MER Article

Unpacking the Gender 'Paradox’ Behind Arab Women in Tech

Compared to women in the United States and most European countries, Arab women are highly represented in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and related computing fields. In fact, six of the ten countries with the highest rates of women studying ICT are in the Arab world, according to UNESCO data.

Fida Adely, Jennifer Olmsted, Sana Odeh • 11 min read

MER Article

The Importance of Mauritanian Scholars in Global Islam

The North African nation of Mauritania may be peripheral in global affairs, but its robust network of Islamic scholars is central to transnational Islamic movements and ideas. Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem traces the influential political economy of Mauritanian Islamic scholarship that has both bolstered

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem • 11 min read

Current Analysis

The Importance of Mauritanian Scholars in Global Islam

The North African nation of Mauritania may be peripheral in global affairs, but its robust network of Islamic scholars is central to transnational Islamic movements and ideas. Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem traces the influential political economy of Mauritanian Islamic scholarship that has both bolstered

Zekeria Ould Ahmed Salem • 11 min read

Current Analysis

How One Palestinian University is Remaking ‘Israel Studies’

At Birzeit University in the Israeli occupied West Bank, students and faculty are fundamentally remaking the dominant paradigm of Israel Studies as it has been configured in the United States with its proud “advocacy” mandate on behalf of the Israeli state. Birzeit’s program turns this paradigm insi

Rebecca L. Stein • 12 min read

Current Analysis

Precarious Teachers Strike for Public Education in Morocco

Over the past three years, striking and demonstrating teachers have mobilized against their new precarious status as contract-labor under government privatization reforms implemented in 2016. The teachers’ struggle is bound up in the broader fight by Moroccan unions against the government’s neoliber

Zakia Salime • 10 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

Current Analysis

Losing Syria’s Youngest Generation

Hasan bounces in his chair, pencil tapping against the table as he bends over the first page of a math exam. He hesitates, before stretching his hand frantically into the air as he waits for help from the program facilitator busy with one of the handful of other boys scattered across the classroom.

Reva Dhingra • 18 min read

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

Educational Aftershocks for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

More than 50 percent of Syrian refugees living in Lebanon [https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id=122] are 17 or younger. Back home the great majority of them were in school. But youth who try to continue their education in Lebanon face social, economic and bureaucratic obstacles. The

Sarah Parkinson • 5 min read

MER Article

The Sociologist Has Left the Building

“Here in Iran, Professor Wallerstein, you are a dangerous man.” So an adviser of President Hassan Rouhani counseled the 83-year old sociologist, and he was correct. It was March, and Immanuel Wallerstein had just arrived for a three-city lecture tour. It was as if the Islamic Republic had granted a

Kevan Harris • 9 min read

MER Article

China's Strategic Middle Eastern Languages

Though the People’s Republic of China has extensive commercial ties in the Middle East, its three strategic partners in the region are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. It is not surprising, therefore, that the major Middle Eastern language programs in China today are Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The g

Haiyun Ma, I-wei Jennifer Chang • 5 min read

MER Article

Muslim Activist Encounters in Meiji Japan

As one of the political, commercial and intellectual centers of Asia, Japan at the turn of the twentieth century was an important arena for the intersection of ideas about modernism, nationalism and anti-colonial politics. Though Cairo, Istanbul and Mecca had long been the capitals of scholarship an

Shuang Wen • 4 min read