The Middle East Journal (MEJ) is published by the Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

-based Middle East Institute

Middle East Institute

The Middle East Institute is a non-partisan think tank and cultural center in Washington, DC. Founded in 1946, MEI is the oldest institution in Washington dedicated exclusively to the study of the Middle East. Its founder, architect and philanthropist George Camp Keiser, assembled a team of...

. It was first published in 1947, making it the oldest U.S. peer-reviewed

Peer review

Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...

 publication on the modern Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

. The Journal is published quarterly and carries analysis of political, economic, and social developments and historical events in North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

, the Middle East, Caucasus, and Central Asia

Central Asia

Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

. Each issue features articles from scholars on the Middle East, as well as book reviews and a chronology of regional events organized by issue and country for each quarter. Like the Middle East Institute, the Journal does not take policy positions and features authors writing from across the political spectrum and around the world.

History

The Middle East Institute (MEI) was founded in 1946 in Washington, DC by a group of diplomats and scholars who aimed to promote the study of the region in a modern, policy-relevant context. From its outset, one of MEI's priorities was "[t]he editing and publishing of an authoritative journal on Middle Eastern affairs." Accordingly, the first issue of the Journal appeared in January 1947. In its "Editorial Foreword", the following mission for the new publication appeared:

Even though the American people may be suffering from a surfeit of periodical publications, no apology need be offered for adding a quarterly journal relating to the Middle East. Except to a very few Americans - Foreign Service and Army officers, educators, businessmen, travelers - this area is essentially terra incognita. Such a circumstance was a matter of no great practical consequence when the world was large and only loosely knit together. Now that the Middle East is very near the United States in point of time-distance and almost equally near with respect to matters of concern in American foreign policy, it deserves such thoughtful attention as can be initiated and encouraged through the pages of The Middle East Journal.

In its earlier years, the Journal covered regional issues and history in the 19th and 20th centuries; in the 1980s, however, the Journal would restrict its coverage to the post-World War II era. The Journal publishes articles from a range of disciplines, including political science, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, among others.

Contributors

The Journal has published leading scholars and policy-makers throughout its history, including: Aaron Miller, Afif Tannous, Akbar S. Ahmed

Akbar S. Ahmed

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, or Akbar Ahmed, is currently the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University in Washington, D.C., the First Distinguished Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the...

, Albert Hourani

Albert Hourani

-Life and career:Hourani was born in Manchester, England, the son of Soumaya Rassi and Fadlo Issa Hourani, immigrants from Marjeyoun in what is now South Lebanon. His brothers were George Hourani and Cecil Hourani. His family had converted from Greek Orthodoxy...

, Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, Amatzia Baram, Bassam Tibi

Bassam Tibi

Bassam Tibi , born 1944 in Damascus, lives in Germany since 1962 and, since 1976, he is a German citizen. He is a political scientist and Professor of International Relations. In academia, he is known for his analysis of international relations and the introduction of Islam to the study of...

, Benny Morris

Benny Morris

Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...

, Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis, FBA is a British-American historian, scholar in Oriental studies, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University...

, Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian politician and diplomat who was the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1992 to December 1996...

, C. Ernest Dawn, Cecil Hourani, Charles Issawi

Charles Issawi

Charles Issawi was a prominent academic economist and historian of the Middle East at Columbia University and Princeton University in the United States. Roger Owen, the A. J...

, Constantinte Zurayk, Don Peretz, Donald Wilber

Donald Wilber

Donald Newton Wilber , American writer and spy.Wilber was the architect of the CIA project "Operation Ajax", a successful plot to overthrow the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. The plot replaced Iran's first democratically elected leader with a brutal dictator and monarch...

, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea was an influential writer, filmmaker, and anthropologist who spent much of her life in the field producing numerous ethnographies and films that capture the struggles and turmoil of African and Middle Eastern cultures. Her husband, the anthropologist Robert A. Fernea, was...

, Elizabeth Monroe, Ernest Gellner

Ernest Gellner

Ernest André Gellner was a philosopher and social anthropologist, described by The Daily Telegraph when he died as one of the world's most vigorous intellectuals and by The Independent as a "one-man crusade for critical rationalism."His first book, Words and Things —famously, and uniquely...

, Fawaz Gerges

Fawaz Gerges

Fawaz A. Gerges is a professor and author with expertise on the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, international relations, Al Qaeda, and relations between the world of Islam and the West....

, Gary Sick

Gary Sick

Gary G. Sick is an American academic and analyst of Middle East affairs, with special expertise on Iran, who served on the U.S. National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter, and for a couple weeks under Reagan as well...

, George Hourani

George Hourani

George Fadlo Hourani was a British philosopher and classicist of Lebanese descent. He was the son of Fadlo Hourani, a Lebanese Christian shipping merchant, who was Lebanese counsel in Manchester...

, George Lenczowski

George Lenczowski

George Lenczowski was a lawyer, diplomat, scholar, and Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at the University of California, Berkeley. Lenczowski was a pioneer in his field as the founder and first chair of the Committee of Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley...

, George Rentz, Harry St. John Bridger Philby, Hanna Batatu

Hanna Batatu

Hanna Batatu was a Palestinian American Marxist historian specialising in the history of Iraq and the modern Arab east. His work on Iraq is widely considered the pre-eminent study of modern Iraqi history.Born in Jerusalem in 1926, Hanna Batatu emigrated to the United States in 1948, the year of...

, Iliya Harik, Irene Gendziher, J. Heyworth-Dunne, Jahangir Amuzegar, James Bill, J.C. Hurewitz, Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

, John Esposito

John Esposito

John Louis Esposito is a professor of International Affairs and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University...

, Juan Cole

Juan Cole

John Ricardo I. "Juan" Cole is an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on...

