Wendy Pearlman
Wendy Pearlman is a Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she specializes in Middle East politics.
She is the author of We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (Custom House, 2017), based on interviews that she conducted hundreds of displaced Syrians across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States since 2012. The book is a collection of first-hand testimonials that chronicles the Syrian uprising, war, and refugee crisis exclusively through Syrians’ own stories and reflections. The book has been longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, called “essential reading” by the New York Times, and been recommended in reviews in the New Yorker, Guardian, and Chicago Review of Books, among other outlets. Wendy is continuing to collect more testimonials from displaced Syrians to prepare a new book.
Wendy has also written three books related to Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict: Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003), Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States that Host Nonstate Actors (co-authored with Boaz Atzili, Columbia University Press, 2018).
Wendy has published essays and articles in Time, Guernica, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Reuters, as well as academic research in journals including Arab Studies Journal, International Migration Review, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Palestine Studies, Middle East Law and Governance, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Security Studies, and Studies of Comparative International Development.
Wendy earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Brown University. She has conducted research in Spain, Germany, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She has received fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Fulbright, the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad at the American University in Cairo, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
A dedicated teacher, Wendy has been awarded the Northwestern University Weinberg College Distinguished Teaching Award and R. Barry Farrell Award for Excellence in Teaching, and has been elected to the Associated Student Government Faculty Honor Roll numerous times. She won “best article” awards from the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies and the Syrian Studies Association, as well as the 2011 Deborah Gerner Grant for Professional Development.
Frequently invited to give guest lectures on the Middle East, Wendy has delivered hundreds of talks on four continents. Addressing audiences ranging from retirees to high school students, she has spoken at universities, public libraries, museums, art galleries, literary festivals, bookstores, conferences, and volunteer trainings. She has done dozens of interviews for print, radio, television, and podcasts.