LAUSR

Our conference this year celebrates crossing borders with the theme “Without Boundaries: The Global Middle East, Then and Now.” In this spirit, I would like to reflect on some of what we have been facing recently in Middle East studies. We have seen challenges to the free circulation of people, ideas, and knowledge, and to the kinds of contacts and exchanges that invigorate our work. And, ironically enough, as restrictions on travel, study, and research have proliferated, the purloining of the cultural property of the region has been proceeding apace. Researchers, students, and scholars in general can move less and less, while the flow of cultural materials from the Middle East to the west has been moving more and more in ways that raise serious ethical questions. MESA and many of its members have been actively engaging these issues, and I will return to some of our accomplishments later in this piece.