Middle East and Islamic Studies at George Mason University

03/26/2025

Teaching Palestine Today Episode 1:
Liberal Arts Context

Featuring:
Lara Deeb
Heather Ferguson
Amanda Lagji
Leila Mansouri

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad

Wednesday, 26 March, 2025 | 2:00PM EST


Watch Here:
Youtube.com/Jadaliyya
X.com/Jadaliyya

Join our first session of “Teaching Palestine Today” series. This session addresses the “Liberal Arts Context,” with Lara Deeb, Heather Ferguson, Amanda Lagji, and Leila Mansouri, moderated by Bassam Haddad.

Four faculty members at the Claremont Colleges, a liberal arts consortium, discuss their approaches to including material on Palestine and Palestinian perspectives into classes in anthropology, history, postcolonial and decolonial literature, and creative writing. Topics addressed include classroom approaches, syllabi scaffolding, and strategies for building support beyond the classroom.

This series is organized by the Gaza in Context Project and National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, with more than 140 chapters nationwide.





Featuring
Lara Deeb is Professor of Anthropology and MENA Studies at Scripps College. She has published widely on Lebanon, especially in relation to gender, Shi'ism, piety, youth, and Hizbullah, as well as on the politics of knowledge production in relation to the Middle East. Her most recent book is Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon. She regularly incorporates material on Palestine into classes in anthropology and has taught a class called "Palestine Through Ethnography and Film" annually for the past decade.

Heather Ferguson is Associate Professor of Ottoman and Middle East History at Claremont McKenna College. Her research focuses on Ottoman imperial categories of difference and patterns of governance in the early modern context. Heather teaches surveys and seminars that span chronologies from the 7th to the 2lst centuries, and develops methods to help students assess violence associated with shifts from empire to nation-building.

Amanda Lagji is Associate Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. Amanda researches and teaches on postcolonial and global Anglophone fiction, time, and terror. Her book, Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now (2022) was published by Edinburgh University Press. Recent courses include "Decolonial Futures" and "Terror and the Text."

Leila Mansouri is Associate Professor of English and Core Faculty in the American Studies Program at Scripps College. A fiction writer, essayist, and literary critic, her creative work focuses on the Iranian-American diaspora and has appeared in Mizna, The Offing, The Believer, and elsewhere. She also holds a PhD in American literature and publishes scholarship on race and the politics of representativeness in the early United States. Her courses include a mix of creative writing workshops and American literature

Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding the Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

03/03/2025

02/06/2025

Capitalism, Christian Right, and Genocide: USA Today
THURSDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2025 | 2:00PM EST, 9:00PM GAZA

WATCH LIVE YOUTUBE.COM//STREAMS

Join us this Thursday, February 6th for this extended conversation with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Chris Hedges, where he will address changes and continuities in the political landscape of the United States, its policies in the Middle East, and its role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hedges pays close attention to the current moment in the United States, with the advent of Trump’s presidency.
Featuring

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and was once the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He spent two decades covering wars, revolutions, social upheavals, dictatorships and failed states in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. Hedges, an Arabic speaker, reported for seven years from Gaza and the occupied West Bank. He covered resistance movements around the globe and the tactics used by regimes, including the apartheid government of Israel, to attempt to destroy them. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University, where is also studied the classics, has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto. He has taught for over a decade in the college degree program in the New Jersey prison system offered by Rutgers University. He is the author of 14 books, including several New York Times best sellers, on war, politics and the decline of the American empire.

01/30/2025

Middle East and Islamic Studies Program Presents

The Fall of the Syrian Regime, 54 Years On: Causes and Prospects
By
Bassam Haddad

01/20/2025

Questioning the State
State Department Briefings on Palestine, Ceasefire, and Beyond

Featuring:
Said Arikat
Sam Husseini

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad

Said Arikat has been the Washington Bureau Chief of the prominent Al Quds Daily Newspaper and an adjunct professor at American University. Currently, his reporting centers around the United States Department of State. He is a frequent guest on Arab Satellite TV as commentator on U.S politics, and its foreign and security policies. From the summer of 2005, he served as the United Nations Chief Spokesman for Iraq and was based in Baghdad 2005-2010. He traveled and worked in every region/city in Iraq and became intimately involved with the Constitution and the 10 different national and regional elections that occurred during his tenure there. Said holds a B.S degree from the University of San Francisco and an M.S degree from California State University in Long Beach.

Sam Husseini is an independent journalist and writer who has been piercing through the establishment’s falsifications for 25 years. Starting October 2023, he wrote a series of pieces about the possibility of a country invoking the Genocide Convention against Israel at the International Court of Justice. In the 1990s, he scrutinized the U.S. sanctions policy against Iraq. He similarly exposed false pretexts for bombing of Iraq and Sudan by the Clinton administration. More at husseini.substack.com

12/11/2024

Collapse of the Syrian Regime - Featuring Omar Dahi and Bassam Haddad. Moderated by Noura Erakat and Mouin Rabbani

Collapse of the Syrian Regime - Featuring Omar Dahi and Bassam Haddad.

