Jerusalem
Arabs, Israelis, Turks, Iranians, and Greeks are logging in to the Middle East’s first virtual academic conference, People Across Borders, which opened August 1. And while formal discussion of the conference papers on the Web site’s bulletin boards has been subdued, the conference organizers are reporting an average of 300 unique visits a day from countries all over the region.
The conference, which runs through August 15, is the first major activity of the Middle East Virtual Community. The brainchild of Michael Dahan, a fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, MEViC hopes to become a forum for the exchange of ideas, information, and Internet services for academics and intellectuals throughout the Middle East.
It has been two years since Mr. Dahan, an American-born Israeli Jew whose family is originally from Morocco, drew up his first proposal for an online community that would improve communication among scholars and educated people across borders in a region beset by political and military conflicts and ethnic hatreds.
MEViC is now operated by a steering committee that is led by a nonacademic Jordanian economist, Riad al Khouri, and has members representing Israel, Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority, Turkey, and North Africa. There is also an unnamed member from the Persian Gulf states -- a female Ph.D. who, because she is also a religious Shiite Muslim, prefers not to be identified for the time being.
An online community of thinking people can be an important tool for creating a civil society in a region where many people are either legally barred from visiting neighboring countries or refrain from doing so for political reasons, says Mr. Dahan. Iraqis, for example, can visit neither Iran nor Israel. And many intellectuals in Arab countries that are officially at peace with Israel, such as Jordan and Egypt, still refuse to visit Israel or feel uncomfortable doing so, he says.
“An online community can also present a different venue for meetings, outside the traditional professional organizations and unions, which tend to restrict their membership,” Mr. Dahan adds. In many cases, he notes, a member of an academic association in the Middle East must comply with the organization’s boycott of another country even if the member does not agree with the boycott personally.
“If you can’t or won’t set foot in enemy territory, then MEViC is your answer,” Mr. al Khouri declares.
While the steering committee meets in person regularly and its members parcel out responsibilities, most of the actual leg work is done by Mr. Dahan and the Palestinian representative, Sam Bahour, who directs a high-tech investment fund. The community’s Web server is located in the Palestinian territories.
The People Across Borders conference Web site displays the keynote address, “New Media and Globalization in the Internet Age,” by Jon Anderson, chairman of the anthropology department at the Catholic University of America. Also on the site are conference papers that examine the socio-cultural, technological, legal, economic, and political aspects of the main subject. Visitors can read the papers online or download them, and make comments and engage in discussion on bulletin boards linked to each panel. Live chat rooms were ruled out for economic reasons, Mr. Dahan says.
The language of the conference, and of MEViC as a whole, is English. While the language is spoken by most educated people in the region, it still constitutes a barrier and may explain the low level of posted responses to the papers, Mr. Bahour says. “English is a restrictive factor not so much for those who want to read, but people still feel more comfortable leaving a message in their own language,” he says.
Mr. Bahour also notes that MEViC hopes to be able to pay honoraria and provide peer review for papers submitted to future conferences. Academic pay is low in many Middle Eastern countries, he says, and many scholars must moonlight at other jobs, making it hard for them to set aside the necessary time to write a high-quality academic article.
Mr. Dahan, Mr. Bahour, and Mr. al Khouri all pronounce themselves quite pleased with the level of response during the first week and anticipate that the bulletin boards will begin to fill up during the second week. The papers and comments will be archived on the MEViC site thereafter.
A call for papers for a second conference, on National Identity in an Era of Globalization, has already been posted on the site. That conference will be held in the winter.
The steering committee hopes that the first conference will help raise money for other projects as well. One of those is to set up a network for research institutes in the region.
“A lot of them have sites but no content,” Mr. Dahan notes. MEViC hopes to set up a kit or send staff members to help put research centers online, and to offer expertise in providing library and archival services that can serve scholars throughout the Middle East.
