Civic Studies » The Middle East

Prisoner’s Dilemma in the Gulf

Peter — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:18:25 +0000

Although many people are using principles of game theory to analyze the Trump/Iran war and to predict the next steps, I haven’t come across an explicit model. Any model drastically oversimplifies reality but also serves to clarify assumptions. The model that I present is essentially a Prisoner’s Dilemma. For each side, it is better to […] Continue reading →

notes from the West Bank

Peter — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 15:41:20 +0000

I spent the Thanksgiving break in the West Bank (via Israel). I visited two Palestinian universities, Bethlehem and An-Najah. I presented at both institutions and met students, faculty, administrators, and alumni, hoping to create or strengthen relationships and perhaps contribute just a bit to Palestinian higher education. Collaborative relationships with outside colleagues represent “social capital” […] Continue reading →

Trump, Modi, Erdogan

Peter — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:07:21 +0000

I am flying back to the USA after a meeting in Istanbul with activists and NGO leaders from six or more countries. (By the way, I don’t think that all of them could have met in the USA because of our government’s visa policies and treatment of visitors.) One of the many benefits of the […] Continue reading →

on the current crisis

Peter — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 17:28:03 +0000

Almost every day, I am in conversations about protests on US college campuses. Some of these encounters take place at Tufts (in committees or one-on-one with students and colleagues), but I have also been part of discussions at Stanford, Harvard, and Providence College, and in DC–just to mention events during April. In decades past, I […]

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youth views of Israel/Palestine

Peter — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 18:05:56 +0000

CIRCLE has published detailed data on young people’s views of the current war in the Middle East. I’ll share two graphs, but I recommend their whole document. First, compared to older generations, young Americans are much more likely to perceive genocide in Palestine (almost 50% agree that it’s happening) and to support an immediate ceasefire. […] Continue reading →

Najwan Darwish on living in doubt

Peter — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 15:59:20 +0000

(Translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, from Najwan Darwish, Exhausted on the Cross, NYRB Books 2021.) I don’t know the Arabic word that is the title of this poem. The English word can mean a logical fallacy–changing the meaning of a term between one part of an argument and another–or a deliberate trick. Macbeth calls a […] Continue reading →

the post-9/11 wars and Trump

Peter — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 13:29:41 +0000

The image that accompanies this post is my graph of US counties.* The y-axis is Trump’s share of the vote in 2016. The x-axis is the percentage of each county’s population that consisted of veterans under the age of 45 in 2020. I chose that statistic as a rough proxy for direct involvement with the […] Continue reading →

Peter Beinart interview on anti-Semitism and Middle East politics

Peter — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 17:43:26 +0000

This is the video of yesterday’s conversation with Peter Beinart at Tufts: I asked him: What do you think is the relationship (if any) between rising anti-Semitism and rising criticism of Israel? When is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic, and when isn’t it? Is it important that we have dialogue about Israel/Palestine in places like Tufts? […] Continue reading →

the 2020 election in the shadow of the Iraq War

Peter — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 20:49:33 +0000

Polls usually show that foreign policy is a low-priority issue in US political campaigns. This year is no exception: asked to choose one priority, just 13 percent of prospective voters recently selected foreign policy. But I think the Iraq and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

a range of federalism options for Israel-Palestine

Peter — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 18:58:28 +0000

In the Washington Post today, Daniel Hollander notes that there is another possible option for Israel/Palestine beyond one state or two states: “a federalist, multistate solution.” I think this direction should be considered, if for no reason than “inventing options” is … Continue reading → Continue reading →