The Arab League States

Iran–US relations – strained at the best of times since the 1979 Iranian revolution – have never been worse than during the past six years, due to the much more intense interaction between the two ...

On the ninth and tenth of May 1970, the American writer James Baldwin agreed to do a videotaped interview in Istanbul with an aspiring young Turkish film maker Sedat Pakay.1 The two had first met at Robert College, now Bogazici University, in Istanbul, Turkey, where Pakay had been a student in the early 1960s.2 Though readers are more familiar with Baldwin’s years abroad in France in the late 1940s and 1950s, beginning in 1961 the writer maintained semiresidency in Istanbul for nearly eight years.3 He had first come to Istanbul with his friend, the Turkish theater actor Engin Cezzar, whom he had met at the Actor’s Studio in New York. He then would come and go, often staying for months at a time. From the fall of 1966 to the summer of 1967 he would rent the Vefik Pasha Library, a Romantic nineteenth-century villa surrounded by gardens and towering pine and plane trees looking out over the Bosphorus Straits toward the Asian continent. His direct neighbor was the fifteenth-century fortress of Mehmet the Conqueror. It was from here that the Turks conquered the Byzantines in 1453. Constantinople would then become Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire for the next four hundred years. Though much less populated than it is today, in 1970 Istanbul was a vibrant, cosmopolitan metropolis. Baldwin would live at the Vefik Pasha Library with his brother David and his friend and assistant, the young Robert College English professor David Leeming. In his 1994 biography of Baldwin, Leeming recalls “the simple daily routine” at the villa:

In the 1970s, oil became the new gold and oil pricing replaced the gold standard in our carbon economy. This power, and the oil economy that facilitated it, is weakening. For Saudi this suggests a very different future and raises the specter of implosion of the kingdom and its oil-dependent economy if it does not diversify in time. There are many nations that could fail and cause little more than a ripple in geopolitical terms, but Saudi has for so long been pivotal in the Middle East that even a severe weakening, let alone failing, is a problem for all. Already Saudi is in the early stages of changing from being a Cold War partner against godless communism into a less-than-trusted partner. This is a mistake and will not help in dealing with the global political presence of Islamic radicalism. It is also a mistake to demand a reformation in Islam or in Saudi, for the reasons stated earlier. If we are to have a global peace in Islam then the solution for the world may be to have a strong Saudi Arabia and one that is not less Islamic, but more Islamic. Saudi is pivotal in Islam due to its role of custodian, and it should use this as a basis to foster more positive diplomatic relations with all nations, not just by being the “American Islam.” What has truly destabilized Saudi’s status in international relations is the tipping toward Iran, which is leading to increasing uncertainty in the kingdom and destabilizing effects. Iran is part of minority Islam, but that doesn’t stop it from seeking to promote itself as the true home of Islam in opposition to Saudi. A major external pressure in recent years has been the nature of the American relationship, which deteriorated under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Pressure has been mounting on the United States to forsake its long relationship in part to force Saudi to change its attitude on human rights violations and gender issues, and in part because it is felt the relationship is losing its benefits. The notions that working together would promote internal change and help in regional affairs have been discredited in many quarters. In remarks at the American University in Cairo made on 20 June 2005, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noted that “for 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East – and we achieved neither” (https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/48328.htm).

Research Article| May 01 2004 Collaboration and Empire in the Middle East and North Africa:introduction and Response Julia Clancy-Smith Julia Clancy-Smith Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2004) 24 (1): 125–129. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-24-1-125 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Julia Clancy-Smith; Collaboration and Empire in the Middle East and North Africa:introduction and Response. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 1 May 2004; 24 (1): 125–129. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-24-1-125 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsComparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East2004 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Collaboration and Empire in the Middle East and North Africa You do not currently have access to this content.

Clashing Constitutions: On the Tectonics of the Egyptian Revolution 2011

of an article by Mary Elaine Hegland, based onpersonal and other anthropologic fieldworks in Iran between 1975 and 1980, published in The Middle East Journal, Vol. 36, no. 4, Autumn 1982.

