Panel discussion featuring Salim Tamari and Helena Cobban

Salim Tamari is a Visiting Professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds.

He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Helena Cobban is a British-American writer and researcher on international relations, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice. In March 2010, she founded a new book-publishing company, Just World Publishing, LLC. She received her BA and MA from Oxford University. From 1974 through 1981, she worked as a Beirut-based correspondent for news outlets including The Christian Science Monitor, The Sunday Times, ABC News, and the BBC.

In 1982 she moved to the United States to take up a research fellowship at the Harvard University Center for International Affairs. Since then she has published six additional books: three others on questions of Middle East war and peace, and three on other international issues. She is a Contributing Editor at Boston Review, where she has published essays on Palestinian-Israeli issues, Iraq, and post-conflict justice questions. She contributes a weekly news analysis on Middle East developments to Inter Press Service and makes periodic contributions to 'ForeignPolicy.com' and The Christian Science Monitor.