Asia

On April 16, 2015, JMEPP Associate Editor Kristin Wagner interviewed Nabil Fahmy, Former Foreign Minister of Egypt and Dean and Professor of Practice in International Diplomacy, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP), American University Cairo. Watch the discussion of Egypt’s transitional process, public policy challenges, and foreign policy, including relations with Iran and intervention […]

On 5th July 2014, a group of three sisters got on a night train after visiting their family. They were scheduled to reach Bangkok the next morning. However, the oldest sister woke up to find that her 13-year-old sister had gone missing, her bed in disarray. The two sisters searched the whole train but came up empty-handed. After notifying the officers and their parents, search teams were set up along the train route and police began investigating those […]

Covering the Middle East has fundamentally changed in the last decade, said Farnaz Fassihi, senior Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal at a Shorenstein Center event. Increased security threats toward journalists in the Middle East and the quick turnaround times required for digital publishing have made it more difficult for Middle East correspondents […]

As Israelis flocked to the polls in last week’s elections, the West Bank remained calm. The 4.1 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza do not have the right to vote. Life went on as usual while only kilometers away, Israelis elected leaders who will determine policy affecting the Palestinians’ fate. Here are […]

“Can we get the successive generations to understand that we built this edifice, that this is a 100-storey building built on an extremely narrow foundation, but piled deep and structured in such a way that the winds won’t blow it down.” – Lee Kuan Yew Lee Kuan Yew was a giant revered for his brilliant […]

BY YASIR GOKCE The United States has been employing preemptive self-defense as a justification for use of force as it carries out its war on terror. Preemptive use of force became a national security strategy under the Bush administration following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. As part of this strategy, there have been many instances […]

In a landmark verdict handed down last Monday, an Egyptian doctor was convicted of the manslaughter of 13-year-old Suhair al-Bataa, who died during an illegal female genital mutilation (FGM) procedure. Dr. Raslan Fadl was initially acquitted in November 2014, triggering a wave of anger among activists and women’s rights advocates. The new verdict provides a […]

BY DEREK PHAM While strategic ambiguity has been a significant instrument of US defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific, emerging regional threats and power imbalances have made this strategy increasingly difficult to justify. Strategic ambiguity insulates us from hard commitments in regional conflicts not directly related to our interests and exacerbates China’s uncertainty about our motivations. […]

In a rare sight this Monday, His Royal Highness Prince Turki bin Saud al-Faisal, former Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States and Dan Meridor, former Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, addressed a public audience together at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The former statesmen discussed instability in the Middle East, potential areas for […]

The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University hosted a talk by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Tarek Masoud on Monday, November 9. The lecture, entitled “When God Speaks, Does Anyone Listen?” was based on a study Dr. Masoud conducted on one of his recent trips to Egypt. Dr. Masoud began the presentation by […]

“The Turtle’s Rage,” directed by Pary al-Qalqili, is a raw, intimate look into one man’s anguish over the loss of his homeland. That man is Pary’s exiled father, who recounts for his filmmaker daughter what it means to be Palestinian, to be in constant conflict with Israel, and what the realities of return look like […]

“Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone.” Those are the words of Hisham Melham, Washington bureau chief of Dubai-based media outlet Al-Arabiya. In a 2,000-word piece for Politico, Melham argues that Arab civilization has collapsed, and that it won’t be revived in his lifetime. Is this gloomy outlook overwrought, or simply […]