Lisa Anderson, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs

The Middle East and the United States: Entangled Systems

Thursday, April 18, 2024 | 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Chaired by Professor Nadim Rouhana, The Fletcher School

Lisa Anderson is Special Lecturer and James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is the Principal Investigator for a commission supported by the Carnegie Corporation to develop guidelines for the conduct of responsible, ethical and constructive social inquiry in the Middle East and North Africa (https://www.mei.columbia.edu/remena-about).

Dr. Anderson served as President of the American University in Cairo for five years from 2011-2016. Prior to her appointment as President, she was the University’s provost, a position she had assumed in 2008.  She is Dean Emerita of SIPA; she led the school from 1997-2007.  Among her books are The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 and Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century; she has also published numerous scholarly articles.

Dr. Anderson is a trustee of the Aga Khan University, and the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She is a member emerita of the Boards of Human Rights Watch and Tufts University, and served as elected President of the Middle East Studies Association and as Chair of the Board of the Social Science Research Council.  A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations, she has received honorary degrees from Monmouth University and the American University in Paris.

Sahar Aziz, Rutgers University

The Middle East in the US Campus and Implications for Knowledge Production and Freedom of Speech

Friday, April 19, 2024 | 1:15pm – 2:45pm
Chaired by Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, The Fletcher School

Sahar Aziz’s scholarship examines the intersection of national security, race, religion, and civil rights with a focus on the adverse impact of national security laws and policies on racial, religious, and ethnic minorities.  She is the author of the book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom and the founding director of the Center for Security, Race and Rights. Professor Aziz is a recipient of the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Association of American Law Schools and was named a Middle Eastern and North African American National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leader by New America in 2020 and a Soros Equality Fellow in 2021.

Peter Beinart, Columbia University New York

The Middle East in the US Campus and Implications for Knowledge Production and Freedom of Speech

Friday, April 19, 2024 | 1:15pm – 2:45pm
Chaired by Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, The Fletcher School

Peter Beinart is Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also Editor-at-Large of Jewish Currents, an MSNBC political commentator, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.Com

Nancy Okail, Center for International Policy

Dr. Nancy Okail is President and CEO of the Center for International Policy. She is a leading scholar, policy analyst, and advocate with more than 20 years of experience working on issues of human rights, democracy, and security in the Middle East and North Africa region. Previously, Dr. Okail served as Executive Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP). In 2020, she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. As Director of Freedom House’s Egypt program, she was one of 43 nongovernmental organization workers sentenced to prison for allegedly using foreign funds to foment unrest in Egypt in 2012. In December 2018, a court ruling exonerated her. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in the UK.

Ismail Numan Telci, Sakarya University

Ismail Numan Telci is the Deputy Director of the Middle East Institute (ORMER) and an Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations at Sakarya University. He also works as a researcher at the Foreign Policy Department at the SETA Foundation. His research focuses on Egyptian politics, Arab revolutions, and politics in the Gulf region. Ismail Numan Telci was a visiting researcher at the Center for Civilizations and Dialogue of Cultures at Cairo University from November 2012 to August 2013. He is the author of the Dictionary of the Egyptian Revolution and editor of the Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Telci is the managing editor of www.misirbulteni.com, a news webpage focusing on the recent developments in Egypt.

Ali Banuazizi, Boston College

Ali Banuazizi is Research Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Research Fellow at the Center for International Studies at M.I.T. After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968, he taught at Yale and the University of Southern California before joining the Boston College Faculty in 1971. Since then, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Tehran, Princeton, Hebrew University, Harvard, Oxford University, and M.I.T. He served as the founding editor of the journal of Iranian Studies, from 1968 to 1982. He is a past president of the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS) and of the Middle East Studies Association in North America (MESA); associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World; and currently editor of Freedom of Thought Journal.

Ali Banuazizi is the author of numerous articles on society, culture, and politics of Iran and the Middle East, and coauthor (with A. Ashraf) of Social Classes, the State and Revolution in Iran (2008) and coeditor (with M. Weiner) of three books on politics, religion, and society in Southwest and Central Asia.

