Syllabus

EPIIC 2013-14
The Future of the Middle East and North Africa
Tuesdays, Thursdays 3-5:30pm, Tisch 304

SYLLABUS

Tuesday, September 3
Orientation

Thursday, September 5
No Class -- Rosh Hashanah

Tuesday, September 10
Part 1. Introduction to The Future of the Middle East and North Africa
Part 2. The Power of Discomfort, with Justine Hardy

Justine Hardy combines being a commentator with working at the grassroots in two fields: conflict and the psychological damage of violence. As a writer and journalist, she has reported on, and written about, South Asia for twenty-five years. Simultaneously she set up, and continues to run Healing Kashmir, an organisation in Kashmir, North India that is rehabilitating those suffering from the psychological fallout of conflict.

Thursday, September 12
Discussion

Readings:
Book
• The Syrian Rebellion by Fouad Ajami, all

Tuesday, September 17
The Making of the Modern Middle East
Guest Lecturer: Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson is a veteran war correspondent, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, whose work also appears in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Harper's, Outside and many other publications. Over the years he has reported from Beirut, Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Israel, Sudan, Sarajevo, El Salvador and many other war-torn countries. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Triage, as well as the nonfiction book The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny and, with his brother Jon Lee Anderson, War Zones.  His most recent book is Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East.

Readings:
Book
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, all

Thursday, September 19

Tuesday, September 24
First Exam

Thursday, September 26
Overview of the Levant
Guest Lecturer: Robert Blecher

Robert Blecher is the Deputy Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.  He is an analyst with the Middle East Program, focusing on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Prior to joining Crisis Group, he taught history at the University of Richmond, USA and was a fellow at the University of Iowa's Center for Human Rights. He has consulted with UN agencies and previously worked with human rights NGOs in Jerusalem.

Readings:
Online Readings
Syria’s Metastasising Conflicts (27 June 2013)
Syria Statement (1 September 2013)
A Precarious Balancing Act: Lebanon and the Syria Conflict (22 November 2012)
Dallying with Reform in a Divided Jordan (12 March 2012)

From Robert Blecher:
Please let the students know that our reports are not meant to be synthetic overviews but rather policy-relevant studies set within a broad analytic frame, so they might not be so easy for those with no background. They should take from them what they can and I'll contextualize them in my talk

Friday, September 27-Sunday, September 29
MENA Reality Check: Understanding the Uprisings and their Outcomes
Weekend Immersion, Pinkham Notch, NH with Outward Bound
Guest Lecturer: Hugh Roberts

Hugh Roberts is the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History and the Director of Middle East Studies at Tufts. Having conducted extensive research in Algeria, he taught politics and political history in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia from 1976 to 1988. In 1997, he returned to academic life as a Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics, a post he held till 2002. In 2001, he moved to Cairo where he lived for ten years, conducting additional research on Egyptian political history and the history of Islamism in North Africa and working for the International Crisis Group as Director of its North Africa Project in 2002-2007, and again from January to July 2011.

Readings:
Books
• The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life by Roger Owen, 2012
• Arab Spring, Libyan Winter by Vijay Prashad, 2012
Handouts
• Protest on the Rocks: Aspects of the Popular Movements in North Africa” by Hugh Roberts, The Middle East in London, June-July 2011
• “This Is Not a Revolution” by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, The New York Review of Books, November 8, 2012
• "Revolution under Threat: The Challenges of the ‘Tunisian Model’” by Anne Wolf and Raphael Lefevre, Journal of North African Studies, May 2012
• “Who Said Gaddafi Had To Go?” by Hugh Robert, London Review of Books, November 17, 2011
• ”How Egypt’s Army Won” by Joshua Stacher, The New York Times, June 30, 2012
• “A Difficult Way Forward in Egypt” by the International Crisis Group, July 3, 2013
• “Syria: Towards a Political Solution” by Julien Barnes-Dacey, European Council on Foreign Relations, March 2012
• “Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the Differences Between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya” by Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011
• “The Black Swan of Cairo” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Blyth, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011
• “The Rise of Islamists: How Islamists Will Change Politics, and Vice Versa” by Shadi Hamid, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011
• ”Terrorism After the Revolutions: How Secular Uprisings Could Help (or Hurt) Jihadists” by Daniel Byman, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2011
• “The Arab Spring at One: A Year of Living Dangerously” by Fouad Ajami, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2012
• “The Mirage of the Arab Spring: Deal with the Region You Have, Not the Region You Want” by Seth G Jones, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013
• “The Promise of the Arab Spring: In Political Development, No Gain Without Pain” by Sheri Berman, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013

