Leaving a rich legacy in world events
The Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs reviews Middle East issues
While in Israel this month, we visited a former colleague of mine, from the time when I worked as a journalist in Washington in the 1980s.
Judith Colp Rubin, a native New Yorker and graduate of the University of Chicago, has been a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for various American newspapers.
She was married to Barry Rubin, who died in 2014. A former Fulbright and Council on Foreign Relations fellow who received his PhD from Georgetown University in Washington in 1978, he was at first a leftwing pro-Palestinian activist.
He wrote for such publications as MERIP Reports, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and the Communist-founded ultra-leftist Guardian, published in New York.
He even turned up in Beirut in 1974, in the company of his Georgetown mentor, the Palestinian professor Hisham Sharabi.
But he began to grow disillusioned with the far left and moved to Israel in the 1990s, where he founded the Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA).
A prolific author, Rubin wrote dozens of books about the Middle East region and the Israeli-Arab conflict, including The Israel-Arab Reader, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East, The Truth About Syria, and Israel: An Introduction. He also frequently wrote for the Jerusalem Post.
Silent Revolution, published a year before his death, describes how the Left rose to political power and cultural dominance in the United States.
Barry and Judy co-authored several books on the Middle East, terrorism, and America’s modern-day reputation.
Their 2003 book, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, was an in-depth look at the life and political career of the Palestinian leader.
Hating America: A History, published in 2004, addressed various aspects of the ways in which the U.S. has been vilified, concentrating in general on the opinions held in European nations.
They also co-authored AntiAmerican Terrorism and the Middle East: A Documentary Reader, in 2003, and Chronologies of Modern Terrorism, in 2008.
Judy is now the honorary president of what has been renamed the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs.
The current director, Jonathan Spyer, holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a Master’s Degree in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The Center publishes two quarterly journals, the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA), and Turkish Studies. They cover developments in the region from a wide variety of viewpoints, including American policy, radical movements, and minorities.
As well, it produces analyses and reporting on the Middle East by research associates and scholars.
Quite a legacy, and one which Judy and the Center try to carry on.