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Elizabeth Thompson Professor and Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace, SIS SIS | Global Inquiry

Additional Positions at AU
Mohamed S. Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace
Co-Chair, Historical International Studies Research Cluster
Degrees
PhD, Columbia University in History;
MIA, Columbia University, in International Affairs;
BA, Harvard University in History & Literature

Languages Spoken
Arabic, French, and some Turkish
Favorite Spot on Campus
My Office
Book Currently Reading
Linda Colley's "The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World
Bio
Elizabeth F. Thompson is a historian of social movements and liberal constitutionalism in the Middle East, with a focus on how race and gender relations have been conditioned by foreign intervention and international law. She recently published her third book: How the West Stole Democracy from the Arabs: The Syrian Arab Congress and the Destruction of its Historic Liberal-Islamic Alliance (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020). It explores how Arabs gathered in Damascus after World War I to establish a democratic regime and why the Arabs' Allies at the Paris Peace Conference decided to destroy their state.

Her new book project is titled "1919 and the Defeat of World Democracy."  It places the Syrian case in a global context.

A second project is under review at a university press:  "The Debacle: A memoir of the Marriage and Divorce of East and West in Istanbul."

Thompson is author of two previous books: Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East (Harvard, 2013) and Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (Columbia, 2000), which won two national prizes.
See Also
Elizabeth Thompson's Website
Politics & Prose Book Talk
For the Media
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Teaching

Fall 2025

  • HIST-496 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Global Revolution of 1919

  • SISU-397 SIS Honors Colloquium: Colonialism and Its Legacies

  • SISU-419 Senior Capstone: Int'l Studies: Americans in the Middle East