Middle East Initiative

Amr Adly and Nathan Brown will present their book (co-authored with Shimaa Hatab) on Egyptian politics, society, and economy.  The book draws on the authors' own research but situates it within multidisciplinary scholarship on Egypt in both English and Arabic and works to integrate the Egyptian experience into broader comparative discussions about state formation, regime type, social movements, and political economy in the Global South.

Nadya Hajj, Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought and Co-Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Wellesley College, will discuss her latest book, Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age. 

Stephen Biddle will discuss his new book, Nonstate Warfare: The Military Methods of Guerillas, Warlords, and Militias, in which he argues that some nonstate armies fight more “conventionally” than state armies and that the internal politics of nonstate actors determine their military tactics and strategies.

Ryan Crocker, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait, and Lebanon, will share his unique perspective on Afghanistan and offer insight into the implications of the 2021 Taliban takeover for the country and the region at large.  

Drawing on themes from her recently published book Black Wave, Kim Ghattas will look back at forty years of rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, unpack the misconceptions that handicap America's dealings with the region, and analyze the inter-play between the Saudi-Iran rivalry and American foreign policy. 

Dr. Nathalie Tocci, Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at Harvard Kennedy School, will discuss themes from her recent article in the HKS Journal of Middle Eastern Politics & Policy, “Teetering on the Brink: Turkey’s Troubled Ties with the West,” including the vicious cycle of Turkey-West relations and why a total breakdown is unlikely.

Middle East Initiative (MEI) Senior Fellow Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin will join MEI Faculty Director Tarek Masoud to offer his perspective on the security landscape of the Middle East from his vantage point as a longtime Israeli soldier, national security official, and strategic analyst.   

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, the first woman to be elected to the highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its official spokesperson until 2020, will speak about the future of Palestine and the current challenges in negotiating an end to the conflict.

Why is jihadism so difficult to predict, and what, if anything, can social scientists hold on to as reliable indicators and frameworks for estimating its future? In this talk, Dr. Thomas Hegghammer, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo, will review the forty-year history of scholarly prediction attempts, reflect on his own misjudgments, and draw up tentative - and likely wrong - scenarios for the coming years.

At a moment when public policy and public health are becoming increasingly intertwined, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini will share his unique perspective on UNRWA’s past, present, and future strategies for supporting Palestinian refugees. MEI Faculty Director, Tarek Masoud, will moderate this discussion.