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Daniel Martin Varisco is Research Professor and Coordinator of Social Science at the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of Qatar University and President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies.
The Sectarian Crisis in Yemen: Damage from a Divisive Storm
The military campaign called Operation Decisive Storm pits Saudi Arabia and most of the GCC states, along with the United States, Britain, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and several other minor players, against the Houthis in Yemen, which possess only moral support from the real target in this proxy war, Shi‘i Iran. How did such a lopsided war come about? Why has Yemen become the new battleground in a Sunni-Shi‘i fault line emerging as an ideological rival to the Cold War mentality that saw Soviet communism versus Western capitalism? What precisely is this sectarian crisis all about?
Orientalism's Wake: The Ongoing Politics of a Polemic
Originally posted September 2009
Edward W. Said, who passed away at the age of 67 on September 25, 2003, was a towering “public intellectual” — a man of extraordinary erudition, a path-breaking scholar, and a passionate activist.
Said was a man of many interests, talents, and accomplishments — pianist, opera critic, newspaper columnist, popular essayist, television celebrity, and public lecturer. From 1963 until his death, he was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
