Today marks the debut of Border Crossings -- a New America Foundation/BloggingHeads.tv collaboration to bring experts from throughout the Middle East together for extended, substantive conversations via video.  This first installment features Daniel Levy,director of New America's Middle East Task Force, and the SETA Foundation's Nuh Yilmaz discussing President Obama's trip to Turkey and that nation's pivotal role in the region.

BloggingHeads, which is a project of New America Senior Fellow Robert Wright, has long provided interesting pairings from the media, academia and the blogosphere. The divides normally bridged, however, are more ideological than national or geographical.  Border Crossings aims to use the technology of remote, web-video "diavlogs" to bring true experts from across the Middle East together for conversations that geography and politics make all but impossible to conduct face to face.

We're very excited at New America to help encourage these discussions, and look forward to those that will follow in the coming weeks.  If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please be sure to let us know.

Border Crossing is one of several new-media projects made possible by New America "seed grants" in recent months.  Others include the State of State Health site, and "Vop-Eds" on various domestic policy issues; other innovations are in the pipeline and will debut later in 2009.