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Since 1946 the Middle East Institute has been an important conduit of information between Middle Eastern nations and American policymakers, organizations and the public. We strive to increase knowledge of the Middle East among our own citizens and to promote understanding between the peoples of the Middle East and America. Today we play a vital and unique role in expanding the dialogue beyond Washington, DC, and actively with organizations in the Middle East. Our Department of Programs present programs with top regional experts and officials from the US and foreign governments. The George Camp Keiser Library has the largest English-language collection on the Middle East outside of the Library of Congress. We publish quarterly one of the most prestigious journals on the Middle East, The Middle East Journal. MEI's Department of Languages and Regional Studies offers courses in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish and seminars highlighting the history, literature and culture of the Middle East.

Stanford Humanities Fellow Edith Sheffer had an idea of how she could personalize history for her students. This led to an innovative use of the wiki. The following are highlights from a conversation in January 2009 about her course "Germany and the World Wars, 1870-1990.″. The idea was to have a writing assignment that would function like weekly response papers but be slightly more interesting to the students. Each student would create his or her own character that was born in 1900 and be in complete control of their persona. Beyond the initial introductory sentence that gave their parent's occupation, and birthplace and gender, they could make life choices.