Middle East Strategy at Harvard

From Stephen Peter Rosen and Martin Kramer

Last weekend marked the first anniversary of Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH), which we launched on December 5, 2007. Over the past year, MESH has provided a platform for expert discussions on a wide range of issues by an impressive array of authorities. The site has acquired a devoted readership in the United States and abroad, especially in Washington and the academy, and it benefits from incoming links from many other websites. There have been many spirited debates, all conducted by experts in their fields, and our unique format of keeping exchanges within a single thread of comments has created a user-friendly archive of enduring value. Our Middle East Papers series has won praise, and we have had some valuable exchanges in the closed forum, MESHNet.

In the next few weeks, we will be reviewing our model and considering improvements. We invite readers’ comments on what we might do better. These will not be published, so write frankly and provide us with constructive feedback.

The mainstay of MESH is our members, who initiate blog postings and sustain discussions. They are listed on the right sidebar, and this is the moment to thank them for keeping MESH fresh and interesting. In addition, MESH benefits from other contributions, by experts invited to comment on posts, and by authors invited to launch their new books on the site. The following list is comprised of all persons—members and others—who contributed posts or comments in our first year. We are grateful to the many outstanding experts who have used this platform to articulate ideas. We take it as a vote of confidence in MESH, and in the high level of discussion and debate we have maintained to date.

Jonathan Adelman
Fouad Ajami
Farhana Ali
Jon Alterman
Tony Badran
Shmuel Bar
Isaac Ben-Israel
Louis René Beres
Mia Bloom
John R. Bradley
Rex Brynen
Daniel Byman
J. Scott Carpenter
Steven Caton
Mark T. Clark
Victor Comras
Steven A. Cook
Alan Dowty
Michele Dunne
John L. Esposito
Andrew Exum
Nabil Fahmy
W. Taylor Fain
Hillel Fradkin
Lawrence Freedman
Robert O. Freedman
Aaron Friedberg
Chuck Freilich
Adam Garfinkle
James K. Glassman
Timur Goksel
Richard N. Haass
Bernard Haykel
Thomas Hegghammer
Charles Hill
Michael Horowitz
Blake Hounshell
Raymond Ibrahim
Efraim Inbar
Martin Indyk
Meir Javedanfar
Bruce Jentleson
Josef Joffe
Efraim Karsh
Mark N. Katz
Nibras Kazimi
Gilles Kepel
Mehdi Khalaji
Mark T. Kimmitt
Martin Kramer
Daniel C. Kurtzer
Walter Laqueur
Michael A. Ledeen
Matthew Levitt
Bernard Lewis
Robert J. Lieber
James Lindsay
Thomas W. Lippman
Kristin Lord
Gal Luft
Edward Luttwak
Ze’ev Maghen
Kanan Makiya
Michael Mandelbaum
Peter R. Mansoor
William McCants
Steven Metz
Aaron David Miller
Assaf Moghadam
Marwan Muasher
Malik Mufti
Joshua Muravchik
Jacqueline Newmyer
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Marc J. O’Reilly
Lindsey O’Rourke
Reuven Paz
Vivien Pertusot
Itamar Rabinovich
Michael Radu
Magnus Ranstorp
Walter Reich
Michael Reynolds
Peter W. Rodman
Stephen Peter Rosen
Bruce Riedel
Barry Rubin
Michael Rubin
Amnon Rubinstein
James R. Russell
Philip Carl Salzman
Priya Satia
Robert Satloff
Paul L. Scham
Jonathan Schanzer
David Schenker
Michael Scheuer
Yoram Schweitzer
Ofira Seliktar
Emad Shahin
Harvey Sicherman
Peter Sluglett
Lee Smith
Asher Susser
Raymond Tanter
Monica Duffy Toft
Reidar Visser
Ruth Wedgewood
Tamara Cofman Wittes
Steven A. Yetiv
Michael Young
Robert Zelnick
Eyal Zisser