12/11/2024

TEST - This is only a test. Join us later today at 2pm EST.

Panel on “The Collapse of the Syrian Regime,” Featuring Omar Dahi and Bassam Haddad, Moderated by Noura Erakat and Mouin Rabbani

11/12/2024

U.S. in the Middle East Project - Session 2

Trajectories of U.S. Middle East Policy
Continuity and Change

Featuring:
Mouin Rabbani
Jamil Mouawad

Moderated by:
Bassam Haddad
Omar Dahi

Tuesday, 12 November 2024
1:00 PM EST | 8:00 PM Gaza

Presented by Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown - Qatar, and Security in Context.
Co-Sponsored by Gaza in Context Project

This panel will address continuities and anticipated change in U.S.-Middle East policy under the second Trump administration. What will this mean for the region and what for the United States? Our speakers will also provide an overview of how U.S. Foreign Policy is perceived from both Palestine and Lebanon over the past two decades, and how politicians and parties engage with it.

Featuring

Amal Saad is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Cardiff University. She specialzes in Hizbullah and its relations with the Resistance Axis. She has authored several works on Hizbullah including the book Hizbullah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press (2002).

Mouin Rabbani is a researcher, analyst, and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the contemporary Middle East. He has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with the Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation, and Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Rabbani is Co-Editor of Jadaliyya.

Jamil Mouawad is Assistant Professor of Politics and Policy at the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut - AUB. He is a founding member of the Beirut School for Critical Security Studies.

Bassam Haddad (Moderator) is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

Omar S. Dahi (Moderator) is a co-editor at Jadaliyya. He is a Professor of Economics at Hampshire College and Founding Director of Security in Context, a research network on peace, conflict, and international affairs. He has published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics and Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. His last book was South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence (co-authored with Firat Demir). Dahi serves as an associate editor of the Review of Social Economy and is a founding member of the Beirut School of Critical Security Studies within the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). Dahi has served as a lead expert on the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of West Asia's National Agenda for the Future of Syria program.

10/04/2024

Israel’s Attacks on Lebanon: To what End? with Lara Deeb, Karim Makdisi, Maya Mikdashi, Hosted by BASSAM HADDAD

Gaza in Context: A Collaborative Teach-In Series - Session 32

Israel's Attacks on Lebanon: To What End?

Featuring:
Maya Mikdashi
Karim Makdisi
Lara Deeb

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad

Thursday, 3 October 2024
12:30 PM EST | 7:30 PM Palestine

In the past week, Israel has killed over 1000 people in Lebanon and injured thousands more. Israeli bombs have destroyed entire city blocks in Beirut and a fifth of the population has been displaced. Israel is also threatening a ground invasion. How far will Israel go and what will be the repercussions for Lebanon, the region, the genocide in Gaza, and the safety and security of people around the globe? This event is hosted by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Arab Studies Institute as part of the Gaza in Context project.

Gaza in Context Collaborative Teach-In Series

We are together experiencing a catastrophic unfolding of history as Gaza awaits a massive invasion of potentially genocidal proportions. This follows an incessant bombardment of a population increasingly bereft of the necessities of living in response to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7. The context within which this takes place includes a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation and the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that depict Palestinians as the culprits, despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid, a matter of consensus in the human rights movement.

The co-organizers below are convening weekly teach-ins and conversations on a host of issues that introduce our common university communities, educators, researchers, and students to the history and present of Gaza, in context.

Co-Organizers: Arab Studies Institute, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, George Mason University’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, Rutgers Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Birzeit University Museum, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies, University of Chicago’s Center for Contemporary Theory, Brown University’s New Directions in Palestinian Studies, Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, Georgetown University-Qatar, American University of Cairo’s Alternative Policy Studies, Middle East Studies Association’s Global Academy, University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, CUNY’s Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, University of Illinois Chicago’s Arab american cultural Center, George Mason University’s AbuSulayman’s Center for Global Islamic Studies, University of Illinois Chicago’s Critical Middle East Studies Working Group, George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies, Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies

Featuring

Maya Mikdashi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her first book Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (SUP, 2022) theorizes the relationships between sexual difference and political difference, the religious and the secular, and law, bureaucracy, and biopower. Her work is grounded in ethnographic and archival research, and has been translated into Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, German and Korean. Maya has been published in several peer reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Gay and Le***an Quarterly, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, American Ethnologist, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She has also been published in peer reviewed edited volumes and in public facing venues. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, and is a member of the editorial collectives of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance, Agitate!, and Social Text. Maya is co-director of the documentary film About Baghdad (2004), filmed in Iraq in 2003, and director of Notes on the War (2006), filmed in Lebanon in 2006. She holds degrees from the Lebanese American University, Georgetown University, and Columbia University.

Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics, and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He has also directed the Environmental Policy program within AUB’s Interfaculty Environmental Sciences Program (IGESP) since 2004. Makdisi was a founding member and served on the first Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), where he is also currently an associated researcher in the Critical Studies Working Group; and also served as the Associate Director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB. He is currently working on a book project related to the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war and the larger United Nations framework; and is thinking about what it means to research and teach international relations, security, the UN, and global governance from Beirut.

