Midan

An American in Tehran

By Holly Dagres
July 5, 2013 / Summer 2013

As I was turning thirteen, I packed up everything I had to embark on a new life in Tehran with my Iranian mother and stepfather. In 1999, I left behind everyone and everything I knew in Los Angeles, including my American father.

Oriental Hall, etc.

The official unemployment rate in Egypt rocketed to 13.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013. The news added to the gloom of Egyptians complaining that the country’s economic fortunes have taken a nasty turn for the worse since the January 25 revolution.

Egypt’s Predicament

By Nabil Fahmy
July 5, 2013 / Summer 2013

Two and a half years after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, a year after the election of his successor, Mohammed Morsi, and after Morsi’s sudden ouster and the appointment of an interim president, Mansour Al-Adly, head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, in July, the country is still searching for its identity.

Refugees and Researchers

By Maha El-Kady
April 1, 2013 / Spring 2013

In March, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that 20,665 Syrian refugees had been registered in Egypt by the international agency. The figure startled researchers at the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies (CMRS) at the American University in Cairo (AUC).

Diary of a BDS Activist

By Aaron T. Rose
April 1, 2013 / Spring 2013

The United Nations General Assembly was on the eve of its historic vote to recognize the State of Palestine. But, for this Palestinian American, it was no cause for rejoicing. “The facts on the ground,” she told a packed lecture hall at the American University in Cairo (AUC) in November, “have killed the possibility of two states.”

Oriental Hall, etc.

By Nadeen Shaker
April 1, 2013 / Spring 2013

What is President Barack Obama doing in Middle East? What should his policy be? Three former U.S. policy makers took a crack at those questions in “After the Arab Spring,” a forum held by AUC’s School of Global Affairs and Public Policy in February a few week’s after Obama’s inauguration for a second term of office.

Land of Immigration

By Mark J. Miller
April 1, 2013 / Spring 2013

A long-serving former head of the Migrants Branch of the International Labor Organization W.R. Boehning once wrote that, “The history of mankind is a history of migration.” Egyptians, better than most, know the value of Boehning’s insight.

The Mission of Middle East Studies

By Owain Lawson
February 1, 2013 / Winter 2013

Middle East Studies is a curious field. Unlike more sharply defined traditional social sciences, it may appear to be an arbitrary collection of disciplinary approaches studying an arbitrary collection of countries. It often finds itself in cross currents that mirror the politics—and passions—of the region it examines. The Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo recently hosted a panel of specialists to engage in some self-reflection that seemed particularly apt in the midst of the Arab Spring: “Why Middle East Studies? A Discussion of the State of the Field.”

Oriental Hall, etc.

By Fritz Lodge and Stephen Kalin
February 1, 2013 / Winter 2013

Is the Middle East entering a new Cold War? That was a question posed at a recent conference at the AUC by Fulya Atacan, a professor of political science at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul.

East and West

By Nabil Fahmy
February 1, 2013 / Winter 2013

While the consequences of Asia’s rise have been exhaustively analyzed in the global context, relatively few have questioned the effect of a rising East on the rapid transformation of the countries of the Middle East.

Elections, American-Style

By Madeline B. Welsh
November 1, 2012 / Fall 2012

Cairo was dark when U.S. Representative Patricia Schroeder stepped off the plane in Egypt. Very dark. It was the beginning of the 1973 Middle East war, Israeli forces had reached Kilometer 101, and the capital was under a blackout.

Oriental Hall, etc.

By Madeline B. Welsh and Stephen Kalin
November 1, 2012 / Fall 2012

Dispense with the notion that archives are endless rows of cabinets where bespectacled historians pour over dusty, yellowed records.

Chomsky in Tahrir

By Madeline B. Welsh
November 1, 2012 / Fall 2012

Two hours beforehand, a crowd was already pressing the gate outside Ewart Hall on the Tahrir Square campus of the American University in Cairo. When American linguist and author Noam Chomsky arrived on stage, the packed audience of twelve hundred rose in a thunderous standing ovation.

Sailboat Diplomacy

By Stephen Kalin
November 1, 2012 / Fall 2012

The wake from a larger vessel rocked the felucca, a traditional Egyptian sailboat, heaving it against the pontoon it was docked beside. As water entered the hull, the two Americans aboard pictured their mission of personal diplomacy sinking along with their second-hand boat.

Remembering Medhat

By Nabil Fahmy
November 1, 2012 / Fall 2012

I had the good fortune to work with a man of great skill and quality of character who was an exemplary diplomat: Medhat Haroun, American University in Cairo’s provost, who passed away on October 18.

Witness to an Election, and to History

By Thomas Plofchan
July 28, 2012 / Summer 2012

Ayman Mohammed Abdel Sabour is a lawyer from Alexandria and a member of the I Am Egyptian Association for Development and Human Rights. It is a warm spring evening, and we are both official observers for the 2012 Egyptian presidential election. He and I are in the Nile Delta city of Damanhour, standing in the city’s cultural center where votes from polling stations in two of the Behera governorate’s fifteen districts are being aggregated. There are a few journalists here as well, watching a team of senior judges tally the figures under military protection.

Oriental Hall, etc.

By Madeline B. Welsh
July 28, 2012 / Summer 2012

Where are you, men of honor? Tunisian human rights activist Radhia Nasraouiproudly recalls a woman shouting these words in front of the government hall in Sidi Bouzid, the first flashpoint of protests that eventually brought down Tunisian ruler Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Our Carbon Footprint

By Marc Rauch and Richard Tutwiler
April 17, 2012 / Spring 2012

Of all the countries in the Arab world, Egypt may be the most vulnerable to global warming. The rising sea level predicted by climate change models threatens to flood large swaths of the Nile Delta, Egypt’s breadbasket, undermining Egypt’s food security and threatening the livelihoods of millions of agricultural workers. Key population centers are also at risk, most notably the city of Alexandria.

Oriental Hall, etc.

By Madeline B. Welsh
April 17, 2012 / Spring 2012

With two billion Internet users and another two billion mobile phone users worldwide, information and ideas flow across borders as never before. Needless to say, this is prompting greater debate over freedom of expression.

Nile View: Science and Responsibility

By Nabil Fahmy
April 17, 2012 / Spring 2012

One often thinks of science in terms of its economic benefits. It is also important to look at how science and particularly technology has affected concepts like the balance of power.

Policy and People at Egypt’s Global University