The study of political identitiy in Middle East is an uniqe one due to the challenge that offered by both sub and supra identities. Sub-state identity indicates nationalism—loyal to its boundaries—and irredentism. Supra-state identity, Pan-Arabism and Pan-Islamism, that limit the loyalty to its state. Since Arab World and Islam World emerged in Middle East, this region became more integrated. This article will examine how political identities shape the region towards the integration. The theory of constructivism will play a significant role to analyize the impact of Middle East identites to conduct their foreign policy. The result of this study shows that Middle East countries’ foreign policies are mainly influenced by their identities as Arab nation and Islam nation. Both of these identities were created through historical interaction with the involvement of the external actors. Those identities shaped regionalism in Middle East through Arab League and Islamic Conference. However, it seems that the identities are collapsing since the institutions no longer functioned recently. Keywords: Political Identity, Regionalism, Middle East, Arab League, Islamic Conference Organization

Colonoscopy is typically performed with sedation. Intravenous benzodiazepines with or without opioids have long been used to induce sedation for both colonoscopy and more complex endoscopic procedures. In recent years, we have observed a rapid transformation from the use of opioids and benzodiazepines to sedation with propofol in Western countries.1 However, most endoscopy centers in the Middle East still use traditional sedation with opioids and benzodiazepines for endoscopy. The safety, feasibility and effectiveness of propofol sedation for endoscopic procedures have been well studied in Western countries.2-6 In this issue of “Middle East Journal of Digestive Diseases”, Ghadir MR and colleagues investigated the role of propofol to induce deep sedation in an endoscopy center in Iran.7 In this uncontrolled study, the authors induced sedation with propofol for colonoscopy in 125 patients. Of these, 5.6% developed hypoxemia during colonoscopy. All hypoxemia episodes were successfully controlled by administration of nasal oxygen without the need for mechanical ventilation. This study provides evidence for the feasibility of propofol sedation in Middle Eastern countries. However, several issues merit consideration. Since this was an uncontrolled study, therefore the safety, feasibility and effectiveness of propofol sedation in Middle Eastern countries should be compared to conventional sedation with benzodiazepines and opioids. Another limitation of this study was that the investigators mainly focused on the side effects of propofol. They did not evaluate the onset of action of propofol, recovery time, patient cooperation (as rated by the endoscopist) or patient satisfaction (as rated by the patient following the procedure). Another point is that in the current study, propofol alone was used for induction of sedation. Previous studies have shown that the combination of propofol with benzodiazepines or opioids allows for a dose reduction of propofol. Some, but not all of these studies, have shown that the combination of propofol with other sedatives may shorten recovery time.1,8,9 In this study, propofol was administered by an anesthesiologist which significantly increases the cost of the procedure. There have been several studies from Western countries that demonstrate the feasibility of non-anesthesiologist administration of propofol for endoscopic procedures.10-12 In Iran, future studies on the feasibility and safety of nurse-administered propofol for endoscopic procedures should be evaluated. Experiences from the Western world have shown the superiority of propofol-based sedation compared to traditional sedation in terms of post-procedure patient satisfaction, time to sedation and recovery time.8,13-15 Therefore, there is a need to expand the use of propofol for colonoscopy and more complex endoscopic procedures (i.e., EUS, ERCP) in Iranian endoscopy centers. Future studies should focus on the feasibility of nurse-administered propofol. Clearly, nurses need to take appropriate theoretical and practical training to become qualified to administer propofol.8

For many years, the ISJ has been included within the quaintly named "basket" of eight (Bo8) premier journals, an endeavour of the Association for Information Systems' (AIS) College of Senior Scholars (CSS)1 to single out the top journals in the field of Information Systems (IS). At its 2019 meeting in Munich, concerns were expressed that the Bo8's editorial boards were insufficiently diverse and as a result the CSS commissioned a task force to investigate the extent to which the editorial boards of the eight journals reflected the diversity of the AIS itself. The task force chose to define "editorial board" as meaning the people most directly connected with managing submitted articles, that is, the Senior and Associate Editors of a journal, but excluded the advisory board or a more general list of reviewers. It collected publicly-available data (primarily from journal and individual websites), and also consulted with the editors of the eight journals, before compiling a report that is available from the CSS website2 and that has been recently published as Beath et al. (2021). In this editorial, I deal with the report insofar as it pertains to the ISJ. I chart the current state of diversity in the ISJ's editorial board, but also take issue with some of the parameters of the report itself and suggest alternative ways of examining diversity. Finally, I outline some of my plans for further diversification of the ISJ and the ways in which this diversity can be measured. The ideas in and structure of this editorial have been significantly informed by Monideepa Tarafdar (senior editor at the ISJ) and Cynthia Beath (a member of the journal's advisory board and a forthright supporter of the journal). Benchmarking diversity lies at the heart of the CSS Diversity report. As Beath et al. (2021) note, "Editorial board diversity, we believe, is a signal that the journal is open to and inclusive of all authors". The task force decided to limit its assessment of diversity to three demographic indicators, viz. gender, regional and