I led an editorial team that surveyed 702 Arab higher education institutions and found that women led fewer than 7 percent of them. Nine Arab countries had no female academic leaders at all. This was the first time that the weak position of women in Arab academic leadership has been documented.

With my colleagues at Al-Fanar Media, I conceived and edited five articles that drew a portrait of the difficult work environment that Arab researchers face. Ninety-one percent of researchers surveyed wanted to leave the country they were working in. The editorial package drew coverage in a wide variety of publications, including Science, Times Higher Education, Morocco World News, and SciDev (in Arabic).

A longstanding theme of my editing career has been to carefully monitor how education is affected by broad social and economic trends. In this article I edited, my colleagues and I examined how the drive to use online education in the Middle East during the Covid-19 pandemic weakened access to education for girls, refugees, and students from low-income families.

Two articles I edited about students pursuing advanced degrees inside Syria created a detailed perspective of those who are trying to rise to the highest levels of academic achievement, in a nation coping with the effects of civil war. Despite facing enormous obstacles, Syrian students expressed a yearning to help their country through research, teaching, and community service.