Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting (Summary)

1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-48

The Board of Directors met for its fourteenth meeting at New York on 16 February 1973. The Board approved the Association’s co-sponsorship of Hamline University’s summer project on the Middle East as an encouragement to small institutions and new programs to undertake the kind of activity proposed by the Image Committee and Center Directors. The Board decided to hold the 1974 annual meeting in Boston under the sponsorship of universities in the area, coordinated by Harvard, and also to look into the possibilities of Madrid and New York City for later meetings. The Board approved a proposal to Be submitted by the University of Michigan to the National Science Foundation for an automated data project on the Middle East, as originally envisaged by the Library Committee. The Board also approved the proposal for a translation project submitted jointly by MESA, the University of Texas and AUC to the Office of Education. In accordance with the current Ford grant, the Board designated visiting scholars and alternates to be invited to attend the 1973 annual meeting and to remain in the country for 3 to 6 weeks travelling and lecturing at American and Canadian institutions. The Board reviewed the matters of federal funding of non-academic markets for graduates in Middle East studies and of the State of the Art Conference. It appointed the following Nominating Committee: Professor John Masson Smith, University of California, Berkeley, Chairman, and Professors Frank Tachau, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, Carolyn Killean, University of Chicago, Michael Lorraine, University of Washington and President Issawi.

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Parks

As part of the Middle East Institute's commitment to promoting and advancing Middle East studies for the next generation, the Institute in late 2003 announced the Mrs. Harley Stevens Award for the best essay on a selected theme by a graduate student at a US University. The Award was named for Mrs. Harley C. Stevens, a longtime benefactor of the Institute and the Journal, who died last year. The theme chosen for the first competition was democratization in the Middle East, with the essayists encouraged to write on a single case study. Under the terms of the competition, the Editor of the Journal chose three judges to judge the entrants. The judges were Amy Hawthorne of the Carnegie Endowment, Nathan Brown of George Washington University, and Stephen Buck, former US Foreign Service Officer, also formerly with National Defense University. The judges chose as the winner of the competition Robert Parks of the University of Texas, who received his award at the Middle East Institute's Annual Conference in the fall. The winning essay appears here.


1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Ira M. Lapidus

Since this is my last gesture as President of the Association I should like to thank you all warmly for the honor you have done me in electing me as President and for the opportunity of working with the Board of Directors and with the Secretary, Michael Bonine, on your behalf. It also happens that I am just about to finish a book on the history of Islamic societies. In a very different way this project has also been a special privilege. I have been able to branch out from my basic and abiding interest in the Arab Middle East and from my studies in early Islamic history to learn something about Muslim peoples all over the world. To learn so much and to work out a way of presenting such a large subject in a coherent way has made this a wonderfully rewarding project. Like a great puzzle, it has occupied my mind for seven years. I hope that the book I am writing will return the rewards of this learning to the reader.


1973 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8

Five years ago, on the occasion of the first annual meeting of this Association at the University of Chicago, the Presidential address was delivered by our departed and lamented colleague, Gustave von Grunebaum. It was a distinguished occasion, but to tell the truth, it was also a somewhat trying one. For an hour or two before dinner, the cocktails had flowed freely; we were then served an enormous meal, enough to put some of us to sleep on the spot; the room was rather crowded and terribly overheated, and as the dinner plates were pushed away, the air grew thick with cigar smoke. As we struggled to regain our sobriety or at least to stay awake, perspiring and gasping for breath, Professor von Grunebaum arose in our midst and delivered a characteristically learned, intricate, and rather lenghthy discourse on the Islamic concept of sin. It was, of course, a brilliant performance, and it endowed the Middle East Studies Association with the necessary academic credibility to get off to a successful start. Upon reflection, I felt that it was also well suited to the locale of the city of Chicago, and as I pointed out to Gustave afterward, all in all it had been the very model of a Chicago convention: lots of booze before dinner, and lots of sin afterward.


1974 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Charles Issawi

Anything coming after the floor show we have just seen can only be an anticlimax, and my impulse is to tear up my prepared text and just quote two great men: Thomas Carlyle, who described economics as “the dismal science” and Henry Ford, who said “history is bunk” — from which it presumably follows that economic history is dismal bunk. Instead, I should like to take advantage of this captive audience and speak to you in praise of economic history. This is an old Arabic genre : mahasin al-iqtisad. And of course economic history means giving as little history for as much money as possible, so you will not expect a long speech.


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