Tuesday, October 1
Egypt in Crisis
Guest Lecturer: Charles Sennott

Charles M. Sennott is the Vice President, Editor-at-Large and co-founder of GlobalPost. An award-winning foreign correspondent with 25 years of experience, Sennott has reported on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 15 countries, including the 2011 revolution in Cairo and the Arab Spring.  He was among the first journalists on the ground in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th and has continued reporting there throughout the last decade. He covered the war in Iraq from the invasion through the surge to the beginning of the drawdown of troops. Before joining GlobalPost, Sennott was a longtime foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe. He served as the Globe's Middle East Bureau Chief based in Jerusalem from 1997 to 2001 and as Europe Bureau Chief based in London from 2001 to 2005. He is the author of two books, "The Body and The Blood" and "Broken Covenant," and a co-author of a third.  In 2005, Sennott was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. In the fall of 2006, he returned to the Globe newsroom as a Staff Writer for Special Projects where he did pioneering work in multimedia.  In April, 2008, he and CEO Philip Balboni launched GlobalPost, seeking to produce a new source of original international reporting for the digital age at a time of diminished foreign coverage by American media. Sennott built a stellar team of editors and more than 70 correspondents in 50 countries who since the site's launch in January 2009 have produced excellent daily coverage that has been widely recognized in the industry. The team has also gained a loyal and growing audience that in early 2011 exceeded three million unique visitors per month.  Recently, Sennott has headed up a new non-profit initiative at GlobalPost that is supported by the Ford Foundation and other institutions to carry out in-depth "Special Reports."  Throughout his career, Sennott has broken new ground in reporting across platforms in print, video, audio and where they all come together on the web. His reporting has won numerous journalism prizes including the prestigious Livingston Award for National Reporting and the Foreign Press Association's "Story of the Year," and he was named a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting by Harvard University's Shorenstein Center. For the last two years, Sennott has served as a juror in the "International Reporting" category for the Pulitzer Prize. He also sits on the board of the Overseas Press Club Foundation.  Sennott has been a frequent analyst of the Middle East and religious extremism for the BBC, CNN, the PBS NewsHour and NPR. In February 2011, he reported on the revolution in Cairo for PBS FRONTLINE. Sennott is a sought-after public speaker who has given talks at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Salzburg Global Seminar and the Newseum. He has also delivered formal lectures at Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, University of Southern California, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Beijing University and Providence College where he delivered the commencement address and was awarded an honorary doctorate for his reporting on religion amid conflict.

Reading:
Web site
http://www.globalpost.com/special-reports/crisis-egypt

Thursday, October 3
Part 1: Introduction to the IRB
Part 2: Egypt’s Road to Revolt
Guest Lecturer: Richard Shultz