ethnic diversity. Diversity was benchmarked on the data of the 3210 individuals who were paid-up Academic members of the AIS on 31/12/2019. Thus, the diversity of the editorial boards of the Bo8 as a whole and of the eight journals individually were compared to the diversity of AIS Academic members in terms of gender (actually sex, i.e., female or male), AIS region (1, 2 or 3) of current employment, and ethnicity.3 While gender and region of current employment are automatically collected by the AIS as part of membership demographics, ethnicity data was manually created by one of the task force members and mapped onto a simplified template that was restricted to terms adapted from the US census: (a) Chinese, (b) Indian subcontinent, (c) other Asian, (d) Black/African descent, (e) Caucasian/European descent, (f) Middle Eastern descent, (g) Hispanic (only in Region 1 because the term is largely meaningless elsewhere) and (h) Other (e.g., indigenous). In Table 1 below, AIS data for these various demographic indicators are compared with ISJ data (the 68 SEs and AEs of the ISJ, current on 1 January 2021) for the same indicators. Beath et al. (2021) report a similar analysis for all eight journals (with data collected in January 2020) that includes standard deviations, but Table 1 is sufficient for the current purposes. Eyeballing the data in this way is instructive. Superficially, it appears that while the ISJ's gender proportions are roughly in line with the AIS benchmark (in contrast to the basket as a whole), we have too few editorial board members from region 1 (while the basket has too many), too many from region 2 (the basket is about right) and about the right number from region 3 (the basket has too few). Where ethnicity is concerned, we have too many Chinese, too few other Asians (e.g., Thai, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, etc.), Caucasians/of European descent and of Middle Eastern descent, and about the right number of Black/of African descent, Indian subcontinent and Hispanic. My immediate observation when I saw the numbers was to think that hitting any of the AIS benchmarks would be entirely fortuitous: while we certainly champion diversity across all aspects of the ISJ and have deliberately sought to bring in more people from historically under-represented groups, we do not deliberately attempt to emulate AIS proportions, hitherto unknown. Indeed, as the AIS membership evolves, so the proportions will evolve and thus any target is going to be a moving one. Nevertheless, I would like to see more diversity in general, and not for a small number of ethnicities to dominate. The AIS CSS report makes six recommendations for change to the CSS itself, 5 to the AIS, and 15 for the consideration of the Bo8 journal editors. I do not plan to list or address all 15 here, but I do note that one of the recommendations is that editors should establish diversity and inclusion indicators that are appropriate for each journal and then to set measurable targets related to those indicators. I caution here that while the AIS benchmarks are instructive they are also limited in their scope. However, I agree that each journal editor should identify a set of diversity and inclusion indicators that make sense in the context of the journal and its readership. Extending these indicators beyond the three that the Task Force has relied on in this report is necessary. An important aspect of the AIS CSS report, and it is one that I share, is the belief that diversity is a good thing. My interpretation of the "diversity is good" argument is that when we include a wider range of perspectives, we will make better decisions and thus enhance quality. We will also demonstrate the openness of the journal to a diversity of authors. Thus, while I am generally in favour of indicators as useful ways of thinking about diversity, and there are many indicators in this editorial, I feel that hard targets are risky because it means that we embark on the slippery slope that leads to quotas and bean counting, both of which I wish to avoid. Nevertheless, I report data for the ISJ below so as to provide an indication of the current situation with respect to various indicators. Readers can decide for themselves if more specific targets are warranted. A second area relates to transparency: journal editors need to report on their diversity and inclusion statistics somewhere, either on the journal website or else in some other public way, such as this editorial, which is freely accessible from the ISJ website. I plan to update these data on an annual basis, either in future editorials or elsewhere on the ISJ website. While the level of diversity in the ISJ is high (at least according to the AIS indicators), it could be higher, particularly with regard to the extent to which minority groups are represented. The same comment, of course, applies to the AIS itself. Achieving a higher level of diversity will require attention to a range of indicators that I outline below. However, diversity must never come at the expense of merit: we expect that SEs and AEs will fit and enhance the ethos of the journal. I have no intention of descending to the point where I cherry pick individuals exclusively for their contribution to a diversity indicator irrespective of other attributes of their suitability for the position. This brings me to a more detailed critique of the AIS report and data. Firstly, I find that the AIS region and ethnicity coding to be coarse: just three regions and eight ethnic groups. Splitting AIS members into (only) three regions conceals a huge lack of diversity. The vast majority (88%) of Region 1 AIS members live in one country, the USA, but as a journal editor, I would like to seek submissions from authors distributed across the region. This will have an impact on targets: while I think we do need more Region 1 editorial board members, they do not all have to come from the USA. They should come from across the region. Thus, I plan to search for potential SEs and AEs from all countries within Region 1. To that end, I recently appointed an AE from Brazil and I am actively seeking other qualified individuals. A similar problem exists in Region 2, where the vast majority of AIS members work in Western Europe, with very few in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and