March 9, 2017. Maribel Fierro, Research Professor, Centre of Human and Social Sciences, Higher Council for Scientific Research, Madrid, delivers the second lecture of the 2017 H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series. Also see a video of Fierro's first lecture in the series, and read Arafat Razzaque's coverage of both talks. Read more about Scholars and Rulers in Al-Andalus: A Christian Emperor for the Muslims? Heraclius in Al-Andalus

March 7, 2017. Maribel Fierro, Research Professor, Centre of Human and Social Sciences, Higher Council for Scientific Research, Madrid, delivers the first lecture of the 2017 H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series. Also see a video of Fierro's second lecture in the series, and read Arafat Razzaque's coverage of both talks. Read more about Scholars and Rulers in Al-Andalus: Averroes' Disgrace in Context

Maribel Fierro, Research Professor at the Centre for Human and Social Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council, and Visiting Scholar at CMES and Senior Scholar at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at HLS in spring 2017, was the distinguished speaker this year for the H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series, established in 1964 in honor of Sir Hamilton A.R. Gibb, who was a director of CMES as well as University Professor and James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard. Arafat Razzaque, PhD candidate in History and Middle East Studies, covered the Read more about The Middle East and the Islamic West: Maribel Fierro's View of Medieval Spain

Roger Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle Eastern History Emeritus and a former CMES director, first encountered the Middle East as a young soldier during his national military service in Cyprus from 1955 to 1956, during which time he visited Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Beirut. He has lived and traveled throughout the region, and spent his academic and professional life at Oxford and Harvard, where he taught, studied, made friends, and tried to understand the Middle East through its politics, economic life, history, and popular culture. He kept an almost daily journal recording his thoughts and feelings, and since 1986 wrote a regular op-ed column for the Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat. Read more about The Book of Roger

Joseph Ataman, AM candidate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, was awarded an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar Award at the Foundation’s 2017 Annual Scholar Awards Luncheon, held February 24 at the Yale Club in New York City. Rebecca Blumenstein, deputy managing editor of the New York Times, was the keynote speaker. Ataman was among 15 aspiring foreign correspondents selected by a panel of leading journalists from a pool of 175 Read more about Joseph Ataman Wins Overseas Press Club Foundation Award

The future of America is as bright or as dark as the future of our immigrants. The battle over the travel ban echoes our history from the founding, slicing deep into the heart of American sympathies: Are refugees and migrants coming ashore to be seen as humble "guests of the nation" or as American as anyone, just for getting through the gate? In the February 9 edition of Open Source, host Christopher Lydon talks with Persian preceptor Sheida Dayani and others about the "who we are" question, between Immigration Nation and Fortress America, traversing all sorts of social, political, and historical terrains. Dayani also reads her poem "The Ordinary Man of this Neighborhood."

A crowd of Harvard affiliates filled Ticknor lounge Monday to hear performances celebrating Middle Eastern people and cultures following President Donald Trump’s executive order that suspended immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Read the story in the Harvard Crimson.

The Trump administration’s executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven majority Muslim nations from entering the United States for at least several months has stirred a hornet’s nest of concern internationally, including at Harvard. Among other actions, Harvard President Drew Faust unveiled a plan for Harvard to appoint a full-time Muslim chaplain, with a search committee to be chaired by Harvard Divinity School Professor and Committee on Middle East Studies faculty member Ousmane Kane. Read more in the Harvard Gazette.

Khaled Fahmy, Shawwaf Visiting Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard, has been named one of 2016's top 100 Thought Leaders in the Arabic-speaking world by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI), an independent think-tank in economics, society, and consumption. Since 2012, GDI has analyzed social networks to identify influential voices in the digital world. This marks the first year that GDI has analyzed the Arabic-speaking internet as well as the English-, German-, Spanish- and Chinese-speaking internet.