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 and military were ill-equipped to manage the chaotic and dangerous situation. In the end, at least 71 people were killed—including civilians, soldiers, police officers, and…
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 Tunisia and Egypt had been overthrown by mass uprisings in their respective countries; the regimes in Yemen and Libya were on the verge of collapse;…
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 first working group under this project was convened in Doha. Seven teams of successful grant awardees were brought together with a number of other scholars…
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 number of renowned scholars to engage in a focused discussion on a book manuscript titled Inside the Arab State: Institutions, Actors, and Processes. This manuscript is…
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 literature on the international relations of the Middle East through the lens of middle power theory. Participants led discussions on related subtopics including the role…
“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 (GUQ) on September 17, 2017. Featured panelists included Gerd Nonneman, Professor of International Relations and Gulf Studies at GUQ; Abdullah Baabood, Director of the Gulf…
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 Middle East.” During this working group, contributors presented their draft papers on a number of subtopics related to their areas of expertise and interest, and…
On October 9, 2017, Waleed Zahoor, Publications Intern at Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), and a senior student at Georgetown University in Qatar, was invited to hold a rabab recital, a stringed instrument known as the lion of instruments played mainly in Afghanistan, Iran, and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Santosh Kulkarni,…
On October 15-16, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group under its research initiative on “Water and Conflict in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, experts engaged in group discussions aimed at identifying a series of original research questions related to competition and cooperation over water in…
The Arab world today is experiencing “its second great fragmentation and reconfiguration of the past century,” according to respected journalist and Middle East analyst Rami G. Khouri. Acknowledging that there is not really an “Arab world,” and the Arab League only exists “on paper” anymore, he used the term "the Arab region" as a geographic…
A new book manuscript by Jeremy Koons, associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (GU-Q), was featured recently in a CIRS Faculty Research Workshop. The manuscript The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars was studied and discussed by specialist scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia during a full day…
In an October 13, 2017 speech, US President Donald Trump rejected the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the arrangement made between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The agreement had lifted economic sanctions on Iran and placed strict limits on its nuclear program, and…