Prof. Philip S. Khoury

Philip S. Khoury is Associate Provost and Ford International Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Professor Khoury was born and raised in Washington, D.C. and educated at the Sidwell Friends School, the American University of Beirut, Trinity College, and Harvard University (Ph.D., 1980).  He joined the MIT Faculty in 1981.  He served as MIT’sDean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences between 1991 and 2006, and was appointed Kenan Sahin Dean in 2002 and Associate Provost in 2006.

Professor Khoury, as Associate Provost, is responsible for overseeing MIT’s non-curricular arts programs and initiatives, including the MIT Museum and the List Visual Arts Center, and MIT’s strategic planning for international education and research. Also reporting to him is MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) Publishing Initiative.

Professor Khoury is a historian of the Middle East.  Among his publications are Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism; Syria and the French Mandate, which received the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association; Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East; The Modern MiddleEast: A Reader; and Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post-war Reconstruction. 

Professor Khoury is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  He is a past President of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).  He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Beirut and of the World Peace Foundation.  He is Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Trinity College, Trustee of the National Humanities Center, and an Overseer of Koç University in Istanbul.  He has received the American University of Beirut Distinguished Alumni Award and the Trinity College Alumni Medal for Excellence.