all of Africa. The almost complete absence of African scholars grossly limits the diversity of the AIS. A similar pattern applies to the ISJ editorial board, and while we do have African scholars on the ISJ editorial board, none of them currently live in Africa. Finally, Region 3 has better diversity data both among AIS members and with respect to ISJ editorial board members, who come from various parts of Asia and Australasia, though none from the Pacific Islands at the time of writing. That said, while we do have Indian scholars among our SEs and AEs, none of them actually live in India and only one received her PhD from India. Diversity is not just gender, country of birth and ethnicity: it is also where one studied, was professionally socialised, where one lives, works and breathes. Thus, using the region of employment or residence but not the natal origin or the location of postgraduate study as the basis of regional classification is quite problematic because the AIS regions are so large and conceal so much diversity. I do not find the AIS regions a good proxy for anything very useful except the most general kind of assessment of where editorial board members live. As I argue below, the actual state of diversity in the ISJ's editorial board is much richer than the data in the AIS CSS report suggests. But what we need to do is to examine some different aspects of the diversity. My first step was to look at the country of current employment, the country where a PhD was obtained and the natal origin (country) of the ISJ's SEs and AEs. This is presented in Table 2 below. Here, a more detailed picture emerges, with 36 countries indicated. Our editorial board members live in 16 countries, earned their PhDs in 17 countries and have natal origins in 29 countries. While 24% of our editorial board members were born in, studied in and now live in the same country, most of them moved at some stage, which I suspect parallels behaviour across the AIS more generally. Considering our SEs and AEs, some stayed at home to study and then moved away (11%) while others moved away to study and then returned (8%). Others moved away to study and then stayed there (32%). A final group moved away to study and then moved elsewhere to work (24%). These figures attest to a global diversity of the ISJ's editorial board in a way that is not captured by the AIS benchmark comparative data. However, a new bias emerges here: while 26 SEs/AEs were born in the global south (developing countries), only two received their PhDs in the global south and only five currently live in the global south. This is a matter for some concern, though it probably reflects global educational movements and cannot easily be addressed at the scale of one journal. Beyond editorial board data, I also felt that it would be instructive to examine the provenance of our authors. Who are they? Where do they live? Obtaining raw data from manuscript central is not too difficult, but parsing it by gender is not at all simple and prone to error. Although genderizing software programmes exist, these tend to be more accurate with "western" names that often tend to be gender specific, and tend to be much less accurate with non-western names. For instance, the Chinese name that is rendered as "Li Li" in the Roman alphabet (i.e., family name and given name are both Li), could involve a number of different characters in Chinese, and so could be male or female. Here are some examples: 李俐, 李力, 黎莉, 黎厉, 厉俪. All five would be romanised as Li Li (in Mandarin), but the act of romanisation removes any way of even guessing at the gender based on the characters. Incidentally, the first, third and fifth are more likely to be female, while the second and fourth are more likely to be male, but these are not absolute. Sometimes females have "male" names and vice versa. Since manuscript central only captures the romanised form, it is impossible to determine gender unless someone does an intensive search for the named individual and ideally finds a photograph or some other gender-identifiable evidence on the Internet, such as a website that uses the male or female personal pronoun. An easier solution is that we ask ScholarOne to request the inclusion of gender when a paper is submitted. However, this is controversial: some believe that the submission of gender data should never be mandatory and indeed, in some countries, it is illegal to collect it. Despite these genderising challenges, I attempted to assess the gender distribution of submissions to ISJ, in response to a request that I look for change in gender distribution of submissions to the journal pre- and during-pandemic. I was able to assign genders to the first authors of 95% of the papers submitted in March–May of 2019 and in the same months of 2020. The results showed that the gender distribution in 2019 was very similar to the gender distribution among AIS Academic members: 35% female/65% male. In 2020, the proportion of submissions from females was actually higher: 40% female/60% male. While this is a very limited analysis of the gender distribution of submitters to ISJ, it does suggest that even during challenging times, the journal is attracting significant submissions from females. Nevertheless, manuscript central data for the ISJ do indicate the country from which the first author is submitting and this provides a very rough indicator of geographical diversity. Therefore, I downloaded the metadata for all submissions to the ISJ from 2011–2020, that is, 10 years of data. This reveals that we have received 2933 submissions from first authors working in 95 countries. See Table 3. Although 95 countries seem to provide considerable evidence of diversity, only 11 of them are in AIS Region 1, while 63 are in Region 2 and 21 are in Region 3. [AIS itself has members from 14 Region 1 countries, 63 Region 2 countries and 22 Region 3 countries]. Within Region 2, 16 countries in Africa are represented among our submitting authors [There are AIS members from 18 countries in Africa]. Where accepted papers are concerned, the situation is not quite so diverse (see Table 4). Over the same 10-year period, we accepted papers from authors based in 28 countries: three in Region 1 (only one, Brazil, is outside North America), 16 in Region 2 (though none from