What's New at MERIP?

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New Developments at MERIP

This has been a busy year at MERIP and we have lots of developments to report. While the production of Middle East Report remains the central focus of MERIP, we are also now organizing other activities to expand our educational outreach and increase intellectual exchanges among activists and intellectuals in the Middle East, Europe and North America. These non-magazine projects are part of a larger effort to put the "IP" (information project) back into the Middle East Research and Information Project.

Overseas Affiliate Offices in Cairo and Cologne

In May, 1996, MERIP opened an affiliate office in Cairo with the help of MERIP Voices Correspondent Karim El-Gawhary. Andrea Lueg, a journalist and former MERIP intern, is working with Jochen Hippler, a member of MERIP's Editorial Committee, to open a small office in Cologne, Germany. The purpose of these small offices is to help MERIP mount special projects in Egypt and Europe.

Arabic Translations

MERIP is now collaborating with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) to produce Arabic translations of articles previously published in Middle East Report. The first of four volumes entitled Ru'a Mughayra (Different Visions)--with articles focusing on how the media works--is already complete, and has been distributed by CIHRS throughout the Arab world. The remaining three volumes will focus on political and social change in Turkey, the state in the Arab world, and developments in Israel and Palestine.

Workshops and Conferences

In April, MERIP collaborated with the Center for the Study of Developing Countries at Cairo University in organizing a workshop on poverty and urban survival in Cairo. At that workshop, several of the authors whose articles were published in the Winter 1996 issue of Middle East Report on Cairo presented papers, along with a number of local scholars. An edited volume of these articles will appear in Arabic later this year.

MERIP is now planning a second workshop in Cairo in March 1998 on culture in the Mashriq. It will be followed later in the year by an issue of Middle East Report devoted to the same topic.

MERIP Books

A new MERIP book, Political Islam, was published in November by The University of California Press. Edited by MERIP board member Joel Beinin and former Middle East Report editor Joe Stork, the book is available from UC Press in paperback and hard cover editions.We are also preparing a book tentatively entitled Gender and Transformation in the Middle East, which will be edited by Susan Slyomovics and Suad Joseph. We anticipate that this book will appear in 1998.

Teacher Outreach

MERIP's board of directors now includes several individuals with significant experience developing materials on the Middle East for high school students and teachers. These board members, along with a larger working committee formed by MERIP, will start by updating a special pamphlet previously published by MERIP on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Following that, we are planning to develop modules for use in high school classrooms focusing on the impact of selected US foreign policy decisions on the region. Students and teachers using the modules will be encouraged to evaluate the effectiveness of US policies in achieving their intended aims, and explore possible policy alternatives.

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MERIP
Middle East Research and Information Project