Middle Eastern Americans

Middle Eastern Americans are Americans of Middle Eastern background. According to the United States Census Bureau, the term "Middle Eastern American" applies to anyone of West Asian or North African origin. This includes people whose background is from the various Middle Eastern and West Asian ethnic groups, such as the Kurds and Assyrians, as well as immigrants from modern-day countries of the Arab world, Iran, Israel, Turkey, and sometimes Armenia.

Although once considered Asian Americans, the modern definition of "Asian American" now excludes people with West Asian backgrounds.

History

One of the first large groups of immigration from the Middle East to the United States came by boat from the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800s. Although U.S. officials referred to them as Turkish, most referred to themselves as Syrian, and it is estimated that 85 percent of these Ottoman immigrants came from modern Lebanon. Later, new categories were created for Syrians and Lebanese.

The number of Armenians who migrated to the US from 1820 to 1898 is estimated to be around 4,000 and according to the Bureau of Immigration, 54,057 Armenians entered the US between 1899 and 1917, with the vast majority coming from the Ottoman Empire. The largest Armenian American communities at that time were located in New York City; Fresno; Worcester, Massachusetts; Boston; Philadelphia; Chicago; Jersey City; Detroit; Los Angeles; Troy, New York; and Cleveland.

Another wave of immigration from the Middle East began in 1946, peaking after the 1960s. Since 1968, these immigrants have arrived from such countries as Iran, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon.

Population

The population of Middle Eastern Americans totals at least 10 million. In 2012 Pew Research estimated the population of Arab Americans to be 3.7 million people) and in 2014 the U.S. Secretary of Commerce stated that there were over 1 million Turkish Americans in the U.S.

The population of Middle Eastern Americans includes both Arabs and non-Arabs. In their definitions of Middle Eastern Americans, United States Census Bureau and the National Health Interview Survey include peoples (diasporic or otherwise) from present-day Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Armenia.

As of 2013, an estimated 1.02 million immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) lived in the United States, making up 2.5 percent of the country's 41.3 million immigrants. Middle Eastern and North African immigrants have primarily settled in California (20%), Michigan (11%), and New York (10%). Data from the United States Census Bureau shows that from 2009 to 2013, the four counties with the most MENA immigrants were Los Angeles County, California; Wayne County, Michigan (Detroit), Cook County, Illinois (Chicago), and Kings County, New York (Brooklyn); these four counties collectively "accounted for about 19 percent of the total MENA immigrant population in the United States."

By ethnicity

Although the United States census has recorded race and ethnicity since the first census in 1790, this information has been voluntary since the end of the Civil War ( non-whites were counted differently from 1787 to 1868 for the purpose of determining congressional representation). As such, these statistics do not include those who did not volunteer this optional information, and so the census underestimates the total populations of each ethnicity actually present.

Although tabulated, "religious responses" were reported as a single total and not differentiated, despite totaling 1,089,597 in 2000.

Independent organizations provide improved estimates of the total populations of races and ethnicities in the US using the raw data from the US Census and other surveys.

Similarly, the Arab American Institute estimated the population of Arab Americans at 3.7 million in 2012.

According to a 2002 Zogby International survey, the majority of Arab Americans are Christian; the survey showed that 24% of Arab Americans were Muslim, 63% were Christian and 13% belonged to another religion or no religion. Christian Arab Americans include Maronites, Melkites, Chaldeans, Orthodox Christians, and Copts; Muslim Arab Americans primarily adhere to one of the two main Islamic denominations, Sunni and Shia.

