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CCAS Remembers Ibrahim Ibrahim; New Faces at CCAS: Catherine Parker and Joseph Sassoon

Published in 2009
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CCAS Remembers Ibrahim Ibrahim

CCAS is sad to report the passing of Dr. Ibrahim Iskandar Ibrahim, Georgetown University professor of Arab studies and director of the Center from 1990 to 1993.

Dr. Ibrahim was born in Palestine in 1932. He was raised in the village of Zeita, studied in Jerusalem, and taught Palestinian refugee children for a UN humanitarian program during and after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. In the 1950s, he lived in Kuwait, serving as a teacher and education officer.
Dr. Ibrahim then completed his master’s degree in political science and Islamic studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany in 1964 and received his doctorate in Middle Eastern history and political science from Oxford University in 1967. His dissertation addressed twentieth-century intellectual trends in Egypt.
His teaching career included a year in England and four years as an assistant professor at the American University of Beirut before coming to Georgetown in 1979. He also served as a top advisor to the United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister in the early 1970s followed by a two-year stint as a business executive there.

Dr. Ibrahim was a valued and well-respected presence at CCAS. Says Dr. Michael Hudson, current director of the Center: “Ibrahim Ibrahim was not only a crucial contributor to CCAS from its very beginning; he was also a fine scholar. He was deeply influenced by his German professors, and he frequently invoked the name of Jürgen Habermas in our ongoing debates about modernization and tradition in Arab societies. Even though much of his later professional experience and teaching centered on the Arab Gulf states, as a Palestinian his concern for the Palestinian cause was unwavering. He was not only a fine scholar but a true gentleman.”

Dr. Ibrahim retired from Georgetown in 1994. He is survived by his wife, Mary C. McDavid of Washington, and two brothers and two sisters.

 

New Faces at CCAS: Catherine Parker and Joseph Sassoon

CCAS is pleased to welcome Ms. Catherine Parker as its new Grants Administrator. Ms. Parker comes to us after working as a program manager with the Institute of International Education and as an assistant language teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. Ms. Parker holds a B.A. in history from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in Near and Middle Eastern studies from SOAS, where she focused her research on Iraqi land law during the late Ottoman period and the British Mandate. Ms. Parker will administer the Title VI grant, which includes coordinating the National Resource Center on the Middle East (NRC-ME) and the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships. She will also work with Ms. Zeina Seikaly, CCAS Director of Educational Outreach, on a variety of projects.

Dr. Joseph Sassoon, a visiting scholar at CCAS through the summer of 2009, completed his doctorate at St Antony’s College, Oxford, where he is now a Senior Associate Member. His recently published book, The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) deals with Iraqi refugees after the 2003 invasion. His other publications include Economic Policy in Iraq, 1932-1950 (Frank Cass, 1987), as well as articles on Iraq and other Middle Eastern economies. Dr. Sassoon will also be a visiting scholar from September 2009 through the summer of 2010 at Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration

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