Professor Bâli Named President of the Middle East Studies Association

Professor of Law Aslı Ü. Bâli was announced as the new President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) during the group’s annual meeting held in Denver from Nov. 29 to Dec. 4.

Bâli will serve as President-elect for 2023 and begin her term as President immediately following MESA’s next annual meeting in December 2023. Her term will last until December 2025, after which she will serve a fourth year as a Board member.

Bâli’s teaching and research interests include public international law — particularly human rights law and the law of the international security order — and comparative constitutional law, with a focus on the Middle East. She has written on the nuclear nonproliferation regime, humanitarian intervention, the roles of race and empire in the interpretation and enforcement of international law, the role of judicial independence in constitutional transitions, federalism and decentralization in the Middle East, and constitutional design in religiously divided societies. Bâli’s scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Chicago Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Chicago Journal of International Law, Cornell Journal of International Law, Virginia Journal of International Law, American Journal of International Law Unbound, Geopolitics, Studies in Law, Politics and Society, and in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. She has also written essays and op-eds for such venues as The New York Times, The Boston Review, The London Review of Books, Jacobin, and Dissent.

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, nonprofit learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world. MESA is primarily concerned with the area encompassing Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, and the countries of the Arab World (and their diasporas) from the seventh century to modern times. Other regions, including Spain, Southeastern Europe, China and the former Soviet Union, also are included for the periods in which their territories were parts of the Middle Eastern empires or were under the influence of Middle Eastern civilization. From its inception in 1966 with 51 founding members, MESA has increased its membership to more than 2,800 and now serves as an umbrella organization for more than 50 institutional members and 36 affiliated organizations.