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...

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.

Iranian human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, spoke at First Parish Church in Harvard Square on March 17. The event, co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Harvard Book Store, coincided with the release of Ebadi’s most recent memoir, Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran. Harvard Magazine covered the event...

Aleksandar Sopov, PhD candidate in the joint program of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the History Department, helped save Istanbul green spaces, but has broader hopes. "I had to save them," he says. “When those public places are erased, it moves people into arenas where demagoguery can take place." Read more of his story in the Harvard Gazette.

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CMES Steering Committee member Kristen Stilt, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the HLS Islamic Legal Studies Program, talks to Harvard Magazine about animals' status under the law, her survey course on the growing field of animal law, and the new Harvard Animal...

Khaled Fahmy is the 2015–2016 Shawwaf Visiting Professor in Modern Middle Eastern History at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. His research interests lie in the social and cultural history of modern Egypt. He has been conducting research in the Egyptian National Archives for the past twenty years on such diverse topics as the history of law, medicine, and public hygiene. Since the outbreak of the January 25 Revolution, he also has been a regular contributor to Egyptian and international media.... Read more about Q&A with Khaled Fahmy

CMES Visiting Researcher Saime Ozcurumez presented a webinar titled "Politics and Policy of Immigration and Asylum in Europe," on January 25, 2016

... Read more about Politics and Policy of Immigration and Asylum in Europe