CENTER NEWS
The Middle East Center is proud to announce a new Certificate of Study in Middle East and Islamic Studies for students in Law School at the University of Pennsylvania. To qualify for certificate, a Penn Law student must successfully complete four courses in the general area of Middle East and Islamic Studies. For more information on requirements, click here.
Ambassador Peter Galbraith - On Wednesday, October 17th at 12 PM, Peter W. Galbraith (former US Ambassador to Croatia, a Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Center for Arms Control, and principal at the Windham Resources Group) will give a talk entitled "After Iraq: Cleaning Up After America's Biggest Foreign Policy Mistake" as part of the Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Power-Sharing in Deeply Divided Places sponsored by the Penn Program in Ethnic Conflict and the Middle East Center. He is a widely respected and published expert in American foreign policy. His most recent publications include After Iraq: Cleaning Up After American’s Biggest Foreign Policy Mistake (forthcoming) and The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (Simon and Schuster, 2006). In this lecture, Ambassador Galbraith will address the challenges that Iraq currently faces as a consequence of the US invasion. He will pay particular attention to the impact of US foreign policy has had on the formation of power-sharing strategies. Professor Brendan O'Leary (Lauder Professor of Political Science) will serve as discussant.
Y PHILLY / Y TURKEY - Youth Identity Murals - Each year, MYX invites all Philadelphians between the ages of 9 – 24 (Philadelphia's Youth Generation) to capture the spirit of their city and youth culture in two youth identity murals. Once completed, the murals are presented to a pre-selected community abroad as a gift from our city.
This year, for the first time, MYX, in partnership with the Middle East Center and Arts for Anyone facilitated a full exchange of murals, creating the Y PHILLY murals for schools in Istanbul and Adana, Turkey, where Turkish students simultaneously created their own youth identity murals for Philadelphia.
Come out and see these murals together for the last time before the Philadelphia murals are presented to their permanent homes in Turkey. Join us for a reception on Wednesday, September 26, 5-8 PM at International House (3701 Chestnut St.). For more information, click here.
The Middle East Center is collaborating with the Center for Global Communication Studies of the Annenberg School of Communication at Penn on its USAID-funded Jordan Initiative on media law and policy, and will host this fall visiting scholar, Dr. Issam Mousa, professor of communication. Middle East University. The Center also helped fund the CGCS’s first occasional paper, “Towards an Understanding of Iraq Media Policy”, and is working with CGCS director Dr. Monroe Price to develop a joint visiting research fellowship on media, identity, and political development in the Middle East.
In keeping with the Center's twin missions to advance scholarship and help disseminate knowledge about the Middle East to the public, we have partnered with the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at Penn to provide a year-long program on Jewish Life Under Caliphs and Sultans. Leading scholars are spending the year in residence at the Center and sharing their knowledge with audiences around the region.