Africa

A podcast from the Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action produced from a Middle East Initiative event on humanitarian negotiations with non-state armed groups featuring Professor Claude Bruderlein; Ashley Jackson; Stig Jarle Hansen; and Abdi Ismail Isse.

During the Fall 2016 semester, visiting scholar Professor Robert Springborg invited a distinguished group of scholars to address the implications of slowing global integration for the Middle East, a region both harmed and helped by rapid globalization in the late 20th century. Over the course of nine seminars, the group explored issues including postcolonial countercurrents in the Middle East and North Africa, the Iranian nuclear agreement, Egypt's military economy, resource wealth, liberal arts education, economic strain and its impact on Islamism, and the future of the United States' Middle East alliances.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

A podcast from the Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action (ATHA) program produced from a Middle East Initiative event on humanitarian negotiations to protect medical personnel and infrastructure on the frontlines of conflict zones on Thursday, October 6, 2016, featuring Professor Claude Bruderlein; Michael VanRooyen, Director, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; Chairman, Brigham and Women's Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine, Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; François Stamm, Head of Delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Washington, D.C.; Adrienne Fricke, Senior Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, Visiting Scientist, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The Right Honourable Douglas Alexander offered his views on European security in a discussion moderated by FDP Executive Director Cathryn Cluver.

"What happens when, after another dozen major attacks, the chain of their barbarism outpaces the chain of our human solidarity? When is the permissible moment to start asking if we can muster as much wisdom and realism to fight terror as we do to harness emotions of solidarity? The recent increasing pace and widening geographic scope of terror suggest we are dealing with a qualitatively new kinds of terrorists — but the policy responses of governments and the emotional responses of entire societies suggest we have no idea how to respond to quell this monster."

A policy paper by former MEI Visiting Scholar Hedi Larbi on the need to enhance regional cooperation and build towards an integrated infrastructure in the Middle East to promote growth and unity in the region.

An audio recording of a book talk by Marc Lynch, Professor of Political Science at George Washington University and Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science, on his most recent book The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East.

"A new front seems to be forming among the many other battles taking place in Syria, this time pitting the local population’s legitimate acceptance of Al-Qaeda governance against either a total rejection of this, or a modified form of shared governance with other local actors. The success or failure of this process merits close monitoring, because it could have implications elsewhere across the Arab world..."

"Hundreds of thousands of desperate and dehumanized individuals transform their former local grumblings or security-forced passivity into a growing global network of terrorists and anarchists whose numbers are beyond the capacity of any intelligence system’s ability to monitor, arrest, prevent, or shut down."