My article for @brookings.edu with @hamzehhadad.bsky.social on the value of Iraqi stability for the region, and the cost of allowing it to descend into the regional war: www.brookings.edu/articles/ira...
The Washington Post laying off their Middle East team weeks ago is of course a feature, not a bug, of this moment: Broad devaluation of fact based analysis and even the pretense of scrutiny of U.S. policies beyond the superficial press releases of our ossified alliances
An immigration court dropped its case against Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk, a little less than a year after federal agents arrested her on a street near Tufts University
October 2025 Arab Barometer Palestinian opinion survey finds “widespread frustration with existing leadership. Fatah’s support has eroded sharply, Hamas has largely maintained its base, and political alienation has become the dominant stance.”
www.arabbarometer.org/media-news/p...
February 1 deadline for @apsamena.bsky.social award nominations.
Advisers/committee members/mentors, please nominate students with strong dissertations.
Self-nominations welcome in all other categories.
apsamena.org/awards/apsa-...
brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis
tfw when the imperialism is boomeranging
Kind of surreal to be discussing my new book on my favorite podcast for learning about new books.
Marc as always knows so much about the topic; it's a real privilege (if intimidating) to be in conversation with him.
Our just-published investigation into Assad's surveillance state which revealed how the former regime urged friends, spouses, and neighbors to inform on each other, leaving a legacy of broken trust that will take years to unravel. www.wsj.com/world/middle...
🚨We analyzed 138 million geocoded property tax records to quantify how municipal boundaries spatially overlap onto economic segregation in every US metro area—creating disparities in localities’ ability to fund public goods. And we made an interactive map of our results! [1/16]
Call for Applications: Early-career scholars in the Arab #MENA region are invited to attend the 2026 Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR), held at @maxwellsu.bsky.social. Deadline: Dec 14th. Apply now!
truly the depths of wikipedia
earlier this year I learned that Benjamin Netanyahu was enrolled in MIT's Political Science PhD
news.mit.edu/1996/netanya...
bsky.app/profile/dand...
third recent text from friends in ~Jordan asking if Zohran Mamdani is *really* about to win
1. as a political scientist we absolutely love to discuss early voting
2. first time in a while my voice messages back haven't needed to explain some distressing feature of U.S. politics
3. fingers crossed
TWO MORE DAYS to apply for the POMEPS Travel – Research – Engagement (TRE) grants for 2026. Awards of up to $3,000 will be offered to support research travel to the broader Middle East. Deadline to apply: Oct. 15th. More info: pomeps.org/call-for-pro...
Graph shows the number of monthly protests in Jordan from 2016 to 2024, with a steep rise in protests in 2024 focused on Palestine.
New article from @biffpm.bsky.social on a little-noticed court decision to outlaw Jordan’s teacher’s union. Her analysis? The muted response underscores how Jordan’s political landscape has shifted as attention/activism center on Gaza. https://loom.ly/D97MUsU
POMEPS is pleased to call for proposals for the POMEPS Junior Scholar Book Development Workshops to be held in a virtual format throughout the academic year 2025-2026. The deadline to apply is Sept. 15. More info:
pomeps.org/pomeps-junio...
Oh so it does have phd level intelligence
That shift is obvious to all: I reached out to a knowledgeable friend about the piece, and he hadn't even heard of the court case: "I've been on Palestine frequency since 2023"
But it also shows up in the data, for instance ACLED's tabulations of protests in Jordan --
The muted response to the decision also underscores how Jordan’s political landscape has shifted as attention and activism center on Gaza and recent, horrifying images of starvation, rendering secondary many of the animating controversies of the post–Arab Spring years
The court decision declared unconstitutional an Arab Spring-era law conceding organizing rights for teachers, and comes nearly 5 years after a crackdown on the group that came to be seen as primary evidence of Jordan's shrinking political space
I wrote a piece for @jodemocracy.bsky.social on a little-noticed court decision last week to effectively permanently outlaw Jordan’s teacher’s union
www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclu...
"'This was an amazing success tonight,' Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview. 'They should make peace immediately or they'll get hit again.'"
That does not sound like a leader who wants this to be "one and done." www.reuters.com/world/middle...
NEW: Why are women overrepresented in STEM fields in the Arab world, despite broader gender inequality? Fida Adely, Jennifer Olmsted and Sana Odeh surveyed members of Arab Women in Computing to find out, and the results defy simplistic economic explanations.
READ NOW
10 million people
"President Donald Trump on Monday urged everyone to immediately evacuate Tehran, and reiterated that Iran should have signed a nuclear deal with the United States."
(as a quick reminder, it did.)
www.reuters.com/world/middle...
list experiment in the wild
Days before masked ICE agents detained Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk to deport her, Dept determined that the admin had not produced any evidence showing she engaged in antisemitic activities or made public statements supporting a terrorist organization www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
