Dr. Martin Kramer

Martin Kramer is an authority on the history and politics of the Middle East, contemporary Islam, and modern Israel.

Kramer is a historian of the Middle East at Tel Aviv University and the Walter P. Stern Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was the founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel’s first liberal arts college. 

Kramer earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, where he prepared his thesis under the supervision of Bernard Lewis. He then spent twenty-five years at Tel Aviv University, where he directed the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. Kramer has taught as a visiting professor at Brandeis University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Georgetown University, and The Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He has also served as a visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.

His authored and edited books include Islam Assembled; Shi'ism, Resistance and Revolution; Middle Eastern Lives; Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival; The Islamism Debate; The Jewish Discovery of Islam; Ivory Towers on Sand; and The War on Error.

Read Dr. Kramer's article "The State of Middle Eastern Studies, Revisited" featured in the Journal of the Middle East and Africa. This article follows on Kramer's Keynote Address at the Sixteenth Annual ASMEA Conference, "A Conversation on the State of Middle East Studies Today."

View Dr. Kramer's webinar discussion, "Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, and the 'Clash of Civilizations.'"