Remembering Professor Ellis Goldberg

Ellis Goldberg, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington and the Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at MEI in the spring of 2013, passed away on September 21, 2019. MEI asked Dr. Hind Ahmed Zaki, his doctoral student and a 2017-2018 postdoctoral fellow at MEI, to share her memories of him.

Ellis Goldberg was not an ordinary man. A man of piercing intelligence, he possessed an encyclopedic knowledge spanning topics as diverse as the political economy of oil and food production, Islamic legal theory, and labor movements in the Middle East. Ellis was also one of the kindest souls I have known, an elusive combination often missing from the world of ideas.

I first met Ellis as an incoming graduate student at the University of Washington in the fall of 2008. Having just arrived from Egypt, I enjoyed the great fortune of having Ellis, one of the greatest scholars of modern Egypt, as my professor, mentor, and friend. When the Egyptian uprising broke out in 2011, my relationship with Ellis took on new meaning. Throughout that pivotal time, Ellis not only continued as my mentor, but he also became my comrade. Along with common friends, we marched together in the streets of Egypt, bursting with the hope of the moment. But Ellis was not simply a dreaming idealist. His enthusiasm for the uprising and its demands for “Bread, Freedom, and Social Equality” did not quell his admonition that Egypt was on the verge of “Mubarakism without Mubarak”—that while we may have removed the autocrat, the system itself remained, and that things would get much worse before they got better—predications which continue to be validated today.

Ellis’s unique place in our intellectual community was grounded in his commitment to know Egypt inside and out, not only as a scholar, but also as a person so invested intellectually as well as emotionally, in understanding the nuances of a place and the diversity of its people. This investment resulted in some of the most insightful writing on Egyptian politics that I have encountered. Whether through his blog, “Nisr Al Nasr,” or his many books and articles, Ellis’s depth of knowledge, willingness to engage the work of Egyptian writers and  intellectuals—a rarity in western academia—and his intellectual courage remain a lasting inspiration for those of us pursuing lives of integrity—both from within and outside of the academy.

Rest in power Ellis. You will always be with me.

To learn more about Prof. Goldberg, including his time at MEI as KFAS Visiting Scholar, visit belfercenter.org/person/ellis-goldberg