27 Items

Arab Spring at 10

James A. Dawson

Analysis & Opinions - Journal of Democracy

The Arab Spring at 10: Kings or People?

| Jan. 01, 2021

Ten years after the onset of the Arab Spring, the Middle East and North Africa are torn between two visions of progress: a democratic one that seeks to replace the leaders who dominate the region, and an ostensibly modernizing one that seeks to replace the people who inhabit it. Though the latter project is currently ascendant, it is likely to founder on its own internal contradictions. Arab publics may be ambivalent about democracy, but the region retains considerable democratic potential.

A man holds the Lebanese flag, as he looks at the scene of Tuesday's explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020.

AP Photo/Hussein Malla

Announcement - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Beirut Will Rebuild: A Message from the Middle East Initiative Faculty Director

| Aug. 07, 2020

In a year marked by widespread illness, unrest, and uncertainty for all of us around the world, what Lebanon and its people have just undergone touches all of our hearts, and fills us alternately with gloom over what was lost and awe for the indomitability of the Lebanese spirit in tragedy’s wake.

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Spotlight: Tarek Masoud

| Spring 2020

Our Spotlight in this newsletter is on Prof. Tarek Masoud, Faculty Chair of the Middle East Initiative (MEI).  In talking about MEI, Masoud says the Initiative is one of the most important ways in which HKS and Harvard engages with the contemporary Middle East. “It’s a bridge," he says. "My goal to make it into a superhighway.”

 

 

 

A crowd gathers on Tunis' main avenue, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. Tunisian polling agencies are forecasting that conservative law professor Kais Saied has overwhelmingly won the North African country's presidential election.

AP Photo/Hassene Dridi

Analysis & Opinions - Harvard Kennedy School Magazine

A Fragile State

| Feb. 04, 2020

PRIOR TO THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP, and the current season of hand- wringing about democracy’s prospects for survival in the United States and Europe, Western social scientists tended to think of democracy as something “we” had achieved and “they”—that is, the peoples of the so-called developing world—had yet to grasp. The hypothesized reasons for this gap between “us” and “them” were many.

In this Sept. 18, 2016 photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran, Iran.

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Impacts of the U.S. Killing of Qassem Soleimani

Belfer Center experts weigh in on potential impacts of the U.S. killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva

Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva

Magazine Article - Harvard Gazette

A revolutionary musical

| May 17, 2019

Love. Music. Freedom. These are the universal themes at the heart of “We Live in Cairo,” a new musical by Daniel and Patrick Lazour, which is having its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater. Set during the January 25 Revolution, the 2011 uprising in Egypt, the work, under the music direction of Madeline Smith and music supervision of Michael Starobin, celebrates the hope and exuberance of the uprising, even as it acknowledges the turmoil that has followed.

Analysis & Opinions

Tarek Masoud - The Shifting Politics of the Middle East | Snack Break with Aroop Mukharji

| Feb. 09, 2019

Host Aroop Mukharji interviews Dr. Tarek Masoud, the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, about the shifting political dynamics of the Middle East, the region's potential for democratization, and a triple snack of doughnuts, coffee, and Turkish delight.

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Press Release - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Tarek Masoud Named New Faculty Chair of Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative

| June 18, 2018

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced that Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations Tarek Masoud will serve as faculty chair of the Center’s Middle East Initiative (MEI).

La Djihad et La Mort, Olivier Roy, Seuil Publishers

Seuil Publishers

News

Event Podcast: Olivier Roy "Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of the Islamic State"

    Author:
  • Olivier Roy
| February 2, 2017

Audio recording of a February 2, 2017 MEI Book Talk with Dr. Olivier Roy, Joint Chair Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies, Chair in Mediterranean Studies, European University Institute on his most recent book Jihad and Death: The Global Appeal of the Islamic State.