WENDY PEARLMAN

Acclaimed Author + Scholar of Middle East Politics

wendy pearlman’s bio

Dr. Wendy Pearlman (she/her) is a scholar of Middle East politics and author of the critically-acclaimed We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, a breath-taking mosaic of first-hand Syrian testimonials that chronicles the Syrian uprising, war and refugee crisis, which was excerpted in Harper's and received glowing reviews from the New York Times, New Yorker, Guardian, and Chicago Review of Books, among other outlets and was longlisted for the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. Her follow-up book to We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled will be published in the summer of 2024. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora is drawn from hundreds of interviews with Syrian refugees after war forced millions of Syrians from their homes. It also forced them to rethink the meaning of home itself. Recasting the “refugee crises” as acts of diaspora-making, The Home I Worked to Make challenges readers to grapple with the hard-won wisdom of those who survive war and to see, with fresh eyes, what home means in their own lives.

Wendy earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Brown University and is currently a Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she also holds the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence. Frequently invited to give guest lectures on the Middle East, Wendy is a compelling speaker who has delivered hundreds of talks on four continents, making the most complex topics accessible to any audience. Addressing audiences ranging from retirees to high school students to students and scholars, 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.

Wendy has also written three highly lauded books related to Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict: Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada; Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement; and Triadic Coercion: Israel’s Targeting of States That Host Nonstate Actors (co-authored with Boaz Atzili). Her essays and articles have appeared in Time, Guernica, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Reuters. She frequently gives Palestine and Israel 101 talks at universities and other venues across the country.

Books by Wendy Pearlman

Wendy Pearlman in the media

Recent Articles Featuring Wendy Pearlman:

• The Erasure of Palestinian Society | New Lines Magazine

• The Conversation We Can’t Avoid About Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests | CNN

• We Don’t Have the Luxury to Stop | Middle East Report

• How the Syrian Uprising Began and Why It Matters | The Conversation

Podcasts with Wendy Pearlman: