Middle East studies in the News

Center for Middle East Studies Envisioned as Unbiased Think Tank

by Brandeis University
Campaign Connections
Fall 2003

http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/858

Brandeis University is pleased to announce the establishment of an ambitious new Center for Middle East Studies (CMES).

"Twenty million dollars have already been committed toward a $30 million goal to create a new kind of Middle East Center. The CMES at Brandeis will be unique among similar university-based Centers in the United States in its comprehensive and unbiased view about issues impacting the region.

"It has long been my hope that Brandeis will become the premier place for scholarship and policy development relative to the Middle East," said Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz. The Center's mission will significantly broaden scholarship of the Middle East by promoting research on the history, politics, economics, religions, cultures and institutions of the entire area from the Arab world and Israel, to Turkey and Iran.

The Center will build on and integrate the University's existing array of programs that cover the ancient Near East, the modern Middle East, Christian and Islamic studies, and the range of Jewish experience from biblical times to present-day world Jewry. It will also provide an important resource for U.S. policy-makers and will be the site of conferences and colloquia for scholars, students and the public.

The Center will provide a coordinated program of education, research and policy analysis designed to address the most pressing issues facing the modern Middle East. It will be a leading source of fair and accurate information about the social, historical, economic, political and environmental aspects of the Middle East.

In addition, the Center will provide an umbrella for several recently endowed faculty chairs in Middle East studies at Brandeis: the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Chair in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, held by Kanan Makiya, the Baghdad-born dissident who wrote the blueprint for a democratic postwar Iraq; the Myra and Robert Kraft Chair in Arab Politics, for which a scholar will be appointed, the Edmond J. Safra Chair in Sephardic Studies, and the Karl, Harry and Helen Stoll Chair in Israel Studies, held by Ilan Troen, who is also a faculty member at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

"Brandeis is an ideal place for such a Center to emerge," according to Marty Krauss, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, "given its curricular strengths in the areas of coexistence, social justice and public policy. It is our hope that international perspectives will be shared without bias through the lens of scholarship and respect."

Jonathan Sarna '75 of Brandeis, the Joseph H. and Belle Braun Professor of American Jewish History, is leading the search for a director to lead the Center, which will open in October 2004. Bernard Lewis, one of the world's foremost authorities on the Middle East, and author of What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2001) and The Crisis of Islam (2003), will serve as an advisor to the center.

Note: Articles listed under "Middle East studies in the News" provide information on current developments concerning Middle East studies on North American campuses. These reports do not necessarily reflect the views of Campus Watch and do not necessarily correspond to Campus Watch's critique.

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