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If you are situated at Harvard or nearby, you now have another reason to visit MESH every day, in addition to the weblog. Scroll down to the lower end of the right sidebar for upcoming events from the calendars of the Weatherhead Center, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Belfer Center. These three calendars include the vast majority of Middle East-related events on campus, so a quick stop here will give you a good idea of what’s coming up today and beyond. Clicking the link of an event will take you to its original calendar listing and full details.

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 These will not be published, so write frankly and provide us with constructive feedback.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

The blog at MESH differs in an important way from most multi-expert blogs. We have some advice about how to make the most of the website, and how not to miss any of the action.

At most multi-expert blogs, the contributors write posts, and any reader can submit a comment. At MESH, our contributors—we call them members—write the posts and the comments. Comments aren’t open to readers, so when a comment appears, you can be sure it has been written by an authority in the relevant field. (If we don’t have a member who knows the subject, we will try to find a guest commentator who does.)

The main advantage of this system is that with one link, you can access a post and the entire exchange or debate that follows it. A good example is this debate over the prospects of democracy in the Middle East.

But there is a disadvantage. The latest comment, no matter how substantive, doesn’t appear at the top of the blog. You have to look for it, under “Latest Comments” on the sidebar to the right.

To make sure you don’t miss a comment, you have three options:

1. Regularly consult “Latest Comments” on the sidebar.
2. Enter this combined feed in your news reader. It includes the full text of all posts and comments, as they are published.
3. Subscribe to MESH by email. You’ll get one email a day, containing the full text of all the posts and comments published over the previous 24 hours. Click here, enter your email, and confirm it.

If you don’t plan to visit the blog every day, we recommend you chose the second or third option. You’ll get all the new material at MESH, including all the comments, which you don’t want to miss.

(And if you want to comment and haven’t been invited, anyone can comment on the MESH Facebook page. Each post is mirrored there.)

Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) is open for business. Why do we think there’s a need for another weblog, and why at Harvard?

The Middle East today receives saturation coverage in the mainstream and alternative media, journals, and books. But we feel there’s no such thing as too much informed debate over long-term U.S. strategy, because so much is at stake. More could be said that isn’t being said, because it doesn’t quite fit the format of the op-ed or article. As a result, some expert insights don’t get captured and disseminated. Check the list of our members. These are people who don’t lack outlets for their longer work, but they haven’t had a place to share pithy analyses and useful pointers. Now they do.

Why at Harvard? That’s where we are, and that’s where this project is based. And for reasons we won’t elaborate, Harvard stands on privileged ground, so that all sorts of people are willing to cooperate under its banner—or, in this case, under its url.

Indeed, we have all sorts of people as members. Today we’re pleased to unveil their names, some forty in all. A few members are now at Harvard and some studied here. The majority are scattered throughout the country, in universities and think tanks. The established ones are already renowned for their contributions to our understanding of the dilemmas that confront the United States in the Middle East. We also have a cadre of talented and promising young people.

We believe that each of our members, at some point, will have something to say that’s best said here. Our task is to show them those opportunities, and to exercise just enough editorial judgment to make sure the site works for them and for you.

Over the next month, we plan to offer our first original content, recruit additional members (we’d like more), and publicize our existence. We urge you to bookmark this website, subscribe to the feed, link to MESH from your own site, and send us your suggestions.