Suchergebnisse

American Academic Exchange with the Middle East through the Fulbright Program is nearly as old as the U.S. government fellowship program itself. Yet even now, after nearly four decades of exchange, there remain many obstacles to academic exchange with the Middle East. For example, during the past three years there has been a declining interest on the part of American scholars in Middle East Fulbright sojourns. This lack of interest is found not only among scholars in disciplines unrelated to the Middle East but among Middle East specialists as well. American scholars seem to look more toward the rest of the world than the Middle East when considering a Fulbright experience.

A concern on the part of Middle East specialists with an examination of political parties and groupings and related political processes represents a comparatively recent development. It is a development, of course, which has lagged behind the study of parties and political processes in the United States and Europe, although even there the subject largely was neglected until a quarter of a century ago.

Is The Cold War finally coming to an end, as some would have us believe? And if so, what does this mean for the Middle East? These are questions that will be with us for some time. They do not lend themselves to clear answers, but they nonetheless demand our attention.For students of the contemporary Middle East, these questions pose special analytical problems—how can one best assess the relationship between the area that we study and the broader currents of international politics? Middle East specialists are rightly skeptical of efforts to analyze their region of study from a "globalist" perspective. Most of us have little patience with theorizing that fails to take into account that which is distinctive in the cultures, politics, and societies of the Middle East. We have even less use for crude empiricism which tries to reduce the complexities of the Middle East to quantifiable events or entries in simplistic classification schemes.

It is not easy to present a summary of Middle East studies in France. Traditionally located in several important institutions—Collège de France, School of Applied Higher Studies (EPHE), National School of Oriental Languages—they have burst out of these walls over the past two decades. Many courses on the Middle East are now given in the Universities of Paris and the provinces. The new organization of higher education created after the crisis of May 1968 was guided by a spirit of university autonomy and thus makes any general summary even more difficult. Several universities have often been created in the same city and specialists have been split up among them rather than remaining together.

Research institutes and projects in the Middle East and recent publications from and on the region; 3 articles. Prepared in conjunction with the Regional Conference of Research Institutes in the Middle East, held in Cairo Apr. 18-19, 1993.

Weakening Washington's Middle East influence / Lee Smtih. - S. 3-10 Tunisia's morning after / Bruce Maddy-Weitzman. - S. 11-17 Egypt's Islamist shadow / Cynthia Farahat. - S. 19-24 The view from Syria and Lebanon / Hilal Khashan. - S. 25-30 Iraq weathers the political strom / Sterling Jensen. - S. 31-34 Mixed response in Iran / Ali ALfoneh. - S. 35-39