Human Rights

Written byWalid El Houri ( Global Voices ) – The bodies of 15 Palestinian rescue workers were recently discovered in Gaza, showing signs of execution-style killings. According to doctors on the ground, the workers were found with gunshot wounds to the head and their hands tied — disturbing indicators of extrajudicial execution. This massacre is […]

Bill of Rights

Condemnation of Trump targeting noncitizen Students, Researchers for Constitutionally protected Speech

Middle East Studies Association

Middle East Studies Association MESA Board Joint Statement with the TFCHR regarding deportations The MESA Board of Directors and the MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights condemn in the strongest terms the Trump administration’s targeting of noncitizen students and researchers for their constitutionally protected speech and advocacy. As part of an expansive […]

censorship

Iran must Unconditionally Release Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi

Human Rights Watch

Release All other Arbitrarily Detained Rights Activists Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Iranian authorities are threatening to return the human rights defender and Nobel Peace Laureate Narges Mohammadi to prison to serve the remainder of her unjust sentence as a means to pressure her to cease her rights advocacy, Human Rights Watch said today. […]

Academic Freedom

Protesting Harvard’s Dismissal of Directors of its Mideast Center over Israel-Palestine as Attack on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | – Committee on Academic Freedom Alan Garber President, Harvard University . . . Dear President Garber, Dean Hoekstra and Dean Cutler: We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our deep […]

Academic Freedom

Condemnation of Columbia U. for Endangering Int’l Studies in U.S. by Caving to Intrusive Gov’t

Middle East Studies Association

Middle East Studies Association | American Comparative Literature Association | American Studies Association | Association for Asian Studies | National Women’s Studies Association | – We, the Middle East Studies Association joined by the undersigned associations, write to express our deep condemnation of actions taken in the past weeks that imperil the autonomy of centers […]

Displaced and Refugees

Syria after Assad: Why many Syrian Refugees aren’t returning Home

The Conversation

By Charlotte Al-Khalili, University of Sussex and Melissa Gatter, University of Sussex (The Conversation) – When news of Bashar al-Assad’s downfall broke on December 8 2024, 13 years after the beginning of the Syrian uprising, Syrians around the world rejoiced. We rejoiced along with them, having spent the last decade in conversation with Syrians displaced […]

Academic Freedom

Middle East Studies Assn, AAUP, and Knight Inst. file Lawsuit over Trump Arrests and Deportation for lawful Speech

Middle East Studies Association

Middle East Studies Association | – Policy has created “climate of fear and repression” on campuses around the country, groups say FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 25, 2025 CONTACT: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org; AAUP, Kelly Benjamin, kbenjamin@aaup.org BOSTON—The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) today filed a lawsuit seeking to […]

Authoritarianism

The “War on Terror” Comes Home in the Trump Era

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Four years ago, I published Subtle Tools, a book on the erosion of American democratic norms in the face of what came to be known as the Global War on Terror. Both what had been done in the name of “national security” in response to the 9/11 attacks and how it […]

censorship

Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana: Mahmoud Khalil

Mahmoud Khalil

Note from Juan Cole: I used to write letters to totalitarian governments on behalf of Amnesty International complaining about their detention of political prisoners for mere thought crimes. One of the worst offenders was Communist Czechoslovakia, which did not even bother to reply. I could not have imagined in 1987 that in 2025 people in […]