Abstract:

Students of liberal democracy have long highlighted its many paradoxes. Most notably, individual rights, although a necessary (albeit insufficient) condition for the existence of liberal democracy, often stands in tension with the dictates of electoral majorities. Nowhere is the tension between individual rights and democratic principle of popular sovereignty more apparent than in the contemporary Turkish context. Exemplifying that trend, the Justice and Development Party (JDP) came to power in 2002 after winning 34% of the vote, and maintained its rule through successive electoral victories in 2007 (with 47%) and 2011 (with almost 50%). Despite professing a commitment to democratic governance and contributing to democratization process early on, the JDP has taken an illiberal turn since 2007. As its popular support increased progressively, the ruling party began steering away from democratic practices, placing restrictions on the freedom of the press, and undermining judicial independence. It is within that context that Turkey offers broader lessons on how executive institutions can employ popular support and the legitimacy it affords them to undermine the effective workings of democracy.

 

Speaker Bio:

Yeşim Arat is 2014-15 FSI-SHC International Visiting Scholar and 2014-15 Aron Rodrigue International Visitor at Stanford University, and Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. She is the author of The Patriarchal Paradox: Women Politicians in Turkey (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989), Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics (SUNY Press, 2005), Violence Against Women in Turkey (with Ayse Gul Altinay-Punto, 2009-Turkish version, 2008 Pen Duygu Asena Award) and numerous articles on women as well as Turkish politics. Arat was the Provost of her university between 2008-2012 and is a member of the Science Academy, Turkey. She is currently working on a book on post-1980 politics of Turkey. She will be in residence at Stanford from October 6, 2014 through November 6, 2014.

 

The event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Mediterranean Studies Forum and Stanford Humanities Center.

 

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*Open only to Stanford students.* 

Speaker Bio: 

Zahera Harb is one of the six 2013-2014 FSI-Humanities Center International Visitors and will be in residence at Stanford in May 2014. She is Senior Lecturer in International Journalism at City University London. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in journalism studies from Cardiff University (United Kingdom). As an expert on Arab media, she has published widely on journalism ethics, conflict and war reporting, political communication and representation of Muslims and Islam in western media. Her recent publications include Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (2013) and Channels of Resistance: Liberation Propaganda, Hezbollah and the Media (2011). Dr. Harb also has 11 years of experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organizations.

 

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, Stanford Humanities Center, Arab Studies Table, Stanford Language Center. 

Description:

Arab screens along with social networks have been flooded over the past three years with words, images and videos that were meant to shed light on the revolts and uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain Libya and Syria. What started as a celebrated influx of information soon turned into means for disseminating sectarian and ethnic hatred, mainly in the cases of Syria and Egypt. Dr. Zahera Harb will discuss ethical boundaries that have been applied in Arab media coverage of the Arab revolts and uprisings, drawing on journalism epistemologies in the Arab world and focusing on recent developments in Syria and Egypt.

Speaker Profile:

Dr. Zahera Harb is a Lebanese journalist and academic. She is currently a senior lecturer in international journalism at City University London. Her recent publications include a co-edited collection titled Narrating conflict in the Middle East: Discourse Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (I.B. Tauris, 2013) and a monograph titled Channels of Resistance: Liberation propaganda Hezbollah and the Media (I.B. Tauris, 2011). She is a review editor for the Journal of Media Practice.

Dr. Harb has 11 years' experience as a journalist in Lebanon working for Lebanese and international media organizations. She started as a news reporter and distinguished herself in particular in the coverage of war operations in the battlefield of South Lebanon. She was then co-producer and presenter of a popular socio-political program (Khamseh Ala Sabaah, 5/7) before becoming one of the main news anchors at Tele Liban (the public service TV in Lebanon). At New TV she was appointed to a news anchor-editor post and hosted the main daily political show (Al Hadath). At Future TV (Pan Arab satellite channel) she produced and presented her own socio-political program (Ala Madar Assaa) while assigned as satellite news editor. She also produced several political and social documentaries for Lebanese TV stations and completed reporting assignments for BBC Arabic service (radio), CNN world report and Dutch TV. She hosted live coverage of distinguished political events inside and outside Lebanon.

Dr. Harb was trained in Lebanon, Holland and the UK and has a BA in Journalism, a Diploma in Broadcasting News and an MA and PhD in Journalism Studies and Political Communications.

She has been on the consultancy board of the Thomson Foundation UK for 7 years conducting media training in the UK and other parts of the world including Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait, UAE, Malta, Spain, Armenia, Ukraine and Brussels.  

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This event is sponsored by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and Mediterranean Studies Forum and in partnership with the Stanford Humanities Center and Arab Studies Table. 

