History professor Peter Sluglett of the Middle East Center was elected president of the Middle East Studies Association.
“It’s nice to have one’s work and achievements recognized in this way,” Sluglett said from the National University of Singapore, where he is on a one-year research fellowship.
Visiting scholar from Cambridge Roxane Farmanfarmaian, who has known Sluglett for the past decade, said she was pleased to hear of her colleague’s promotion to the position.
“He’s one of a handful, perhaps only three or four of the very most respected Iraq specialists,” she said.
MESA is the most influential body of academics studying the Middle East with about 3,000 members, Sluglett said. The entire body voted on the presidential race between Sluglett and professor of Islamic Studies Carl Ernst from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Sluglett served on the board of directors for MESA in the 1990s and will now serve as president for three years. He will be president elect for the first year, president for second and then past president, completing the term.
“It’s a great boon for the [Middle East] center,” Farmanfarmaian said of Sluglett’s new role. “The irony is that he’s at the top of his game and field, and is in some sense representing an increasingly defunct center.”
The Middle East Center came under fire this year after the previous director, Bahman Bakhtiari was fired after a plagiarism finding, according to The Chronicle for Higher Education. Bakhtiari is currently suing Sluglett in Utah’s 3rd district court. The four counts are interference with contract and prospective economic relations, invasion of privacy, breach of contract and defamation.
“I hope the Middle Eastern Center can emerge as the leading institution that it once was,” Sluglett said.
Sluglett began teaching Middle Eastern history at Durham University in England in 1974. He came to the U in 1994 as the director of the center.
Sluglett is currently at the National University of Singapore as a visiting researcher. He will be attending the MESA conference this December in Washington, D.C., where several topics including the Arab Spring will be discussed.
“No one would have forseen these developments [of the Arab Spring] when I started back in the 1960s,” Sluglett said.
Sluglett said he had the great fortune to study under one of the pioneers of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Oxford in the 1970s, Albert Hourani. Hourani passed away in 1992.
The 45-year-old MESA is responsible for two journal publications, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the MESA Review of Middle Eastern Studies, according to its website. Although not directly involved in its publication, his role will make him influential in policy determinations.
Discussing the future of MESA, Farmanfarmaian said, “He will be giving perspective to those that make upper-level decisions as well as having contacts for those in power who must tread lightly, whereas academics can move with ease.”