Sopanit Angushinga, Georgetown University

Sopanit “Dede” Angsusingha is a Ph.D. Candidate specializing in the modern Middle East and North Africa in the Department of History at Georgetown University. Her research interests include women and gender in the Arab World as well as colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. Her dissertation entitled “Schools of Character: Transcultural Encounters in American Mission Schools in Iraq, 1890s-1960s” examines the construction and negotiation of gender norms, national identity, and citizenship through missionary education in Iraq as well as the transnational networks of Iraqi students and missionary educators across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Her work will appear in an upcoming issue of Les Cahiers d’ histoire published by the University of Montrealand a forthcoming edited volume titled Gender, Intersectionality and the History of Education: Networks, Time and Place (Springer Nature).

Nora Lessersohn, Harvard University

Nora Lessersohn is a historian of U.S., Ottoman and Armenian history with a focus on the lives of Armenian-Americans. She earned her doctorate in history from University College London in 2023, supported by a Calouste Gulbenkian Armenian Studies Scholarship. In 2021-22, she was a Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of American History. She earned her bachelor of arts in the Study of Religion at Harvard College and her master’s in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she is currently a Visiting Fellow. Dr. Lessersohn has published articles on the memoir of her great-grandfather, Hovhannes Cherishian, and is now preparing a manuscript on the life and work of Christopher Oscanyan, an early Middle Eastern-American.

Maha El Said, Cairo University

Mounira Soliman, Cairo University

An Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Cairo University. Co-editor of “Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook” (Routledge, 2013), and the co-translator into Arabic of Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Democracy (Saqi Books, 2011). Fulbright Visiting Senior Specialist at Yale University in 2008. Serves on the International Advisory Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at American University in Beirut.

Nathaniel George, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies

Nathaniel George is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics of the Middle East at SOAS, University of London. He is a global political historian of the modern Arab world and United States foreign relations. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between revolution, counterrevolution, sectarianism, and empire. Prior to joining SOAS, he was a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies. His writings have been translated into Arabic and Spanish, and have appeared in The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East: Iran, Palestine and Beyond, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Arab Studies Journal, Bidayat, The Arab Lefts: Histories and Legacies, America in the World, 1776 to the Present, and Armed by Design/El Diseño a las Armas.

Tamirace Fakhoury, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University

Tamirace Fakhoury is Associate Professor of International Politics and Conflict at the Fletcher School. Before joining Fletcher, she was Associate Professor of Political Science at Aalborg University in its Copenhagen Campus (Denmark), and a visiting Professor as well as the Research Kuwait Chair at Sciences Po in Paris (2020-2022). Prior to this, Tamirace was Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Lebanese American University and the Director of the Institute for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution (ISJCR). From 2012 until 2016, she was a visiting Assistant Professor in the summer sessions at the University of California in Berkeley. In 2023, Tamirace earned the Carlsberg Monograph fellowship to write a book on political systems, conflict, and time in post-war societies.

Mohamed-Ali Adraoui, Radboud University

Currently an Assistant Professor in Middle East History and Politics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, Mohamed-Ali Adraoui holds a PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po Paris (2011). He is mainly interested in the fields of International Relations of the Middle East, US Foreign Policy, Political Islam, Religiously motivated forms of violences, and Global Islamic networks. He has held several positions in the past across many continents (European University Institute, National University of Singapore, Georgetown University, American Political Science Association, London School of Economics, Oxford University, Sciences Po Paris, Scuola Superiore Meridionale).

He has published two books on contemporary Salafism (Oxford University Press and Palgrave). His articles have been released in academic journals such as: International Affairs, International Politics, Journal of Historical Sociology, Mediterranean Politics and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. He is currently completing the writing of my manuscript on the history of the US foreign policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ritika Lal, New York University

Ritika Lal is a first year student in the Joint History/Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies doctoral program at NYU. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University, and a BA in International Relations and Modern Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations from the University of Toronto. Her research interests lie in histories of capitalism, petro-modernity, state formation, and corporations, with a particular focus on the Gulf region in the 20th century. She is especially interested in the development of information gathering practices, bureaucracies, and the social and business networks through which authoritarian and militarized structures come to be.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zara-lal-305891153/

Harvard Profile: https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/people/zara-lal