The CMES Alumni Reunion held in April 2009 was featured in the Summer 2009 edition of the Colloquy Alumni Quarterly. Download a PDF of article, or see the full edition on the GSAS website.

A Reunion for Middle Eastern Studies

Lively discussion and some energetic debate characterized an afternoon of panels exploring points of conflict in the Middle East, an ever-relevant subject given a timely and vibrant airing by GSAS faculty and alumni and accomplished scholars from other institutions.

Roger Owen, Harvard’s A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle Eastern History, delivered a typically illuminating talk on Iraq and its current challenges, to which Jon Alterman, PhD ’97, history, responded. Alterman is director and senior fellow of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

A symposium on Sudan, looking at recent films about the crisis in Darfur, was led by Eve Troutt Powell, AB ’83, PhD ’95, history and Middle Eastern studies. The complexity of the issue — and the emotions associated with it — was evident in the questions audience members had for Powell, an associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, and respondent J. Lorand Matory, AB ’82, professor of anthropology and of African American studies at Harvard.

Naghmeh Sohrabi, PhD ’05, Middle Eastern studies, described Iran’s presidential campaign in the months leading up to the June elections, a campaign that she said had captivated the nation. Sohrabi is the assistant director for research at the Crown Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis. Her respondent was Tarek Masoud, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard.