About the Department

Jocelyne Cesari, is an Associate at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for European Studies and teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and Government Department. Dr. Cesari is a political scientist, specializing in the Middle East and Islamic studies. Before coming to Harvard, she served as an Associate Research Scholar and Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  At Harvard, she is Director of the interfaculty Islam in the West Program (see http://cmes.hmdc.harvard.edu/research/iw). This research program produced a major publication, the Encyclopedia of Islam in the United States, which was published by Greenwood Press in September of 2007.  Dr. Cesari received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Aix-en-Provence in France and has served as a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research at the Sorbonne, Paris, since the fall of 1992.  Her areas of expertise include Islam and globalization, Muslim minorities in Europe and America, and Islam and politics in North Africa.  Over the course of her career, Dr. Cesari has published thirteen books and more than fifty articles in European and American journals.  Her most recent books are When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States (Palgrave 2006) and European Muslims and the Secular State (Ashgate 2005).  She has also received grants to write the reports “Islam and Fundamental Rights” and “The Religious Consequences of September 11, 2001, on Muslims in Europe” for the European Commission (see www.euro-islam.info).