The Middle East Institute (MEI) was founded in 1946 with the primary goal of fostering understanding of the Middle East among Americans. Middle East scholar George Camp Keiser and former Secretary of State Christian Herter transformed the organization from its initial roots at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies into an independent nonprofit organization. MEI became a groundbreaking entity focused on issues of the post-World War II Middle East. The region MEi came to geographically define as stretching from Morocco to Pakistan and including Central Asia.