 

Abstract:

The Tahrir and Gezi Park protests were, amongst many other things, moments of energetic artistic creativity, in the sound world as well as other domains. Though well documented, and clearly a vital component of the political energies and transformations of the moment, they have proved difficult to think about. This talk, a musicologist's perspective, will explore them in the light of some recent thinking about crowds and social movements. 

Bio:

Martin Stokes  is King Edward Professor of Music at King's College, London. He is an ethnomusicologist, working primarily on the questions of ethnicity, identity, emotions, globalization in the context of the Middle East. His most recent book,  The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 2010), has received the Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Among his other publications are Celtic Modern: Music on the Global Fringe (Scarecrow 2004), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place (Berg 1994), and The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford 1992).

  

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Department of Music, and Department of Anthropology

 

 

Abstract:  

Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East is a new, ground-breaking textbook on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is the first on this hyper-sensitive subject to have been team-written by a Palestinian, an Israeli, and an Egyptian representing a broader Arab perspective: The book presents competing narratives that the different parties have developed and adopted with respect to the conflict's various milestones and provides a toolbox for analyzing past, current and future developments in the conflict and in the efforts to resolve it.

At the CDDRL seminar, two of the book's three authors, Shai Feldman and Khalil Shikaki will address the challenges associated with teaching the Arab-Israeli conflict and the manner in which they suggest overcoming these challenges. In addition, they will share what insights they gain from the historical record of the efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict when assessing the likely prospects of the most recent attempt to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, launched and orchestrated by Secretary of State John Kerry. 

Speaker bios:

Shai Feldman is the Judith and Sidney Swartz Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies and Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. Prof. Feldman is also a Senior Fellow and a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where he serves as Co-Chair of the Middle East Security Project. In 1997-2005, he was Head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and in 2001-2003, he served as a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. Educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Prof. Feldman was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of California at Berkeley in 1980.

Prof. Feldman is the author of numerous publications. These include five books: Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); The Future of U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation (Washington D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996); Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control in the Middle East (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); Bridging the Gap: A Future Security Architecture for the Middle East (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 – with Abdullah Toukan (Jordan); and, Track-II Diplomacy: Lessons from the Middle East (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003 – with Hussein Agha, Ahmad Khalidi, and Zeev Schiff).

 

Khalil Shikaki is a professor of political science and director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah. Since 2005 he has been a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 1985, and taught at several Palestinian and American universities. Between 1996-99, Prof. Shikaki served as the dean of scientific research at al Najah University in Nablus. Since 1993 he has conducted more than 200 polls among Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and, since 2000, dozens of joint polls among Palestinians and Israelis.

He is the co-author of the annual report of the Arab Democracy Index. His recent publications include “The future of Israel-Palestine: a one-state reality in the making,” NOREF Report, May 2012; "Coping with the Arab Spring; Palestinian Domestic and Regional Ramifications," Middle East Brief, no. 58, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, December 2011; Public Opinion in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Public Imperative During the Second Intifada, with Yaacov Shamir, Indiana University Press, 2010.

The Mediterranean Studies Forum presents a panel discussion about the popular protests and recent developments in the Middle East.

Co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, and the Stanford Humanities Center Workshop on Ethnic Minorities, Religious Communities and Rights and Democracy in the Modern Middle East and Central Asia.

 

Amr Adly (Stanford University), “Egypt after June 30^th: Between Abortive and Potential Fascism”

Adly is postdoctoral fellow in Stanford CDDRL’s Arab Reform and Democracy Program. He received his Ph.D. in political and social Sciences from the European University. His research focuses on state reform and development in the context of the Middle East. He is currently working on a project about entrepreneurial reforms in Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab Spring.

 

Ayça Alemdaroğlu (Stanford University), “Youth and Politics in Turkey”

Alemdaroglu is a lecturer in Stanford's Introductory Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Cambridge. Her research and teaching interests include social inequality and change, youth experiences, gender and sexuality, experiences of modernity, commercialization of education, nationalism and eugenics. In Winter 2014, she will teach ANTHRO 149A/URBANST144 Tahrir to Taksim: Cities and Citizens in the Middle East.

 

Alexander Key (Stanford University), “Should It Matter What We Call It? Islamic, Democratic, and Spring Politics”

Key is assistant professor of Arabic and comparative literature at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University. His research focuses on literary and intellectual history of the Arabic and Persian-speaking worlds from the seventh century, together with Western political thought and philosophy. He is currently working on two book projects about the Arabic philosophy of language during the 11th century. Key is founding editor of New Middle Eastern Studies, where he has edited articles on women Iran's nuclear program, Salafi conceptions of citizenship, and art in the Arab Spring. 

