Middle East Strategy at Harvard

Tamara Cofman Wittes is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, as of November 2009. Her MESH membership is inactive.

While an active member, she was Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, where she focused on U.S. efforts to promote democracy and the Arab-Israeli peace process. Before joining the Saban Center, Wittes was a Middle East specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace, conducting and supervising research on the Arab-Israeli peace process, regional security, and U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Before that, she was director of programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington. She has also served as an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University and as a consultant for the RAND Corporation.

Wittes has written extensively on the conflict in the Middle East, and, more broadly, on conflict resolution. Her articles have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, the Weekly Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and National Security Studies Quarterly, among others. Her recent work has explored U.S. democracy aid to the Middle East, the role of culture in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and the role of ethnic diasporas in conflict resolution. She has written and taught on a wide variety of related issues, including Middle East politics, international security, coercive diplomacy, complex humanitarian crises, international law, and U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Wittes was one of the first recipients of the Rabin-Peres Peace Award, established by President Bill Clinton in 1997. She holds a B.A. in Judaic and Near Eastern Studies from Oberlin College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Government from Georgetown University.

Posts by Tamara Cofman Wittes