Crown Center for Middle East Studies

Since its inauguration in April 2005, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies has been committed to a balanced and dispassionate approach to the Middle East. We have accomplished this despite the politicization that accompanies much of what is written and said about the region and the strong emotions it evokes among its observers. In only seven years, we have built a unique center whose mission is not only to produce high-quality scholarship but also to apply this scholarship to understanding the real and everyday issues that affect the contemporary Middle East.

In only ten years, the center’s Middle East Briefs have become must-read material for both scholars and policymakers in almost every area of the globe. The basic research conducted at the center has been published or accepted for publication by the best and most demanding university presses. The teachings of our senior research staff offer students unique learning opportunities. For example, the class “Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East” has no equivalent in other universities and remains the only class on this topic team-taught by an Israeli, a Palestinian and an Egyptian. Graduates of this and other Crown Center classes are now enrolled in some of the best Ph.D. programs in the United States, while others have begun public service in the U.S. Department of State, congressional offices, policy think tanks and NGOs.