Africa) and 9 in Region 3. On balance, I feel that this more detailed analysis presents a richer picture of the diversity of the ISJ, but there is still room for improvement. The fact that we have submitting authors from 95 countries, and have accepted papers from authors located in 28 countries, sounds impressive, but there is no basis for comparison with other journals. What is critical is that authors should feel welcome, no matter who they are, where they come from, what kind of IS research they do. This spirit of inclusiveness is what diversity really means. It may be that we cannot accept their papers, but at the very least, we must offer constructive feedback that will help them to enhance the quality of their research and writing. This is something that we already do, and indeed I am positively biased to appoint AEs and SEs on the basis of such constructive reviews and reports, because they demonstrate affiliation with the journal's mission. Having a globally distributed editorial board helps if those board members promote the ISJ in their own communities as a desirable journal in which to publish, and as a journal that will give them constructive feedback. In appointing an AE or SE, while the ability of the individual to perform in this role at a high level is essential, I am also interested in the network of the individual concerned. AEs often assign papers to be reviewed by colleagues in their network. AEs and SEs can also promote the journal within their network. Thus, greater diversity in the editorial board is likely to lead to greater diversity in the submitting authors. This is a worthwhile objective. I hope that the AIS CSS will consider a more sophisticated analysis of diversity in future years. Finally, I come to the tricky issue of identifying diversity and inclusion indicators. As I mentioned above, I am loath to be too specific: I do not think it is sensible for us to set precise quotas for any particular AIS region, gender or location of current work. Nevertheless, I do consider that the current levels of diversity (on multiple indicators) are not only respectable and appropriate for the journal, but also self-sustaining. We have excellent networks among authors and reviewers, ensuring that the ISJ will continue to attract suitably qualified individuals in multiple roles. Nevertheless, I recognise that we have few editorial board members who either received their PhDs in or live in the global south: I am striving to appoint more. The AIS CSS Task Force suggested that editors appoint AEs on a trial basis with some mentoring from more senior members of the editorial board. I find that this is a sensible suggestion that fits well with an SE-AE structure, such that we need to be open to new junior AEs, so long as they are mentored by more senior SEs. Including junior AEs from the global south will be an effective way of ensuring that our diversity extends beyond the developed countries. Indeed, I suggest that the AIS CSS Task Force consider a 6-region split, with separate identification of developed and developing countries (global north and global south) in each of the current AIS regions. This will encourage journal editors to consider how they can achieve diversity in a more nuanced way than the current 3-way split. Where gender is concerned, if anything we should be looking to appoint more female board members since we expect the AIS proportions to shift towards parity over time. Overall, I believe that the ISJ will be best served by a variety of people in SE and AE roles across multiple indicators. If our SEs and AEs perfectly matched the AIS benchmarks for gender, location and ethnicity, but had received their professional training in a small group of countries/universities, spoke the same language, subscribed to the same epistemological beliefs and undertook the same kind of research, then that would not count as a diverse editorial board in my view. I note that while approximately half of our SEs and AEs received their PhDs and currently work in countries where English is the "national language", less than 14% were born in a country where English is the "national language". This in part reflects the global educational migrations that I referred to earlier. It also suggests that well over 80% of our SEs and AEs have successfully made that transition from a first language other-than-English to succeed in an English-dominated academic culture. I regard this as a valid aspect of diversity that we need to uphold and celebrate. I also hope that these non-native English speakers will be more understanding of the difficulties that similar authors face, will be constructive and developmental in their reviews and reports and will encourage them to submit to the ISJ. A polyglot editorial board is an asset to the journal and is something we should maintain or enhance. As I mentioned above, I believe that a diverse editorial board will help us to attract a diverse set of authors (and for that matter readers). At this point, I will also mention the editorial advisory board, which for the ISJ consists of 36 people. Many of them are associated with the same countries as the editorial board, but to that list of 36 countries, I can and It is my hope that the editorial advisory board members actively encourage potential authors to submit to the ISJ, where and so actively to the diversity of the journal. All the to this point has diversity as by multiple of demographic indicators. I suggest that this is are also indicators to which we have not the of a submitting is a journal open to and of different of research, different different epistemological It is for an editor to a of But how does that of openness into the papers that are submitted to and accepted for Here, I see two indicators, each of which is though with some Firstly, what are the of of the editorial board At the ISJ, we do collect this each AE and SE is to provide to 10 that identify We this to assign Since the are there is a considerable and many But in terms of diversity, I would like our editorial board members to be diverse to be able to any paper that is within and that is submitted to the ISJ. At the time of we have and I consider that this indicator is with further diversification not At the same it is important that members of the be very with authors should not