October 2011 Until recently, the economic dimensions of the Arab Spring have played second fiddle to high-order political issues. Policymakers and pundits have focused much more on the posturing of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt or on debating whether an Nahda will upend the secular order in Tunisia. Less attention […]

The Hollings Center awarded a small grant to Dr. Şebnem Udum (Hacettepe University) and Dr. Philipp Bleek (Monterey Institute of International Studies) to plan a workshop on the science and politics of nuclear proliferation. This one-day workshop, titled “Nuclear Proliferation & Turkish & U.S. Threat Perceptions Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program” was held in June 2011 at the […]

Joanie Meharry, independent scholar in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies In an isolated valley in Logar province, located about 25 miles south-east of Kabul, an armed convoy moves in to secure a makeshift landing pad. On board the helicopter is a group of American cultural specialists and international journalists coming from the U.S. Embassy in […]

Afghan-U.S. relations are entering a new and uncertain period. While many U.S. policymakers are buoyed by the death of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and focused on completing the troop drawdown in 2014, there is no clear vision of what America’s future engagement with Afghanistan will look like. The sole certainty is that the United States […]

What kind of weather will the Arab Spring bring to the Middle East? Lara Friedman, director of policy and government relations for Americans for Peace Now April 15, 2011 In collaboration with Kadir Has University International Relations Department and the Center for International and European Studies (CIES) What are the commonalities and differences among the […]

Yigal Schleifer recently received a Hollings Center Small Grant to organize a series of workshops for early-career Turkish and American journalists working in Turkey. Yigal has extensive experience as a freelance journalist in Istanbul where between 2002 and 2010 he worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and the Eurasianet website. During this time he […]

Turkey and the United States are increasingly engaged in the Middle East but with policies that seemingly diverge. This dialogue sought to understand the U.S. and Turkish foreign policies and proposed ways to enhance Turkish-American cooperation across fraught regional issues. Participants discussed a number of Middle East issues that affect US-Turkish relations: the Iranian nuclear […]

[doc id=17153]Today, with the effects of globalization and with dramatically expanded access to higher education, the quality of education has become more crucial for national development and competitiveness as well as for individual success. The rise of cross-border education, including branch campuses, student and faculty mobility, and partnerships between universities in different countries, also raises […]

July 2009. As a follow-up to the May 2009 dialogue, participants discussed changes in Egypt and how to reshape U.S. aid to Egypt, broaden economic ties, support effective political reform and increase educational and cultural exchange. As in the previous dialogue, a group of Egyptian and American NGO and business leaders, diplomats, foreign policy experts, […]

June 2009 [doc id=17156]Afghanistan’s 2004 Constitution revived a system of highly centralized government with a strong presidency. Six years later, it is apparent that this arrangement is failing on many counts. The Hollings Center for International Dialogue and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS) convened pre-eminent experts from Afghanistan, Europe, Turkey, and the United […]