MER Article Barbara Harlow I first met Professor Barbara Harlow (1948-2017) in the autumn of 1992, while conducting field research in Egypt, when she gave her talk at the American University in Cairo on her new book, Barred: Women, Writing and Political Detention (Wesleyan University Press, 1992). This book examined the struggle of Kamran Asdar Ali • 4 min read
MER Article Open Hillel Lodge 5 at Swarthmore College is a dignified building in gray stone, the aesthetic match of much of the rest of the bucolic campus located 20 miles outside Philadelphia. The structure houses three floors supporting Jewish student life: a kosher kitchen, a lounge and a library whose walls are heavy w Mimi Kirk • 14 min read
MER Article The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back In January 2015, Christie’s announced that a painting by the Palestinian Suleiman Mansour, Camel of Burdens II (Jamal al-Mahamil), would be the highlight of its annual auction of modern and contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish art held in Dubai. The piece was listed as the second version of the 19 Dina Ramadan • 12 min read
MER Article The Arab World’s Non-Linear Electricity Transitions For many, especially in the United States, the Arab world is closely associated with fossil fuels. But over the past several years, a raft of news articles, opinion pieces and analyses have hailed the advent of renewable energy—especially solar power—in Arab countries. Many such pieces open with ima Zachary Cuyler • 19 min read
MER Article Into the Emergency Maze It was a sunny and warm day in February 2015, in the midst of an otherwise atypically rainy and cold Sicilian winter. Awate and Drissa sat next to one other on the edge of the covered balcony at the small reception center for asylum seekers where they lived. Both wore headphones but their bodies mov Silvia Pasquetti • 14 min read
MER Article Municipal Politics in Lebanon The municipal system has been a key pillar of debates on administrative decentralization, economic development and political participation in Lebanon. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists sought to stop the demolition of the 1924 Barakat Building on the basis that it was a heritage site. Ziad Abu-Rish • 22 min read
MER Article From The Editors (Fall 2016) The surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has already had a dramatic and troubling impact on the domestic politics and foreign policy of the US, and it is sure to affect international relations around the world. Trump is the very caricature of the most negative The Editors • 9 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2016) Achcar, Gilbert. Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). Abu-‘Uksa, Wael. Freedom in the Arab World: Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Al-Nakib, Farah. Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life (Author not identified) • 1 min read
MER Article Armed Social Science Counterinsurgency is sometimes referred to as armed social work; it could also be called armed social science. Kristian Williams • 8 min read
MER Article Israel as Innovator in the Mainstreaming of Extreme Violence The present era of counter-terrorism wars has severely damaged what, in hindsight, looked like a solid international consensus about which forms and levels of violence are “legal” in war and what “humanitarian” limits are imposed on such violence. The counter-terrorism paradigm of “with us or agains Lisa Hajjar • 19 min read
MER Article A Lonely Songkran in the Arabah The colonization of Palestine began in the late nineteenth century with the First Aliyah, or Zionist immigration, and the establishment of plantations worked by Palestinians under the management of Jewish settler-owners. A generation later, the “socialist” or “labor settlement” wing of the Zionist m Matan Kaminer • 12 min read
MER Article Education Under Occupation Most Palestinian universities are underfunded, but Hebron University is extreme in its needs. Compared to other institutions in Palestine, there are few buildings named for wealthy donors. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement mean that students rarely enroll in a university outside the vicinity where they were raised. Most of Birzeit Joshua Stacher • 1 min read
