Talk:Middle East Institute

Who is/was George Camp Kesier?

What a fascinating entry. I can hardly believe it's been tagged "low importance". In particular, it is surprising to me that there is virtually no background available, via Google, on the MEI's founder the late George Camp Keiser. Presumably you need plenty of cash to launch such a prestigious enterprise as the MEI clearly is - and you need to be very connected. Apparently he was enough of both to fund the Institute, but, again, a Top Ten (Google) comes up with virtually no mention of his mysterious career/origins. We at the wiki are very curious about such things! I opened a page for him. Anyone should please feel free to fill in the blank. Is he, for instance, in any way related to billionaire philanthropist Buffet/Gates buddy George Kaiser and or Kaiser-Francis Oil and the BOK Financial Corporation?

Kiosacoup (talk) 14:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

So uncontroversial that there is no criticism section?

There is a lot to criticize in the work of this center and others like it in terms of helping marginalize the voices of targeted communities in the Middle East in official DC. As it currently stands, this entry is almost hagiographic, and it needs to be made more neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.137.35.130 (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

You can add section, but it needs to be information that can be cited. Irtapil (talk) 11:02, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree - there should be a section with criticism examining MEI exclusive focus on Arab or Muslim communities and perspectives.

It includes Turkey which is not technically part of the Mideast but excludes Israel which is central to so much that is going on in the Mideast for the past 80 years when MEI was first conceived. And not a single Israeli scholar is mentioned in the article. Furthermore are any questions raised when a U.S. government-sponsored MEI is so heavily funded by Arab countries?

The current entry leaves Wikipedia open to criticism that it's heavily biased. No? Moshelevin (talk) 07:07, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps, but any criticism would require a reliable source. Dimadick (talk) 07:38, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Undisclosed paid edits

For the past three years, a group of almost 30 accounts closely associated to the Lobo Institute and Michael Patrick Mulroy have substantially edited this page (see SPI case page). These edits generally introduced text to spam links to articles authored by Lobo Institute members or where they were quoted. Links are often in the mei.edu, abcnewsradioonline.com and defenseonline.com domains, but not limited to these. Other edits were focused on promoting certain people associated with Mulroy. Most edits looked fine individually, but a strong promotional pattern can be observed when getting the contributions of the sockfarm as a whole. I have cleaned up many articles where the issue was limited to a single link or a single paragraph, but this is one of the articles where the contributions where substantial enough that a more in-depth review is required. I'm adding the {{Undisclosed paid}} tag until then. MarioGom (talk) 17:22, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I have reviewed edits of the sockfarm to this page. They were not so substantial and I reverted the only problematic edit. I removed the {{UDP}} tag. MarioGom (talk) 18:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Outdated Information

Disclosure: I am director of communications at the Middle East Institute. Several sections of this article contain inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete information, and I would like to request the attention of neutral editors to improve its quality.

Photo

The current photo was taken prior to MEI's renovation and shows an outdated entrance. The main entrance is now next door, and can be seen on the Institute's Google Business listing.

The organization's current logo, which was last revised in 2018, could also be included in addition to or in place of the building photo.

The 2010s and funding

The content currently in this section is inconsistent with the others under 'History' and would be better put in a separate section about 'Funding' (discussed further below).

A history of the 2010s should include the renovation of MEI's headquarters and the opening of the MEI Art Gallery in 2019 (See 2020 Annual Report), as well as Wendy Chamberlin's retirement and transition to Paul Salem as president in 2018 (See History).

Organizational Structure

Since 2017/2018 MEI has described its structure as consisting of three centers: the Policy Center, Education Center, and Center for Arts & Culture (See 'About' page, History page linked above, annual reports, etc.). The Policy Center is the "think tank" portion of the organization, focusing on policy analysis. The roster of experts is now close to 200. The MEJ, language courses, and Oman Library are now organized under the Education Center. The Center for Arts & Culture primarily operates the MEI Art Gallery, which was established in 2019 and hosts several art exhibitions each year.

Centers of Study

Following significant expansion over the past five years, the Institute currently has 18 research programs (See "Research Programs" on the Policy Center page) covering multiple countries/regions, regional security issues, and global issues such as economics and climate. The programs on Pakistan, Turkey, and Middle East-Asia are still among them but don't warrant standalone sections unless all the others do too. A list with short descriptions may make more sense.

The section on "Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center (SQCC)" could either be removed or relocated under 'History' as the organizations have been separated for nearly 10 years and have no connection today.

Funding

The article currently does not mention that MEI is a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Adding a section on 'Funding' in line with what is typical for similar organizations may be a good idea. The organization publishes a list of its annual donors on its website (Public Disclosures), as well as financial disclosure forms and annual reports with more recent budget numbers than currently shown. If the lines currently under the "2010s and History" section are relocated to this section, I would suggest adding a reference for the $20M contribution linking to the Institute's published list of 2016 Contributions specifically.

Scottzuke (talk) 18:13, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Scottzuke if you can upload a photo you have the rights to with an appropriate license to commons.wikimedia.org we can use it here. Ill try to look at the rest of this if nobody else does. nableezy - 18:32, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Middle_East_Institute_main_entrance.jpg Scottzuke (talk) 19:05, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Scottzuke Thanks for the disclosure :).

This is an encyclopedia article, not an advertisement about today, so The section on "Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center (SQCC)" could either be removed or relocated ... have been separated for nearly 10 years and have no connection today mostly likely wouldn't make much sense, prior to the article being rewritten. Currently we do have a sentence stating that, apparently after eight years, the centre separated from MEI, so the big problem in the section is a lack of sources, not a need to shift it.

What would really help are independent, WP:SECONDARY, in-depth reliable sources. There also need to be independent Wikipedians willing to put in the work to do a serious rewrite of the article. We expect a variety of sources with different biases. For example, research papers from Iranian political scientists (including some at Iranian research institutes) would help provide some balance. There's no guarantee that any sources will be used, but the better quality and variety of sources you provide, the more likely it is that someone will do the work to rewrite this article, based mainly on the independent reliable sources, instead of basing the article on what MEI says about itself. Boud (talk) 20:18, 21 December 2025 (UTC)

The 2024 financials can be found on the website — Preceding unsigned comment added by Turkeyduck81 (talk • contribs) 18:05, 13 May 2026 (UTC)