have to the on of for instance, since an accepted should not include a to the that is The may be for an that makes an at the ISJ, we have recently the as a new of how diverse is the research that is actually submitted and Although it would not be hard to a of research though it would be more to each to this Nevertheless, such an would certainly have the of what is what we and what we I would not to do this analysis for submitted but it could be for each submitted and each published in the 10 years. However, such a will take more time than I have at my at least for the time Finally, I have to that each journal has its It would be if all journals with the same the same the same people. as diversity and inclusiveness are journals need to maintain their individual often a journal to submit to because of that indeed, I encourage authors to an with a specific journal in since if the fit is good then the of is In this issue of the ISJ, we In the first et al. (2021) the problem of and context in research in IS and the potential of research They argue that many of the associated with research are and also to their and They further argue that these may in the if do not actively on how they the research They a research for research, research as a and on three levels of and In the second and (2021) how when of their They on and study the a which is both for personal and in for professional purposes. from they that when they will using the a or their The authors to the a to they identify that are for than and they the that these In the third and (2021) examine which both an state of and how that state is with the in the context of a study with and data, the authors that with and a while and and and actual to The study to the of the by the new of based on a and that that many are an the and the of a In the fourth et al. (2021) how using as a for individuals identify has But is about how individuals to potential The authors related to from a the number of an was as the of the reports, the of the on and the of the The results showed that work to encourage and the most on related to to and with I am to my colleagues at the ISJ and elsewhere for their to multiple of this Cynthia Monideepa

As instructors, we are quite familiar with students coming to our classes loaded with preconceived notions. For instance, some believe that male instructors are better at math, while others think that markets, if left on their own, will produce wealth for everyone. Teaching about gender and politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at an American college is no different. Students come to class rarely knowing the basic facts, history, or culture of the region, mostly because the K–12 educational curriculum in the United States does not typically cover the MENA region. However, students’ lack of formal education on the MENA region does not mean they are unexposed to its issues, which are frequent topics in American media. Unfortunately, students often hold misconceptions and deep biases about women, culture, and politics in the region, and these misconceptions impair the learning process by acting as a “psychological block” for the students. As Haddad and Schwedler (2013, 211) put it, “our years of teaching undergraduates have taught us how images of harems, pyramids, and desert warriors wielding sabers on camelback still shape many Americans’ perceptions of the region.” This essay discusses some of the challenges that instructors teaching gender and politics in the MENA region face in an American college classroom. No single course can eradicate old paradigms and prejudices. However, this piece proposes some strategies for effective teaching about gender and politics of the MENA region.

This book should command the attention of all Cold War historians. It is a book of prodigious research and immense erudition. Lorenz Lüthi has visited archives in the United States, England, Russia, China, Australia, India, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, among other places. His aim is noteworthy: to “de-center” the Cold War. He argues that, for the most part, developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe had roots not in the global Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union but in “structural” changes in each of these regions that presaged the Cold War's end. He rejects the triumphalist narrative of some U.S. writers, minimizes the role of President Ronald Reagan, and claims that Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, did not want to end the Cold War and instead yearned to win that conflict. Overall, Lüthi stresses the agency of local actors and regional dynamics and claims that the capacity of Moscow and Washington to shape events was circumscribed by “decolonization, Asian-African Internationalism, pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism, Arab-Israeli hostility, and European economic developments” (p. 1).Despite the ambition and learning that inform every page of this tome, the book is beset with interpretive ambiguities and conceptual problems. Lüthi argues that the Cold War was not predetermined but was the collective result of “ideological clashes, unilateral decisions, political disagreements, and misperceptions” (p. 13). Its origins rest in the desires of the USSR to “overthrow the imperialist-capitalist world system and the establishment of a stateless and classless society across the globe” (p. 3). In contrast to Odd Arne Westad's The Cold War: A World History (New York; Basic Books, 2017), Lüthi pays scant attention to the economic contradictions within global capitalism in the late nineteenth century, the cyclical fluctuations of business cycles in the early twentieth century, the rise of the Left, the yearnings for structural change within capitalism, and the disillusionment spawned by two world wars and the Great Depression. Rather, Lüthi's focus is on imperial aspirations and ideological conflict. He elides geostrategic motivations, the underlying dynamics of global capitalism, and the legacy of World War II. He does not explain that controlling German power in Europe and harnessing Japanese power in Asia were key components of the global Cold War as well as the regional Cold Wars in Europe and Asia. He does not show how the perceived structural dynamics of global capitalism