MERIP updates

NEW: Censorship and Surveillance at US Universities

Dear Friends and Comrades, Today we’re publishing the first piece from our forthcoming issue on campus activism and repression since October 7, 2023. In “Censorship and Surveillance at US Universities,” Torin Monahan details the expansive apparatus used by university administrations, often following federal or state political pressures, to police

James Ryan, Torin Monahan • 2 min read

Academic Freedom

Censorship and Surveillance at US Universities

The night before the start of the Fall 2025 semester, facilities workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill quietly boarded up a pro-Palestine mural. The mural, created by art students, was composed of prints bearing slogans of solidarity such as “We keep us safe.” Its black and

Torin Monahan • 10 min read

Current Analysis

The AnthroBoycott Collective and Organizing Against Apartheid—An Interview with Daniel Segal and Jessica Winegar

What we can learn from the American Anthropological Association's historic resolution.

Lori Allen, Jessica Winegar, Daniel Segal • 10 min read

MER Article

Generational Dislocation and Academic Solidarity—Aslı Bâli on MESA’s Global Academy

The last ten years have seen a precipitous decline in conditions for academics across the Middle East. With campuses under literal fire in some places and extraordinary repression and authoritarian crackdowns in others, research, writing and teaching have become nearly impossible in many places.

Aslı Bâli, Arang Keshavarzian • 13 min read

Current Analysis

Intellectual Traditions and the Academy in Turkey — An Interview with Evren Altınkaş

MERIP editors interview Evren Altınkaş, a Turkish scholar who was pushed out of his academic position by his university’s administration as a consequence of participating in the Gezi Park protests of 2013. Altınkaş discusses his work on the intellectual tradition in Turkey, the role of the ruling AK

Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Elif Babül, Nabil Al-Tikriti • 11 min read

Current Analysis

Boğaziçi Resists Authoritarian Control of the Academy in Turkey

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's appointment of Melih Bulu as the new rector of Boğaziçi University on January 1, 2021 provoked outrage among students and faculty in Turkey. Alemdaroğlu and Babül explain the anger behind the continuing protests and how Boğaziçi's struggle fits into a long history of

Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Elif Babül • 15 min read

Current Analysis

Remaking AUC in the Corporate Image of US Foreign Policy

Over the past few years, students and staff at the American University in Cairo have joined forces with faculty against the increasingly draconian measures taken by the AUC administration.

A Special Correspondent • 8 min read

MER Article

Revealing State Secrets through FOIA Research

Making FOIA requests for classified government documents can be a powerful way to breach the wall of secrecy regarding state actions that would otherwise stay secret or await future historians to uncover. The basics of filing a FOIA request are simple and learning how to press for unredacted or with

David H. Price • 4 min read

Current Analysis

Scholars, Spies and the Gulf Military Industrial Complex

A military-industrial complex is growing in the Gulf states. In May 2018, a British researcher Matt Hedges was arrested in the UAE and charged with espionage for researching this industry as a spy, not a scholar. His colleague Shana Marshall explains why.

Shana Marshall • 11 min read

MER Article

Turkey’s Purge of Critical Academia

Academic freedom has always been limited and under threat by the state in Turkey. But since the beginning of 2016, academic freedom in Turkey—and the broader field of higher education—has been subject to a sustained campaign of state repression that is unprecedented in the history of the Turkish Rep

Muzaffer Kaya • 11 min read

MER Article

BDS in a Time of Precarity

The University of Toronto is not known as a particularly progressive institution. Like many universities, it has adopted neoliberal thinking and practice, becoming part of Academia, Inc. But two seemingly unrelated events during the 2014-2015 academic year showcased the increasing political activity of the school’s graduate student body. In

Omar Sirri • 14 min read

MER Article

Imperiled Academics in Turkey

Dilsa Deniz, an anthropologist of the Alevi-Kurdish religion, was fired from her position as an assistant professor at Nişantaşı University in Istanbul after she signed the Academics for Peace petition issued in Turkey on January 10, 2016. More than 1,000 scholars signed the petition to protest the

Jeannie Sowers • 6 min read