The Middle East Journal, Volume 62, Number 3, Summer 2008

Pages [5], 378-554, [2]. Footnotes. Illustrations. The Middle East Journal is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Middle East Institute (Washington, D.C.). It was established in 1947 and covers research on the modern Middle East, including political, economic, and social developments and historical events in North Africa, the Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asia. The editor-in-chief is Michael Collins Dunn. The Middle East Institute was founded in 1946 to promote the study of the region in a modern, policy-relevant context. From its outset, one of its priorities was "[t]he editing and publishing of an authoritative journal on Middle Eastern affairs." Accordingly, the first issue of the journal appeared in January 1947. This includes articles that address the Iraq War, Turkey, Caspian Energy Projects, Resistance, Jihad, Martyrdom, Lebanese Shi'a, Yemeni National Unity, Regional Divisions, Palestinian Christian, Jordan. Iran, Coup, and Interfaith. Authors include Paul Williams, Stephen Day. The Middle East Journal is an indispensable resource for research and analysis, examining emerging trends and persistent challenges in a complex regional environment. First printed in 1947, MEJ is the oldest peer-reviewed publication in North America dedicated to the study of the contemporary Middle East. MEJ features the work of leading scholars, policy analysts, journalists, and area experts from around the world, including from the Middle East itself. In 1946, inspired by his experiences in the region prior to World War II, George Camp Keiser established a center for the study of the Middle East. An architect by training and a student of Islamic architecture, Keiser brought together a group of individuals who shared his interest in the region and his conviction that its importance in world affairs would only increase as the century progressed. The group he assembled included a number of Washington’s most prominent scholars and statesmen: Christian A. Herter, a congressman from Massachusetts who would go on to become Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state and an advocate for the nascent concepts of global justice and the international rule of law; Ambassador George Allen; Harvey P. Hall, a former instructor at the American University of Beirut and Robert College in Istanbul; and Halford L. Hoskins, an academic who directed what would eventually become the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Though their backgrounds varied, these men recognized how foreign policy was evolving. Together they wrote in a 1948 pamphlet that the very concepts of global strategy, security, and national interest would need "much reconsideration" in the post-war era. Nowhere, they argued, were these lessons more important than in the Middle East. Keiser and his colleagues envisioned a center of learning where leaders from disparate fields could converge and collaborate in order "to increase knowledge of the Middle East among citizens of the United States and to promote a better understanding between the peoples of these two areas." This broad mandate was to be pursued through five specific means: a quarterly journal and other periodicals and books; a library dedicated exclusively to the Middle East and pertinent global issues; courses in the languages, history, cultures, religions, and politics of the region; research, writing, and publications by and for scholars in the emerging field of Middle East studies; and conferences and public lectures that would provide a forum for discussion of the region. In all of these pursuits, the Institute would commit to a position of political neutrality and attempt to deal objectively with a region in which facts have often been difficult to distinguish from legend and propaganda. In its early years, MEI was an informal organization, more akin to a club for like-minded individuals than a scholarly institution. Its members met from time to time to discuss their travels i.…