impelled policymakers in North American, Europe, and Japan to focus on integrating the core industrial areas of global capitalism with markets and raw materials in the “periphery”; that is, in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. He does not illustrate how socioeconomic unrest and political turmoil stemming from the Great Depression and World War II created perceptions of threat and opportunity in Moscow and Washington that set the conditions for the Cold War.The great attribute of this volume is Lüthi's detailed description of developments in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Cold War historians will be surprised by his decision to place developments in the Middle East at the forefront of the volume (chapter two), even while he argues that the Cold War did not come to the Middle East until the Suez crisis (chapters 8–10). The Middle East commands initial attention because Lüthi focuses on the legacy of British imperialism and the desires of officials in London to remake their empire in the aftermath of World War II with the help of the Arab League. In this context, Lüthi luminously describes inter-Arab dynamics, Arab-Israeli hostilities, and the rise of pan-Islamism. He stresses Anwar el-Sadat's desire to expel Soviet influence from Egypt, the complex dynamics spawned by the Palestinian quest for statehood, and the repercussions of the Iranian revolution. By the early 1980s, he writes, “the Cold War ceased to be the critical structure that shaped the regional system in the Middle East” (p. 518). But it is not clear what he means by the “regional system,” or whether the Cold War had ever shaped it. It is also not clear what constituted the regional Cold War in the Middle East when so many of the wars were hot, not cold. The role of oil in shaping the local, regional, and international dynamics of the different versions of Cold War in the region goes totally unexamined.Lüthi's discussion of Asia is central to the overall thesis of his book. “Three countries,” he writes, “played major roles in Asia's Cold War. China, Vietnam, and India all were dynamic agents in the shaping of their own fates and not just passive battlegrounds in the global competition between the United States and the Soviet Union” (p. 115). Lüthi shows how the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese rapprochement with the United States, the unification of revolutionary Vietnam, and “the collapse of communism as a unifying program for national liberation” (p. 537) reshaped the Asian Cold War during the 1970s. But here again it is not clear precisely what the Asian Cold War was, and why Japan is totally omitted from its discussion. Perhaps Lüthi would argue that Japan lacked agency, but even if that was the case the country was crucial to the trajectory of the Vietnam War and the U.S. role in it. Numerous historians—Howard Schonberger, Michael Schaller, Andrew Rotter, William Borden, and Robert Blum, among others—have shown in great detail how the goal of reconstructing and stabilizing Japan impelled U.S. officials to thwart Communist gains in Southeast Asia, create an independent South Vietnam, establish the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and support the rightwing military coup, crackdown, and massacres in Indonesia. While ignoring these dimensions of the Asian Cold War, Lüthi presents fascinating chapters on China, Vietnam, and India, on Asian-African internationalism, and on nonalignment. He shows that the Asian Cold War had many manifestations and permutations. At different times, in different ways, these trajectories affected the U.S.-Soviet global conflict and were influenced by that conflict. But Lüthi also acknowledges that “the end of the global Cold War primarily required a strategic rethinking in Moscow which would only come in March 1985 with Mikhail S. Gorbachev's ascent to power” (p. 537).Strategic rethinking was necessitated by developments in Europe. Lüthi incisively describes the successful integrationist initiatives in Western Europe and the concomitant failures in the Soviet-imposed Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. He emphasizes the ability of Western economies to recalibrate, innovate, and adjust to changing economic and monetary conditions, and he highlights the failures of centrally managed systems to do so. He minimizes the role of the United States in the reconstruction of Western Europe, mentioning that it “provided a stable and supportive framework” (p. 380). Ultimately, the failure of Communist economies to compete and modernize contributed to the flagging popular support for Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War. But Lüthi does not make much of an effort to analyze the basic shortcomings in Communist systems, nor does he examine why and how liberal capitalist and social-democratic market economies were able to adapt successfully. For example, he describes the impact of declining oil prices in the 1980s and the constraints that imposed on Moscow's ability to subsidize the economies of its East European satellites, but he rarely makes an attempt to analyze the dysfunctionality of Soviet agricultural policies or the flawed operations of central planning. He stresses the resilience of West European economies but barely mentions the creation of social welfare states and the role of governments in providing minimal social provision and expanding educational opportunity, access to medical care, and support for basic research.This volume is a monumental attempt to de-center the Cold War and restore agency to middle-level powers and local actors. What it does is de-center international politics. It illuminates that much was going on in the latter half of the twentieth century that was not the product of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War but at times intersected with it and contributed to its denouement. Small powers had their own agendas, and regional dynamics had their own logic. In complicated ways, developments in one region influenced those in another. Thanks to the prodigious research of an author with staggering linguistic skills and breathtaking knowledge of multiple literatures, one comes away much better informed about the complexities of international politics but not equally enlightened about the Cold War itself.

