Current Analysis Title VI and Middle East Studies In the past few years, pro-Israel groups have mounted an escalating and concerted effort to set the contours of scholarly debate about Israel on American campuses. This fall, two such organizations, the AMCHA Initiative and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, are lobbying Congre Bekah Wolf • 9 min read
Current Analysis The Battle Over Higher Education in Iran The educated middle class that played an influential role in electing Hassan Rouhani to the Iranian presidency in June 2013 is anxious to see his promises of “prudence and hope” fulfilled. One area that Rouhani’s administration is expected to reform is higher education, which was targeted for politi Mohammad Ali Kadivar • 10 min read
MER Article The Challenges for Women Working at Iraqi Universities Ten years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, Iraqi women suffer from pervasive hardships -- the overall lack of security, gender-based violence, the feminization of poverty and poor access to basic services. Women working at universities face all these challenges, as well as others particular to hig Nadje Al-Ali • 4 min read
Current Analysis CAFMENA Letter re: Syria The Committee on Academic Freedom [http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/committees/academic-freedom/index.html] of the Middle East Studies Association of North America has published an open letter [http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/committees/academic-freedom/intervention/letters-syria.html#021913]regarding armed (Author not identified) • 3 min read
MER Article The September 11 Effect on Anthropology Conventional wisdom among scholars of the Middle East is that the September 11, 2001 attacks left behind a threatening professional environment. Graduate students and faculty alike speak of hostile infiltrators in their classrooms, inevitably bitter tenure battles and the self-censorship that both c Lara Deeb, Jessica Winegar • 5 min read
Current Analysis Behind the Battles Over Middle East Studies An ideological campaign to reshape the academic study of the Middle East in the United States has begun to bear fruit on Capitol Hill. In late 2003, the House of Representatives passed legislation which would, for the first time, mandate that university-based Middle East studies centers “foster deba Zachary Lockman • 20 min read
MER Article Pappe Faces Down Prosecution On May 19, 2002, Ilan Pappé received word that an order for him to stand trial at Haifa University, where he teaches political science, had been rescinded. The prosecution, represented by Haifa’s dean of humanities, had demanded Pappé’s expulsion from the university due to positions he has taken on Rebecca L. Stein • 2 min read
MER Article Column: Turkey's Little Tiger Princeton University recently launched a massive fundraising campaign in its palatial Prospect House for maximum media exposure. But its public relations people are unhappy with reporters snooping around the Near Eastern studies division -- a lumbering dinosaur of a department housed in nearby ivy-c Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article "Silencing Is at the Heart of My Case" When a group of Islamist lawyers filed a suit this summer to divorce a Cairo professor from his wife, against the couple’s wishes and without their knowledge, on the grounds that he was an apostate, the story got attention even in the Western media. But little attention was given to the intellectual Elliott Colla • 11 min read
Harvard and the CIA A scandal erupted in October over covert CIA funding of ostensibly scholarly projects at Harvard University. This has confirmed long-held suspicions that at least some US academic research on the Middle East is only a cover for intelligence work. (Author not identified) • 4 min read
