Middle East Studies

Today was my last day as Project Assistant and de jure Assistant Director for UW-Madison's Middle East Studies Program. They might keep me around for a little while as an hourly employee, but that would involve just a small amount of processing faculty travel grants, sorting through supply orders and watering the office plant rather than the organization of conferences and lectures and occasional grant writing which have occupied me for the past three and a half years.

There is a less than happy note to the occasion, as yesterday we learned we hadn't made the cut for this cycle's Title VI competition, meaning it's unclear if or how we will get funding for the next four years. Still, the program is in good hands with incoming director Dr. Uli Schamiloglu, and we have just enough money left for a K-16 pedagogy conference this October. Hopefully Dr. Schamiloglu and my successor will dig up some non-governmental sources of funding to keep things operating for the next few years. For my part, I'm quite content to bid farewell to administrative and bureaucratic duties and spend next year on fellowship in Jerusalem.