Over the past months the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of many scholars, students and others involved in Middle East studies in the United States. Among other things it has exacerbated the difficulties that many in this and other academic fields were already experiencing in terms of their ability to pursue study and research, to travel, live and work in parts of the Middle East, and to secure academic employment. But these issues are also impacted by the severe challenges that higher education in the U.S. faces, the country’s deepening sociopolitical and economic crises, and the decline of American hegemony in the region on which this field focuses along with ongoing conflicts and struggles there. In the years ahead all these intersecting factors are likely to reshape the contours of this field, along with many others in the humanities and social sciences