Stepping into the hot center
Niles Singer/Harvard Staff Photographer Campus & Community Stepping into the hot center Liz Mineo Harvard Staff Writer February 25, 2025 5 min read Tarek Masoud’s ‘Middle East Dialogues’ sparked many conversations — including about importance of having them Part of a series of profiles focused on community-led efforts to promote dialogue across campus. A week after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Middle East expert Tarek Masoud led a well-attended forum with policymakers and scholars on the causes of the war and what might happen next in the conflict-ridden region. Masoud, faculty director of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, thought he was doing his part to educate and promote civil discourse on a divisive topic. A few weeks later, however, an HKS student complained in a Boston Globe op-ed piece that Harvard needed to do more to teach her about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Masoud was hearing similar complaints around campus and was taken aback. “My first thought...