Since President Barack Obama is much different than American presidents before him, he has the ability to appeal to the Arab audience, Middle East Centre Director at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford said.

Eugene Rogan spoke about Obama and his policies in the Arab World at a seminar hosted by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Monday night at Harvard University to about 40 attendees.

‘The Arab world was looking for a major change in American policy,’ Rogan said.

Obama’s speech at Cairo University on June 4 received a positive reaction from the Arab world, Rogan said. They ‘expected great things from Barack Obama,’ he said. The Arab world believed Obama ‘might actually share some of their values.’

Rogan said after Obama’s speech, there was an increase in American approval in the Middle East.

Several polls taken at the time showed that many Arab nations had a more positive view of the United States after the speech, Rogan said.

Rogan also spoke about the importance of history in trying to solve problems in the Middle East.

‘Western policy makers need to pay more attention to history,’ He said.

Rogan discussed three of the seven issues that Obama’s speech addressed: America’s security, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and democracy, all of which he said are historically important.

Obama gained support when he promised to withdraw troops from Iraq by 2012, Rogan said. The majority of U.S. invasions into a Middle Eastern country were unpopular and unsuccessful.

Obama faced a greater challenge when addressing Palestinians, as there has been an important decline in Palestinian support of the United States, Rogan said.

The Obama administration restated U.S. commitment to Israel, but also expressed a desire in restarting peace talks with the goal of reaching a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a Nov.18 Daily Free Press article.

Obama said Israel had to acknowledge Palestine’s right to have settlements, Rogan said.

Rogan also spoke about democracy, stating that there is a ‘misconception that Arabs are opposed to democracy or representative government,’ he said.

Looking at history, Rogan said this is not true and that democracy was initially encouraged in many nations, but ultimately was not adopted.

Rogan said the danger in addressing so many problems at once is that no progress can be made on any of them.

‘The administration will have to choose which problems to tackle,’ he said.

Harvard University graduate student Scott Liddle said he was glad he attended the event, and was interested about Rogan’s suggested solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.’

‘It sounded interesting,’ he said. ‘It seemed like intuitively the right thing to do.’