Notable people

Academia

* Elias J. Corey, organic chemistry professor at Harvard University, winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Lebanese parents)
* Ahmed Zewail, Egyptian American scientist, known as the "father of femtochemistry", winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
*Michael E. DeBakey, pioneering Lebanese American cardiovascular surgeon and researcher, 1963 Lasker Award laureate
* Omar M. Yaghi, Jordanian American reticular chemistry pioneer; winner of the 2018 Wolf Prize in Chemistry
* Mostafa El-Sayed, Egyptian American US National Medal of Science laureate; leading nanoscience researcher; known for the spectroscopy rule named after him, the El-Sayed rule
* Farouk El-Baz Egyptian American space scientist who worked with NASA to assist in the planning of scientific exploration of the Moon
* Huda Zoghbi, Lebanese American physician and medical researcher who discovered the genetic cause of the Rett syndrome
* Huda Akil, pioneering Syrian American neuroscientist and medical researcher
* Yasmine Belkaid, Algerian American immunologist, professor and a senior investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
* Hunein Maassab, Syrian American professor of epidemiology and the inventor of the live attenuated influenza vaccine
* Joanne Chory, plant biologist and geneticist (Lebanese)
* Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (Lebanese)
* Noureddine Melikechi, Algerian American Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physicist, member of the Mars Science Laboratory
*Michel T. Halbouty, Lebanese American geologist and geophysicist; pioneer in oil field research
* Adah al-Mutairi (Saudi Arabian), inventor and scholar in nanotechnology and nanomedicine
* M. Amin Arnaout, Lebanese American nephrologist and biologist
* Essam Heggy, Egyptian American Planetary scientist
* Shadia Habbal, Syrian American astronomer and physicist specialized in Space physics
*Mohamed Atalla, engineer, inventor of MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor), pioneer in silicon semiconductors and security systems, founder of Atalla Corporation
* Charles Elachi, Lebanese American professor of electrical engineering and planetary science at Caltech and the former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
* Fawwaz T. Ulaby Syrian American professor of electrical engineering and computer science, former vice president of research for the University of Michigan; first Arab American winner of the IEEE Edison Medal
*Taher ElGamal, Egyptian American cryptographer, inventor of the ElGamal discrete log cryptosystem and the ElGamal signature scheme
* Ali H. Nayfeh, Palestinian American mechanical engineer, the 2014 recipient of Benjamin Franklin Medal in mechanical engineering
* Dina Katabi, Syrian American professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and the director of the MIT Wireless Center.
*Abbas El Gamal, Egyptian American electrical engineer, educator and entrepreneur, the recipient of the 2012 Claude E. Shannon Award
* Oussama Khatib, roboticist and a professor of computer science
* Elias Zerhouni, former director of the National Institutes of Health (Algerian)
* Hassan Kamel Al-Sabbah, Lebanese American technology innovator. He received 43 patents covering his work. Among the patents were reported innovations in television transmission.
* Mohammad S. Obaidat (Jordanian), computer science/engineering academic and scholar
*Charbel Farhat, Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures; Director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center; Chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University (Lebanese)
* Hany Farid, professor of computer science at Dartmouth College, pioneer in Digital forensics (Egyptian)
*Ahmed Tewfik, Egyptian American electrical engineer, Professor and college administrator
* Munther A. Dahleh, professor and director at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Palestinian)
* Ismail al-Faruqi, philosopher, professor (Palestinian)
* Fouad Ajami, professor of international relations (Lebanese)
* Saddeka Arebi, professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley (Libyan)
*Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America (Sudanese)
*Samih Farsoun, sociology professor at the American University (Palestinian)
*Philip Khuri Hitti, historian of Arab culture and history (Lebanese)
* Philip S. Khoury, Ford International professor of history and associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Lebanese)
*Laura Nader, cultural anthropologist (Lebanese)
*Edward Said, Palestinian-Lebanese American literary theorist and former professor at Columbia University
*Ahmed Ismail Samatar, prominent writer, professor and former dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College; Somali ancestry
* Nada Shabout, art historian and professor of art history at University of North Texas (Palestinian-Iraqi)
* Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor of political science at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (Palestinian)
* Nadia Abu El Haj, author and professor of anthropology at Barnard College and subject of a major tenure controversy case at Columbia University (Palestinian)
* Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, former director of Graduate Studies at Northwestern University, father of Lila Abu-Lughod (Palestinian)
* Lila Abu-Lughod, professor of anthropology and women's and gender studies at Columbia University (Palestinian)
* Leila Farsakh, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (Palestinian)
* Samih Farsoun, professor of sociology at American University and editor of ''Arab Studies Quarterly'' (Palestinian)
* Nadia Hijab, Journalist with ''Middle East Magazine'' and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies (Palestinian)
* Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University (Palestinian-Lebanese)
* Joseph Massad, professor at Columbia University known for his work on nationalism and sexuality in the Arab world (Palestinian)
* Hisham Sharabi professor emeritus of history and Umar al-Mukhtar Chair of Arab Culture at Georgetown University (Palestinian)
* Rosemarie Said Zahlan, historian, journalist, and author, sister of Edward Said (Palestinian-Lebanese)
* Steven Salaita, former professor of English at Virginia Tech, winner of Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights 2007 (Palestinian)
