Press Release: CILOS Announces Partnership with Harvard University's Arab Conference
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Washington, D.C. | May 08, 2026
The Council on International Law, Order, and Security (CILOS) is pleased to announce its partnership with the Arab Conference at Harvard, building on CILOS’s ongoing work on the Middle East. As part of this partnership, CILOS supported a high-level policy panel at this year’s conference focused on the Middle East’s evolving power structure, strategic alliances, and the broader regional ramifications of the escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran. The panel featured H.E. Shaikh Abdulla Rashid Al Khalifa, Ambassador of Bahrain to the United States; H.E. Youssef Chahed, former Prime Minister of Tunisia; Dr. Saleh El Machnouk, lecturer in comparative politics at Lebanon’s Université Saint-Joseph (USJ); and Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute.
CILOS’s partnership with the Arab Conference at Harvard reflects the Council’s role in supporting forward-looking policy discussion on questions that bear directly on regional order, state behavior, and alliance patterns that will shape the future of the Middle East and its place in a changing international order. For CILOS, the Middle East remains a region where recent developments cannot be understood in isolation from broader realignments in the international system, the distribution of power, and the strategic conduct of major and rising states. Advancing dialogue on these issues against the backdrop of international law, international order, and international security helps inform more responsible statecraft and stronger policy thinking on regional and global stability.
Commenting on the partnership, CILOS President Omer Niazi, said “CILOS partnered with the Arab Conference at Harvard to support a discourse that contributes to clearer policy thinking on the Middle East at a time when the region’s power structure, strategic alliances, and the future of its stability and development are being tested in real time. The panel brought different perspectives into direct conversation and that was part of its value. One of CILOS’s founding institutional pillars is to create space to engage with precisely those issues that do not lend themselves to easy consensus. Our view is that dialogue should not avoid hard issues, particularly when the stakes are high and carry real human costs and strategic consequences that will shape the lives of people across the region in immediate and deeply human ways. Supporting this kind of engagements is fully consistent with CILOS’s mission, and we see this partnership as a strong basis for continued institutional engagement.”
This partnership extends CILOS’s continued work on the Middle East through research, analysis, and policy engagement on questions of governance, security, conflict, and regional order. CILOS looks forward to building on this relationship and to continued engagement with forums that bring together policymakers, scholars, and practitioners for forward-looking serious discussion of regional and international affairs.
About CILOS
The Council on International Law, Order, and Security (CILOS) is an independent, nonpartisan policy research think tank and advisory institution working to address the growing challenges facing global order in the twenty-first century. Centered at the intersection of international law, international order, and international security, the council brings together leaders, intellectuals, and academics to inform policy and strategic thinking and contribute to debate on international affairs.