中东和南亚语言与文化系提供两个跨学科专业，其特色是语言工作的核心和其他两个区域集中之一的附加课程工作：中东或南亚。并非所有集中课程都必须来自MESALC。例如，宗教研究部门开设的伊斯兰课程将计入中东或南亚地区的集中度。当前批准的集中课程列表按地区发布在这里：中东，南亚（有关当前学期课程的信息，请参阅学生信息系统）。在与他们的顾问协商后，学生也可以在他们所关注的地理区域之外上课，以算出他们的主要要求。
The Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures focuses on the deep historical ties between the many and varied cultures, religions, literatures, and languages of the Middle East (Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, United Arab Emirates), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia), and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Having crossed such wide-ranging intellectual and regional boundaries for several decades, being interdisciplinary and inter-regional by our very nature, we teach at least six languages at any given time (currently, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit, and Urdu, languages spoken by 32% of the world's population). We have an impressive array of expertise and specialization among our faculty members: Language Pedagogy, Literary Studies, Linguistics, Islamic Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Media Studies, Anthropology, Film Studies, Philology, and Gender Studies. We also have quite a heterogeneous faculty in terms of diverse demographics (American, Indian, Israeli, Iranian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Pakistani, Yemeni).