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The MERIP Podcast

The MERIP Podcast

By: James Ryan
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Summary

 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James Ryan Political Science Politics & Government World
Episodes
  • Episode 22: Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li

    Episode 22: Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li
    May 7 2026
    Today's episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with two contributors to the spring issue of Middle East Report, “Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order.” Since the beginning of world-wide campus protests in the wake of October 7, 2023, there has been a tremendous upswell of organizing and support for Palestinian liberation and activism against US militarism. In response, a wave of repression against students, staff and faculty on campus began in 2023 and accelerated after Donald Trump took office. Our latest issue takes stock of these dynamics and the stakes of political action on campus in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. To discuss campus politics in our present moment, MERIP’s executive director, James Ryan, was joined by Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li. Aslı Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the former president of the Middle East Studies Association. Her article in this issue, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown–Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court,” is a reflection on MESA’s lawsuit, with the American Association of University Professors and the Knight First Amendment Institute, against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration over the free speech rights of noncitizens, like Rümeysa Öztürk and others, who spoke up about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Darryl Li is an associate professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and a contributor, along with Andrew Ross, Lara Deeb, Meera Shah and Lisa Hajjar to “The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses.”Further Reading: Aslı Bâli, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown—Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court” Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026). Lisa Hajjar, Lara Deeb, Darryl Li, Andrew Ross and Meera Shah, “‘The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses” Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026).The MESA Academic Freedom Initiative MESA and AAUP, “Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine,” November 5, 2025.Palestine Legal 2025 Report The Knight First Amendment Institute PEN America, “Expanding the Web of Control–America’s Censored Campuses 2025,” January 15, 2025. The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    51 mins
  • Episode 21: Susann Kassem, Lara Deeb and Habib Battah

    Episode 21: Susann Kassem, Lara Deeb and Habib Battah
    Apr 23 2026
    Today on the podcast three MERIP contributors discuss Lebanon’s tenuous, one-sided ceasefire with Israel. Even as officials in the Lebanese government have entered into negotiations with Israel, an unprecedented diplomatic move with questionable legal status under Lebanese law, Israel has violated the ceasefire numerous times and has continued its efforts to destroy villages south of its unilaterally declared “yellow line” in preparation for expanded occupation and settlement. Some displaced Lebanese from the south have temporarily returned to assess the damage to their homes and villages, and many Shi’a across Lebanon remain under threat. Joining MERIP’s executive director James Ryan to discuss this bleak reality and internal Lebanese politics are Susann Kassem, an anthropologist and Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellow between Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and the Geneva Graduate Institute and author of “‘Our Compass is Broken’—Israel’s Ongoing War in South Lebanon,” published by MERIP on April 2; Lara Deeb, a professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern and North African studies at Scripps College and co-author of MERIP’s “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Palestine and Resistance to Israeli Violence;” and Habib Battah, an independent journalist who teaches global studies at St. Lawrence University in New York and whose most recent article for MERIP was “Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy.” This podcast was recorded on April 22, 2026. Further reading: Habib Battah, “Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy” Middle East Report Online, April 10, 2024Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian, Nadya Sbaiti, “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Palestine and Resistance to Israeli Violence” Middle East Report, Issue 313 Winter 2024Susann Kassem, “‘Our Compass is Broken’--Israel’s Ongoing War in South Lebanon” Middle East Report Online April 2, 2026Malek Abisaab and Michelle Hartman, What the War Left Behind: Women’s Stories of Resistance and Struggle in Lebanon Syracuse University Press, 2024 Munira Khayyat, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon University of California Press, 2022Munira Khayyat, Another Season of War in Lebanon Society for Cultural Anthropology Editor’s Forum, Hotspots April 11, 2025Amani Rammal, “Crossing the ‘Security Belt:’ A History of the Occupied Lebanese Border Strip” The Public Source, April 16, 2026 “The War in Lebanon is Existential with Hala Jaber” Makdisi Street Podcast, March 14, 2026 Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon, Princeton University Press, 2006 Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Shi’ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities Columbia University Press, 2008 Humans of Dahieh (Instagram) Glenn Diesen–Greater Eurasia Podcast Hadley Suter and Tania El Khoury, “Tania El Khoury’s Soothing ‘Revenge Art’” Hyperallergic, April 17, 2026 The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Episode 20: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part III

    Episode 20: The MERIP Roundtable, On the Iran War Part III
    Mar 26 2026
    Today’s episode is the third installment of our MERIP Roundtable discussing the war on Iran, instigated by the US and Israeli on February 28, 2026, and its regional reverberations. This episode focuses on Israel’s expanded war on Lebanon. Following the assassination of Ali Khamanei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hizballah fired six missiles into Israel, its first offensive move since a ceasefire was signed in the fall of 2024. Israel, meanwhile, has violated the ceasefire on a near daily basis over the past year and a half through missile and drone strikes. In the past weeks, Israel has issued mass evacuation warnings across the entire area south of the Litani river, in Dahiyeh south of Beirut and in the Bekaa valley. Invasions, including a commando raid through Syria into the Bekaa followed, as have the near daily barrage of missile and drone attacks. In a matter of a couple of weeks, over one million people have been displaced—representing a quarter of Lebanon’s population. The renewed assault has raised the stakes of long running issues in Lebanon around national sovereignty and self-defense, and wider questions about how both Lebanese and Palestinian resistance to Israeli aggression in the region can be constituted in the face of its overwhelming military and technological advantages. To discuss these issues, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan was joined by Rima Majed, an associate professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, whose work has focused on sectarianism, social movements and conflict in Lebanon. Rima Majed is a member of MERIP’s editorial committee and also the author of a short essay on the war on Lebanon that appeared as part of our collection “War Across Boundaries–Perspectives on Iran and a Region Under Siege,” published on March 19, 2026. Also joining the podcast is Ali Musleh, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis, whose research focuses on the effects of automated warscapes on everyday life and resistance in Palestine.This conversation was recorded on March 23rd, 2026. Further Reading:Laleh Khalili (interview) Democracy Now “The End of the Petrodollar? How Iran War Is Reshaping the Global Economy: Author Laleh Khalili” March 19, 2026Joseph Daher, Hezbollah: The Political Economy of the Party of God (Pluto Press, 2016)Abdaljawad Omar, “Gaza Faces the World” Turbulence Podcast Episode 10, January 20, 2026Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Macmillan, 2020)The Material Politics of Normalization Middle East Report Summer/Fall 2025, Issue 315-316Munira Khayyat, “Dispatch from South Lebanon–Life as Resistance at the End of the World” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313Lara Deeb, Maya Mikdashi, Tsolin Nalbantian and Nadya Sbaiti, “A Primer on Lebanon–History, Politics and Resistance to Israeli Violence” Middle East Report Winter 2024, Issue 313The MERIP Podcast features exclusive interviews with contributors to the Middle East Research and Information Project from the present and past about their work for MERIP, as well as audio from events we've conducted online and in-person that examine contemporary issues in the politics, economy, society and culture of the Middle East. Hosted by James Ryan, MERIP's Executive Director. Visit our website, www.merip.org, to read all of our work without paywalls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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    1 hr and 11 mins
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