The GLORIA Center
By Joy Pincus

The following article was published in the Herzliyan, spring 2008 issue.

IT IS 11PM IN ISRAEL and most citizens are winding down for the night if not already in bed, when the phone rings. Prof. Barry Rubin, founder and director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center at IDC Herzliya, answers on the second ring and knows within moments that there will be no sleep this night.

A voice on the other end is asking, on behalf of a high-ranking European official, for GLORIA to provide a brief on Lebanon on his desk by noon the next day. Rubin assures the man it will be there, hangs up the phone, and sets the wheels in motion. By the following morning the piece is done and sent off to a GLORIA staff member for translation into the recipient’s language. And by noon, it is on the desk of the person who today heads the country. 

According to Rubin, “That real-time response to a crisis is the difference between academia and research centers; it’s a different way of thinking. We have to meet high pressured deadlines and it has to correspond to reality, not theory. We have to combine decades of research with being completely up to the minute.”  

Readiness to Respond could very well be written on the banner of GLORIA, a research center that focuses on the Middle East and the relationship of North America, Europe and Asia to the region. Led by Rubin, who is one of the foremost minds in Middle East research today, GLORIA has not only won a reputation for providing high-quality, time-sensitive analysis of current events. It also reaches and is respected by a wide range of policy-makers, opinion-makers and the public alike.

“We want to have a real-world effect,” says Rubin. “I think that is very much in the spirit of IDC, and its new conception of a university as a place that seriously relates to and has a real effect on the world, on a ‘real-time basis’. Whereas traditional universities look on that as something negative - preferring to cloister themselves off from the world – that different approach is very much in President Uriel Reichman’s concept. Many universities are still in the nineteenth century and some are in the twentieth century, but the idea of IDC is to be a twenty-first century university.”

A great part of GLORIA’s success has been its founder’s enthusiasm for exploring the latest and most innovative techniques, and seeing how they can be applied to today’s research methods. One way in which GLORIA brings the latest technology and innovation to its research in Middle East affairs is the MERIA Journal (http://meria.idc.ac.il).

Twelve years ago, Rubin conceived of a journal that would be delivered by Internet – which is not to be confused with an Internet journal. This journal would be identical to any high-quality policy journal, with the exception that it would be available for free and on the Internet and emailed to subscribers. The idea grew into the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, which at a circulation of 23,000 is the most widely read Middle East journal in the world; the closest equivalent having a circulation of 4,000. MERIA is read by people throughout the globe, in virtually every country, including those in the Arab world who could never receive a journal by mail that originated in Israel. It also uses a broad base of international authors, many of whom come from Arab countries.

“MERIA is one example of innovation that’s in keeping with the spirit of IDC,” says Rubin.

Another is the series of videoconferences the center has produced over the last six years. Using experts from around the world, GLORIA creates virtual roundtable discussions on topics including the political situation in Iraq, the nuclear threat from Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some of these meetings are held with an invited audience; others are held behind closed doors to allow government officials who are participating to speak frankly. Most importantly, professionals and academics from around the world and who might otherwise not have met, can exchange ideas on topics of mutual interest.

Passionate about his work, Rubin, in his mid 50s, has already accomplished enough for several lifetimes. Born and raised in Washington D.C., he worked for several research centers there, including Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Johns Hopkins University and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy before making aliyah. He has lectured at a number of academic institutions throughout Israel and is a sought-after speaker throughout the world, from New Zealand to Italy to the United States. To date he has authored 22 books, and edited more than thirty, two of each with wife Judith Colp Rubin, mainly on topics concerning Middle East affairs. He is also the publisher and editor of the MERIA Journal; editor of Turkish Studies and Covenant, a new journal about Jewish affairs; and author of a weekly column about regional affairs for the Jerusalem Post. As if that were not enough, he is constantly in demand to give briefings for governments, universities and the public.

“In addition to publications and public meetings, there is a huge amount behind the scenes, including contacts and discussions with hundreds of people, some who live in places that don’t have relations with Israel, and that’s very important,” says Rubin. “I just found out that copies of my books have been translated into Arabic and smuggled into certain countries. Now usually you don’t like people to steal your book, but I felt this was the highest compliment one could have.”

Perhaps one of Rubin’s greatest gifts is inspiring the people around him to give their best. Over the last year alone he has commissioned some 150 people to write books or chapters, and has overseen production of some 20 books. Rubin credits a great deal of GLORIA’s success to the people involved, such as Dr. Reuven Paz, a senior research fellow at GLORIA who is also the founder and director of the Project for the Research of Islamic Movements (PRISM), and Keren Ribo, director of operations and chief administrator. Another strong contributor is Dr. Jonathan Spyer, who became a GLORIA research fellow some four years ago. Spyer, who writes regularly for the Guardian newspaper in the UK and Haaretz in Israel, has been involved in a number of projects with GLORIA, from writing book chapters and working on electronic print media work, to lecturing abroad at various conferences and institutions throughout the Unites States and Europe.

For Spyer, GLORIA is the perfect combination of research, on the one hand, and activism, on the other where, “You get to be involved in day-to-day advocacy…and also the development of ideas or issues. You have classical academics and pure journalists, and I think what we somehow manage to combine – for my taste – is a lot of the best sides of each.”

Yeru Aharoni, director of publications and chief editor, couldn’t agree more: “I think that we have a great atmosphere from Barry, who very much encourages people to grow and progress, to find their niche and figure out what they want to do and contribute in that way to the GLORIA center.”  As senior editor, Aharoni oversees all publications, from editing the MERIA Journal to dealing with publishers for GLORIA’s book projects and working with writers for MERIA in French, a companion to the MERIA Journal with all-original articles in French.

Based in Israel, GLORIA has truly become a global organization in every aspect. Seizing the fact that the high-tech revolution allows one to be located anywhere in the world and play a global role, Rubin has built a center in which the main players can be anywhere at any time, ready to respond to world events. “It’s totally different from the past,” explains Rubin. “Geography is what you make of it.”

And if another word was to be written on the GLORIA banner, it would have to be Quality. For despite the deluge of information about Middle East affairs available today on the Internet, Rubin insists that this is still what people look for, and what has earned GLORIA its reputation:

“You have to prove to people that you are worth their time; that you will give them something good. Time in the 21^st century is what money was in the 20^th century.”