Endowment Boosts International Democracy Studies
An estate endowment by former history and political science faculty members supports student research on democracy in the Middle East.
The Louay Bahry and Phebe Marr Middle Eastern Democracy Studies Endowment will establish a scholarship to reward the best undergraduate or graduate student essays on topics of democracy in the Middle East.
Bahry served as an adjunct professor with the Department of Political Science for many years and Marr, his wife, was a professor in the Department of History from 1974 to 1984. After she passed away in December 2024, Bahry established the $200,000 estate gift in both their names.
Bahry, who turns 92 this year, and Marr built their expertise on Middle Eastern affairs over decades of research, field work, and policy consultation with multiple presidential administrations. Marr published her book The Modern History of Iraq while teaching at UT. Bahry published extensively on topics surrounding Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East as an adjunct professor from 1978 until his retirement in 2016.
“Phebe helped increase awareness and knowledge of Middle East issues among her students,” said Bahry. “I want to inspire the students to further their studies and do research on the topic of democracy in the Middle East.”
Fond memories of their time teaching and making professional and personal connections at UT led Bahry and Marr to create such a purposeful endowment.
“Faculty and staff were very welcoming and helpful to me,” said Bahry. “Some faculty members invited me to lecture in the classes and I appreciated them profoundly. Phebe was very popular among all the members of the history and political science departments. She would especially have liked to acknowledge Dean Landon, Mike Simpson, Alexi Smith, Tom Ungst, Robert Cunningham, Vernon Iradell, and Douglas Carlisle.”
Professor Brandon Prins, head of the political science department, sees great value in this scholarship for students looking to offer fresh ideas about how democracies can adapt and thrive.
“While many current debates about democracy are inward-looking, an essay award on democratization invites comparative and historical analysis, reminding us that democracy has never been static,” said Prins. “It has evolved, regressed, and reinvented itself across regions and centuries. Supporting such research helps put today’s challenges in context and reveals lessons from other societies’ democratic struggles. Further, an award that spotlights research on democratization signals that understanding and strengthening democracy is not only an academic pursuit but an urgent civic need.”
Associate Professor Matt Buehler, chair of the Middle East Studies program, sees the award as a way for students to connect classroom insights with complex, real-world international dynamics and present potentially transformative ideas through their work.
“The Middle East and North Africa region—and particularly the Arab countries—have been resistant to trends in democratization that we’ve seen in other places, like Eastern Europe and Latin America,” said Buehler. “This paper prize encourages UT students to learn more about the stalled democratization process in this region, which is critically important to US diplomatic and trade relations. It will provide students, especially graduate students, essential resources to help them conduct fieldwork in the Middle East or develop other critical skills, like learning Arabic.”
by Randall Brown