Within a few years of the historic Arab uprisings of 2011, popular mobilization dissipated amidst instability in many Arab countries. We trace the relationship between shifting macro-political conditions and individual-level political values in the Middle East, demonstrating that a preference for democracy and political trust are not fixed cultural features of populations but rather can shift rapidly in the face of perceived insecurity. Our empirical analyses employ longitudinal data from the Arab Barometer covering 13 countries and data from the 2015 World Values Survey, which includes...

“Mecca is lived, experienced, and documented differently by different people,” began Rosie Bsheer, Assistant Professor of History at Harvard and author of the forthcoming “Archive Wars: Spectacle, Speculation, and the Politics of History in Saudi Arabia,” in her keynote address to the colloquium Mecca: The Lived City, hosted in May by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and organized by CMES Director William Granara and Gareth Doherty, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Director of the Master in Landscape Architecture Program at the Harvard Graduate School of...

In summer 2018, Gordon Gray Professor of Arabic and CMES Director William Granara, along with Khaled al-Masri, Associate Professor of Arabic at Swarthmore, led undergraduates on a Harvard Summer School program in Aix-en-Provence, France. The program, which Granara has led for several years, brings together students of Arabic and French language and culture to examine historical, literary, and cultural aspects of Arab and European interactions in the colonial and postcolonial eras. Andrew Aoyama ’21 wrote about his experience on the trip.... Read more about Arab and European Interactions in Aix-en-Provence

To the members of the CMES family:

I write to convey the very sad news that our colleague, teacher, and friend Roger Owen passed away last Saturday. Roger was a towering figure in Middle Eastern studies and a much beloved patriarch for all of us at Harvard’s CMES. At this time, his family is making arrangements, and I write to let you know we will celebrate his life, his scholarship, and his legacy in mid-February.

May he rest in Peace.

William Granara
Director, CMES