Essay| January 01 1992 The United States in the Middle East: The Gulf War and Its Aftermath Adeed Dawisha Adeed Dawisha Adeed Dawisha is a professor of government and politics at George Mason University. He is, with I. William Zartman, the coauthor of Beyond Coercion: The Durability of the Arab State (New York: Methuen, 1989). He spent the academic year 1990–1991 in Cairo, Egypt, as a Fulbright Fellow. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1992) 91 (561): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1992.91.561.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Adeed Dawisha; The United States in the Middle East: The Gulf War and Its Aftermath. Current History 1 January 1992; 91 (561): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1992.91.561.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1992 by The Regents of the University of California1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| April 01 2012 Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean, Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno. Assan Sarr Assan Sarr Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2012) 12 (1): 317–319. https://doi.org/10.2307/41960569 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Assan Sarr; Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean. Northeast African Studies 1 April 2012; 12 (1): 317–319. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41960569 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressNortheast African Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 Michigan State University2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

One of the most valuable works that I have read on Iran during the last twenty years. . . . There is nothing else in the market relative to the subject of land tenure and reform in Iran. [The author s] dual knowledge of the native aspects of Iranian land tenure and the archival documentation coupled with its theoretical sophistication is probably unique. Hafez Farmayan, University of TexasMohammad Gholi Majd examines land policy in Iran under the two Pahlavi shahs from 1925 to 1979, the social and economic consequences of the policies, and their impact on the popular uprisings of 1962-63, which many scholars regard as the beginning of the Islamic revolution. Contrary to widely held views, much of Iran s agricultural land up to 1960 was owned by 1.3 million small landowners. Mohammad Gholi Majd points out that traditional Islamic practices of matrimony and inheritance resulted in a continuous redistribution of landownership and these customs included a system of sharecropping that fulfilled a vital social and economic function. Tenants enjoyed secure rights to the land and the water, could not be easily evicted, and were thus practically owners themselves. In short, conditions in Iran were entirely different from those assumed in most Western theories of land policy and reform. Pressured by the United States in the 1950s to inaugurate land reform, the shah in his initial attempts met with stiff resistance from parliament and the Islamic leadership. The result, Majd argues, was an effective alliance between landowners and the fundamentalist Islamic ulama, in particular Ayatollah Khomeini, who emerged as the principal leader of the religious opposition. In addition to photos of the secular and religious opposition leaders, the book contains many rare photos of rural Iran during the periods 1890-1911 and 1930-60. For students of Iran and the Middle East as well as those interested in agrarian change and reform, this work offers a provocative and revisionist perspective on important events in Iran s recent history. Mohammad Gholi Majd is the author of articles published in the of Peasant Middle East Journal, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Middle Eastern Studies, and Land Use Policy, among others. He has taught courses in Middle East economics and economic development, most recently in the Department of Economics and at the Middle East Center, University of Pennsylvania.

The author, a cultural anthropologist, Professor Emeritus, Social Research Center, American University in Cairo, and a member of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee and Egypt's National Bioethics Committee, after completing her Ph. D studies at Cornell University, has been for 25 years Professor and Director of the Social Research Center, American University in Cairo, while also acting as Senior Fellow, Population Center, Harvard University; Senior Visiting Associate, Population Program, California Institute of Technology; Research Project Director, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva. Parallel to the above, she has been consultant for, and member of numerous international evaluation missions and expert committees of the UN Economic and Social Department, the UN Population Division, UNFPA, UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO and FAO. She has also been Secretary General of the Organization for the Promotion of Social Sciences in the Middle East; member of the Smithsonian Center for the Study of Man and of the Board of the International Union for Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences; member of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE),of which she was Vice-President for four years. The various distinctions awarded to Dr El-Hamamsy for her overall scientific achievements include the Distinguished Alumni Award of the American University in Cairo and the President Award of the American Anthropological Association. The text that follows is a slightly edited and revised version of a paper presented at the WSE Symposion "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century," Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001.