PHILADELPHIA — The Middle East Forum is pleased to announce that Efraim Karsh will assume the Forum’s directorship in June 2011.
Daniel Pipes, who founded the Forum in 1994 and has since then served as its director, will remain full time at the Forum, where he will now serve as president.
Mr. Karsh, a research professor at King’s College London, is already editor of the Forum’s flagship publication, the Middle East Quarterly. He will relocate to Philadelphia.
Mr. Karsh is among the most original and accomplished historians of the Middle East active today. His groundbreaking study Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard, 1999) challenges the widespread belief that modern Middle Easterners were hapless victims of predatory imperial powers, showing that, in fact, they were “active participants in the restructuring of their region"—a shift with vast political implications. His latest book, Palestine Betrayed (Yale, 2010) reframes today’s Arab-Israeli debate by demonstrating how Palestinians aborted the Palestinian state.
In addition, Mr. Karsh has authored Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale, 2006); Arafat’s War (Grove, 2003); Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians” (Routledge, 1997); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton, 1993); Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography (The Free Press, 1991); The Soviet Union and Syria (Routledge, 1988), and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge, 1988).
He earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his doctorate in international relations from Tel Aviv University. Mr. Karsh has served as a research analyst for the Israel Defense Forces, attaining the rank of major and held several academic posts before joining King’s College in 1989 where he founded the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Program.
He has appeared as a commentator on all the main radio and television networks in the United Kingdom and the United States and has contributed more than 100 articles to leading newspapers around the world.
“Along with being a foremost scholar, Efraim Karsh is also an excellent editor, creative administrator, and active participant in policy debates,” stated Daniel Pipes. “I look forward to the Forum flourishing under his directorship.”
“I am excited to join the Middle East Forum,” Mr. Karsh said. “I can think of no better place to be during these momentous times than at a think tank with its international stature.”
Mr. Pipes will focus on expanding the reach of the Forum and on his own writing.
Unique in its appeal to both specialists and the general public alike, the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, is dedicated to defining American interests in the Middle East and protecting Americans from Islamism.
Immediate release.
For more information, contact Amy Shargel at
215-546-5406, ex. 22
Shargel@MEForum.org
