Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS - MESA GLOBAL ACADEMY Deadline August 7th, 2020 The MESA Global Academy is an interdisciplinary initiative of the Middle East Studies Association of North America designed to sustain essential research collaborations and knowledge production among MENA-focused academics by providing competitive scholarships to displaced scholars from the MENA region currently located in North America. ... The MESA Global Academy is thrilled to announce a call for applications for scholarships for the academic year 2020-2021. The Global Academy will award up to 12 scholars a $5,000 award to further their research and collaboration with MENA-focused scholars in North America. The Global Academy will support up to six scholars working in the area of governance, accountability, and the rule of law, and six scholars working on fairness and economic equality. Eligibility Applicants must 1) hold a PhD or equivalent in a field in the social sciences or humanities; 2) have been primarily affiliated with an institution in the MENA region prior to displacement; and 3) have a publication record indicating scholarly productivity (in English, French, their native MENA language, or principal research language of the field). Further Information: https://mesana.org/advocacy//08/global-academy-scholarships

#DeadlineExtension: The MESA Global Academy, an initiative sustaining research & knowledge production among MENA-focused academics by providing scholarships to displaced scholars from MENA in N America, has extended its application deadline to Aug 7 https://mesana.org/advocacy//08/global-academy-scholarships

MEMEAC supports and is in solidarity with the statement by the Middle East Studies Association [MESA] on uprisings against systemic racism and anti-Blackness. The letter is quoted below: Black lives matter. We deplore the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and the countless Black people dying and suffering from systemic racism and police brutality in the United States. We stand in solidarity with the global and national upri...sings demanding basic freedoms and human rights for Black people. We condemn the U.S. government’s violent response to these protests and the police brutality that preceded them. The militarization of U.S. streets, the state-sponsored attacks on journalists and the free press, and the destruction of Black lives in America resonate with the experiences of people living under authoritarian regimes and U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. We stand in solidarity with our Black American members, as well as with Black and Afro-Diasporic members in the United States, Canada, the Middle East and North Africa. We recognize the daily threat of violence that Black people face from the police, the state, and society. Declaring our solidarity is not enough. MESA pledges to oppose anti-Black racist violence by addressing the structural injustice at work in our own organization, in the field of Middle East studies, and among communities in the region. As scholars in Middle East studies, Africana studies, and Islamic studies have taught us, this is a moment of reckoning with anti-Blackness and its entrenched history in our fields, classrooms, and communities in the region and diaspora. Now is the time to turn to anti-racist activists, as well as colleagues in Black Studies and Indigenous Studies for guidance on dismantling white supremacy. This work extends well beyond the United States. We cannot speak out against the murders of Black people on U.S. soil without also condemning those occurring in the Middle East and North Africa. We cannot decry the systemic racism in the United States without also condemning it in the Middle East and North Africa. Black citizens of Middle East and North African states face legal, social, economic exclusion and discrimination on a daily basis. Furthermore, it is urgent to say the names of women like Faustina Tay, a Ghanaian domestic worker in Lebanon, subject to the systematic abuse of her employers, and left to die in a parking lot. Confronting the systematic racism and injustice of indentured labor in the Middle East and North Africa is a core component of the struggle against anti-Blackness. Guided by the principles articulated here, we commit to eradicating anti-Blackness in our organization and in the knowledge we produce. We commit to reckoning with the long-marginalized history of Black slavery and its afterlives in the Middle East and North Africa. https://mesana.org//mesa-board-statement-in-solidarity-wit

Next week! Please join us for our first Egypt Salon of 2020

The Carnegie Corporation has awarded the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center a $400,000 grant to support its partnership with the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in launching the MESA Global Academy.

Come by MEMEAC's last event for the year (and the decade!)

This Friday, come to MEMEAC's last public event for 2019!