Richard Shultz is the Director of the International Security Studies Program and a Professor of International Politics at The Fletcher School.  Since Professor Richard Shultz began studying security issues, there have been massive changes in the global use of force and its implications. This change led Shultz to explore many aspects of the issue: What were the tools the U.S. had at its disposal to deal with these security challenges? What were the roles of Special Forces? Why did the U.S. never use Special Forces to capture Osama bin Laden?  The latter question was addressed in a year-long study Shultz conducted with the Pentagon starting in December 2001, which was later briefed to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Shultz made a convincing argument to the Department of Defense to allow publication of declassified portions of the study. Shultz's other work includes research on how other democracies have collected intelligence on armed groups, which was conducted through the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, a project of the Washington, DC based National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). Since 1962, NSIC has been at the forefront of innovating and institutionalizing education on major dimensions of security and intelligence studies. He works directly with Roy Godson, NSIC president and professor of government at Georgetown University. The findings from this research, which are part of the Consortium's "Armed Groups Project" have been presented to senior U.S. government officials in Washington and Shultz and Godson have published the results in the article "Intelligence Dominance, A Better Way Forward," The Weekly Standard (July 31, 2006). His recent research under the auspices of the Consortium's "Armed Groups Project" also includes how to best understand non-state armed groups. This has appeared in a Consortium monograph (with Douglas Farah and Itamara V. Lochard) titled Armed Groups: A Tier-One Security Priority, (Colorado: USAF Academy, Institute for National Security Studies, September 2004).  In August 2006, Shultz (with Andrea Dew) came out with a new book titled Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, published by Columbia University Press. It is intended, according to Shultz, as "a provocative account and analysis of 21st century warfare and the failures to understand the changing face of combat," and is designed to appeal to informed readers both in and out of the academic field, from policy-makers to politicians.

Readings:
Book
Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt by Hazem Kandil, all
Handouts
• “Democratic Control of Armed Forces”, Background Paper from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, May 2008
• ”Defence Reform”, Background Paper from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, October 2009
• “Security Sector Governance and Reform”, Background Paper from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, May 2009
• “SSR in a Nutshell: Manual for Introductory Training on Security Sector Reform”, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2011
• “Arab Uprisings and Armed Forces: Between Openness and Resistance” by Derek Lutterbeck, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, 2011

Friday, October 4
Assigned to Inquiry School

Week of October 7
Research Consultations with Sherman and Heather
- email to make an appointment

For anyone considering doing research over winter break or writing a research paper, the topic needs to be approved this week.
Initial email contact with Inquiry school teacher (cc’d to Heather)

Tuesday, October 8
Part 1: Peace through Entrepreneurship in the MENA Region
Part 2: Whose Reality Counts: Empowering the Marginalized of the MENA Region
Guest Lecturers: Steven Koltai and Curt Rhodes

Steven Koltai created and ran the Global Entrepreneurship Program for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a central element of President Obama’s strategy for changing the relationship between the U.S. and Muslim communities around the world. He left the State Department to continue the work of global entrepreneurship ecosystem building via Koltai & Company. Steven is currently a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Steven has over 30 years of business experience with several successful startups under his belt, including SES, the world’s largest commercial TV satellite system, and Event411, an online event management business which he founded, grew to over 250 employees, and sold in 2002. He has also served as Senior Vice President for Strategy and Corporate Development at Warner Bros., as a strategic planning consultant at McKinsey & Co., and as an investment banker at Salomon Bros. Steven is an active angel investor and mentor to entrepreneurs around the world.

Curt Rhodes has spent over 30 years working with, and on behalf of, marginalized communities and young people across the Middle East. In recognition of his work through Questscope with marginalized youth in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and in the region, Dr. Rhodes was recently awarded Social Entrepreneur of the Year for the Middle East and North Africa by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Dr. Rhodes began his career in the Middle East in the early Eighties, as Assistant Dean in the School of Public Health at the American University of Beirut. During the 1982 invasion of (west) Beirut, he volunteered in a community based clinic alongside students and friends, doing around the clock triage for wounded and ill civilians. That was when the seed idea for Questscope began to take shape. Living and working with people in great suffering compelled him to find a way that he and others in the Middle East could assist the most vulnerable: participating with the voiceless ones in invisible communities. In 1988, Questscope was founded with the goal of putting the last, first. From the beginning, Questscope worked closely with local communities, identifying their aspirations and together addressing their greatest needs.

