Crown Conversations draw on the wealth of regional expertise at the Crown Center in order to focus on recent developments in the Middle East with two goals: to draw attention to aspects of ongoing events that are overlooked in the U.S. news media and to provide insights into the wider regional and global implications of the news.
Crown Conversations 4 (Summary) — The largest and most sustained demonstrations in Iraq’s post-Ba‘th era began in early October 2019, which led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. After five months without a government and several failed attempts by other nominees to form one, journalist and intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi became Iraq’s new prime minister in May. In this Crown Conversation, as the premier approaches 100 days in office, we asked Kanan Makiya to reflect on the forces that brought Kadhimi to power, his mandate, and the challenges he faces. In 2003, Makiya founded the Iraq Memory Foundation, an NGO dedicated to issues of remembrance, violence, and identity formation in Iraq; Kadhimi directed that foundation from 2003 to 2010.
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Kanan Makiya is a senior fellow at the Crown Center and professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University. His most recent book, On Cruelty (in Arabic, Dar Al Jamal, Beirut, 2020), explores the phenomenon of cruelty in politics and grew out of a course he taught each spring at Brandeis.
David Siddhartha Patel is the Associate Director for Research.
Crown Conversations 3 (Summary) — The killing of an African-American man, George Floyd, by police in Minneapolis on May 25 triggered a wave of protests and acts of civil disobedience throughout the United States. These protests were accompanied by demonstrations of solidarity across the globe. In this Crown Conversation, we asked three members of the Crown Center research team—Hayal Akarsu, Yazan Doughan, and Youssef El Chazli—to reflect on how their research on related topics in Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt sheds light on aspects of this global moment of mobilization, demand for police reform, and reexamination of racial and social inequalities.
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Hayal Akarsu is a Junior Research Fellow.
Yazan Doughan is the Neubauer Junior Research Fellow.
Youssef El Chazli is a Junior Research Fellow.
Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Director for Research and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History.
David Siddhartha Patel is the Associate Director for Research.
Crown Conversations 2 (Summary) — Iran has been one of the worst hit countries by the current global outbreak of a coronavirus disease (officially known as COVID-19), with the World Health Organization acknowledging over 4,200 deaths and 68,000 confirmed cases in the country as of April 11, 2020. In this Crown Conversation, we discuss the political and historical context of the crisis, including the Iranian government’s response to it, with Orkideh Behrouzan, a medical anthropologist and physician and the author of Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2016).
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Orkideh Behrouzan is a faculty leave fellow at the Crown Center and associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS University of London.
Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Director for Research and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History.
David Siddhartha Patel is the Associate Director for Research.
Crown Conversations 1 (Summary) — Our first Crown Conversation, "Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon after Soleimani," was organized and edited by Naghmeh Sohrabi and David Siddhartha Patel and features Maryam Alemzadeh, David Siddhartha Patel, and Kelly Stedem. It focuses on the targeted killing of Iranian General Qasim Soleimani and others by a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020 and its short- and medium-term effects on domestic politics in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.
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Naghmeh Sohrabi is the Director for Research and the Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History.
Maryam Alemzadeh is the Harold Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow.
David Siddhartha Patel is the Associate Director for Research.
Kelly Stedem is a PhD candidate in Politics at Brandeis.
The views expressed in the Crown Conversations belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies or Brandeis University.