MEI Events

Latest Episodes:

MEI Defense Leadership Series: Episode 16 with U.S. NAVCENT Commander Vice Admiral Brad Cooper Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

Created in June 2020, MEI’s Defense Leadership Series is a speakers' forum for current and former high-level military and defense leaders from both the United States and the Middle East to discuss the most important policy issues facing the two sides. The Series was inaugurated on June 10 with a conversation with U.S. Marine Corps General and Commander of CENTCOM Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

In this episode, MEI Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense and Security Program Bilal Y. Saab speaks to Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, Commander of U.S. Naval Forces in U.S. Central Command (NAVCENT), the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and Combined Maritime Forces. This conversation will focus on present and future challenges and opportunities facing U.S. maritime goals and plans in the region.

Speaker biography:

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper is the son of a career Army Officer. He is a 1989 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and earned a master’s degree in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University. He has also studied national security policy and international relations at Harvard and Tufts Universities.
A career Surface Warfare Officer, he served on guided missile cruisers, guided-missile destroyers, aircraft carriers, and amphibious assault ships. His ship commands include USS Russell (DDG 59) and USS Gettysburg (CG 64). Cooper is particularly proud of the extraordinary men and women with whom he served on sea duty during 9 deployments and 13 real-world operations all around the world. His amazing Sailors in USS Gettysburg earned the Battenberg Cup as the best ship, submarine or aircraft carrier in the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet.
Ashore, he served in a variety of executive, military assistant and special assistant roles in the White House, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters. He also served as principal U.S. Advisor to the Interior Minister of Afghanistan and Director, Surface Warfare Officer assignments (Pers-41).
As a flag officer, he most recently served as commander, Naval Surface Force Atlantic. Previous tours include service as Chief of Legislative Affairs, where he led the Navy’s engagement efforts with the U.S. Congress; commander, U.S. Naval Forces Korea during the height of tensions on the Korean Peninsula in 2016-2017; and, commander, Expeditionary Strike Group 7 in Okinawa, Japan, where he led 7th Fleet’s Navy-Marine Corps team on the U.S. military’s first F-35 deployment.
Cooper has been recognized with various personal and unit-level awards including the Distinguished Service Medal and Bronze Star Medal. He is a recipient of the Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Award for Visionary Leadership.

Artist Talk | Shifting Illusions: A Conversation with Emirati Artist Ebtisam Abdulaziz Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

The Middle East Institute Arts and Culture Center is pleased to host an art talk with renowned visual and performance artist Ebtisam Abdulaziz, whose work is featured in the exhibition Between the Sky and the Earth: Contemporary Art from the UAE, currently on view at the MEI Art Gallery.

Abdulaziz will discuss her seminal work as the first female Arab artist to do public performance art in the Gulf, as well as her current performance-based work created in the United States. She will speak about the conceptual landscapes of living between these two spaces and how her overall body of work relates to her painting, Focal Illusion (see image above), currently on view at the MEI Art Gallery. Abdulaziz will be in conversation with Dr. Elizabeth Rauh, art historian of global modernism and contemporary art of Iran, Iraq, and the Islamic world.

Between the Sky and the Earth is curated by Abu Dhabi-based independent curator Munira al Sayegh, in partnership with The NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery. The exhibition brings together12 artists reflecting the diverse contemporary art ecosystem in the UAE today. Through themes such as the environment, consumerism, and the impact of rapid urbanization in the UAE, the artists reflect on their social, cultural, and natural landscapes and challenge standard narratives about the Emirates.

The event is part of the on-going programming around Between the Sky and the Earth, which runs until April 29, 2022. Please make a timed appointment to visit the gallery or check out the show online.

Speaker Biographies:

Ebtisam Abdulaziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. With a BA in Math and Science, Abdulaziz incorporates her unique perspective on mathematics and the structures of systems to explore issues of identity and culture through installations, performance pieces, video, paintings, and works on paper. Focal Illusion employs themes of Islamic geometry in its use of multiple layers and mathematical structures, and calls to mind muqarnas, the honeycomb-like structures found in mosques. Abdulaziz has been widely exhibited in the UAE and internationally. She was among the featured artists in the inaugural UAE and ADACH Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale, as well as at the 7th and 10th Sharjah Biennials. She has shown at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany; FotoFest Biennial, Art in Houston, Texas; and The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa, Florida, among other museums.