Readings:
Handouts
Required
• Exploratory Mission Report on Syrian Crisis in Jordan and Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, Action Contre la Faim, May June 2013
• Joint Education Needs Assessment: Za'atari Refugee Camp – Jordan, Education Sector Working Group, April 2013
• Syrian Refugees in Urban Jordan: Baseline Assessment of Community Identified Vulnerabilities Among Syrian Refugees Living in Irbid, Madaba, Mufraq, and Zarqa, Care Jordan, Rapid Participatory Community Assessment, April 2013
• Sanctuary in the city?: Urban displacement and vulnerability in Amman, HPG Working Paper, Sara Pavanello and Simone Haysom, March 2012
• Forever Young: Innovative work in Jordan and elsewhere helps turn the young into economic stakeholders, Jordan Business, November 2011
• Out of School: A look at deprived children in Jordan, Zina Nimeh and Robert Bauchmüller, August 2009
• Youth empowerment for the most vulnerable: A model based on the pedagogy of Freire and experiences in the field, Health Education, Nicole Mohajer and Jaya Earnest, 2009

Recommended for the Workshops
• Social and Emotional Learning, Children's Needs III, Joseph Zins and Maurice Elias, August 2013
• Mapping Change Using a Theory of Change to Guide Planning and Evaluation, Grantcraft
• Social Psychology and Social Change, Science, Geoffrey Cohen, October 2011
• Most people are not WEIRD, Nature, Joseph Heinrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan, July 2010
• The Role of Prosocial Communities in Youth Development, Psykhe, Forrest Tyler, November 2004
• Opportunities provision of preventing youth gang involvement for children and young people (7-16) (Review), The Cochrane Collaboration, H Fisher, P Montgomery, and F Gardner, 2009
• Addressing spiritual development in youth development programs and practices: Opportunities and challenges, New Directions for youth Development, Karen Pittman et al, Summer 2008
• What It Means to Prepare and Engage, The Forum for Youth Investment
• Contracts don't add up to real life, The Guardian Weekly, Amartya Sen, April 2010

Afternoon Brown Bag Lunch with Steven Koltai
12:00pm, Institute for Global Leadership

Evening Lecture: Refugees in MENA: Restoring Agency in the Midst of Crisis
Curt Rhodes
7:00pm, Barnum 008

Curt Rhodes and Mike Niconchuk (IGL alumnus working with Questscope in Jordan) will also be holding several workshop and individual meetings. 

Thursday, October 10
Beyond War: Social Enterprise in the Middle East
Guest Lecturer: David Rohde

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters and the Atlantic.  A former reporter for The New York Times, he is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the author of Endgame and, with Kristen Mulvihill, A Rope and a Prayer.

Readings:
Book
• Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East by David Rohde, all

Friday, October 11 - Monday, October 28
Interaction between Tufts students and high school students, either via visit or email (as determined by location) -- teachers and Tufts students should also work out a schedule for interaction for rest of semester, which the Tufts students will give to Heather by Oct 18 

Monday, October 14
First Take-Home Essay Due by 9:00pm
Emailed to Heather

Completion of the “Sexual Misconduct: How Teachers and Other Educators Can Protect Our Children – Higher Ed Version” online training (back side of sheet) and print certificate of completion and give to Heather with signed statement of acknowledgment

Set up a googlegroup for you to interact with the high school students

Tuesday, October 15
No Class, Monday’s Schedule

Wednesday, October 16
One State, Two States: The Future of Israel-Palestine
Public Lecture with INSPIRE Fellow Mouin Rabbani and potentially joined by Sara Roy and Sa’ed Atshan
7:00pm Barnum 104

Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies specializing in the Palestinian economy, Palestinian Islamism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dr. Roy is also co-chair of the Middle East Seminar, jointly sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and co-chair of the Middle East Forum at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.  Dr. Roy began her research in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1985 with a focus on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip and on U.S. foreign assistance to the region. Since then she has written extensively on the Palestinian economy, particularly in Gaza, and on Gaza’s de-development, a concept she originated.

