On February 12-13, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held its second working group under the research initiative on “Leading the Faithful: The Role of Religious Authorities in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, working group participants presented a number of draft papers investigating the dynamics, the position of,…
Student enrollment in higher education institutions has rapidly increased in most Middle Eastern countries in recent years. Governments have shown a strong commitment to higher education, and there has been broad support from politicians and citizens for establishing more universities and increasing access to higher education. However, in recent years, the supply of university graduates…
On March 12-13, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group under its research initiative on “Sports, Society, and the State in the Middle East.” During the course of two days, participants identified key gaps in the literature on sports in the Middle East through the lenses of their various…
While human rights issues faced by low-wage migrant workers in the Gulf region have been widely reported on, the related issue of “recruitment fees” paid by these workers in their countries of origin – central to the experience of so many migrants – hasn’t received as much attention. There are legitimate costs associated with…
On April 2, 2017, CIRS held the second working group under its research initiative on “The ‘Resource Curse’ in the Gulf.” During the working group, the participants presented their original contributions…
On September 21, 2013, four members of the Somalia-based militant group al-Shabaab attacked the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The attack turned into a 4-day siege, as Kenyan police…
Abdullah Al-Arian asked his audience to reflect back six years, to the hopefulness that emerged in spring 2011, when decades-old authoritarian regimes were on the brink of collapse. Leaders of…
In December 2016 CIRS launched a grants cycle to fund empirical research on the subject of “Mobility, Displacement, and Forced Migration in the Middle East,” and on May 21–22, 2017 the…
On June 9, 2017, CIRS hosted a CIRS Research Workshop at the Georgetown University campus in Washington D.C. The workshop, which was a closed-door, one-day seminar, brought together a small…
On August 20-21, 2017, CIRS hosted the second working group of its project on “Middle Power Politics in the Middle East.” Over two days, scholars discussed key gaps in the…
“Crisis in the GCC: Causes, Consequences, and Prospects” was the topic of a panel discussion hosted by the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar…
On September 24-25, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a second two-day working group under its research initiative on “Sports, Society, and the State in the…