J. C. Hurewitz

Jacob Coleman Hurewitz (November 11, 1914 – May 16, 2008) was a professor emeritus in the political science department at Columbia University.

Hurewitz graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1936, then did his graduate work at Columbia, making what was then an unusual decision to concentrate on the Middle East. He worked for the Near East section of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, then worked successively at the State Department, as a political adviser on Palestine to the President’s cabinet and for the United Nations secretariat. Professor Hurewitz began studying Middle Eastern politics in 1950, before the field had emerged as an academic discipline. From 1970 until 1984, Professor Hurewitz was director of the Columbia university's Middle East Institute, when he retired. In 1972, Hurewitz established the Columbia University Seminar on the Middle East, which he continued to chair until he was nearly 90.