The MESA Global Academy is an initiative of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in partnership with the City University of New York Graduate Center to support knowledge production among scholars of the Middle East from the MENA region and to facilitate their collaboration with counterparts outside the region.Footnote ¹ It is an adaptive program that supports scholars in the humanities and social sciences whose careers have been disrupted in their home countries due to war, institutional collapse, or repression. What began as a program focused on displaced scholars within the United States and Canada has expanded into a global network with over one hundred current and alumni fellows around the world. The fellows are originally from Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, and close to half of them are women. They are scholars in diverse fields, from comparative literature, to political sociology, to Islamic law.

The program started in 2019 through the initiative of Aslı Bali (MESA president 2023–25, Yale Law School) to address the needs of scholars who had been forced to leave their home countries in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings of 2011, the Gezi Park protests of 2013, and the rise of repression in Iran. The subsequent counterrevolutions and government crackdowns made knowledge production extremely difficult in universities across the region. The MESA Global Academy was therefore created as a solidarity project to foster scholarship and connect colleagues from the region with those in North America. It began as a three-year pilot funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and was renewed for another three years in 2022. In 2025 we secured another round of funding from the Carnegie Corporation as well as a grant from the Open Society Foundations to extend the program to 2027.

Initially, the program, which is run by a program manager and a committee of five volunteer scholars, planned to secure temporary appointments for scholars who had come to the United States. However, recognizing scholars’ loss of social and intellectual community upon relocation to a new country, their employment precarity, and their lack of visibility and legibility in the new academic milieu, MESA reconfigured the program to tackle these issues more comprehensively. These goals—supporting fellows and promoting knowledge creation—paved the way for a multifaceted program that includes curated presentations by expert panels and at conferences; publication opportunities in academic journals, and blogs; and professional development workshops and mentorship. These programs have the added benefit of connecting North American scholars with fieldwork and archives in the MENA region.

The MESA Global Academy relies on many partners to fulfill these goals. The program organizes both online and in-person academic talks, panels, and conferences with such partners as the African Studies Association, the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, the Centers for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, the Kevorkian Center at NYU, McGill University’s Institute of Islamic Studies, the Department of Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California, and American universities in the MENA region such as the American University in Cairo and the American University of Beirut. The program also regularly organizes panels at the MESA annual meeting. These events give Global Academy scholars the opportunity to showcase their research agendas and contributions to the field, and also provide our larger network with opportunities for research collaborations that build on the knowledge production of Global Academy fellows.

The program offers fellows publication opportunities in English, both in academic journals and outlets for broader audiences. The Global Academy also provides assistance from a consulting editor, whose guidance is critical in that our fellows’ first language is not English and they may not be familiar with the conventions of academic writing in North America. Global Academy fellows regularly publish in preeminent publications in the field of Middle Eastern studies, including in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the Review of Middle East Studies, the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, and the Journal of Palestine Studies. We also partner with such venues as Jadaliyya, MERIP, and the Islamic Law Blog at Harvard Law School. For example, with Jadaliyya we started the Scholars in Context series to introduce the intellectual trajectories and research agendas of our fellows, increasing their reach (specifically in English) and visibility in their new academic environments. We also plan to start a podcast series in 2026 to address important issues, ranging from migration to postconflict reconstruction in the region.

Our professional development workshops offer guidance on book and peer-reviewed journal publishing, grant writing, teaching, job applications, and academic-adjacent careers to ensure that our scholars have the support they need to transition to permanent careers in their adopted homes. The mentorship program matches fellows with senior faculty in North American, European, and Middle Eastern universities. The Global Academy has devised a relationship model that helps fellows navigate their new academic milieux and build collaborative ties. This rich program is only possible with the solidarity of volunteer scholars who are eager to form a close connection with another scholar and colleague.

The Global Academy program has adapted to domestic and international challenges that have arisen, such as restrictions on travel to the United States and the emergence of new conflicts in the MENA region. In the current political climate, higher education in the United States (and globally) is under attack, and academic freedoms and conditions for research are being severely curtailed, especially in the field of Middle East studies. As a result, the program now also supports colleagues displaced within the region or who have relocated to Europe, not just those in North America. The program partners with institutions such as those in Amman and Cairo to support scholars who have been impacted by the wars and violence in Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza. For example, in 2023–24, MESA was able to leverage its membership to raise significant funds for scholars in crisis in Gaza and Sudan and help them continue their research and teaching. In addition, we were able to place four Gazan scholars at the American University in Cairo through a MESA-AUC partnership. We also expanded our scholarly networks in Europe to better support our fellows there and increase collaboration with our European colleagues, because we believe that we need a community and collaboration-focused approach to counter these challenges. The MESA Global Academy embodies this approach in its support of its fellows, who are rigorous researchers with firsthand experience of contemporary crises. Their insights often challenge dominant narratives and deepen understanding of regional and global events, and their voices need to be heard at this critical juncture, perhaps more than ever.

Confronted with these challenges and listening to feedback from our fellows and friends of the Global Academy, we introduced new psychosocial programming designed to address the specific challenges displaced scholars face, such as war-related trauma. Despite the diversity of the scholars’ backgrounds and experiences, they consistently express a common need: to share their stories and belong to a supportive community. Accordingly, in 2025, we introduced a monthly virtual coffee hour to share experiences with each other.

In a world of growing instability, MESA’s commitment to the Global Academy program is part of a wider effort to protect and create knowledge, uphold academic freedom for a more democratic world, and foster global understanding. Lasting support to our fellows requires a sustained intellectual community and a collaborative, network-based approach. We are grateful to all our institutional partners and individual scholars who make this program possible.

We invite Middle East studies scholars to be a part of our network by sponsoring or partnering with us to host scholarly events for our fellows, such as webinars in which they present their research, or joining events we have organized as discussants; serving as mentors; spreading the word about our program; and making donations.Footnote ² We look forward to expanding our network and to collaborating with our colleagues across academia.