The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and Silatech  joined the Middle East Youth Initiative in sponsoring a workshop focused on understanding the social and economic conditions faced by youth across the wider Middle East on the eve of the Arab Spring. Agenda ||| Summary ||| Papers 

IFI's Youth in the Arab World in partnership with the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at AUB organized a workshop that included participants from various academic and professional fields from six Arab countries, as well as interested AUB graduate students. Summary

Check out the Final Report of the results of an IFI funded research study "Effect of distributed electric power generation on household exposure to airborne carcinogenses" by Alan Shihadeh and Najat Saliba on December 17, 2012.  

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri attended and spoke at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies – Doha, Qatar about IFI's work on Arab think tanks. Summary ||| Press Release

The "Right to Work for Palestinians in Lebanon" hits the news.
"Palestinians are being paid lower wages for the same work done by Lebanese", "The overwhelming majority of Lebanese support granting rights to Palestinians and allowing them to live in dignity" Read more about it in: 
AUB News ||| Lebanese Republic Ministry of Information  ||| Lebanon Files  ||| Albawaba ||| As-Safir  |||  Watch Video 

“The Emerging Political Landscape in Egypt - New Players and the Constitutional Debates”, Read the summary of the lecture.

 IFI Associate Director and Faculty Research Director for the UN in the Arab World program, Karim Makdisi, wrote an article on “Doha as Host for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” in PERSPECTIVES: Political Analysis and Commentary from the Middle East & North Africa, November 2012 Issue #4 . PERSPECTIVES is published by Heinrich Boll Foundation. Read Article

IFI signs a Memorandum of Partnership with NEREUS, University of Sao Paolo IFI’s Climate Change and Environment in the Arab World Program, and the University of Sao Paolo Regional and Urban Economics Laboratory (NEREUS) have recently signed a two year Memorandum of Partnership to carry out collaborative research work pertaining to the economics of climate change. 

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri appeared on Australian Broadcasting Corporation on November 19, 2012. Interviewd by Reporter Emma Alberici. Watch Interview

Professor Lori Allen, IFI Affiliated Scholar with the UN in the Arab World Program, will be spending the year in Lebanon, conducting research for a book titled, "A Genealogy of Political Proof: One Hundred Years of Investigative Commissions to Palestine, 1919-2009."

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri gave a lecture on Arab Uprisings: Current Transformations & Roadblocks at Fletcher School

IFI Associate Director, Dr. Karim Makdisi participated in the 14th annual "Humanitarian Congress" that took place this year in Berlin, Germany on the 12th and 13th of October 2012. Dr. Makdisi participated in a panel on "Humanitarian Aid in the Middle East." Dr. Makdisi framed the discussion of humanitarianism in the middle east within the larger international political framework. He spoke about the transformation of the uprisings from idealized revolts from Tunisia to Tahrir Square, into becoming internationalized conflicts with different degrees of foreign intervention; and noted the ongoing significance of the “war on terror” framework. Makdisi suggested that the concept and practice of “humanitarian space” is increasingly contested in the Arab world today, and more research is needed to understand this.

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri gave a Bustani Lecture Series talk on October 16, 2012 at MIT. Read more

The World Bank Flagship Report, executive summary, technical summary and final report are out: Executive Summary, Technical Summary, Final Report

Joint Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi gave a lecture at AUB as part of the Bill and Sally Hambrecht Distinguished Peacemakers Lecture Series, "Making Peace and Keeping Peace"

After serving for three years in Damascus, Denmark's Former Ambassador to Syria and Jordan, and Visiting Fellow Christina Markus Lassen becomes IFI's first Diplomat in Residence. Read Press Release

Implications of Palestinian Application for UN Membership on Euromed Relations and Arab-Israeli Conflict written by Associate Director Karim Makdisi. This publication is via the "EUROMED SURVEY OF EXPERTS AND ACTORS 2011: Euro-Meditaranean Policies in the Light of the Arab Spring" publication by IEMed (european institute of the mediterranean, a consortium based in Barcelona, Spain).

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri speaks to the World Affairs Council of Northern California on "Understanding Syria's Three Conflicts". Watch video

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri writes in Issue 15, Spring 2012 of Arab Media Society "Remembering Anthony Shadid's Craft and Conscience"

IFI Director Rami G. Khouri and IFI Distinguished Senior Fellow Dr Samir Makdisi, Professor Emeritus of Economics, will be "Exploring the Transition to Democracy in the Arab Region" at Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies for a joint AUB-Harvard panel. Mr Khouri and Dr Makdisi will also be giving a public talk in Harvard Yard, "The Arab Uprisings: Underlying Factors, Democratic Transitions and Future Prospects"

IFI Associate Director Dr Karim Makdisi visited the United Nations as an expert to the Lebanese delegation, where he spent time meeting with Ambassador Salam and his team and attended United Nations Security Council (UNSC) deliberations, as Lebanon was presiding over the UNSC during September 2011.
Read Dr Makdisi's personal account

The New York Times' award-winning international affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman met with AUB professors, senior administrators and students for a two-hour roundtable discussion.
Read more

Rami G. Khouri is nominated Peace Lecturer, and will deliver this year's Salem Peace Lecture at Willamette University in October, 2011. IFI's director will be the 22^nd speaker in the series, alongside Daniel Ellsberg, Philip Berrigan, Helen Caldicott and many others.