 

Kabir Tambar  (Stanford University), “Popular Protest and the Politics of the Present in Turkey”Panelists will discuss the contemporary political situation in the Middle East with special respect to Egypt and Turkey.

Tambar is assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. As an anthropologist of the Middle East and Muslim world, he has published widely on secular political identities, contemporary appropriations of and challenges to Turkish nationalism, and the politics of devotional affect in Alevi Muslim contexts. His book, The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Voice and the Demands of History in Turkey, is coming out from Stanford University Press in 2013.

Abstract:

The seminar session will present findings from a new study on the entrepreneurship ecosystem in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia. The discussion will focus on the challenges facing entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs in these countries and the MENA region, and will highlight the importance of reform of the legal and regulatory environment.

Speakers bio:

Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Amr Adly has a Ph.D. from the European University Institute-Florence, Department of political and social sciences (Date of completion: September 2010). His thesis topic was "The political economy of trade and industrialization in the post-liberalization period: Cases of Turkey and Egypt". The thesis was published by Routledge in December 2012 under the title of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt.

He has several other academic publications that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Politics, Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to articles in several other periodicals and newspapers in English and Arabic.

Before joining Stanford, he worked as a senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, heading the unit of social and economic rights, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

At Stanford, he is leading a research project on reforming the regulatory environment governing entrepreneurship after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, which will result in policy papers as well as conferences in the two countries. 

Greg Simpson is Deputy Regional Director of the Middle East and North Africa division at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), where in addition to co-managing the division with the regional director, he also directly oversees CIPE’s sizeable Egypt portfolio. A veteran of the nongovernmental sector with eighteen years of experience in strengthening democratic institutions, Simpson came to CIPE from the U.S. online political firm New Media Communications, where he focused on developing and managing the company’s international initiatives. Prior to New Media, Simpson worked at the International Republican Institute (IRI), where he held three successive country director posts in the Balkans. There he directed assistance programs in political party development, political communications, local governance, grassroots organization and mobilization, civil society development, public opinion research, and election observation. During this time, Simpson advised and trained hundreds of political activists and elected officials, and directly advised two of the region’s presidents. Before joining IRI, Simpson held positions at the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) and the Center for Civil Society in Southeastern Europe. He holds a B.A. in International Studies from American University in Washington, DC. Simpson currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and two children. 

One of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy and an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) is a U.S. non-profit organization with the mission of strengthening democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. CIPE has supported more than 1,300 initiatives in over 100 developing countries, involving the private sector in policy advocacy and institutional reform, improving governance, and building understanding of market-based democratic systems. CIPE provides management assistance, practical experience, and financial support to local organizations to strengthen their capacity to implement democratic and economic reforms.

Lina Khatib is the co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She joined Stanford University in 2010 from the University of London where she was an Associate Professor. Her research is firmly interdisciplinary and focuses on the intersections of politics, media, and social factors in relation to the politics of the Middle East. She is also a consultant on Middle East politics and media and has published widely on topics such as new media and Islamism, US public diplomacy towards the Middle East, and political media and conflict in the Arab world, as well as on the political dynamics in Lebanon and Iran. She has an active interest in the link between track two dialogue and democratization policy. She is also a Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and, from 2010-2012, was a Research Fellow at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

Amr Adly has a Ph.D. from the European University Institute-Florence, Department of political and social sciences (Date of completion: September 2010). His thesis topic was "The political economy of trade and industrialization in the post-liberalization period: Cases of Turkey and Egypt". The thesis was published by Routledge in December 2012 under the title of State Reform and Development in the Middle East: The Cases of Turkey and Egypt.

He has several other academic publications that have appeared in the Journal of Business and Politics, Turkish Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies, in addition to articles in several other periodicals and newspapers in English and Arabic.

Before joining Stanford, he worked as a senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, heading the unit of social and economic rights, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a diplomat.

At Stanford, he is leading a research project on reforming the regulatory environment governing entrepreneurship after the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, which will result in policy papers as well as conferences in the two countries.

Adel Iskandar is a scholar of media and international communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazerra: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (co-authored with Mohammed el-Naway, Basic Books, 2003). Iskandar's work deals with the intersections of media (pring, electronic, and digital) culture, identity, and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universateries worldwide. His latest publications include two coedited volumes titled Edward SAid: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (co-edited with Hakem Rustom, University of California Press, 2010) and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween, 2013). His just published title the uthored anthology Egypt In Flux: Essay on an unfinished Revolution (OUP/AUC Press, 2013. Iskandar is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.

Hesham Sallam is a doctoral candidate in government at Georgetown University and co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. He is former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on Islamist movements and the politics of economic reform in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Past institutional affiliations include Middle East Institute, Asharq Al-Awsat, and the World Security Institute. He is editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013).