Elizabeth Rauh is an art historian of global modern and contemporary arts of Iran, Iraq, and the Islamic world. Her work examines contemporary artist engagements with Islamic heritage, popular image practices and visual cultures in Shi`i Islam, and arts of the 1960s “Shi`i Left.” She also pursues research in ecological art practices in the history of the Persian Gulf, such as in her new article: “Experiments in Eden: Midcentury Artist Voyages into the Mesopotamian Marshlands” (2021), online mini-lecture “A Hot Wind Blows: Ecocritical Art in the Middle East” with Khamseen Islamic Art History Online, forthcoming article “Iridescent Modernism: The Troubling Artistic Legacy of Pearl Diving in the Arab Gulf” (2022) and her new exhibition project Iraq En Route: A Photographic Journey, 1952-1953 with the Cranbrook Institute’s Center for Collections and Research in Detroit (2022). She is Assistant Professor of Modern Art & Visual Cultures at the American University in Cairo and the 2021-2022 Art History Faculty-in-Residence at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Will Iran’s Pro-natalist Population Policy Succeed? Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

Demographics have worried kings, politicians, and even philosophers as early as the Greek Republics. Population policy is an important lever to balance short-term goals with long-term economic growth, prosperity, and power, as well as social and environmental sustainability.

The revolutionary governments in Iran initially reversed the pre-1979 family planning policies of the previous regime. But, in the early 1990s, Iran reversed its course and implemented one of the most successful family planning schemes by international standards, reducing fertility rates from 6.2 to 1.9. Now, three decades later, Iran is making another U-turn, with a policy to mitigate the graying of its population in decades to come. A host of measures, some highly controversial, have been put in place together with a generous budget and the establishment of a campaign headquarters to induce families to have more children. Is this objective justified? And will the measures taken be acceptable to the people, or be effective? This topic will be discussed by a panel of experts.

Speakers:
Nadereh Chamlou
Former Senior Advisor, The World Bank, and current Nonresident Senior Fellow, the Atlantic Council

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania, and Author of “Conceiving Citizens, Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran”

Farzaneh Roudi
Former Director, Middle East & North Africa, The Population Reference Bureau

Alex Vatanka, moderator
Director of Iran Program and Senior Fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative, The Middle East Institute

Book Talk | A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: the Saudi Struggle for Iraq with Kitty Harvey Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s new leadership prioritized a return to the Arab fold. To do that, they recognized that building a relationship with Saudi Arabia was essential to the success of their effort. But their outreach to the Saudi leadership was firmly rejected, as Riyadh convinced itself that the new leaders in Baghdad were inextricably linked to the Iranian regime. Despite pleas from Saudi Arabia’s closest friends and partners, and even from its own foreign policy advisors, the Saudi leadership remained committed to its hard line on Baghdad. The result, in the end, was pushing a reluctant Maliki government to the very embrace of Tehran that the Saudis feared.

In A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Kitty Harvey revisits Saudi decision-making in the first decade of the 21st century on Iraq and shows how King Abdullah’s conviction that the new Iraqi government was of necessity beholden to Tehran. But she then builds on that analysis as a jumping off point to a contemplation of how perceptions often shape decisions and how self-perpetuating images of others often veer dangerously to become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Speaker:

Kitty Harvey
Author, A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Amb. Gerald M. Feierstein, moderator
Senior VP, MEI

Global Repercussions: Exporting the Israeli Surveillance Model Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

Session 2: Global Implications of the Israeli Surveillance State

The Israeli tech sector’s increasing reliance on surveillance technology and spyware has global implications, particularly as more governments around the world borrow from the Israeli playbook and purchase these tools, often for the purpose of spying on dissidents, journalists, and others. The growing question of the spyware industry, as well as its reach and potential use, have prompted concern among many digital rights and free speech advocates, many of whom draw attention to the ways in which these tools might be mobilized against movements for democracy and human rights around the world. Building on our first event in the series, we take an understanding that Israel uses Palestinian communities as a testing ground for surveilliance technologies, and pose the question, what might the rise of the Israeli surveillance state mean for the rest of the world? This expert panel, co-hosted by 7amleh (The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement) and the Middle East Institute, will be part two of a two-part series examining this and other vital questions about this increasingly vital topic.

Speakers:

Lara Friedman
President of Foundation for Middle East Peace
Twitter: @LaraFriedmanDC

Mona Shtaya
Advocacy Advisor, 7amleh
Twitter: @Monashtayya

Eliza Campbell, moderator
Director, Cyber Program, MEI
Twitter: @elizaecampbell

Partner: 7amleh

Women in the U.S. Military Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

If women are integral to all phases of conflict, then why do they continue to face significant challenges and constraints when it comes to empowerment and increased responsibilities in U.S. national security? History has shown that women have crucial roles to play not just in conflict prevention and resolution but also in other aspects of war.

How can the United States best leverage its female civilian and military personnel to maintain its competitive advantage in an era of strategic competition with China? What bureaucratic and legislative changes need to be made? How can women’s role(s) in peace and security be expanded and further institutionalized? Please join the Middle East Institute for an expert panel to discuss these questions and more.

