Meet the Speaker with Steven Cook

Egypt: A Year after the Fall

Al-Jazeera’s perspective on Egypt’s one-year anniversary:

The evening of January 30, a year after the historic Egyptian revolution that took place January 25, the Word Affairs Council of Northern California hosted Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations for a Meet the Speaker session and a talk on the historic moment Egypt is facing in its current precarious post-revolution situation.

Students and Steven Cook at Meet the Speaker

Dr. Cook describes himself as a fulfillment of the American dream, simply a “guy who did well in language classes, got into a good college” to become the expert on Arab and Turkish politics he is today. As the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, he describes his current job as essentially the non-student-related side of a professor—books, research, expertise—and, in place of classes, his students are the world through the eyes of the media in television, radio, and the web.

Mr. Steven Cook

Dr. Cook was actually in Egypt for the first four days of the revolution and described the experience as simply “extraordinary”. It was a young generation aided by modern media and propelled by a unification of religious, economic, and ideological gulfs in a protest against authoritarian rule, and the revolution’s triumphs thus far are evident.

A year into its fitful transitional process after former president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, Egypt is in “the most dangerous and most important phase in Egypt’s history” says the interim military leadership, and faces challenges that threaten to overshadow the initial purpose of the revolution. Indeed, Dr. Cook commented that one of the most serious questions is that of vision, or at least, a coherent one. I myself had a unique opportunity last year to experience firsthand the complex processes, delights and heartache that mark constitution-writing in a simulation on Nepal as part of a constituent assembly. The drafting process is wearying to say the least: everyone seeks to have interests represented, with incentives to delay and undermine as bargaining chips for power, yet at the same time no one wants the blame of stopping passage of a new constitution. Egypt’s deadline is this June and I will believe it a minor miracle if Egypt does manage to show the world a new constitution (one satisfactorily addressing accountability and legitimacy) by then.

When asked how the U.S. should react, Dr. Cook responded that the worst thing for the United States to do would be to intervene or attempt to manage the transitional process in any capacity. Even from a diplomatic perspective, Egypt had been the second-largest recipient of aid after Israel; intervention now may be a source for contempt in the future. Egyptians received no significant foreign help to instigate the revolution, and is unlikely to want for it now.  It is, as Dr. Cook said, a purely Egyptian affair “without precedent”—we must now look to the Egyptian people for their future.

Interested readers can follow Steven Cook’s blog “From the Potomac to the Euphrates” and his Twitter feed.

–Katherine Hsu, San Mateo High School, World Affairs Council Student Ambassador

 

Summer Institute 2011, Week Four (7/21): “Assessing the Arab Spring: A Cairo Perspective”

Source: The Economist

Last week at the Summer Institute, we celebrated the halfway point of our programming calendar in style, as the World Affairs Council of Northern California welcomed Dr. Lisa Anderson, President of the American University in Cairo, which has a campus on the now-famous Tahrir Square.

For the week’s readings, students were required to look at Dr. Anderson’s article from the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, entitled “Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the Differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.” Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The important story about the 2011 Arab revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya is not how the globalization of the norms of civic engagement shaped the protesters’ aspirations. Nor is it about how activists used technology to share ideas and tactics. Instead, the critical issue is how and why these ambitions and techniques resonated in their various local contexts. The patterns and demographics of the protests varied widely. The demonstrations in Tunisia spiraled toward the capital from the neglected rural areas, finding common cause with a once powerful but much repressed labor movement. In Egypt, by contrast, urbane and cosmopolitan young people in the major cities organized the uprisings. Meanwhile, in Libya, ragtag bands of armed rebels in the eastern provinces ignited the protests, revealing the tribal and regional cleavages that have beset the country for decades. Although they shared a common call for personal dignity and responsive government, the revolutions across these three countries reflected divergent economic grievances and social dynamics — legacies of their diverse encounters with modern Europe and decades under unique regimes.

In the spirit of Dr. Anderson’s comparative approach, our activity challenged the Summer Institute participants to examine the similarities and differences of the important uprisings of the Arab Spring. We looked at the countries of  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen and answered the following questions about each:

1. Was there a regime change?
2. Was there violence and, if so, to what degree?
3. Who is the current leadership of the country?
4. What is/ was the role of the national military?
5. What was the US reaction?
6. What are the challenges moving forward?

This exercise further convinced us that each country had a unique experience in the Arab Spring.  We hope that those making policy decisions will take this into account as a one-size-fits-all response the Arab Spring will not work.

After this we had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Anderson for a question and answer session before her public program. The students asked a variety of questions drawing upon both her expertise and experiences living through the Arab Spring. One student commented:

I was amazed by how much the country of Egypt was like a community during the uprising. Even when the police disappeared during the height of the protests and it was predicted the country would go into chaos, the opposite was proved true. The citizens of Egypt stepped up to protect their neighborhoods and country. Dr. Anderson explained how in her own community she saw neighborhood watches form, as ordinary citizens stepped up to protect the neighborhood from criminals that may have escaped the prisons.

She was very honest, engaging, and informative in her answers and we thank her again for speaking to us!

Meet the Speaker: Dr. Lisa Anderson

The 2011 Summer Institute Participants pose with Dr. Anderson

After our private Meet-the-Speaker session, we concluded our session by attending the public program. Audio for the speech is available here.