NC State’s Akram Khater, a professor of history and director of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies, spoke about peace amid violence in the Middle East on Thursday evening at the North Carolina Museum of History. Khater’s discussion, titled “The Future of the Middle East,” was part of the Museum’s Ancient and Modern World lecture series.

Khater gave the audience some historical context by giving a brief overview of modern history in the Middle East and the United States’ role in the various ups and downs of the timeline. Imperialistic colonialism and economic policy were common themes of the West’s involvement..

“There hasn’t been a single decade, a single year where we [the U.S.] haven’t intervened somewhere or another,” Khater said.

The image of the Arab in popular media is also a great contributing factor to hostility towards the region from the U.S, according to Khater, characterizing Middle Easterners as violent and primitive.

Khater also discussed the repeated presence of “violent visionaries” as leaders in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, and how they worked with the West for personal gain, leaving their civilians behind. This led to the inevitable examination of the renowned Arab Spring, a political revolution across the Middle East against fascist dictatorships

“You name it, the Middle East has seen all sorts of violence,” Khater said. “Out of that, all of a sudden, there’s this sense of hope. Most people were caught completely unaware. No intelligence agency of the United States anticipated that the population of the region would actually do this: peacefully overthrow regimes.”

Khater praised the optimism and resilience of the Arab people in the aftermath of countless wars and conflicts and encouraged the crowd to be empathetic when watching the news and to put themselves in the shoes of those living in war-torn countries, drawing upon his experience as a teenager living in Lebanon during the civil war.  

“You can see an image of a bomb dropping,” Khater said. “You can see an image of an explosion happening or a building destroyed. To some extent, you take this in as an act of violence. But what we don’t really see, what we do not experience, is what happens after this.”

After his speech, Khater answered questions from the crowd about colonialism, the intervention of the United States in the Middle East, and how to stay optimistic in the face of the Trump administration.

Alexis Nowicki, a freshman studying political science, said she was impressed by Khater’s ability to put a positive spin on all the seemingly negative topics he discussed.

“[Khater] definitely gave a human aspect to what most Americans don’t necessarily see,” Nowicki said. “We all know the tragedies and atrocities that happen, but we don’t really see the people that they affect as human beings.”