Speakers:

Katie Crombe
Non-resident Scholar, Defense and Security Program, MEI

Melissa Horvath
Non-resident Senior Fellow, Defense and Security Program, MEI

Erin Moffit
Non-resident Scholar, Defense and Security Program, MEI

Bilal Y. Saab, moderator
Senior Fellow and Founding Director of the Defense and Security Program, MEI

Life Under Digital Occupation: The Global Implications of the Israeli Surveillance State Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

Session 1: Life Under Digital Occupation

The Israeli tech sector is booming more than ever and has come under increased scrutiny for its direct facilitation of the surveillance and spyware industries. Experts and activists have long drawn attention to the ways in which the Israeli state is directly complicit in technology-aided abuses of Palestinians living in the occupied territories - what might this mean for the future? This expert panel, co-hosted by 7amleh (The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement) and the Middle East Institute, will be part one of a two-part series on mass surveillance in Palestine examining the impact of the Israeli surveillance state on the lives of Palestinians.

Speakers:

Mariam Barghouti
Palestinian writer and researcher

Sahar Francis
General director, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Nadim Nashif
Co-Founder and executive director, 7amleh

Khaled Elgindy, moderator
Director, Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs Program, MEI

Partner: 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media

Climate Policy Outlook for MENA: 2022 and Beyond Mar 01, 2022

Show notes

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is poised to take the spotlight on climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Early last year Egypt joined five other countries to form the Adaptation Action Coalition, to accelerate global action on adaptation to help achieve a climate-resilient world by 2030. And just ahead of the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, several countries from across the MENA pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions within the period 2050-2060. Several nations also shared their vision on how they plan to achieve that carbon neutrality target; e.g. the Middle East Green Initiative and the framework for a carbon circular economy. With the next two Conference of Parties (COP) meetings taking place in the MENA; COP27 in Egypt and COP28 in the UAE, MENA countries are in a unique position to demonstrate climate policy leadership and move the global climate change management agenda forward by delivering successful back-to-back conferences that push world nations to achieve a more climate-resilient world.

Please join us at this program launch event for the Middle East Institute’s Climate and Water program as we explore how the Middle East and North Africa can capitalize on this momentum concerning global climate policy leadership and the opportunities and priorities that the region should pursue.

Speakers:

Vahakn Kabakian
Climate change advisor and portfolio manager, United Nations Development Programme

Brian Katulis
Vice president for policy, MEI

Hajar Khamlichi
Board member, Moroccan Alliance for Climate and Sustainable Development

Tina Latif
Advisory council member, Strategic Foresight Initiative, MEI

Mohammed Mahmoud
Director, Climate and Water Program, MEI

Karim Elgendy, moderator
Founder, Carboun; non-resident scholar, MEI

MEI Defense Leadership Series: Episode 15 with Saeid A. Alzahrani Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

Created in June 2020, MEI’s Defense Leadership Series is a speakers' forum for current and former high-level military and defense leaders from both the United States and the Middle East to discuss the most important policy issues facing the two sides. The series was inaugurated on June 10, 2020 with a conversation with U.S. Marine Corps General and Commander of CENTCOM Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

In this episode, MEI Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense and Security Program Bilal Y. Saab speaks to Saudi defense specialist and aerospace engineer Saeid A. Alzahrani. This conversation will focus on unmanned aerial systems, the missile war in Yemen, and Saudi Arabia's evolving missile defense capabilities.

Biography:
Saeid is CTO & Co-Founder of SRB Aerial Systems LLC and Managing Partner of BRAQ Industries LLC. He is one of MENA’s leading and youngest innovators under 35 in Urban Air Mobility (UAM), holding several patents. He is an aerospace engineer and considered as a pioneer in UAS technologies. He is the first Saudi national to pursue UAS studies in the United States. Saeid believes he can influence young professionals through promoting STEM education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

He has received numerous awards throughout his career including being named as a Top 5 KPMG Global Tech Innovator, Forbes 30 Under 30 in Manufacturing & Industry, and EmTech MENA Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review. He has been selected as an astronaut candidate for Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) Astronaut Program in 2019.

His patents include a Multi-Mode Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, a Multi-Mode Aerial Vehicle, and Methods and Apparatus for Multi-Role Air-Launched Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (SUAS) and Loitering Munitions. Saeid is a member of the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems International (AUVSI) and the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), among several other prestigious organizations.

The Olympics and Russian Invasion Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 took place during the summer Olympics in Beijing. The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 took place during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Because of this pattern, many analysts have pointed to an increased risk of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. At this year’s Olympic opening, China’s President Xi and Russia’s President Putin are due to meet for the first time in two years in person and to extensively discuss Ukraine and Russia’s demands from the United States to withdraw from Eastern Europe. This panel discussion will focus on Russia’s intentions vis-à-vis Ukraine and the West and what role strategic competition between the West, Russia, China plays in Eastern Europe. It will also look at the complex role of regional powers in the conflict, such as Turkey.

What is the role of strategic competition in the Black Sea region? What are the effects of Russian aggression and demands on Ukraine? How can regional powers navigate strategic competition and maintain security and dialogue?

Speakers:

Gen. (ret.) Phillip Breedlove
Distinguished Chair, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI

Robert McConnell
Co-founder, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation; coordinator of external relations, Friends of Ukraine Network

Gonul Tol
Director of Turkey Program and senior fellow, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI

Iulia Joja, moderator
Director, Frontier Europe Initiative, MEI