Dr. Luke Peterson will discuss Knowledge and Power in Middle Eastern Studies. Dr. Peterson will speak on the relationship between knowledge and power in the contemporary political moment and on the failure of the promises of the internet age to quell rancor and promote civility where political debate arises. This talk will further examine the position of the East, the Orient, the Middle East, and/or the Arab-Muslim Other within contemporary political discourse in the United States, and will speak to the degree to which knowledge about Muslim communities is maintained deliberately and for pre-determined purposes in American politics, and in considerations of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.