PHILADELPHIA — The Middle East Forum is pleased to announce that Efraim Karsh, the distinguished historian, will become editor of the Middle East Quarterly starting with the Fall 2010 issue.
Mr. Karsh has taught at King’s College London since 1989, where he has just ended a sixteen-year stint as founding director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Program and is now a research professor.
Previously, Mr. Karsh held various academic posts at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C., and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University. In 2003 he was the first Nahshon Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Harvard.
He earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his graduate and doctoral degrees in international relations from Tel Aviv University.
Mr. Karsh has published extensively on the Middle East, strategic and military affairs, and European neutrality. He is the author of fifteen books, including Palestine Betrayed (Yale); Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale); Empires of the Sand: the Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard); Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians” (Routledge); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton); Saddam Hussein (Free Press); Arafat’s War (Grove); and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge). He is founding editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, now in its sixteenth year, and general editor of a Routledge book series on Israeli History, Politics and Society.
Mr. Karsh has appeared as a commentator on virtually all the main British and American television networks and has contributed over 100 articles to leading newspapers and magazines, including Commentary, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
“Efraim Karsh is the leading historian of the Middle East active today. It is therefore a great privilege to have him agree to assume the editorship of the Quarterly,” notes Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.
“I am excited to take up the Middle East Quarterly editorship,” Professor Karsh said. “The journal has established itself as the foremost scholarly publication on the contemporary Middle East, questioning established wisdom, debunking popular myths, and providing an alternative perspective on the region’s history and current affairs.”
The Times of London has called the Quarterly, founded in 1994, an “invaluable source of information on the Middle East.” Bernard Lewis terms it, “Lively and stimulating … interesting and important.”
Immediate release.
For more information, contact Amy Shargel at
215-546-5406, ex. 22
Shargel@MEForum.org.