* Majid Khadduri, academic and founder of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Middle East Studies program (Iraqi)
* Thomas L. Saaty, Assyrian-Iraqi University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh
* Ella Shohat, professor, author and activist (Iraqi-Jewish)
* Saadi Simawe, translator, novelist and teacher (Iraqi)
* Aziz Sancar, biochemist and molecular biologist specializing in DNA repair, cell cycle checkpoints, and circadian clock. Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2015 (Turkish)
* Donny George Youkhanna, Iraqi archaeologist, anthropologist, author, curator, and scholar, and a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in New York, internationally known as "the man who saved the Iraqi National Museum."
*Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, teaches religion, science, and freedom at the University of Maryland, College Park; directs the Minaret of Freedom Institute (Palestinian)
*Muhsin Mahdi, Iraqi American Islamologist and Arabist.
* Talal Asad, anthropologist at the CUNY Graduate Center. (Saudi Arabian)
*Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University (Syrian)
*Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami (Lebanese)
*Joseph E. Aoun, president of Northeastern University (Lebanese)
* Robert Khayat, chancellor of the University of Mississippi (Lebanese)
* Behnaam Aazhang, J. S. Abercrombie Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University (Iranian)
* Kamyar Abdi, archaeologist, former assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College (Iranian)
* Alexander Abian, mathematician, Iowa State University (Iranian-Armenian)
*Mohammad Javad Abdolmohammadi, John E. Rhodes Professor of Accounting at Bentley University since 1988. (Iranian)
*Ervand Abrahamian, historian of Middle Eastern (particularly Iranian) history at City University of New York (Iranian)
* Janet Afary, author, feminist activist, and professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (Iranian)
* Gholam Reza Afkhami, senior scholar and director of Social Science Research and International Studies at the Foundation for Iranian Studies
*Shahriar Afshar, physicist and inventor who is the namesake of the Afshar experiment
* Newsha Ajami, hydrologist specializing in urban water policy and sustainable water management; professor and director of Urban Water Policy program at Stanford University
*Abass Alavi, professor of radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania
*Leonardo Alishan, professor of Persian and Comparative Literature at the University of Utah (1978–1997)
* Abbas Alizadeh, archeologist of ancient Iran; former senior research associate and director of the Iranian Prehistoric Project at the University of Chicago
* Abbas Amanat, professor of history and international studies at Yale University
* Hooshang Amirahmadi, academic and political analyst. Professor of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University
* Nahid Angha, Sufi scholar,. Co-director and co-founder of the International Association of Sufism (IAS), founder of the International Sufi Women Organization, and executive editor of the journal ''Sufism: An Inquiry''
* Anousheh Ansari, first Iranian in space and the first female space tourist;
*Nima Arkani-Hamed, theoretical physicist and professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey
*Abbas Ardehali, surgical director of UCLA's Heart and Lung Transplant program
* Saïd Amir Arjomand, professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, and director of the Stony Brook Institute of Global Studies. Founding editor of the ''Journal of Persianate Studies''
* Yahya Armajani, professor of history and soccer coach at Macalester College
*Reza Aslan, scholar of religious studies, television host, and author of '' No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam'' and '' Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth''. Currently a professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside. Board member of the National Iranian American Council (NAIC)
*Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, structural engineer and professor at University of California, Berkeley; investigated the collapse of the World Trade Center towers due to the September 11 attacks
* Fakhreddin Azimi, professor of history at the University of Connecticut
* Babak Azizzadeh, facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Keck School of Medicine of USC
* Sussan Babaie, art historian and curator, specialist in Persian art and Islamic art of the early modern period.especially the Safavid dynasty
*Shaul Bakhash, historian, expert in Iranian studies, George Mason University, Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History
*Laleh Bakhtiar, author and translator of 25 books about Islam, many of which deal with Sufism. She is best known for her 2007 translation of the Qur'an, known as ''The Sublime Quran'',
* Mehrsa Baradaran, law professor specializing in banking law at University of Georgia
*Iraj Bashiri, professor of history at the University of Minnesota specialist in the fields of Central Asian studies and Iranian studies
* Asef Bayat, professor of sociology and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
*Manuel Berberian, earth scientist, specializing in earthquake seismology, geophysics, archaeoseismology, and environmental geoscience
* Mina Bissell, scientist and biologist known for research on breast cancer; former head of life science at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
*George Bournoutian, historian, professor of history at Iona College, and author of over 30 books on the history of Armenia, Iran, and the Caucasus
*Jennifer Tour Chayes, mathematical physicist and theoretical computer scientist, and world renowned leading expert on the modeling & analysis of dynamically growing graphs. Founder, Technical Fellow, & Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England & Microsoft Research New York
* Houchang Chehabi, historian, expert in Iranian studies at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, where he is professor of international relations and History
* Aaron Cohen-Gadol, internationally renowned neurosurgeon specializing in surgical treatment of brain tumors and aneurysms
*Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University in New York City
* Jaleh Daie, scientist, former professor of biology and department chairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Rutgers University
