Introduction
In 2001, University leaders made a commitment to advance the internationalization of Yale. Five years later, Newsweek magazine placed Yale third among the “Top 100 Global Universities,” and today we continue to increase the number and scope of our international programs and initiatives. The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies is the major engine of that ongoing effort. As Yale’s hub for interdisciplinary teaching and research on international affairs, societies, and cultures worldwide, the MacMillan Center is the principal resource for faculty and students who engage in international research and collaboration. Seven undergraduate majors and four masters programs are offered through the Center, and hundreds of workshops, lectures, conferences and events take place each year under its auspices.
The Middle East and North Africa are among the MacMillan Center’s priorities, and its faculty and students are eager to work with scholars, students, and practitioners from across the MENA region. The MacMillan Center’s Council on Middle East Studies is the hub of interdisciplinary study of the Middle East and North Africa at Yale, supporting and coordinating Yale’s faculty specialists. Our faculty has deep expertise in the languages, cultures, history, politics, and economics of the MENA region. (See faculty here.)Yale University resources also include first-rate libraries, from the Sterling Memorial Library to the Beinecke Library, housing rare books and manuscripts. These offer scholars access to first rate collections of materials on the Middle East and North Africa (indeed a collection that rivals many found in the region itself), across the disciplines. Yale students, at the graduate and undergraduate level, are among the best in the nation.
Scholars and practitioners from the MENA region come to our campus every year to lecture and conduct research through the MacMillan Center. Each year a cohort of undergraduate, masters, professional school and doctoral students compete for campus and external funds to pursue more individually focused policy, service and research projects in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Many students have already had remarkable experience in the region through a wide range of opportunities, including language study with U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships, the Yale Law School’s Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, and engagement with the Yale Arab Alumni Association.