, Kemal Derviş, Kemal Karpat, Kermit Roosevelt

Kermit Roosevelt

Kermit Roosevelt I MC was a son of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. He was an explorer on two continents with his father, a graduate of Harvard University, a soldier serving in two world wars, with both the British and U.S. Armies, a businessman, and a writer...

, L. Carl Brown, Lee H. Hamilton

Lee H. Hamilton

Lee Herbert Hamilton is a former member of the United States House of Representatives and currently a member of the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council. A member of the Democratic Party, Hamilton represented the 9th congressional district of Indiana from 1965 to 1999...

, Leonard Binder, Louis Dupree, L.P. Elwell-Sutton, Majid Khadduri

Majid Khadduri

Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi–born founder of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Middle East Studies program. Internationally, he was recognized as a leading authority on a wide variety of Islamic subjects, modern history and the politics of the Middle East...

, Malcolm Kerr, Moshe Ma'oz, Musa Alami

Musa Alami

Musa Alami was a prominent Palestinian nationalist and politician.Alami was born in the Musrara district of Jerusalem, Palestine into a prominent family...

, Nikki Keddie

Nikki Keddie

Nikki R. Keddie is an professor of Eastern, Iranian, and women's history. She retired from the University of California, Los Angeles after 35 years of teaching...

, Olivier Roy, Pierre Salinger

Pierre Salinger

Pierre Emil George Salinger was a White House Press Secretary to U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson...

, P.M. Holt, R.K. Ramazani, Raphael Patai

Raphael Patai

Raphael Patai , born Ervin György Patai, was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer, historian, Orientalist and anthropologist.-Family background:...

, Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Ismail Khalidi , born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.-Family, education and...

, Richard Pipes

Richard Pipes

Richard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...

, Roderic Davidson, Rom Landau, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Serif Mardin, Shibley Telhami

Shibley Telhami

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a nonresident senior fellow of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution....

, Süleyman Demirel

Süleyman Demirel

Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel, better known as Süleyman Demirel , is a Turkish politician who served as Prime Minister seven times and was the ninth President of Turkey.-Life:Demirel was born in İslamköy, a town in Isparta Province...

, Walter Laqueur

Walter Laqueur

Walter Zeev Laqueur is an American historian and political commentator. He was born in Breslau, Germany , to a Jewish family. In 1938, Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust...

, William B. Quandt

William B. Quandt

William B. Quandt is an American scholar, author, professor and member of the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He previously served as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and as a member on the National Security Council in the...

, and Ze'ev Schiff

Ze'ev Schiff

Ze'ev Schiff was an Israeli journalist and military correspondent for Ha'aretz....

.

Masthead (Present and Past)

• Editor: Michael Collins Dunn (present), Mary-Jane Deeb, Eric Hooglund, Christopher Van Hollen, Jean Newsom, Richard B. Parker, William Sands, Harvey Hall
• Managing Editor: Aaron Reese (present), Adam Mendelson, Jennifer McElhinny, Amged Soliman
• Book Review Editor: John Calabrese (present), Sana Abed-Kotob, Steven Glazer
• Assistant Editor: Rachel Wilson (present), Peter B. White, Julia Voelker, Talal Belrhiti
• Publications Assistant: Nancy C. Wood (present)
• Circulation Assistant: Aaron Reese, Lisa Jacqueline Barr
• Board of Advisory Editors: Jon Alterman, Muriel A. Atkin, Shaul Bakhash
  Shaul Bakhash
  Shaul Bakhash , PhD, is a historian and leading expert in Iranian studies at George Mason University where he is a "Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History."...
  
  , Henri Barkey, Helena Cobban
  Helena Cobban
  Helena Cobban is a British-American writer and researcher on international relations, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice. In March 2010, she founded a new book-publishing company, Just World Publishing, LLC...
  
  , Mary-Jane Deeb, Graham E. Fuller, Edmund Ghareeb, Phebe Marr, John Moore, Jean C. Newsom, Richard B. Parker, Don Peretz, R.K. Ramazani, Bernard Reich, Sabri Sayari, Gary Sick, Barbara Slavin, Barbara Stowasser, and George N. Attiyeh (Emeritus).

The Middle East Journal is indexed in ABC POL SCI, A Bibliography of Contents: Political Science and Government, CrossRef

CrossRef

CrossRef is an official Digital Object Identifier Registration Agency of the International DOI Foundation. It was launched in early 2000 as a cooperative effort among publishers to enable persistent cross-publisher citation linking in online academic journals.-Background:CrossRef has who...

, Current Contents

Current Contents

Current Contents is a rapid alerting service database from the Institute for Scientific Information, now part of Thomson Reuters, that is published online and in several different printed subject sections.-History:...

: Social and Behavioral Sciences, EBSCO, JSTOR

JSTOR

JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...

, Middle East: Abstracts and Index, PAIS

Pais

Pais is a red wine grape that has played a prominent role in the Chilean wine industry. Up until the turn of the 21st century, it was Chile's most planted variety until it was overtaken by Cabernet Sauvignon. Today it is most commonly used in the creation of jug wine in the Bío-Bío, Maule and Itata...

 International in Print, Quarterly Index Islamicus, Social Sciences Index, and United States Political Science Documents. Book reviews are indexed in Book Review Digest and Book Review Index

Book Review Index

Book Review Index is an index of book reviews and literary criticism, found in leading academic, popular, and professional periodicals. It has been published since 1965. For most of its history it has been owned by Gale and part of the Thomson family of information businesses.-Publication...

. Articles are abstracted in Historical Abstracts and International Political Science Abstracts. The Middle East Journal is also available on University Microfile (Proquest).