David W. Lesch, Professor and Chair | PhD

David Lesch is Professor of Middle East History in the Department of History. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. (1991) in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. In May of 2008, Dr. Lesch was recognized by Trinity for his outstanding research. Click here to view narrative.

Publications

• The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History, Oxford University Press, 2007
• The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria, Yale University Press, 2005
• Syria and the United States: Eisenhower's Cold War in the Middle East, Westview Press, 1992
• The Middle East and the United States: A Historical and Political Reassessment (editor, Westview Press, 1996, 1999, 2003, 4th edition, 2006)
• 1979: The Year that Shaped the Modern Middle East, Westview Press, 2001
• The two-volume edited work, History in Dispute: The Middle East Since 1945, Volumes 14 and 15, St. James Press, 2003
• The United States in the Middle East: An Interpretative History, Blackwell Publishing, forthcoming 2009.

Lesch has published numerous articles in leading journals in the field and chapters in books. Dr. Lesch has commented on Middle East issues on local and network radio and television programs as well as such national broadcasts as The History Channel, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and MSNBC, and he is a regular commentator on National Public Radio, Christian Science Monitor Radio, BBC and CBS Radio. He has traveled widely in the Middle East and Europe on scholarly, business, and diplomatic endeavors, and he is a frequent consultant to various U.S. government departments. Dr. Lesch was also president of Middle East International Business Associates, Inc., a consulting company that facilitated business opportunities in the Middle East for American companies--among his clients were a number of Fortune 500 corporations. He was also the number one draft pick of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball club in 1980 as a pitcher.

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