Middle Eastern Studies Center

[forestgreen]

PSU To Receive Federal Funds For Middle Eastern Studies Center

http://news.opb.org/article/14448-psu-receive-federal-funds-middle-eastern-studies-center/

Portland State University has become one of just two Northwest universities to get federal recognition for its Middle East studies center. PSU announced Wednesday.

The designation is worth $1.6 million over the next four years. The money will pay for three professors – an Arabic language scholar, one focused on Islam, and a Mid-East geography expert.

The money will also fund scholarships for as many as ten students.

The federal funding for PSU’s Middle East studies is new this year. But the university’s vice provost for international affairs, Gil Latz, says it restores a distinction the college had in the 1960s, ’70s, and ‘80s.

Gil Latz: “Over the last ten or 15 years, we have not had the designation as a federally-funded national resource center. So, we in effect, are reclaiming our place at the highest levels of recognition by the federal government for the work that we do in Middle East studies.”

Latz says the designation also reflects the high priority PSU is placing on international affairs under president Wim Wievel.

 

[pdxfan]

Thanks for posting this, forest. Nice of OPB to notice. I wonder if the Oregonian will? What this article should have said is that those three profesors will be new ones - we already have seven who directly deal with the ME in research and courses, and another dozen or so affiliated with us. We teach at least three years of Arabic, Turkish, Persian and Hebrew. The grant, which designates us a a National Resource Center, is one of 19 others around the country (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago etc.) for ME Studies. And by the way (he says proudly), I teach in the Center.