Ira M. Lapidus
| Ira M. Lapidus | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
June 9, 1937 Brooklyn, New York |
| Occupation | Professor Emeritus of History, Author |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Subject | Middle Eastern and Islamic History |
| Notable works | A History of Islamic Societies |
| Spouse | Brenda Webster |
| Website | |
| history |
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Ira M. Lapidus is an Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic History at The University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of A History of Islamic Societies, and Contemporary Islamic Movements in Historical Perspective, among other works.
Lapidus was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He was born to immigrant parents, who instilled a sense of the value of education in him and his brother. He attended Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, where a history teacher helped him prepare for admissions tests and suggested he pursue Asian history studies.
Lapidus went on to college and graduate school at Harvard. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he took a course in Middle Eastern history taught by Sir Hamilton Gibb. He enjoyed the class and liked the instructor, who encouraged him to pursue social sciences in addition to history. Lapidus continued taking classes in Middle Eastern and Islamic history, and upon graduation entered a career in academia.
Professor Lapidus began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1965. He primarily taught courses about early Islamic history and Modern Middle East history, but also courses on the history of the Mediterranean and Islam in South and South East Asia. In graduate seminars he taught Islamic history and courses on social science concepts and methods for historians. He has trained graduate students in History, Anthropology, Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Political Science, Geography and other disciplines. Professor Lapidus has also lectured widely to public audiences, and has frequently been interviewed for television, radio and newspaper articles.
Professor Lapidus was for many years Chairman of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley. He is a past president and director of the Middle East Studies Association (1984), and has served on numerous professional administrative, advisory and review committees including Visiting Committees for Georgetown and Harvard Universities, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a member of United States Middle East Studies delegation to Peoples' Republic of China. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban History, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and the Journal of Early Modern Europe.
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