Over the past decade, academic departments across campus have prioritized hiring faculty who specialize in the Middle East and/or North Africa region. The 28 faculty are members of the departments of History, Literature, Feminist Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, History of Consciousness, Latin American and Latino Studies, Politics, Anthropology, History of Art and Visual Culture, Film and Digital Media, Environmental Studies, and Computational Media. These tenured or tenure-track ladder-rank faculty span the divisions of Humanities, Social Sciences, Arts, and Engineering.
The presence of faculty who specialize in MENA has resulted in a significant increase in the number of graduate students who specialize in the Middle East and/or North Africa. There are currently more than 25 graduate students associated with CMENA. UC Santa Cruz has supported these graduate students with prestigious fellowships and competitive funding packages