CMES in the Media

Harvard CMES building

Federal Funding and the Question of Academic Freedom

October 17, 2019

After many organizations decried the First Amendment violations in the letter, last month, the Department of Education voted to renew funding for the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies for the 2019-2020 academic year. Still, members of Harvard’s CMES are worried the letter will affect its own Middle East Studies programming under the Trump administration. Read Paul G. Sullivan's article in the Harvard Crimson Magazine...

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Nadia Murad

Nadia Murad: The Making of an Activist

April 5, 2019

Nadia Murad came to Harvard as a survivor of genocide under ISIS, an advocate for victims of sexual violence, and the first Iraqi citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her talk at the Memorial Church, as part of the Weatherhead Center’s Samuel L. and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture Series, co-sponsored this year by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, focused on her personal journey and how her ordeal turned her into an activist. Read more about her talk in the...

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Tarek Masoud

Tarek Masoud Named New Faculty Chair of Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative

June 18, 2018

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced that CMES Steering Committee member Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, will serve as faculty chair of the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative. Masoud succeeds Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations. Read the complete...

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Doherty, Paradoxes of Green

Paradoxes of Green

November 29, 2017
Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State, by CMES Steering Committee member Gareth Doherty, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program at the Graduate School of Design, has been named one of the top ten books of 2017 by the American Society of Landscape Architects blog THE DIRT. Reviewer Aaron King calls the book "a successful hybrid of landscape writing and... Read more about Paradoxes of Green
HAM qajar album

Mobile Images from 19th-Century Iran

October 13, 2017

A rare album of artists’ drawings, preparatory sketches, and more helped shape a Harvard Art Museums exhibition about art in 19th-century Iran, co-curated by McWilliams, Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at the Harvard Art Museums, and CMES Steering Committee member David Roxburgh, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History and chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Read more about the exhibition and related publications in HAM's...

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Insight on Syria: A Quagmire of Warring Religious Groups? Why the Western View Is Misguided

Insight on Syria: A Quagmire of Warring Religious Groups? Why the Western View Is Misguided

September 26, 2017

CMES Steering Committee member Melani Cammett, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Government, clarifies the role of sectarianism in the Syrian War in a post on Epicenter, an online publication of Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

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Designing for Darkness: What Can Latin American Cities Learn From the Arabian Peninsula?

April 13, 2017

Andreina Seijas, an incoming doctoral student at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, attended the April 7-8 symposium After Dark: Nocturnal Landscapes and Public Spaces in the Arabian Peninsula, jointly sponsored by the Aka Khan Program at the GSD and by Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. In her Ciudades Sostenibles blog, Seijas writes about the challenges of urban design in the Arabian Peninsula, regarding especially the night-time urban landscape, that participants explored, and she speculates how some of the lessons learned and in progress in the Arabian Peninsula might apply to Latin American cities facing similar challenges.