The uprisings that spread across the Middle East in 2011 created new hope for democratic change in the Arab world. Four years later, the euphoria that greeted the Arab uprisings has given way to a far more somber mood, a recognition of the limits of mass protests to bring about political change, and acknowledgement that the region's entrenched authoritarian regimes are more resilient than many protesters imagined. Yet in responding to the challenge of mass politics, authoritarian regimes in the Middle East have not simply shown their resilience. In adapting to new challenges they have also changed, giving rise to new and more troubling forms of authoritarian rule, suggesting that the turmoil of recent years may be only the beginning of an extended period of political instability, violence, and repression in many parts of the Middle East.
Speaker Bio:
Steven Heydemann
Steven Heydemann serves as the vice president of Applied Research on Conflict at United States Institute of Peace. Heydemann is a political scientist who specializes in the comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Syria. His interests include authoritarian governance, economic development, social policy, political and economic reform and civil society. From 2003 to 2007, Heydemann directed the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. From 1997 to 2001, he was an associate professor in the department of political science at Columbia University. Earlier, from 1990-1997, he directed the Social Science Research Council’s Program on International Peace and Security and Program on the Near and Middle East. Heydemann is the author of Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970 (Cornell University Press, 1999), and editor of Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited, (Palgrave Press, 2004), and War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East (University of California Press, 2000).
This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute
U.S. Human Rights NGOs and International Human Rights
Many U.S. human rights non-government organizations, including the U.S. philanthropic sector, work on international human rights. The U.S. government now also partners with the private sector on human rights, both in the U.S. and internationally. This weekly series feature speakers to explore the pro’s and con’s of U.S. NGOs working on international human rights.
Civil society is under siege in many parts of the world. Governments have arrested human rights activists, closed humanitarian NGOs, and banned peaceful protests. Simply stated, governments are criminalizing dissent and confining civic space. Join Doug Rutzen for a discussion of the global backlash against civil society and ongoing efforts to protect the freedoms of association and assembly around the world.
Speaker Bio
Douglas Rutzen
Doug Rutzen is President and CEO of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which has worked on the legal framework for civil society in 100 countries. Doug also teaches “global revolutions, social change, and NGOs” at Georgetown law school. On the margins of the 2013 UN General Assembly, Doug joined President Obama on a panel discussing civil society. Under Doug’s leadership, ICNL received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions, the organizational analogue to MacArthur's "genius award" for individuals. Earlier this year, the Nonprofit Times named Doug as one of the most influential nonprofit leaders in the United States.
Arab workers participated prominently in the popular uprisings of 2011. They shared the outrage of many of their compatriots over daily abuse by internal security forces, widespread corruption, and foreign policies subservient to U.S. interests. Their participation in those uprisings was also informed by struggles against the neoliberal economic restructuring of the region since the 1970s, which resulted in an indecent chasm between rich and poor, deteriorating working conditions and public social services, and high youth unemployment.
Egypt experienced a strike wave of unprecedented magnitude in the 2000s. Tunisia, with one exception, experienced less intense contestation by workers and others. Egyptian workers’ have had very limited influence on national politics in the post-Mubarak era. Democratic development seems unlikely in the near future. The Tunisian national trade union federation and its affiliates were the central force in installing procedural democracy. The nature of workers’ social movements in the 2000s partially explains these divergent outcomes.
Speaker Bio:
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Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, his M.A. from Harvard University in 1974, and his A.M.L.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978 and 1982. He also studied at the American University of Cairo and and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He lived in Egypt in 1969, 1980-81, 1985, 1986, 1994, 2004-05, and 2006-08 and in Israel in 1965-66, 1970-73, 1987, 1988, 1993, and 1993. He has taught Middle East history at Stanford University since 1983. From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. His research and writing focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East and on Israel, Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Beinin has written or edited nine books, most recently Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa; co-edited with Frédéric Vairel (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (Solidarity Center, 2010). His articles have been published in leading scholarly journals as well as The Nation, Middle East Report, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Le Monde Diplomatique, and others. He has appeared on Al-Jazeera TV, BBC radio, National Public Radio, and many other TV and radio programs throughout North America, and in France, Egypt, Singapore, and Australia, and has given frequent interviews to the global media. In 2002 he served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
This event is co-sponsored by the Arab Studies Institute.
Is democracy heading toward a depression? CDDRL Director Larry Diamond answers in a recent Foreign Policy piece, assessing the challenges of overcoming a global, decade-long democratic recession. With much of the world losing faith in the model of liberal democracy, Diamond believes the key to setting democracy back on track involves heavy reform in America, serious crackdowns on corruption, and a reassessment of how the West approaches its support for democratic development abroad.
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'Protect your Republic Protest' in Anıtkabir, Ankara, Turkey. 14 April 2007. | Selahattin Sönmez, Wikimedia Commons
CDDRL congratulates two of its 2014-2015 senior honors students, Stefan Norgaard (Public Policy and Urban Studies '15) and Garima Sharma (Economics '15), after they were featured in a recent article in Business Insider highlighting some of Stanford University's most 'incredibly impressive students.' Both Norgaard and Sharma conducted field research this past summer in foreign countries to collect data for their theses, which they are currently writing under the direction of the CDDRL Senior Honors Program.
Norgaard is currently researching South Africa's active political youth, the "born free" generation, and helped create an innovative community-building tool in Johannesburg's gentrifying neighborhoods. Sharma is examining the culture behind child marriages in India and has interviewed over 80 mothers on their decisions to put their daughters through the practice.
The CDDRL Senior Honors Program aims to provide an opportunity for eligible seniors focusing on democracy, economic development, and rule of law subjects in any university department to earn honors in democracy, development and rule of law (DDRL). To learn more, please visit the program page here.
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Stefan Norgaard (third from the left) and Garima Sharma (fourth from the right) stand with their cohort of 2014-2015 CDDRL honors students with Faculty Advisor Francis Fukuyama in front of the White House. | Didi Kuo
Department of History Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2024
(650) 723-1884
(650) 725-0597
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jolluck@stanford.edu
Senior Lecturer in History
Senior Fellow of the WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice
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Katherine R. Jolluck is Senior Lecturer and Coordinator of the Public History/Public Service Track in the Department of History at Stanford University. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice. She has also taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey. A specialist on the history of twentieth-century Eastern Europe and Russia, she focuses on the topics of women and war, women in communist societies, nationalism, the Soviet Gulag, and human trafficking. Her books include: Exile and Identity: Polish Women in the Soviet Union during WWII, and Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile (with Jehanne M Gheith). She has also written articles on Poland in World War II, antisemitism, and human trafficking in Europe. Jolluck serves on the Faculty Steering Committee of the Haas Center for Public Service, offers service-learning courses, and is active in the Bay Area anti-trafficking community. She is a Steering Committee member of No Traffick Ahead, a multi-county, multi-disciplinary workgroup dedicated to combating human trafficking in all forms.
Affiliated Senior Lecturer at The Europe Center
Affiliated Senior Lecturer at the Program on Human Rights
In a recent article, Stanford Professor of Middle East History Joel Beinin examines the controversy over the decision of a European Parliament bloc to withdraw their nomination of Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought after a Wall Street Journal editorial accused Abdel Fattah of inciting hatred against Israel on social media.
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Alaa Abd El-Fatah | Alaa Abd El-Fatah, Wikipedia Creative Commons
Steven Heydemann
Douglas Rutzen