National Public Radio (NPR) interviews IFI Director Rami Khouri on Talk of the Nation. Read the interview summary and transcript.

The Issam Fares Institute has been granted official observatory status to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the world summit Conference of Parties meeting in Durban, South Africa (COP17).

IFI Director Rami G Khouri insists that Arab democracy be given a chance in an interview with CNN World's Global Public Square, and predicts the current historic changes sweeping the Arab world will lead to a secular political order in an interview with The Cario Review of Global Affairs for the American University of Cairo. Mr Khouri also joined IFI's Associate Director Dr Karim Makdisi for a distinguished AUB panel event, Engaging Change in the Middle East: Reflections on Regional Transformations, which was organized by AUB's Office of the Provost; the event was covered by AUB's Office of Communications and the Beirut-based Daily Star.

IFI hosted a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the newly established Beirut-based Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS) - an independent, non-profit, regional network that aims to strengthen social science research in the Arab region and to promote links between Arab scholars and their regional and international counterparts.
In 2008, Dr. Karim Makdisi, Associate Director at IFI, was elected to the ACSS Board of Trustees and currently serves as its Treasurer.

The Issam Fares Institute and UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office recently held a roundtable on Youth Identities and Values at the Dubai School of Government, bringing together professors and researchers from universities across the region, including the United Arab Emirates University, University of Bahrain, American University in Cairo, American University of Beirut, Dubai School of Government and Mohammed V University in Morocco, and addressing the question of how young people see themselves and their place in the world.

Read paper (Arabic) presented by Dr Driss Guerraoui, Mohammed V University, Rabat.

The Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs held a round-table discussion entitled: "Analyzing, Teaching and Influencing public policy: sharing national lessons and exploring new horizons? with Dr. Mitchel Wallerstein, Dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and Dr. Iman Nuwayhid, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at AUB.
Listen Audio ||| Watch Video

Issam Fares Institute delegates participate in the 2010 Dubai Initiative Conference, Belfer Center, Harvard University. AUB's former President and Distinguished Senior Fellow at IFI John Waterbury, AUB Associate Professor Robert Saliba, from IFI's new program on Urbanism, and AUB Associate Professor Nadim Farajalla, Faculty Research Director for IFI's Climate Change program, will be presenting at the conference.

More information about the conference can be found here.

Director of the Issam Fares Institute (AUB) and Fares Center Visiting Scholar Spring 2010 (Tufts University), Rami G. Khouri gave three lectures at The Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University.

Fares Lecture Series, Spring 2010

On-the-Job Training in the Turbulent Middle East: Assessing Obama's First Year by Rami G. Khouri
Watch Video

Mosques, Malls and Monarchs: The New/Old Power Balance Inside the Arab World by Rami G. Khouri
Watch Video

The Palestinian Exile and the Babylonian Exile: Reflections on the Arab-Israeli Conflict After 62 Years by Rami G. Khouri
Watch Video

Dr Samir Makdisi, Distinguished Senior Public Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute, AUB, publishes in the Institute of Financial Economics Lecture and Working Paper Series No.2, 2009.

Read / Download working paper

The Issam Fares Institute commissioned 5 country/region-specific papers on the various issues and stakeholders involved in climate change for the Levant countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria) and North Africa.
Read More...

The Nadim Makdisi Memorial Fund at AUB will honor the life and legacy of the late Nadim Makdisi by sponsoring an annual lecture and funding research in the field of media and communications.

Richard Makdisi, the son of Nadim, generously endowed the fund with a donation of $200,000. The memorial fund and its activities are housed at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at AUB.

Every year IFI will organize an annual Nadim Makdisi Memorial Lecture by a distinguished Arab or international personality in the field of mass media and communications and their intersection with public policy. The first lecture will be held in the fall semester of the 2009-10 academic year.

The fund will also offer several fellowships to AUB graduate students to undertake research related to journalism and communications, the fields that defined Nadim Makdisi's professional life.

• Read press release (PDF)
• Visit Nadim Makdisi Memorial Fund section for graduate student grant applications

IFI hosted the Danish Embassy Lebanon and IndyACT at AUB to launch a new report published by Canadian reaserch insititute IISD titled, "Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: climate change and the risk of violent conflict in the Middle East"
Download / Read full report (PDF) English ||| Arabic

IFI, IndyAct and the Heinrich Boll Foundation published the proceedings of this 2-day regional Climate Change workshop held at AUB 14/15 October 2008.
Download full publication [PDF, 26.7 MB]