Dear UCI students, colleagues and community, Welcome to the 2022-23 academic year. It's very exciting to all of us to return fully to in-person learning, not the least because it allows all of our students, hailing from so many diverse cultures, to interact directly and learn from each other. This year begins a transitional period for Global Middle East Studies. We are revamping our core three core courses, which will return the 2023-24 academic year. At the same time, we have elected a new Director, Professor Liron Mor of the Department of Comparative Literature, who will take over in 2024. In the meantime, we are continuing to expand our offerings to students, to work with various departments across campus to strengthen the integration of various disciplines into our courses and in so doing broaden the offerings of the major and strengthen its interdisciplinary grounding.
The heart of our program is interaction between faculty and students from diverse departments. there is nothing quite like having economics majors, engineers, history majors and Global & International Studies students all coming together to share, learn, discuss and debate some of the most hotly debated topics in the history and contemporary dynamics of societies across the Middle East, North Africa, wider Muslim world and their many diasporas. As has been the case during the last two academic years, we continue to center race, gender, public health, and the environment/climate change in our offerings. We hope to serve as a counter-example to the attempts by some 44 states today to restrict teaching on many of these issues, ensuring that the current generation of students finds an equally welcoming and intellectually open and challenging environment in our program.
For those of you who are interested in more information about the program, please contact me at mlevine@uci.edu and I will be happy to discuss its many possibilities and opportunities for both students and colleagues.
I look forward to meeting all of you as the year progresses and wish everyone again a healthy and productive academic year. Sincerely, Mark LeVine Director GMES