MESA Committee on Public Affairs

Statement of Purpose

Members of the Committee for Public Affairs (CPA) shall be appointed by the Board of Directors. The committee shall consist of at least three, but no more than five members. Term of office shall normally be three years. The members of the CPA shall be prepared to make a report to the Board of Directors and to the membership at the annual meeting.

The purpose of a Committee for Public Affairs is to provide accurate information about the association and Middle East Studies to the public. The committee shall focus its efforts on public education about MESA and Middle East studies, not on lobbying or issue advocacy. The constraint on advocacy work and lobbying, however, does not imply that the committee should refrain from interacting with public and elected officials when matters arise concerning Middle East studies, including legislative and budgetary initiatives that affect federal funding for the field.

The core mandate for the committee is to prepare informational materials about MESA and Middle East studies and assist in disseminating information to the public, the media, and elected officials. Committee members shall be available to respond to questions from the media or public officials about the association and Middle East studies. In addition, members of the committee might be asked to reach out to elected officials in order to address issues relating to the state of Middle East studies, including criticism of the field, legislation that bears on the field, and issues relating to federal and state level funding of Middle East studies.

With support from the MESA Secretariat, the committee shall develop and maintain data about the field, and make the data available to the public. The data shall include statistics on enrollment in ME courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including language courses; graduation rates; employment rates and fields of employment of those who specialize on the Middle East; trends in faculty composition, hiring, retirement; information on the activities of Title VI centers; information on the composition of MESA’s members, and other information that can be used to convey an accurate picture of the state of the field and the association.

These data can be used to prepare informational and educational materials about the association and the field for use by MESA, its members, Title VI centers, and by the media and public officials. For example, the Committee might work in conjunction with the MESA Secretariat to produce a FAQs brochure about the Title VI centers, providing information that would help a general readership understand how centers operate, how they are funded, and what they do.

A wide range of additional roles are possible beyond this informational/educational effort. They could be incorporated into the work of a CPA as it develops – and if consensus can be reached that these additional roles fall within the mandate of the committee.

The committee, with help from the Secretariat, might track media coverage of the field to assess whether there is a particular bias or slant to the way the field is presented. If so, corrective materials can be developed and circulated. The committee may also serve as a mechanism for communicating to MESA members about issues relating to the state of the field and the association, and for mobilizing members, through the Secretariat, to respond to issues as needed.

Committee Members

Augustus Richard Norton (chair)
International Relations and Anthropology
152 Bay State Road
Boston University
Boston MA 02215

Lisa Anderson
Dean, School of International & Public Affairs
Columbia University
420 West 118th Street, Room 1414
New York NY 10027

Ali Banuazizi (ex officio-MESA president)
Department of Psychology
Boston College
Chestnut Hill MA 02467-3807

Steven Heydemann
CDATS
Georgetown University
3240 Prospect St NW LL
Washington, DC 20057

Amy W. Newhall (ex officio- MESA Executive Director)
Middle East Studies Association
1219 N Santa Rita Ave
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721