“Empowering the Teachers” provides an immersive and innovative training experience for young African academics. The program brings talented Nigerian academics at the postdoctoral level to MIT for a semester-long immersive experience, then sends them back out into the field to teach, research, and grow into influential leadership roles in their higher education system.

MENA/MIT is a new regional program at the Center for International Studies that houses and connects activities and initiatives across MIT related to the Middle East and North Africa region. In this interview, Richard Nielsen and David Dolev discuss MENA/MIT engagement with the MIT community, its contributions to the Institute's educational and research objectives, and their goals for 2024.

CIS recognizes the contributions of its PhD students to the growing body of relevant research to the ongoing crisis in the Middle East. The dissertations of Nasir Almasri and Elizabeth Parker-Magyar offer helpful perspectives on contributing factors and regional outcomes of the war.

The Center hosted the delegates to a post-COP28 event that was sponsored by Climate/MIT, a newly formed initiative at CIS that is co-led by Drew Story, PhD, managing director of the MIT Policy Lab, and Madeleine Smith, managing director of the MIT-Denmark Program.

Evan Lieberman reflects on the last few months at CIS after his recent appointment as its new director. He began his term with a look back to the Center’s origins, born of the politics of the Cold War. More than seven decades later, this past continues to echo loudly as we confront a new, arguably much more complex set of realities, he says.