Lara Deeb is Laura Vausbinder Hockett Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and the Program in MENA Studies at Scripps College. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, Deeb is the author of Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2024), An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton University Press, 2006), co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2013), co-author of Anthropology’s Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2015), co-editor of the volume Practicing Sectarianism Archival and Ethnographic Interventions on Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2023).

Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

10/03/2024

Israel's Attacks on Lebanon: To What End?

[this video will be re-broadcast in the coming 48 hours]

In the past week, Israel has killed over 1000 people in Lebanon and injured thousands more. Israeli bombs have destroyed entire city blocks in Beirut and a fifth of the population has been displaced. Israel is also threatening a ground invasion. How far will Israel go and what will be the repercussions for Lebanon, the region, the genocide in Gaza, and the safety and security of people around the globe? This event is hosted by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Arab Studies Institute as part of the Gaza in Context project (www.PalestineInContext.com)

Speakers:
Lara Deeb is Laura Vausbinder Hockett Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and the Program in MENA Studies at Scripps College. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, Deeb is the author of Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2024), An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton University Press, 2006), co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2013), co-author of Anthropology’s Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2015), co-editor of the volume Practicing Sectarianism Archival and Ethnographic Interventions on Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2023).

Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics, and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He has also directed the Environmental Policy program within AUB’s Interfaculty Environmental Sciences Program (IGESP) since 2004. Makdisi was a founding member and served on the first Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), where he is also currently an associated researcher in the Critical Studies Working Group; and also served as the Associate Director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB. He is currently working on a book project related to the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war and the larger United Nations framework; and is thinking about what it means to research and teach international relations, security, the UN, and global governance from Beirut.

Maya Mikdashi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her first book Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (SUP, 2022) theorizes the relationships between sexual difference and political difference, the religious and the secular, and law, bureaucracy, and biopower. Her work is grounded in ethnographic and archival research, and has been translated into Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, German and Korean. Maya has been published in several peer reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Gay and Le***an Quarterly, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, American Ethnologist, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She has also been published in peer reviewed edited volumes and in public facing venues. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, and is a member of the editorial collectives of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance, Agitate!, and Social Text. Maya is co-director of the documentary film About Baghdad (2004), filmed in Iraq in 2003, and director of Notes on the War (2006), filmed in Lebanon in 2006. She holds degrees from the Lebanese American University, Georgetown University, and Columbia University.

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).

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10/03/2024

Israel’s Attacks on Lebanon: To what End? with Lara Deeb, Karim Makdisi, Maya Mikdashi, Hosted by BASSAM HADDAD

Israel’s Attacks on Lebanon: To what End?

Gaza in Context Teach-In #32

��Event Timing: October 3rd, 12:30 PM ET�Event Address: Zoom�
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In the past week, Israel has killed over 1000 people in Lebanon and injured thousands more. Israeli bombs have destroyed entire city blocks in Beirut and a fifth of the population has been displaced. Israel is also threatening a ground invasion. How far will Israel go and what will be the repercussions for Lebanon, the region, the genocide in Gaza, and the safety and security of people around the globe? This event is hosted by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Arab Studies Institute as part of the Gaza in Context project (www.PalestineInContext.com)

Speakers:
Lara Deeb is Laura Vausbinder Hockett Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and the Program in MENA Studies at Scripps College. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, Deeb is the author of Love Across Difference: Mixed Marriage in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2024), An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton University Press, 2006), co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2013), co-author of Anthropology’s Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2015), co-editor of the volume Practicing Sectarianism Archival and Ethnographic Interventions on Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2023).

Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics, and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He has also directed the Environmental Policy program within AUB’s Interfaculty Environmental Sciences Program (IGESP) since 2004. Makdisi was a founding member and served on the first Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), where he is also currently an associated researcher in the Critical Studies Working Group; and also served as the Associate Director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB. He is currently working on a book project related to the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war and the larger United Nations framework; and is thinking about what it means to research and teach international relations, security, the UN, and global governance from Beirut.

Maya Mikdashi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her first book Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (SUP, 2022) theorizes the relationships between sexual difference and political difference, the religious and the secular, and law, bureaucracy, and biopower. Her work is grounded in ethnographic and archival research, and has been translated into Arabic, Turkish, French, Spanish, German and Korean. Maya has been published in several peer reviewed journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Gay and Le***an Quarterly, the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, American Ethnologist, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and the American Indian Culture and Research Journal. She has also been published in peer reviewed edited volumes and in public facing venues. She is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, and is a member of the editorial collectives of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance, Agitate!, and Social Text. Maya is co-director of the documentary film About Baghdad (2004), filmed in Iraq in 2003, and director of Notes on the War (2006), filmed in Lebanon in 2006. She holds degrees from the Lebanese American University, Georgetown University, and Columbia University.

Moderator:
Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Executive Producer of Status Podcast Channel and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding The Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).