* Richard Danielpour, professor of composition, Manhattan School of Music
*Touraj Daryaee, Iranologist and historian at the University of California, Irvine
* Armen Der Kiureghian, professor of civil engineering at University of California, Berkeley, member of U.S. National Academy of Engineering, current president of the American University of Armenia
* Sibel Edmonds, former translator who worked as a contractor for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC)
* Azita Emami, Andrew and Peggy Cherng professor of electrical engineering and medical engineering at Caltech; Executive Officer of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Caltech
* Nader Engheta, H. Nedwill Ramsey professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He has made pioneering contributions to the fields of metamaterials, transformation and plasmonic optics, nano- and graphene photonics, optical rectenna, nano- and miniature antennas, and bio-inspired optical imaging, among many others
* Dara Entekhabi, Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences at MIT. His main expertise is in the field of hydrology.
*Haleh Esfandiari, Middle East scholar and former director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is an expert on contemporary Iranian intellectual currents and politics, as well as women's issues and democratic developments in the Middle East. She was one of the four Iranian Americans falsely convicted and detained by the Iranian government in May 2007.
* Kamran Eshraghian, electrical engineer, notable for his work on VLSI and CMOS VLSI design
*Fariba Fahroo, mathematician, program manager at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Along with I. M. Ross, she has published papers in pseudospectral optimal control theory. The Ross–Fahroo lemma and the Ross–Fahroo pseudospectral method are named after her
* Fereydoon Family, leading physicist in the field of nanotechnology and solid-state physics. He is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Physics at Emory University
*Allah Verdi Mirza Farman Farmaian, professor and head of Biology department at Rutgers University
*Sattareh Farmanfarmaian, founder and director of the Tehran School of Social Work. Co-founder of the Family Planning Association of Iran, and former vice-president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation
*Alimorad Farshchian, medical doctor, medical author, and founder and director of The Center of Regenerative Medicine in Miami, Florida
* Nariman Farvardin, president of Stevens Institute of Technology, and former provost of University of Maryland
*Bobak Ferdowsi, systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; served on the ''Cassini–Huygens'' and Mars Science Laboratory ''Curiosity'' mission.
* Alexander L. George (born Alexander L. Givargis), behavioral scientist specialist in the psychological effects of nuclear crisis management, Graham H. Stuart professor emeritus of political science at Stanford University
* Mohammadreza Ghadiri, chemist and professor of chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute. Awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 1998
* Roozbeh Ghaffari, inventor, bioelectronics entrepreneur, biomedical engineering research faculty at Northwestern University
*Zoubin Ghahramani, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge
* Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, professor of religion at Reed College, and author of ''A History of Islam in America'' and ''Competing Visions of Islam in the United States''.
*M.R. Ghanoonparvar, professor emeritus of Persian and comparative literature at the faculty of Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas, Austin
*Morteza Gharib, Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Bio-Inspired Engineering at Caltech.
*Jamshid Gharajedaghi, organizational theorist, management consultant, & adjunct professor of Systems thinking at Villanova University. B
* John Ghazvinian, author, historian and former journalist. Associate Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
* Doreen Granpeesheh, clinical psychologist, and producer of the documentary '' Recovered: Journeys Through the Autism Spectrum and Back''.
*Vartan Gregorian, president of The Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of Brown University
* Mohammad Hajiaghayi, computer scientist known for his work in algorithms, game theory, network design, and big data. Jack and Rita G. Minker professor at the University of Maryland Dept. of Computer Science.
* Ali Hajimiri, inventor, technologist, and Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering at Caltech. Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI)
* Reza Hamzaee, economist and BOG-Distinguished Professor of Economics at Missouri Western State University. Specialist in banking and managerial economics
* Babak Hassibi, electrical engineer, the inaugural Mose and Lillian S. Bohn Professor of Electrical Engineering. Specialist in communications, signal processing and control.
*Payam Heydari, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of California, Irvine
* Shireen Hunter, research professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.
*Ahmad Iravani, philosopher, scholar, and clergyman. Professor of theology at the University of California, Davis. Founder, president, and executive director of "Center for the Study of Islam and the Middle East"
*Ali Jadbabaie, systems theorist, network scientist, and the JR East Professor of Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Ali Jafari, professor of computer and information technology at Purdue University, director of the CyberLab at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
*Hamid Jafarkhani, leading communication theorist and chancellor's professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Irvine
* Ramin Jahanbegloo, philosopher at University of Toronto
* Farnam Jahanian, computer scientist and the 10th president of Carnegie Mellon University
* Ali Javan, physicist, inventor of gas laser; Professor Emeritus of Physics at MIT
*Hassan Jawahery, physicist, former spokesman of the BaBar Collaboration, and professor of physics at the University of Maryland
* Majd Kamalmaz, psychotherapist who has been illegally detained in Syria since 2017
*Sepandar Kamvar

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases