Martha Myers, former Country Director, Save the Children—Syria, delivers the 2017 Hilda B. Silverman Memorial Lecture. Read more about Video: "No Place to Raise a Daughter": My Life and Work in the Middle East—A Woman’s Perspective

CMES awarded a first prize and three honorable mentions in the 2016–17 Harvard College International Photo Contest for photos taken in the Middle East region. All photos were from students’ internships, language study, and travel in the summer of 2016. This year’s first prize went to Kami Choi (’17), a senior at the college pursuing a joint concentration in Government and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Choi interned at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters in Amman, Jordan while Read more about Photo Gallery: 2016-17 Harvard College International Photo Contest

Emrah Yildiz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. He completed his PhD in Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Harvard in 2016. Read more about Q&A with Emrah Yildiz

This semester, CMES students Anna Boots, Chloe Bordewich, Blaire Byg, Alice Duesdieker, Eleanor Ellis, Ethan Mefford, Kim ­Quarantello, Hannah Riggs, and Becca Wadness participated in events to welcome Syrian refugees who have recently resettled in Lowell, Massachusetts. Read more about CMES Students Help Welcome Young Refugees

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

In this episode of the Fares Center Podcast at the Fletcher School, Roger Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History Emeritus at Harvard and former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, discusses his recently published volume of memoirs outlining his study of and perspectives on the Middle East, beginning with his first visits to Cairo, Beirut, and Jerusalem in 1955-1956.

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

Center for Middle Eastern Studies faculty affiliate Jocelyne Cesari, a visiting professor of Religion and Politics at the Harvard Divinity School, discussed the politicization of Islam by the Islamic State at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies on Tuesday February 16. Read about her talk in the Harvard Crimson.

Arab-American artist Helen Zughaib reflects on Middle East unrest in new exhibition sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Read the story in the Harvard Gazette.

Lebanese-American artist Helen Zughaib's work is on display this month at CGIS, under the auspices of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Her paintings have been displayed widely in public collections, at the White House, the Library of Congress, and elsewhere; they often lend themselves to diplomatic optimism, even as they depict people in desperate situations: fleeing catastrophe in Syria, leaving home to emigrate to America, selling tiny items in the street to feed their families. Read a review of the exhibition and of Zughaib's accompanying artist talk in Read more about The Everyday Dignity of Helen Zughaib’s Refugees