What do people sound like when they are speaking honestly?
The Majlis takes its name from the Arabic word majlis (مجلس): a room where people gather to talk. A place where people leave carrying pieces of each other’s thinking home with them.
The publication began between two Gulf students in New York City who kept finding themselves inside conversations they could not stop thinking about afterward. Conversations in apartments after midnight. Walking back from class. Sitting across from people who had built extraordinary lives and realizing the most important things they said were often spoken almost casually, in between everything else.
No one was preserving those moments.
So we decided to.
The Majlis is an independent interview publication documenting conversations with people shaping culture, politics, business, science, academia, and public life across the world. We care about the way people arrive at their beliefs. The experiences that change them. The questions they cannot fully answer yet. The thoughts they return to repeatedly.
Co-Founders
Areej, Columbia University
May, Columbia University
As students at Columbia University, they founded The Majlis as a way to engage with the intellectual and cultural pulse of New York City, creating a globally minded platform that overcomes regional boundaries through thoughtful dialogue.