About CSME

WELCOME to the Indiana University Center for the Study of the Middle East, which the U.S. Department of Education has designated as a Title VI National Resource Center. With approximately 100 affiliated faculty members located in the College of Arts and Sciences and seven professional schools, CSME promotes multi- and inter-disciplinary knowledge of the Middle East by supporting academic programs, scholarship, public outreach, and support for educators and students at all levels. The Middle East has long been a center of political, cultural, religious and linguistic fascination for the rest of the world. It is of tremendous importance to the vital strategic interests of the U.S., and never more so than at this moment when popular democratic movements are challenging autocratic regimes throughout the region.

Understanding of the Middle East cannot occur without a solid grounding in the modern languages of the region. Thus, CSME supports the study of Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, and Kurdish. We offer Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) scholarships to highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students in each of these languages. With our partner institutions across the Bloomington Campus, CSME also sponsors and supports degree and non-degree programs enhancing scholarly understanding of the Middle East. CSME does this, in part, by facilitating close academic collaboration between our flagship department, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC), and the seven professional schools that are also constituents of CSME.

CSME plans to continue and strengthen IU's Middle East Studies through teacher training in cooperation with the existing NRCs and the School of Education. In addition, CSME develops library collections that reflect our current breadth of teaching and building faculty and training capacity in NRC methodology and outreach to local schools and community members, particularly in the professional schools affiliated with Indiana University.