Joshua Donovan, Instructor in History and Social Science, delivered a talk last Thursday tracing the historical roots of the current conflict in the Middle East. The talk covered the proxy wars involving Iran and Lebanon, as well as the roles of Israel and Gulf-region nations. Drawing on his background as a scholar of Middle Eastern history, Donovan framed the presentation around the human stories beyond the strategic and economic metrics often dominating the headlines.
Given the topic’s pertinence, Donovan emphasized the importance of students understanding the contemporary affairs in the Middle East.
“Part of being in this community means having an awareness of what happens beyond the borders of the United States. And of course, the war in the Middle East is especially important. Setting aside the international student component for a second, it’s important for people who are American citizens, and who, in a few years, will be able to vote in American elections, to have an awareness of what the United States government does overseas. What the U.S. does has enormous reverberations, often in a very negative way, for people around the world. And so part of being a good global citizen of the United States is being aware of those things,” said Donovan.
Gabriele De Carlo ’26 chose to attend after following developments in the Middle East through the news. He had previously attended a similar history panel on campus and said the talk provided context he had not found elsewhere.
“I very much appreciated Dr. Donovan’s focus on humanity through the world, rather than looking at oil prices or displacement or warfare in general, which is what you tend to get a lot of on the news. I remember he talked about the bombing, the two Tomahawk missiles that hit the school in Iran, and he showed a picture of one of the students who had gone to school in the morning. That was a stark example. [Dr. Donovan] showed us some infographics about casualties and where they were. And so it was very interesting to see how casualties had spiked in Iran and Lebanon comparatively to Western-affiliated countries,” said De Carlo.
Anna Tsvetkov ’26, whose family is from Israel, attended with a friend from Donovan’s class the previous term. Having closely followed the news, she said she came less to learn new information than to observe how the material would be framed.
“[Dr. Donovan] did a good job of being informative without getting into too much politics because it’s a heated political topic. The talk [gave] people a foundational understanding of the region and the current conflict. I already have personal relations to the area and I already knew a lot about the current news. I was intrigued to see how he’d frame it. What most baffled me was, he put up Trump’s tweets, and they were so absurd, and it was shocking to see to some extent,” said Tsvetkov.
Tsvetkov also discussed the importance of critically evaluating information on social media.
She continued, “It’s important to be informed on [the Middle East] to some extent. Things you see on social media may be true, or maybe aren’t true, or [are] twisted in some way. Because it’s something that’s so often discussed, and also that people make a lot of opinions on, it’s important to be well-versed in the topic.”
Dononvan also addressed challenges that scholars of the region are facing, describing what he called growing threats to academic freedom in the United States for those who study and teach about the Middle East. Donovan said that Andover has been a place where he feels supported in facilitating these conversations.
“We have to navigate threats and concerns about censorship regarding our work in teaching. So I’ve been really fortunate to be here at Andover, where there seems to be a desire to have courses and talks and programming about the Middle East. It’s really important to have these kinds of conversations, and they can be difficult to have, but there’s a way to do it that centers human beings and tries to bridge divides and promote dialogue,” said Donovan.
