IN: Bernard Lewis, FBA (born 31 May 1916) is a British American historian specializing in oriental studies. He is also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Lewis' expertise is in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West.

Lewis' influence extends beyond academia to the general public. He is a pioneer of the social and economic history of the Middle East and is famous for his extensive research of the Ottoman archives. He began his research career with the study of medieval Arab, especially Syrian, history. His first article, dedicated to professional guilds of medieval Islam, had been widely regarded as the most authoritative work on the subject for about thirty years. However, after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, scholars of Jewish origin found it more and more difficult to conduct archival and field research in the Arab countries, where they were suspected of espionage. Therefore, Lewis switched to the study of the Ottoman Empire, while continuing to research Arab history through the Ottoman archives which had only recently been opened to Western researchers. A series of articles that Lewis published over the next several years revolutionized the history of the Middle East by giving a broad picture of Islamic society, including its government, economy, and demographics.  Lewis argues that the Middle East is currently backward and its decline was a largely self-inflicted condition resulting from both culture and religion, as opposed to the post-colonialist view which posits the problems of the region as economic and political maldevelopment mainly due to the 19th-century European colonization. In his 1982 work Muslim Discovery of Europe, Lewis argues that Muslim societies could not keep pace with the West and that "Crusader successes were due in no small part to Muslim weakness." Further, he suggested that as early as the 11th century Islamic societies were decaying, primarily the byproduct of internal problems like "cultural arrogance," which was a barrier to creative borrowing, rather than external pressures like the Crusades.  In the wake of Soviet and Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel as a racist country, Lewis wrote a study of anti-Semitism, Semites and Anti-Semites (1986). In other works he argued Arab rage against Israel was disproportionate to other tragedies or injustices in the Muslim world, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and control of Muslim-majority land in Central Asia, the bloody and destructive fighting during the Hama uprising in Syria (1982), the Algerian civil war (1992-98), and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88).  In addition to his scholarly works, Lewis wrote several influential books accessible to the general public: The Arabs in History (1950), The Middle East and the West (1964), and The Middle East (1995). In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the interest in Lewis's work surged, especially his 1990 essay The Roots of Muslim Rage. Three of his books were published after 9/11: What Went Wrong? (written before the attacks), which explored the reasons of the Muslim world's apprehension of (and sometimes outright hostility to) modernization; The Crisis of Islam; and Islam: The Religion and the People.

which part of the middle east did he study

OUT: extensive research of the Ottoman archives.


IN: Kelis Rogers was born and raised in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in the Frederick Douglass Houses. Her first name is a portmanteau of her father's name, Kenneth (1944-2000), and her mother's name, Eveliss. Her father Kenneth was an African American jazz musician and Pentecostal minister, and was formerly a professor at Wesleyan University. Her mother Eveliss is a Chinese-Puerto Rican fashion designer who inspired Kelis to pursue her singing career.

Kelis contributed a track titled "80's Joint" to the soundtrack of the 2006 dance film Step Up. She collaborated with Busta Rhymes and will.i.am on the track "I Love My Bitch", the second single from Rhymes's 2006 album The Big Bang. This was the second time Kelis teamed up with Rhymes, the first being his 2001 song "What It Is".  Kelis's fourth studio album, Kelis Was Here, was released in August 2006, and debuted and peaked at number ten on the Billboard 200. Despite the career-high debut, the album has sold only 157,000 copies in the United States as of 2007, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Its lead single, "Bossy" (featuring Too Short), achieved frequent airplay on urban radio and was a moderate hit in the U.S., peaking at number 16. "Bossy" went multi-platinum as a mobile phone ringtone, according to the RIAA. Kelis Was Here was nominated for Best Contemporary R&B Album at the 2007 Grammy Awards.  The second single released from the album by her American label, Jive, was a collaboration with Nas, "Blindfold Me". The song missed the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 91 on the R&B chart. Her European label, Virgin, instead released the Cee-Lo-featuring "Lil Star", which was another hit for Kelis in the United Kingdom, peaking at number three. In the UK, Kelis Was Here charted at number 41 and has sold 60,000 copies, earning a silver certification from the BPI. In Australia, the album reached number 96 on the ARIA Albums Chart and the track "I Don't Think So" was used in promotion for the 2008 season of the reality series Big Brother Australia. The song subsequently peaked at number 27 on the ARIA chart and became a top ten urban hit. During mid 2007, Kelis toured in Europe, appearing in numerous festivals across the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, such as Wireless, Rise and Gurtenfestival. Ford chose Kelis to help advertise the 2007 Ford Edge, and she recorded a theme song for the commercial, entitled "Push It to the Edge", with help from producer Scott Storch.  According to Kelis, she received no support from Jive Records for Kelis Was Here, and the label dropped her in late 2007. Her manager at the time said that the singer was working with Cee-Lo Green on an alternative dance album and would be shopping a pop album produced by songwriter Guy Chambers, who co-wrote hits such as Robbie Williams's "Angels". Scottish electronica producer Calvin Harris was also said to be collaborating with her. Kelis later said of this period, "I was like, 'I will never put out another record again, I hate this business, I hate all these people.' I was in this race that I didn't even realise that I was in. I woke up and ten years had passed. That was never my plan". She subsequently took a hiatus from music.  After Kelis left Jive, the label released a fourteen-track greatest hits album entitled The Hits in March 2008. The album does not contain any previously unreleased songs; Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Got Your Money", N.E.R.D's "Truth or Dare", and Richard X's "Finest Dreams" appear on the album alongside every charted Kelis single to that date, with the exception of "Blindfold Me".

was there a number one single on the album?

OUT:
the track "I Don't Think So" was used in promotion for the 2008 season of the reality series Big Brother Australia.