Title VI National Resource Center

Founded in 1963, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies promotes the interdisciplinary study of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) at the University of California, Berkeley, and beyond, raising public awareness of the region’s diverse peoples, languages, cultures and their connection to wider global contexts. A Title VI National Resource Center for more than three decades, UC Berkeley’s CMES is widely recognized as one of the country’s most important sources of knowledge about the Arab world, Iran, Israel, and Turkey.  Our activities further the national interests of the United States in the following ways:

• Our Center and its Senior Research Scholars support and teach a range of Area Studies courses, which cover US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, regional politics, Middle East and North Africa history, anthropology, ecology, health and development. 
• We support the teaching of critical languages (including colloquial dialects) of the region.
• Over the years, numerous students have been funded through our FLAS Fellowships, which offer generous stipends for students who want to delve into the intensive study of a given language. 
• We engage in outreach to the wider UC Berkeley student, faculty, and adjacent non-student communities through public lectures, events, virtual courses, and engagement with K-14 institutions and teachers.