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Speaker: Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He was educated in the University of London, primarily but not entirely at the School of Oriental and African Studies, where he took both his B.A. (Honors in History) and his Ph.D. His B.A. degree was in History with special reference to the Near and Middle East; his Ph.D. in the History of Islam. He also studied Law, and went part of the way towards becoming a barrister, but decided that he didn't like it, and returned to study, and later teach, Middle Eastern History. He also did part of his graduate work in the University of Paris, and spent some months touring the Middle East. He received his first teaching appointment in 1938, as an assistant lecturer in Islamic History at the School of Oriental and African Studies. With the exception of the years 1940 to 1945, he remained a University teacher until his formal retirement in 1986, and, in a less formal sense, ever since. Until 1974, he taught at the University of London; since 1974 at Princeton.

Professor Lewis is the author of countless books and articles on the Middle East. His most notable texts are The Arabs in History (1950), The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961), The Assassins (1967), The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982), The Political Language of Islam (1988), Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry (1990), Islam and the West (1993), Islam in History (1993), The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (1994), Cultures in Conflict (1994), The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (1995), The Future of the Middle East (1997), The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998), and What Went Wrong? (2001)

Related Readings:
Islamicist Lewis gives final series lecture, Yale Daily News, April 15, 2002