Shifting Identities in the Middle East: Personal and Historical Perspectives

A lecture organised as part of the MENA Program (Middle East North Africa)

Chair: Laurence Louër, Sciences Po - CERI, Deputy Director for Scientific Affairs of CERI

Discussants: 

Alain Dieckhoff, Sciences Po CERI / CNRS

Bayram Balci, Sciences Po CERI / CNRS Scientific Director of the MENA Program

Speaker: Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford - Shifting Identities in the Middle East: Personal and Historical Perspectives. 

"We live in an era of closed and clashing national identities which feed conflict and bloodshed in the Middle East as evidenced by Israel's current war in Gaza. My talk focuses on an earlier era in the region when identities were much more flexible and fluid, enabling pluralism, cosmopolitanism, and Muslim-Jewish coexistence. The talk is based on my book "Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew". In the first half of the talk, I’ll revisit some of the main themes and arguments of the book, including the pivotal notion of the Arab-Jew. In the second half I’ll offer some broader reflections on the politics of identity in Israel-Palestine and in the wider Middle East."

Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew (Oneworld Publications, 2023); Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso Books, 2009); Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (Penguin, 2007); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Penguin, 2000, updated edition 2014); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History ( Penguin, 1995) and Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Columbia Univ Pr, 1988).