Sa’ed Atshan’s doctoral research is on the politics of international aid provision in the Palestinian Territories. His scholarship is at the intersection between the study of conflict, development, and humanitarianism, medical anthropology, the anthropology of policy, and Middle Eastern Studies, with a focus on the Palestinian Territories. Sa’ed has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, the UN High Commission on Refugees, Human Rights Watch, Seeds of Peace, the Palestinian Negotiations Affairs Department, and the Government of Dubai. Sa’ed is a member of Al-Qaws, an organization promoting LGBTQ rights for Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories. He is also a Lecturer in Peace and Justice Studies at Tufts University.

Research 2-3 page Overview and at least 10 source Annotated Bibliography due for those planning to do research over winter break or write a research paper for the final

Thursday, October 17
Internal Palestine Politics
Guest Lecturer: Mouin Rabbani

Mouni Rabbani is an independent writer and analyst specializing in Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and is a Contributing Editor to the Middle East Report. His articles have also appeared in The National and he has provided comments for The New York Times.

Readings:
Books
• Israel-Palestine by Alan Dowty, all
• Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: Engaging the Islamist Social Sector by Sara Roy, all
Handout
• “The Peace Process and the Palestinian National Movement” by Robert Malley in Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Daniel Kurtzer el al eds.

Friday, October 18
Completion og CITI training
(http://www.tufts.edu/central/research/IRB/citi.htm) 

Tuesday, October 22
Part 1: Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood
Part 2: Conflict in Bahrain
Guest Lecturers: Ina Breuer and Denis Sullivan

Denis Sullivan is the Director of the Dialogue of Civilizations Program, International Initiatives, and the Middle East Center for Peace, Culture, and Development at Northeastern University. He is the co-author of Egypt: Global Security Watch and the author of The World Bank and the Palestinian NGO Project: From Service Delivery to Sustainable Development.

Ina Breuer is Executive Director of Beyond Conflict (formerly the Project on Justice in Times of Transition). She joined the Project’s staff in October 1999 after working for five years at the New School for Social Research as the Assistant Director of the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies. She was an Advisory Committee member to the Initiative on Inclusive Security in their efforts to develop a Toolkit for Advocacy and Action for women peacemakers around the world. For over sixteen years her work has focused on conflict resolution, civil society development, facilitating the growth of higher education and fostering democratic political culture in transitional societies, primarily in Eastern Europe and South Asia.

Readings:
Book
• The Muslim Brotherhood: Evolution of an Islamist Movement by Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, all

Evening Public Lecture at Northeastern University
Rami Khouri

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and US citizen whose family resides in Beirut and Nazareth. He is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, as well as a columnist at the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper. He is an internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Dubai School of Government. He has been a visiting scholar at Stanford, Syracuse, Tufts, Mt. Holyoke and Northeastern universities, and in November 2006 he was the co-recipient of the Pax Christi International Peace Award for his efforts to bring peace and reconciliation to the Middle East. He was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University in 2001-02, and recently served for four years on the international advisory board of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Thursday, October 24
The Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Middle East
Guest Lecturer: Christopher M Schroeder

Christopher M. Schroeder is a leading entrepreneur and investor in interactive technologies and social communications.  He is Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of HealthCentral, a collection of condition and wellness-specific interactive experiences focused on people finding and sharing real-life experiences related to their health needs.  Schroeder is an investor and advisor for a series of technology start-ups and funds ranging from news and media, education, social networks and marketing.  He is also engaged in exploring more global trends towards entrepreneurship, with a special focus on the developing world and the Middle East.  A veteran of online media, Schroeder served as CEO and Publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, which hosts washingtonpost.com and newsweek.msnbc.com, among other leading news sites. During his tenure, the Company more than quadrupled in revenue and audience. Previously, Schroeder was CEO and President of LEGI-SLATE, INC, a leading online B2B provider of information on federal and state legislation and regulation, which he sold.

