Philip Khoury

Professor Khoury grew up in Washington, DC and was educated at the Sidwell Friends School, the American University of Beirut, Trinity College and Harvard University (PhD 1980). He joined the MIT History Faculty in 1981 and served as Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) between 1991 and 2006. He was appointed the inaugural Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS in 2002.

Professor Khoury served as vice provost between 2006 and 2025. He was responsible for overseeing MIT’s non-curricular arts programs and initiatives, including the MIT Museum and the List Visual Arts Center. Between 2006 and 2011, he also served as MIT’s first vice provost for international activities.

Professor Khoury is a political and social historian of the Middle East. Among his publications are Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism (Cambridge University Press); Syria and the French Mandate (Princeton University Press), which received the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association; Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (University of California Press); The Modern Middle East: A Reader (Palgrave/MacMillan); and Recovering Beirut: Urban Planning and Post-war Reconstruction (E.J. Brill).

Professor Khoury serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History. In 1985, he established the Emile Bustani Middle East Seminar at MIT, a public forum for the examination of contemporary Middle Eastern affairs. He served for 15 years as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut and is now Chairman Emeritus. He is a trustee of Underwriters Laboratories Research Institutes and a director of Underwriter Laboratories Standards and Engagement. He remains an overseer of Koç University in Istanbul. He served 19 years on the Trinity College Board of Trustees, and 12 years as its vice chairman. He is Trustee Emeritus of the National Humanities Center. He was a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, a member of the Academic Research Council in Singapore, and a director of the Harvard Cooperative Society.

Professor Khoury is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). He has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, and Thomas J. Watson Foundation. He has been a visiting associate of St. Antony’s College in the University of Oxford, and a faculty associate of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He holds honorary degrees from Earth University, Trinity College, and the American University of Beirut. He received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Lebanon in 2025.