• Causes and Consequences of Food Insecurity in the Middle East

    In collaboration with partner organizations, Qatar’s National Food Security Program hosted the ‎‎“International Conference on Food Security in Dry Lands” in Doha on November 14th and 15th, ‎‎2012. National, regional,…

  • CIRS and the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs Discuss Climate Change in the Arab World

    Rabi Mohtar founded the Global Engineering Program at Purdue University where he was a ‎Professor of Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering since 1996. His professional ‎activities addressed the important issues of Water – Energy Food nexus and its inter-linkages; ‎more specifically in developing and maintaining the environmental aspects of sustainable ‎development.‎

  • Weak States in the Greater Middle East Working Group I

    On December 8–9, 2012, CIRS convened its first Working Group meeting under the research initiative “Weak States in the Greater Middle East.” Participants employed a multi-disciplinary approach to critically analyze the…

  • Ambassador Munir Ghannam Lectures on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

    H.E. Munir Ghannam, Ambassador of Palestine in Qatar, delivered a Focused Discussion lecture ‎on February 13, 2013, on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Ambassador introduced ‎the lecture by noting that “the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which is part of the Arab-Israeli ‎conflict,” has a long and turbulent history that has been ongoing for over a century. Giving…

  • Maha Al-Hendawi Lectures on Inclusive Education in the Gulf

    Maha Al-Hendawi, the inaugural CIRS Qatar University Fellow for 2012-2013 and Assistant ‎Professor of Special Education in the College of Education at Qatar ‎University, delivered a ‎CIRSFocused Discussion on “Policy Borrowing in Education: the Example of Inclusive ‎Education in the Gulf” on February 19, 2013. Al-Hendawi began the lecture by noting that her ‎interest in the topic came…

  • Deputy Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zlatko Lagumdzija, on the Syrian conflict

    CIRS hosted a Focused Discussion featuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dr. Zlatko Lagumdžija. The event included an in-depth discussion of the Syrian conflict with senior diplomats and ambassadors, academics, and foreign policy analysts. Some of the topics of discussion included the course and direction of the Syrian conflict, the regional and international responses it has elicited, the pros and cons of outside military intervention in the conflict, and the rise in the scale of the refugees and the humanitarian disaster to which the conflict has given rise.

  • War by Other Means? Iran under Sanctions

    On March 12, 2013, CIRS organized a panel discussion on the topic of “War by Other Means?Iran under Sanctions,” featuring Mehran Kamrava, Director of CIRS; Mansoor Moaddel, CIRS Visiting Scholar; and Manata Hashemi, CIRS Postdoctoral Fellow. The objective of the panel was to have a discussion on the nature of the sanctions and their consequences…