There was a lot happening this week, so here is a quick re-cap:
Steven Kull and Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland reveal new polling data on what Americans really think about an Iran deal (spoiler alert: Netanyahu’s speech didn’t have a shot at swaying them).
Alissa Amico of the OECD takes a close look at the role and impact of state ownership in the Middle East, revealing that the state is not always – as is commonly assumed – an inefficient owner.
Amaney Jamal, Robert O. Keohane, David Romney and Dustin Tingley carry out a unique Twitter analysis to explore if there evidence for the proposition that Muslims and Westerners actually consider themselves to be fundamentally at odds with one another?
In the “Rethinking Nation and Nationalism” symposium:
Adam G. Licthenheld of U.C. Berkeley urges scholars to take a closer look at the identity politics of displacement in the Middle East.
Serhun Al of the University of Utah takes a comparative look at Kurds, state elites, and patterns of nationhood in Iraq and Turkey.
Meghan Tinsley of Boston University assesses the contested memory of the Sykes-Picot Agreement in Middle Eastern, British, and French media.
and one more for the “Islamist Politics in the Shadow of the Islamic State” symposium:
Peter Mandaville of George Mason University (and currently serving as a senior advisor in the Office of Religion & Global Affairs at the U.S. Department of State) makes a plea for decentering sects in the analysis of political Islam.