive as the contrasting fortunes of knowledge production in Arabic versus English language, particularly focusing on the political economy of knowledge production. The rise of the satellite campus Western universities and a new generation of scholars in formal academic institutions writing almost exclusively in English will be contrasted with the crisis facing formally institutionalized knowledge production in Arabic. I will also talk about the new forms of public pedagogies and knowledge production in Arabic that are currently flourishing outside of formally institutionalized academic venues, using social media mediums such as Youtube, Instagram, and blogs. I will reflect on what this entails for continuity, ruptures, and accumulation of knowledge production in the region, as well as the tensions and interactions between knowledge production in the two languages. This includes the differences and intersections in topics, discourses, readerships, and motivations for knowledge production.