Walter B. Denny, Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, gave a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “Innovation in the Visual Arts of Islam: New Ways of Looking at Islamic Art” on December 12, 2011. The lecture was a follow-up to a previous one Denny gave for CIRS at the “Innovation in Islam” conference…
On January 23, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, delivered the first CIRS Monthly Dialogueof 2012 titled, “Being a Citizen of the World Today.” Appiah’s lecture was centered on the question of global citizenship and how historical intellectual theories of “cosmopolitanism” have a bearing on how people live their lives in the contemporary…
On February 13, 2012, Peter Bergen delivered the 2011-2012 CIRS Faculty Distinguished Lecture titled, “The Awakening: How Revolutionaries, Barack Obama, and Ordinary Muslims are Remaking the Middle East.” In addition to being CNN’s security analyst, Bergen is a Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation and an adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at…
On February 19–20, 2012, CIRS held a two-day working group meeting on the topic “The Evolving Ruling Bargain in the Middle East.” Several scholars and experts on the Middle East were invited to CIRS at Georgetown University’s Qatar (GU-Q) campus to take part in the discussions. At the conclusion of the research initiative, the working group…
On February 21, 2012, Ahmad H. Sa’di, Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of Negev, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue on the topic “Population Management and Political Control: Israel’s Policies towards the Palestinians in the First Two Decades, 1948-1968.” Sa’di based his lecture on the results of investigations into historical and archival…
On February 26, 2012, CIRS hosted a Focused Discussion with Ambassador James Larocco Distinguished Professor and Director of the Near East South Asia Center at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. The talk titled, “The Gulf Looking East: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Iran,” was supported by the United States embassy in Qatar. Citing full academic freedom, Larocco gave…
Shahla Haeri, a cultural anthropologist and a 2011-2012 CIRS Visiting Scholar, gave a Focused Discussion titled, “From Bilqis to Benazir: Women and Political Leadership in Muslim Societies” on February 26, 2012. Haeri’s current research interests revolve around examining Muslim women in positions of power, both past and present. Haeri began her talk by critiquing western media accounts…
David Dyment, senior research associate at the Center on North American Politics and Society at Carleton University in Ottawa, gave a CIRS Focused Discussion on March 26, 2012, titled “A New Canadian-American Relationship. The lecture summarized the main arguments in his book, Doing the Continental: A New Canadian-American Relationship (Dundurn, 2010). Dyment explained that the title of his book…
On April 22–23, 2012, CIRS concluded its “Food Security and Food Sovereignty in the Middle East” research initiative with a two-day working group meeting. Sixteen scholars and experts participating in the initiative were invited back to Doha for a second time to share their findings with working group members and to critique each other’s paper…
Michael Driessen, a 2011-2012 Postdoctoral Fellow at CIRS and Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at John Cabot University, gave a CIRS Monthly Dialogue Lecture on “Religion-State Institutions and Patterns of Democracy: Religious Revivals and Secular Politics in Catholic and Muslim Societies” on April 24, 2012. The lecture was geared towards analyzing the relationship between…
On May 15–16, 2012, CIRS held a second working group meeting to conclude its research initiative on “Sectarian Politics in the Gulf.” Scholars and experts on the topic were invited to return to Doha for a second time to share their chapter submissions and to solicit feedback from members of the working group. CIRS will gather…
Lawrence G. Potter, a 2011-2012 CIRS Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Associate Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, delivered a CIRS Monthly Dialogue lecture on “The Rise and Fall of Port Cities in the Gulf” on May 16, 2012. Potter’s lecture was designed to explain the economic, political, and ecological reasons why port cities in the Gulf…