The case of Matthew Hedges, the British doctoral student who was convicted of spying by the United Arab Emirates, has created an atmosphere of uncertainty among academics who are involved in study and research in the country.
Hedges, a doctoral candidate in political science at Durham University, in England, spent nearly seven months in detention in the Emirates—much of it in solitary confinement—after being arrested while researching security policy. He was among 785 prisoners given an official pardon on Monday ahead of the country’s national holiday. He was released and flew back to the United Kingdom. More...

For the second year in a row, the Egyptian art consultancy firm Art d’Égypte has organized an art exhibition in a historic landmark setting in Cairo to show contemporary Egyptian art. This year, the exhibition is being held at Manial Palace, once the home of the presumptive heir to the throne, Prince Ali Tewfik, who died in 1955. More...

On a bookshelf at the University of Mosul sits George Orwell’s dystopian novel about perpetual war and propaganda, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It’s one of the few books that survived the burnings carried out by the Islamic State during the three years it controlled the city. More...

The opening this month of the Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai represents a major addition to the growing prominence of the United Arab Emirates as a cultural destination and the arrival of a new type of art institution for the country: One that’s not supported or run by the government. More...

A little over an hour’s drive north of Mosul lies the small but growing provincial town of Duhok, nestled in a valley flanked by jagged peaks. The safety of Duhok’s mountain setting has often made it a destination for people fleeing conflicts. More...

Syrian students face many barriers when they seek advanced degrees. Many of the obstacles are not academic but logistical, sometimes with Kafkaesque twists. More...

A computer science professor at Birzeit University has built an online tool called Arabic Ontology that is both a comprehensive dictionary of Arabic and a system that will enable the creation of new Arabic-language software, such as better machine translation. More...