An incredibly amount of information on the Middle East is readily available online. The links given here are but the tip of the iceberg, but we hope that they will encourage you to spend some time online familiarizing yourself with the available resources. Of course, caution is always required—especially when reading blogs—but for those who are interested in current events, the internet provides a rich samplying of widely disparate opinions and views.
The following are listed in no special order:
Informed Comment : Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan. His academic field of specialty is Shi’ism and the Early Modern History of Iran, though he recently published a book on Napoleon’s Conquest of Egypt. In the past few years, however, he has become known for his blog on ongoing events in Iraq. His political views are decidedly left of center, but one can also read his blog for his summaries of how events in Iraq are being covered in the Arab Press.
Tabsir (“Insight”) : A collective blog run by a whole series of professors, most prominently Dan Varisco, professor of anthropology at Hofstra, and Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion at Duke. Focuses mostly on cultural developments and the ways in which the Middle East and Islam are represented in European and American media.
Mark Lynch : Formerly writing under the pen name Abu Aardvark, this is the blog of Mark Lynch, a professor of political science at George Washington University who has most recently published a book on new media in the Middle East. He comments frequently on events in Egypt, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq.
Windows on Iran : the blog of Fatemeh Keshavarz, professor of persian and comparative literature at Washington University. Professor Keshavarz originally started blogging to counter the stereotypes in American media about Iran, but has been recently been commenting regularly on the ongoing events in Iran.
