Search Results - Kafadar, Cemal, 1954-

Cemal Kafadar

Cemal Kafadar (born 1954) is a Turkish scholar and historian. He is a Professor of History, the Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies in the Department of History, and the director of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University (CMES).

In March 2025, during what the ''Crimson'' described as "a mounting pressure campaign by the Trump administration" and concerns about CMES' "programming on Israel and Palestine", Harvard dismissed Kafadar as director of CMES, effective at the end of the academic year.

Kafadar graduated from Robert College, then Hamilton College, and received his PhD from the McGill University Institute of Islamic Studies in 1987 and taught for two years in Princeton's Near Eastern Studies department before going to Harvard. Kafadar teaches seminars related to popular culture, hagiography and Ottoman historiography as well as the early modern history of the Middle East and Balkans. He is a member of the editorial board of the Historians of the Ottoman Empire and was a member of the jury of the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in 2009. He is an honorary member of the Turkish Historical Society.

He is the author of the book ''Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State'' (1995). Provided by Wikipedia