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Middle East Studies After September 11, 2001

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Joel Beinin
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Extract

The office of MESA president is mainly honorific; the associated duties are normally not particularly onerous. The very capable staff of the secretariat does most of the hard work involved in running this organization. None of you could have known at the time of the MESA elections in the summer and early fall of 2000 that you would be giving me the opportunity to serve as your president in the post-September 11, 2001 era, when public interest in the Middle East, demands on those with expertise in the region, and incongruously, attacks on MESA, university-based programs in Middle East Studies, and more than a few individual MESA members have reached unprecedented levels. Serving as your president in this period has been a more exciting ride than it would have been at almost any other time I can imagine; I thank you all for making it possible. I would also like to acknowledge my wife Miriam, who also received a fuller plate than she could have imagined as a result of my serving as MESA president. Her support has always been indispensable in everything I have done.

Type
Essays and MESA 2002
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , Summer 2003 , pp. 2 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2003

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References

1 The most recent research on the circumstances of the coup is Abrahamian, Ervand, “The 1953 Coup in Iran,” Science & Society 65 (no. 2, 2001):182–215.Google Scholar

2 New York Times, February 14, 1980.

3 The low figure is the official Israeli estimate. The high figure is the one proposed by Israeli journalist Kapeliouk, Amnon, who investigated the matter and reported his conclusion in Sabra and Sha tila: Inquiry into a Massacre (Belmont, MA: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1984).Google Scholar

4 Schbley, Ayla Hammond, “Resurgent Religious Terrorism: A Study of Some of the Lebanese Shi’a Contemporary Terrorism,” Terrorism 12 (no. 4, 1989):213–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For example, Sterling, Claire, The Terror Network: The Secret War of International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981)Google Scholar and Netanyahu, Benjamin (ed.), Terrorism: How the West Can Win (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986).Google Scholar The quote is from Netanyahu, Benjamin, “Defining Terrorism,” pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

6 Mishnah Sanhedrin, 4:5.

7 Qur’an, 5:32.

8 For a slightly different formulation see Halliday, Fred, Two Hours that Shook the World. September 11, 2001, Causes and Consequences (London: Saqi Books, 2002), p. 27.Google Scholar

9 Diamond, Larry, “What Political Science Owes the World,” PS Online, March 2002 http://www,apsa.com/PS/post911/diamond.cfmGoogle Scholar

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11 Prewitt, Kenneth, “The Social Science Project: Then, Now and Next,” Items & Issues 3 (no. 1-2, Spring) 2002:6.Google Scholar

12 Hitti, Philip K., “Arabie and Islamic Studies at Princeton University,” Muslim World 31 (no. 3, 1941): 294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The quote and the information in the previous paragraph are from Mitchell, Timothy, “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in Szanton, David (ed.) The Past and Future of Area Studies in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

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