Jacob Coleman Hurewitz (November 11, 1914 – May 16, 2008) was an American political scientist Hurewitz graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1936, then did his graduate work at Columbia, making what was then an unusual decision to concentrate on the Middle East. He worked for the Near East section of the

Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branc ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, then worked successively at the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

, as a political adviser on

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

to the President’s cabinet and for the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

secretariat. Professor Hurewitz began studying Middle Eastern politics in 1950, before the field had emerged as an academic discipline. From 1970 until 1984, Professor Hurewitz was director of the Columbia university's Middle East Institute, when he retired. In 1972, Hurewitz established the Columbia University Seminar on the Middle East, which he continued to chair until he was nearly 90. His publications influenced many other historians. For example,

Wm. Roger Louis William Roger Louis Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire, CBE Fellow of the British Academy, FBA (born May 8, 1936), commonly known as Wm. Roger Louis or, informally, Roger Louis, is an American historian and a professor at the ...

wrote in his book "The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951" (Clarendon, 1984) that "my views on Arab nationalism and Zionism, and on the United States and the Middle East, have been influenced by the sensitive and dead-on-the-mark observations of J. C. Hurewitz." Hurewitz, died on May 16, 2008, of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

. aged 93. The Hoover Institution Archives hold fourteen boxes of his papers.

Books

*''Soviet American Rivalry In The Middle East'', New York Columbia Univ Press (1969), ASIN B0023XB3IA *''The Struggle for Palestine, ACLS Humanities'' E-Book (2008), *''Soviet-American Rivalry in the middle East'', Praeger for The Academy of Political Science (1972), ASIN B00128M7W8 *''Oil, the Arab-Israel Dispute, and the Industrial World, Columbia University'', Westview Press, *''Persian Gulf: After Iran's Revolution'', Foreign Policy Assn, *''Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East A Documentary Record: Volume 1, 1535 - 1914; Volume 2 1914 - 1956'', D. Van Nostrand Company Inc. (1956), ASIN B000TLT4ES *''The Middle East and North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged; Volume 2, British-French Supremacy, 1914–1945'', Yale University Press (1979), *''Middle East Politics: The Military Dimension'', Frederick A. Praeger (1969); Westview Press (1982), *''Middle East Dilemmas'', Harper & Brothers (1953), *''Changing military perspectives in the Middle East'', Rand Corp. (1970), ASIN B0006C9IIC *''The road to partition: The Palestine problem, 1936–1948'', Norton (1950), ASIN B0006ASFPQ

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hurewitz, J. C. 1914 births 2008 deaths Columbia University faculty Trinity College (Connecticut) alumni People of the Office of Strategic Services Columbia University alumni United States Army personnel of World War II United States Army officers Military personnel from Hartford, Connecticut American orientalists Deaths from pneumonia in New York City Truman administration personnel American officials of the United Nations