Jacob Coleman Hurewitz (November 11, 1914 – May 16, 2008) was an American political scientist Hurewitz graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1936, then did his graduate work at Columbia, making what was then an unusual decision to concentrate on the Middle East.
Professor Hurewitz began studying Middle Eastern politics in 1950, before the field had emerged as an academic discipline.
From 1970 until 1984, Professor Hurewitz was director of the Columbia university's Middle East Institute, when he retired.
In 1972, Hurewitz established the Columbia University Seminar on the Middle East, which he continued to chair until he was nearly 90.
Roger Louis wrote in his book "The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951" (Clarendon, 1984) that "my views on Arab nationalism and Zionism, and on the United States and the Middle East, have been influenced by the sensitive and dead-on-the-mark observations of J. C.