In this edition of the journal, the Ostour Symposium offers an overview of the International Academic Conference hosted in 2015 by the Department of Humanities at Qatar University , which surveyed the changes to academic history across Arab national universities over five decades. The symposium on The Teaching of History in Universities and Higher Education Institutes: Visions, Curricula and Subjects, which was held on November 25 - 26, 2015 , offered scholars an opportunity to discuss the changes to the academic study of history as well as the interfaces of history with the other social sciences and humanities. The four papers included in this edition of Ostour look at how these issues affect the teaching of history in Arab universities, with special reference to educational plans, the status of “world history” within history curricula, universities in the Gulf and how they approach proscribed topics in Gulf History, and the periodization of historical pedagogy in universities in the Arab Maghreb.