New director for Center for Middle Eastern Studies

May 12, 2021

Announcement of new Director, UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies
May 12, 2021

It is with great pleasure that we announce Professor Asad Q. Ahmed as the new director of the UC Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). Director Ahmed’s appointment will begin on July 1, 2021.

Director Ahmed is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Philosophy. He received his B.A. in 2000 from Yale University, majoring from the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Literature. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 2007 from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University. He specializes in early Islamic social history and pre-modern Islamic intellectual history, with a special focus on the rationalist disciplines, such as philosophy, logic, legal theories, and astronomy. Although he has worked extensively on Islamic intellectual history of the so-called classical period (ca. 800-1200 CE), his current focus is the period ca. 1200-1900 CE, especially with reference to the Indian subcontinent. His general training includes Graeco-Arabica, classical Arabic poetry and poetics, and hadith and Qur’anic Studies. In 2020-21, he served as interim director of CMES. We are very much looking forward to his continued leadership at CMES.

Randy Katz, Vice Chancellor for Research

Linda H. Rugg, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research