“Twenty million dollars have already been committed toward a $30 million goal to create a new kind of
“It has long been my hope that Brandeis will become the premier place for scholarship and policy development relative to the
The Center will build on and integrate the University’s existing array of programs that cover the ancient Near East, the modern
The Center will provide a coordinated program of education, research and policy analysis designed to address the most pressing issues facing the modern
In addition, the Center will provide an umbrella for several recently endowed faculty chairs in Middle East studies at Brandeis: the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Chair in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, held by Kanan Makiya, the Baghdad-born dissident who wrote the blueprint for a democratic postwar Iraq; the Myra and Robert Kraft Chair in Arab Politics, for which a scholar will be appointed, the Edmond J. Safra Chair in Sephardic Studies, and the Karl, Harry and Helen Stoll Chair in Israel Studies, held by Ilan Troen, who is also a faculty member at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
“Brandeis is an ideal place for such a Center to emerge,” according to Marty Krauss, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, “given its curricular strengths in the areas of coexistence, social justice and public policy. It is our hope that international perspectives will be shared without bias through the lens of scholarship and respect.”
Jonathan Sarna ’75 of Brandeis, the Joseph H. and Belle Braun Professor of American Jewish History, is leading the search for a director to lead the Center, which will open in October 2004. Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the
