Yale “Teach-In” aims to offer insight into unrest in Middle East

NEW HAVEN — A panel discussion featuring four experts on the history and political affairs of the Middle East will take place from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Feb. 8 in Levinson Auditorium of Yale Law School, 127 Wall St.

The discussion is intended to "provide a primer for understanding the rapidly evolving social unrest in the region," according to a statement.

The discussion is free and open to the public, the statement said.

Panelists are Adel Allouche, Department of History, Yale; Adria Lawrence and Ellen Lust, Department of Political Science, Yale; and Tarek Masoud, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, the statement said.
Marcia C. Inhorn, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale and chairwoman of the Council on Middle East Studies will act as moderator.

Other details, all in the statement:
* Allouche, a native of Tunis, was born with dual U.S. and Tunisian citizenship and received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Tunis. He is an authority on Medieval Islamic history and has written “The Origins and Development of the Ottoman-Safavid Conflict (906-962/1500-1555)” (1983) and “Mamluk Economics: A Study and Translation of al-Maqrizi's Ighathah” ( 1994). He has contributed countless articles and reviews to encyclopedias and journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Language in Society, Journal of Semitic Studies and The Muslim World.

* Lawrence, a scholar of Middle Eastern and North African politics, studies conflict and collective action, focusing on how people mobilize to advance ideologies such as ethnicity, nationalism, religion and democracy. Her study titled “Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism” analyzes the nationalist mobilization against French colonial rule in the 20th-century. Her work on the use of violence by non-state actors, co-edited with Erica Chenoweth, has been published in “International Security and Rethinking Violence: States and Non State Actors in Conflict” (2010).

* Inhorn’s research interests revolve around science and technology studies, gender and feminist theory (including masculinity studies), religion and bioethics, globalization and global health. As past-president of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA) of the American Anthropological Association, Inhorn chaired the SMA conference on “Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity,” held at Yale in September 2009.

* Lust is a leading authority on the politics of authoritarianism and the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. Her books include “Structuring Conflict in the Arab World” (2005); “Political Participation in the Middle East” (2008), co-edited with Saloua Zerhouni; and a textbook titled “The Middle East” (2010). She has also published articles in such journals as Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Journal of Middle East Studies and Politics and Society. Lust is currently working on a book examining the politics of elections in the Arab world and on a project focusing on social and economic transformations in Africa and the Middle East. Lust and two Yale colleagues are among 150 academics publicly urging President Barack Obama to demand the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.

* Masoud teaches public policy at the Kennedy School. His research focuses on the processes by which governments in poor countries become more responsive to the needs of their people. Masoud is the co-editor of “Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics” (2004) and “Order, Conflict, and Violence” (2008), and his articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy and the International Journal of Middle East Studies, among others. Masoud received his Ph.D in from Yale in 2008.

The “teach in” is sponsored by the Council on Middle East Studies, the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, the International Students Organization, and the Arab Students Association.

Editor's note: All information in this post was provided by Yale; it is lightly edited here and provided as a public service.
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