ASMEA's Chairman, Professor Bernard Lewis, addressed an audience of over 200 people on Friday, April 25th in a keynote speech to the attendees of the 2008 ASMEA conference. Entitled "Studying the Other: Different Ways of Looking at the Middle East and Africa," his speech discussed the threat to the freedom of scholarly inquiry regarding these two regions and the prospects for enhancing the body of knowledge in an open and inter-disciplinary manner.

To watch a video of the keynote press the play button below.

Potential explanations for the current instability in Africa were examined during a conference roundtable featuring Dr. J. Peter Pham (James Madison University), BGen Richard Vercauteren (USMC, ret.), and Dr. Michael Vlahos (Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory).