POMED's Weekly Wire for March 11th is now available. This week we highlight the following top stories: Deputy Sec. of State Burns Attends Friends of Yemen Meeting Tunisia Announces New Cabinet U.S. Calls for Transparency in UAE Dissidents' Trial Egypt's Parliamentary Elections Delayed; Police Begin Strike Sen. Rubio Critical of Recently Pledged Egypt Aid To continue reading the full Weekly Wire, click here.

The Stimson Center and the Middle East Institute co-hosted a panel discussion entitled “Syria Beyond Assad: Building a New Syria from the Grassroots.” The panel featured Leila Hilal, Director of the Middle East Task Force for the New America Foundation, Rafif Jouejati, Director of FREE-Syria and English-language Spokeswoman for the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, Elizabeth O’Bagy, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, Honey al-Sayed, Host ...

POMED's Weekly Wire for the week of March 4th is now available. In this edition, we review these and other top stories: Sec. Kerry Announces Release of $250 Million in Aid to Egypt U.S. to Provide Non-Lethal Assistance to Syrian Opposition Rubio Discusses Importance of Human Rights after Middle East Visit Sen. Durbin Issues Statement on Trip to Bahrain Congressmen Urge Morsi to Revise Controversial Draft NGO Law To continue reading the full Weekly Wire, click ...

The Woodrow Wilson Center held an event titled “The Resistible Rise of the Islamists?” on February 27th featuring Marina Ottaway, Senior Scholar at the Wilson Center, and Les Campbell, Senior Associate and Regional Director, Middle East and North Africa at the National Democratic Institute. Haleh Esfandiari, Director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, moderated. The event coincided with the release of Ottaway’s paper “The Resistible Rise of Islamist Parties.” For full event ...

POMED's Weekly Wire newsletter for the week of February 25th is now available. In this edition, we cover the following top stories: Sec. Kerry Preps for Egypt Visit, Morsi Announces Election Date Sen. Corker Meets with Tunisian Officials, New PM Chosen Lebanese Legislative Committees Approve Draft Elec. Law Yemeni Dialogue Planning Stalls amid Resignations, Protester Deaths Iranian Supreme Leader Meets with Reformists To continue reading the full Weekly Wire, click here.  

On Thursday, February 14, the Middle East Institute hosted an event entitled “Yemen’s National Dialogue: Prospects for Success,” where Charles P. Schmitz, a Professor of Geography at Towson University, spoke on the conditions surrounding Yemen’s upcoming National Dialogue Conference (NDC). Professor Schmitz began by sketching out the series of events leading up to the NDC—which is scheduled to commence March 18—and touching on the Yemeni revolution’s successes and failures to ...

The Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) and Freedom House co-hosted a panel discussion titled "Two Years Later: Prospects for Reform in Bahrain on the Anniversary of the Uprising." The panel members were Frederic Wehrey, Senior Associate, Middle East Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Mohammed al-Maskati, President, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, and Maryam al-Khawaja, Acting President, Bahrain Center for Human Rights. The event was ...

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)'s International Forum for Democratic Studies and POMED put on a conference on Wednesday (2/13) titled “The Arab Spring after Two Years: Prospects for Democracy in the Gulf States.” Carl Gershman of NED and U.S. Representative James McGovern (D-MA) gave opening remarks. The first panel, “The Future of Reform in the Gulf,” was chaired by Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution and featured Jafar Alshayeb, a ...

On Monday, February 11 the Elliot School of International Affairs’ Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University hosted a panel discussion entitled “Elections and Politics in North Africa.”  The panel featured Ellen Lust, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University, Lindsay Benstead, Professor of Political Science at Portland State University and Matthew Buehler, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Texas-Austin, and was moderated by Marc Lynch, Associate Professor ...

POMED's Weekly Wire for February 11 is now available. This week, we cover these and other top stories: Bahrain National Dialogue Underway Yemen’s National Dialogue Scheduled, Karman to Boycott Libyan Constitutional Commission to be Elected Tunisia Navigates Political Crisis after Opposition Leader's Assassination Assad Spurns Negotiations Offer,Rebels Capture Dam To continue reading the full Weekly Wire, click here.  

POMED's Weekly Wire for February 4th is now available. In this week's edition, we highlight these and other top stories: Biden Meets with Syrian Opposition, Obama Announces Aid Increase Senators Target Military Aid to Egypt Outgoing Sec. Clinton Offers Thoughts on Tenure, Middle East POMED Publishes Recs from 15 MENA Experts on Changes to U.S. Policy Iran Arrests Numerous Journalists, Amends Election Law To continue reading the full Weekly Wire, click here.

On Thursday,  January 31, 2013 the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services conducted a confirmation hearing on the expected nomination of Charles T. Hagel to be Secretary of Defense.  Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) presided. Continue reading for full notes, or click here for the PDF.Senator Carl Levin opened the hearing by welcoming Senator Hagel and noting that if confirmed, he would become the first former enlisted man and the first veteran of the ...

On February 1, 2013 the Middle East Institute hosted an event titled "After the Jordanian Elections: Challenges Ahead for the Hashemite Kingdom." The speakers were Leslie Campbell, senior associate and regional director for the Middle East at the National Democratic Institute, and Danya Greenfield, deputy director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council. Both speakers monitored the Jordanian parliamentary elections on January 23rd.  The ...

On January 30, 2013, the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) hosted an event entitled “Moving beyond Rhetoric: How Should President Obama Change U.S. Policy in the Middle East?” The event launched POMED’s new publication, which highlights recommendations from leading voices in the field on how President Obama should adjust his policies toward the Middle East in his second term. The event featured a panel discussion with Larry Diamond, Director ...

On Wednesday (1/30) the McCain institute for International Leadership held its first debate, “Should the United States Save Syria?” in its Debate and Decision series at the U.S. Navy Memorial Theater.  Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor of the New Republic, Dr. Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and Aaron David Miller, Distinguished Scholar at ...

On Tuesday (1/29), the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) held an event entitled “Global Authoritarianism and the Arab Spring: New Challenges for U.S. Diplomacy.” Steven Heydemann of USIP and Daniel Brumberg of USIP and Georgetown University presented the paper they authored of the same name and Tamara Cofman Wittes of the Brookings Institution offered comments. Haleh Esfandiari of the ...

POMED is excited to announce the release of its new report, "Moving Beyond Rhetoric: How Should President Obama Change U.S. Policy in the Middle East?" When President Barack Obama took office four years ago, we at the Project on Middle East Democracy urged him to speak clearly to the people of the Middle East in order to signal meaningful changes to the policy approach of the United States toward that region.  Early ...

Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs held a panel discussion entitled “Civil Rights in Muslim Democracies” with Jocelyne Cesari, Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center, Daniel Brumberg, Associate Professor of Government and Co-Director of Democracy and Governance Studies at Georgetown University, Jose Casanova, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, and Nader Hashemi, Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School ...