In 2011, Syrians took to the streets demanding freedom. Brutal government repression transformed peaceful protests into one of the most devastating conflicts of our times, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions.
The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (Liveright, 2024) takes Syria’s refugee outflow as its point of depar ... Show More
Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Today
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, "War and Community in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026) Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and politic ... Show More
1h 51m
Apr 24
Mujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political futures? The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals ... Show More
57m 51s
Feb 2023
A Crisis Within a Crisis in Syria
<p>When a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Syria and Turkey last week, it killed thousands and created a crisis within a crisis.</p><p>International aid began pouring into Turkey, but northwestern Syria, which was also hard-hit, received only a trickle. It was a bitter blow for Syria ... Show More
26m 28s
Feb 2023
Natasha Hall: The Aftermath of Earthquakes in Syria
This week, in a special episode of Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with Middle East Program senior fellow Natasha Hall about the aftermath of the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. They talk about the aid response, how governments are instrumentalizing the aid response to advance ... Show More
29m 13s
Jun 2023
Syrie: la normalisation amorcée?
Le 19 mai 2023, le sommet de la Ligue arabe à Djeddah a marqué le retour en grâce de Bachar el-Assad auprès de ses pairs du Proche-Orient. Tapis rouge pour un président que l’organisation avait exclu, fin 2011, pour sa répression sanglante du soulèvement démocratique en Syrie, da ... Show More
50 m