FAQs

Established in 1954, Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies supports research and teaching on a broad range of topics related to the region. At the core of the Center’s mandate is the pursuit of firsthand knowledge about the Middle East based on literacy in its languages and understanding of its diverse politics, cultures, and histories. Approximately 900 students have graduated from CMES’s degree programs over the years, with careers spanning academia, government, business, journalism, NGOs, and law. 

CMES encompasses the humanities, social sciences, arts, and natural sciences, and CMES engages with faculty, departments, professional schools, and other regional studies centers across Harvard. CMES’s academic community includes over 50 core and affiliated faculty, a cohort of more than 50 graduate students (PhD and AM), and a 15-20 visiting researchers and postdoctoral associates. CMES also operates an office in Tunisia, established in 2017. CMES scholars study the countries in Southwest Asia and North Africa.

CMES does not appoint faculty; rather, all faculty are appointed in academic departments at Harvard’s various Schools. All endowed professorships at Harvard University sit in the University’s departments and not at its research centers.

CMES has requirements for its various educational programs. The courses themselves are offered through academic departments at the University.

CMES aims to educate the next generation of scholars studying the Middle East using the methodologies of anthropology, history, political science, literature, art, architecture, public health, religion, and languages. CMES offers the following programs through the Committee on Middle Eastern Studies:

• A 2-year Master of Arts (AM) Degree in Regional Studies—Middle East
• Three joint Doctoral (PhD) degrees, with the Departments of Anthropology, History, and the History of Art and Architecture 

CMES student take various language courses offered through the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. These include: 

• Arabic
• Armenian
• Hebrew
• Kurdish
• Persian
• Turkish
• Yiddish

CMES’s resident scholarly community is augmented by an annual cohort of 15-20 visiting scholars and postdoctoral researchers. In addition, national and international faculty are invited to serve as H.A.R. Gibb Lecturers and Shawwaf Visiting Professors.

CMES publishes a yearly newsletter highlighting Center activities and the accomplishments of faculty, students, and other affiliates. CMES’s past publications have included the Middle Eastern Monograph Series, numbering over forty volumes, and the Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review.

CMES’s seminar series and topical workshops bring regional experts and diverse perspectives to the Harvard community and beyond. CMES hosts long-standing public lecture series including the Middle East Seminar (co-sponsored with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs), the Middle East Forum, Sohbet-i Osmani (Ottoman history), New Works in Middle Eastern Studies book talks, Arabian Peninsula Lecture Series, Environmental History Seminar Series, and Disaster Studies Initiative Lecture Series. CMES has also organized working groups to address the ongoing transformations in the Arab world with an emphasis on politics, literature, and film and visual arts. Ad hoc roundtable forums organized at CMES on topical regional issues provide an interactive venue for timely scholarly discussion of complex events in the region with participants who have often just returned from the epicenter of these events.

The current governance of the CMES involves two committees:

The Steering Committee, chaired by the CMES Director, is composed of core CMES faculty who have been, or continue to be, active in the running of the Center and in teaching on the Middle East in their departments. The committee’s functions are to offer advice to the Director on matters pertaining to the Center, to vote on key Center policy issues, and to serve as a conduit for information on Middle Eastern studies at Harvard and beyond the university. 

The Committee on Middle Eastern Studies administers the AM Regional Studies program and the joint PhD programs in Middle Eastern Studies with Anthropology, History, and the History of Art and Architecture.