News & Announcements

Former UK Ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, and BBC war correspondent, Paul Wood, participated in a conversation on Syria moderated by Future of Diplomacy Project Executive Director, Cathryn Clüver, titled “Tolerating the Intolerable: Syria Four Years On” on September 30. Both speakers gave a highly variegated and in-depth response of the major and corollary issues at play in the Syrian conflict and beyond, including the difficulty of finding moderate forces on the ground, the dangers of warzone journalism, the migrant crisis, and Russia's strategic interests.

"The Middle East Initiative (MEI) at Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs announced today that Former Tunisian Minister Hedi Larbi will join the HKS community this autumn as MEI’s Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar."

"Democracy remains a rare commodity in the Middle East as the promise of the Arab Spring has given way to authoritarian retrenchment, democratic breakdown, and civil war. Countries that once seemed promising terrain for democracy now feature clashes between citizens and governments, military domination, and the imprisonment of activists and journalists. Sultan of Oman Associate Professor of International Relations Tarek Masoud helps to explain why the region has taken a turn for the worse."

An audio recording from an MEI panel discussion on Yemen, featuring panelists Fatima Abo Alasrar, Asher Orkaby, Leslie Campbell, and chair Michael C. Hudson.

On May 12, 2015, MEI convened a panel of Yemen experts to discuss Yemen's political and economic history and current dynamics, disentangle the various groups competing for control and influence, and envision potential resolutions to the current crisis.

Audio recordings from MEI's Spring 2015 Study Group Rethinking the Arab State: the Collapse of Legitimacy in Arab Politics, with Professor Michael C. Hudson.

During the Spring 2015 semester, Prof. Hudson hosted a distinguished group of scholars to re-examine the foundational concepts of legitimacy, the state, civil society, religion, and regional stability in the wake of the Arab Uprisings.

In this week's edition of PolicyCast, the HKS weekly podcast on public policy, politics, and global issues, host Matt Cadwallader sits down with former Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa and Middle East scholar Paul Salem to discuss Tunisia’s relative success in establishing a stable democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring.

An audio recording from Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School.

On April 29, 2015 at MEI, Prof. Stephen Walt assessed U.S. policy and interests in the Middle East, arguing that scaled back involvement might yield better results for the U.S. and the region.

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” recorded on April 16, 2015, Nabil Fahmy, Former Foreign Minister of Egypt and Dean and Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP), American University Cairo, discusses Egypt’s transitional process, public policy challenges, and foreign policy, including relations with Iran and intervention in Yemen.

An audio recording from Bassam Haddad, Associate Professor, School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs, and Director, Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, George Mason University.

On April 2, 2015 at MEI, Professor Bassam Haddad presented a lecture in MEI Visiting Scholar Michael C. Hudson's Spring 2015 Study Group "Rethinking the Arab State" in which he assessed the fluctuating political reality in Syria and how various groups, including Bashar Al-Assad's regime, as well as ISIS and the unarmed civilian opposition organize and govern areas and people under their control.

We kicked off April with a series of phenomenal events led by world-class speakers and practitioners of negotiation and diplomacy in the 21st century. In the space of one week, we hosted the former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer; Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Constanze Stelzenmueller; we also began a series of study groups with our spring Fisher Family Fellows: former EU Trade Commissioner, Karel De Gucht; and former Indian National Security Adviser, Shivshankar Menon.