Readings:
Book
• Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East by Christopher Schroeder, all

Pre-IRB Forms due for those planning to conduct winter research

Monday, October 28
Conceptualizing the New Map of the Middle East
Public Lecture with Ariel Levite
12:00pm, Crane Room

Ariel (Eli) Levite is a nonresident senior associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.  Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment, Levite was the principal deputy director general for policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission from 2002 to 2007. He also served as the deputy national security adviser for defense policy and was head of the Bureau of International Security and Arms Control in the Israeli Ministry of Defense.  In September 2000, Levite took a two-year sabbatical from the Israeli civil service to work as a visiting fellow and co-leader of the Discriminate Force Project at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. Before his government service, Levite worked for five years as a senior research associate and head of the project on Israeli security at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. He has taught courses on security studies and political science at Tel Aviv University, Cornell University, and the University of California, Davis. He has been awarded the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award at Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership and the Chevalier dans l’Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur.

Readings:
Online
• “Imagining a Remapped Middle East” by Robin Wright, The New York Times, September 28, 2013

Tuesday, October 29
Israel-Palestine
Guest Lecturer: Ariel Levite

Readings:
Book
• The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011 by Daniel C Kurtzer et al, all

Wednesday, October 30
Nature Knows No Borders: Advancing Peace in the Middle East through Cross-border Environmental Research
Public Lecture with Clive Lipchin
7:00pm, Barnum 104

Clive Lipchin is the Director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute. He joined the faculty of the Arava Institute in 2003 and teaches a multidisciplinary course on water management in the Middle East.  He oversees research projects, workshops and conferences that focus on transboundary water and environmental problems facing Israel, Jordan and Palestine. His specialty is in water resources management and policy.   Currently, he is coordinating the TransBasin—Transboundary Water Basin Management Project, a project funded by the International Research Staff Exchange Scheme of the European Union. This project brings together researchers from Europe and the Middle East to study conflict and cooperation in river basin management and to identify the principles and mechanisms that both promote and hinder cooperation in river basins in Europe and the Middle East. He is also coordinating a USAID funded project on mitigating transboundary wastewater conflicts between Israel and Palestine and is conducting research on solar powered desalination of brackish groundwater in the Gaza Strip.

Thursday, October 31
Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions
Guest Lecturers: Ariel Levite and Steven Miller

Steven E. Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal, International Security and also co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, Belfer Center Studies in International Security at Harvard University. Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author of the monograph, War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002).  Miller is editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books, including, most recently, Going Nuclear (January 2010) and Contending with Terrorism (July 2010). Miller is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he co-chairs their Committee on International Security Studies (CISS). He currently co-directs the Academy's project On the Global Nuclear Future. In this capacity, he has co-chaired two conferences on the regional implications of the nuclear renaissance, one in Abu Dhabi (November 2009) and the other in Singapore (November 2010). He also co-edited two special issues of the Academy's quarterly journal Daedalus On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010). Miller is also co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee, a member of the Council of International Pugwash, a member of the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a member of the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy), and formerly a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Readings:
Book
• Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb and American Strategy by Kenneth Pollack, all
Article
• ”Bomb Scare” by Leslie Gelb, The New York Times, September 5, 2013

Tuesday, November 5
Democracy and the Arab Spring
Guest Lecturer: Eva Bellin

Eva Bellin is the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics at Brandeis University and the Crown Center for Middle East Studies.  Bellin is the author of Stalled Democracy: Capital Labor and the Paradox of State-Sponsored Development and has written extensively on the authoritarian persistence in the Middle East, the political economy of development, the evolution of civil society, and the politics of cultural change. She has been a Carnegie Scholar and a Princeton University Fellow and has served as an editor of the journal Comparative Politics since 2005.

Readings:
Book
• Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East by Elizabeth Thompson, all

Evening Panel with Oslo Freedom Scholars
Guest Lecturer: Ahmed Benchemsi (Morocco)
Guest Lecturer: Marina Nemat (Iran)
6:00pm, Cohen Auditorium

Thursday, November 7
Midterm Exam

Tuesday, November 12
Arab-Israeli Conflict
Guest Lecturer: Shai Feldman and Khalil Shikaki

Shai Feldman is the Judith and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. He is also a Senior Fellow and a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. In 2001-2003, Feldman served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters.

