Center for Middle East Studies

The Center for Middle East Studies is led by Joshua Landis, Sandra Mackey Chair and Professor in Middle East Studies. Marjan Seirafi-Pour provides administrative assistance for the Center. The center Board of Directors includes Associate Professor Samer Shehata and Assistant Professor of International and Area Studies and Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics Waleed Mahdi.

The center focuses on outreach to those interested in Middle East studies through events featuring distinguished visiting speakers. In spring 2020 CMES held a small conference on Middle East conflicts with three guest speakers, but other scheduled spring 2020 activities had to be canceled due to COVID. The shift to delivery via Zoom in fall 2020 turned out to be a big success, increasing audiences to 200-300 attendees. The center will likely continue to host Zoom webinars in the post-pandemic environment to maximize the impact of events and to expand participation to both synchronous and asynchronous audiences. The center's first Zoom event in the fall, a lecture on COVID, oil & U.S. policy in the Middle East, was coordinated with the Tulsa Committee on Foreign Relations and attracted more than 200 attendees. CMES also partnered with the University of South Florida to deliver a Zoom panel on “U.S. Challenges in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon” with Joshua Landis, Randa Slim and Abbas Kadhim.

In 2019-20 the center received a generous donation from OU alumnus Dan Mackey to endow annual grants to students for the study of Arabic and travel to the Middle East. Additionally, CMES received the personal library of a Middle East scholar, Michael Van Dusen, which included 20 boxes of books on the region.

Four College of International Studies faculty members working on issues related to the Middle East have published 10 articles in refereed journals and non-refereed journals, such as Foreign Affairs.

In addition to his role as director of CMES, Joshua Landis served as the director of the Farzaneh Family Center for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies and as the faculty advisor for the student group Sooners for Israel.