Arab Center Washington DC (ACW) is deeply saddened by the news of the death of our Academic Advisory Board Member Professor Emeritus Augustus Richard Norton on February 20, 2019. He was a beloved colleague, professor, and renowned Middle East expert. He is survived by his wife Deanna and son Timothy.
Augustus Richard Norton (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1984) was a professor of International Relations and Anthropology at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, as well as Director of the Institute for Iraqi Studies. He was also a Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As a faculty member at Boston University, Norton’s research interests focused on strategies of reform in authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and renewal in reformist Muslim thought.
Norton’s books include Hezbollah: A Short History, the two-volume collection Civil Society in the Middle East, Amal and the Shi’a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon , The International Relations of the PLO (senior editor), Political Tides in the Arab World (co-author), UN Peacekeepers (co-author), and Security in the Middle East: New Perspectives (in Arabic). His articles have appeared in Current History, Foreign Policy, International Spectator, Journal of Palestine Studies, Middle East Journal, The Nation, and in leading newspapers.
Arab Center Washington DC is grateful for Professor Norton’s support and notable contributions to our work, and to the field of Middle East studies in general. He will be dearly missed by his colleagues at Arab Center Washington DC and his friends around the world.