Khalil Shikaki is an Associate Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Ramallah). Dr. Shikaki has conducted more than 100 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1993. His recent publications include Palestinian Public Opinion and the Peace Process: Long Term Trends and Policy Implications (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2005).

Readings:
Book
• Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East by Shai Feldman, Abdel Monem Said Aly and Khalil Shikaki, all 

Thursday, November 14
Women in the Middle East and North Africa
Guest Lecturer: Isobel Coleman

Isobel Coleman is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, where she directs CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, & Democracy program. Her areas of expertise include the political economy of the Middle East, democratization, civil society, economic development, educational reform and gender issues. She is the author and coauthor of numerous books, including Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons from Democratic Transitions (Council on Foreign Relations, 2013), The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Security (Routledge Press, 2012), Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East (Random House, 2010), Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), and Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security (Hoover Institution Press, 2006).

Seminar talk: The Arab Revolution, Democratization, and the Implications for Women’s Rights
8:00pm, Cabot Auditorium

Readings:
Book
• Paradise beneath her Feet: How Women Are Transforming the Middle East by Isobel Coleman, all
Articles
• Is the Arab Spring Bad for Women? by Isobel Coleman (link to Foreign Policy Dec 2011)  
• Are Mideast Revolutions Bad for Women's Rights? by Isobel Coleman (link to Washington Post Feb 2011)
• Women, Islam, and Reform in the Middle East:  Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Lecture with Isobel Coleman

Monday, November 18
Second Take-Home Essay Due by 3:00pm, emailed to Heather

Tuesday, November 19
Lebanon
Guest Lecturer: Sahar Atrache

Sahar Atrache is an analyst with the Middle East Program of the International Crisis Group based in Beirut. She previously worked with the United Nations, Lebanese and International NGOs on projects related to social development, women empowerment and governance. Her post-graduate degree in Political Science comprised extensive research on salafist groups in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Readings:
Books
• Killing Mr Lebanon by Nicholas Blanford, all
• Hezbollah: A History of the “Party of God” by Dominique Avon and Anais-Trissa Khatchadourian, all

Wednesday, November 20
Public Lecture: ICG in Lebanon and Syria with Sahar Atrache and Noah Bonsey

Thursday, November 21
Syria
Guest Lecturer: Noah Bonsey

Noah Bonsey is a Senior Analyst in Syria with the International Crisis Group.

Tuesday, November 26
tbd

Tuesday, December 3
Guest Lecturer: Sohail Hashmi

Sohail H. Hashmi is Professor of International Relations and Alumnae Foundation Chair in the Social Sciences at Mount Holyoke College, where he has taught since 1994. He is also currently the chairman of the International Relations Department.  Hashmi’s research and teaching interests focus on comparative international ethics, particularly concepts of just war and peace, and on the study of religion in politics, particularly Islam in domestic and international politics. He has published on a range of topics in Islamic ethics and political theory, including sovereignty, humanitarian intervention, tolerance, civil society, and the theory of jihad. He is currently working on a book analyzing Muslim responses to the rise of international law.

Readings:
Handout
• Just Wars, Holy Wars & Jihads by Sohail Hashmi, pp 325-416

Thursday, December 5
Part 1: Inquiry Simulation
Part 2: US News and the Middle East
Part 3: Class trip to the Museum of Fine Arts
Guest Lecturer: Amahl Bishara

Amahl Bishara is the author of Back Stories: U.S. News Production & Palestinian Politics. She is an assistant professor of anthropology at Tufts University.

Evening excursion to the Museum of Fine Arts for the “She Who Tells a Story” Exhibition of women photographers from the Middle East

Thursday, December 19
In-Class Final Exam, 12:00pm

Friday, December 20
Final Papers/Take-Home Questions Due by 10:00am, emailed to Heather