Middle East Studies Association (MESA)

In March 2025, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for arresting, detaining, and deporting non-citizen students and faculty members, alleging they were being targeted for lawful Palestinian-nationalist activism on college campuses across America. MESA argued this policy was a violation of the First Amendment. On September 30, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled in favor of MESA and its fellow plaintiffs, blocking the policy. ²

Activities

Academic Publications

The Middle East Studies Association publishes several scholarly publications about the Middle East, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), a peer-reviewed quarterly journal featuring original research on politics, society, and culture in the Middle East and related regions. MESA also publishes the Review of Middle East Studies (RoMES), a twice-annual journal of reviews, essays, and reflective pieces on scholarship, pedagogy, and emerging topics in Middle Eastern studies. MESA also publishes Issues in Middle East Studies (IMES), a biannual newsletter covering the organization’s annual meeting highlights, committee reports, and updates from its affiliated organizations. ³

Advocacy

MESA advocates on behalf of its members and scholars in the field of Middle East studies. The organization drafts statements and letters from the board of directors on issues related to the Middle East and maintains a Committee on Academic Freedom, which monitors and responds to what it perceives to be threats to intellectual and academic freedom in the Middle East and in the United States. ⁴

Workshops, Grants, and Digital Events

In addition to its publications and advocacy, MESA organizes and sponsors research workshops and virtual events where scholars can present their work and share updates to ongoing research projects related to the Middle East. ⁵ MESA also organizes an annual event for Middle East studies scholars to organize and plan for future scholarship related to the region. ⁶

Partner and Affiliated Organizations

MESA works with a wide network of partner organizations and affiliated scholarly groups, including the American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA), the Arab American Studies Association (AASA), the Association for Iranian Studies (AIS), and the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA), among others. ^{7  8}

MESA also has several organizations affiliated with its Academic Freedom initiative, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Scholar Rescue Fund, and Scholars at Risk. ⁹

Activism and Controversies

Anti-Israel Activism

In March 2022, Middle East Studies Association members voted 80 percent in favor of ratifying a resolution endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against the State of Israel. The MESA resolution stated that the boycott will not target individual students or scholars and affirms the right of individual MESA members to choose not to participate in an academic boycott. The resolution calls for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions for what MESA considers their complicity in Israel’s “violations” of human rights” and international law. ¹⁰

ICE Detention of MESA Conference Speaker

On November 22, 2025, Vahid Abedini, the Farzaneh Family assistant professor of Iranian studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU), was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before boarding a flight to attend the MESA annual conference in Washington, D.C. Abedini works in the United States under an H-1B visa ¹¹ and was detained by ICE for three days before being released. Abedini and MESA claimed the detention resulted from Abedini’s Palestinian-nationalist scholarship and activism. ^{12  13}

Opposition to Northwestern University Bias Training

In October 2025, two members of MESA sent a letter to the administration of Northwestern University calling for the immediate rescindment of the school’s threat to block course registration, access to financial aid, and other resources for students who have not yet completed the university’s required bias training. The MESA members argued that the bias training–which sought to address the issue of antisemitism on campus–was discriminatory toward Muslims and Arabs. MESA also argued that by forcing students to undergo the bias training, the university infringed upon the students’ right to freedom of speech. ¹⁴

Then-MESA president and Yale Law School professor Asli Bali and then-MESA committee chair on academic freedom and University of Southern California professor Laurie Brand, co-authored the letter. They claimed that the “Antisemitism Here/Now” module in the training offered inaccurate information from an overtly one-sided perspective. The letter stated that “[v]iewers will learn nothing from the video about Israeli settlements on confiscated Palestinian land, militarized checkpoints, the separation wall or Israeli-only highways, all features of a regime that the International Court of Justice has ruled constitutes an instance of apartheid, a crime under international law.” The bias training included another module, “Beyond the Headlines,” about bias against Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities. The letter claimed the video module was incomplete, as it made no mention of the Palestinians. ¹⁴

Lawsuit Against Trump Administration

In March 2025, the Middle East Studies Association filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting non-citizen students and faculty members, allegedly for lawful Palestinian-nationalist activism on college campuses across America. On September 30, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the policy was a violation of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. The ruling came after a two-week trial in the case brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, partnering with Sher Tremonte LLP (on behalf of MESA) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). It was the first major legal challenge to a policy of President Trump’s second term. The court ruled that non-citizens have “the same free speech rights as the rest of us,” including anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian advocacy on college campuses. ²

In response to the ruling, then-president of MESA Aslı Bali stated the “Trump administration’s actions have grievously harmed our colleagues, by treating protected free speech and freedom of association as deportable offenses…The attack on the constitutionally protected rights of our members and conference attendees is unconscionable, and must be redressed.” ²

Leadership

Jeffrey D. Reger is the executive director of the Middle East Studies Association, a position he has held since 2019. Previously, Reger worked as a lecturer at the Catholic University of America. He is also the former assistant director of the National History Center of the American Historical Association. Before joining MESA, Reger was the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area studies chair at the Foreign Service Institute. ^{15  16} He received a bachelor’s degree in foreign service, culture, and politics from the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service, and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. ¹⁷

Ussama Makdisi is the president of the board of directors at MESA. He is a professor of history and the chancellor’s chair at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously a professor of history and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation chair of Arab studies at Rice University in Houston. In April 2009, the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar as part of its effort to promote original scholarship regarding Muslim societies and communities in the United States and across the world.  Makdisi was also awarded the Berlin Prize and spent the Spring 2018 semester as a fellow at the American Academy of Berlin. He is the author of several books, including Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World, Faith Misplaced: the Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820-2001, and Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, among others. ¹⁸

Finances

In 2024, the Middle East Studies Association reported $916,467 in total revenue, $792,956 in total expenses, and $3,566,677 in total assets. ¹⁹