Speaker Bio:

Nabil Mouline is a senior researcher in The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). Prior to this, he was a research professor at the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (Sciences Po).
He earned a Ph.D. in history from the Paris-Sorbonne University and a Ph.D. in political science from the Institute of Political Studies of Paris (Sciences Po).

He is the author, among other works, of The Imaginary Caliphate of Ahmad al-Mansûr: Power and Diplomacy in Morocco in the 16th Century (PUF, Paris, 2009) and The Clerics of Islam: Religious Authority and Political Power in Saudi Arabia (PUF, Paris, 2011). Cambridge University Press and Yale University Press will publish the English translation of these two books in 2014 respectively.

During his residency at Stanford, he will work on a book on the sociological history of Saudi Arabia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Rachel Gillum is a PhD student in Political Science at Stanford University, and joined CISAC as a predoctoral fellow in September of 2013. She is also a fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS) and is affiliated with Stanford’s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies. Rachel’s research focuses on the Muslim-American community and examines the determinants of a variety of political beliefs and behaviors towards the American government, from full integration and identification with the United States, to support for violent extremism.

Rachel previously served as a graduate associate researcher at the RAND Corporation’s International Policy Center, where she conducted in-depth analysis on terrorist recruitment strategies and presented policy suggestions to U.S. government clients. From 2010-2012, she served as the chief editor and head research assistant under Prof. Martha Crenshaw on the Mapping Militants Project, where she oversaw and helped devise the design of an online tool for the analysis of terrorist networks. Rachel has also worked as a consultant for the Gallup Organization and a research assistant at the Department of Defense’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies.

ABOUT THE TOPIC: How do Muslim-Americans form beliefs about the treatment they expect to receive from US law enforcement? The results of an original, nationally-representative survey of Muslim-Americans suggest two key findings. First, expectations of fairness on the part of Muslim immigrants are shaped, in part, by the level of institutional corruption in their country of origin. Immigrants coming from less corrupt countries hold more optimistic views about expected treatment by US law enforcement. Second, Muslim immigrants who have been naturalized are less trusting in the government than newcomers, and Muslims who were born and raised in the United States are least likely to believe that law enforcement will deal with Muslims fairly. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of control variables. Ethnographic evidence drawn from interviews with Muslims-Americans suggests that Muslims update their expectations through interactions and familiarity with American institutions. US-born Muslims expect violations of their rights by the government and are politically concerned about such issues. Foreign-born Muslims, while aware of the controversies regarding US government surveillance and profiling of Muslim communities, tend to be less focused on issues related to citizen rights and more focused on the day-to-day concerns common to immigrants everywhere.

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.

This event is being presented in partnership with CDDRL, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Hoover Institution, and a student led movement to end atrocities at Stanford (STAND).

Abstract:

Sixty-eight years after the Holocaust, governments continue to struggle with preventing genocide and mass atrocities. In 2005, United Nations member states agreed that nations share a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Join us for a discussion about how the responsibility to protect (or R2P) has been applied in recent crises.

Speakers bio:

Richard Williamson is a nonresident senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings and a principal in the consulting firm Salisbury Strategies LLP. His work focuses on human rights, multilateral diplomacy, nuclear nonproliferation and post-conflict reconstruction. Prior to those positions, Mr. Williamson served as U.S. special envoy to Sudan, under President George W. Bush. Earlier in the Bush administration, Mr. Williamson, who has broad foreign policy and negotiating experience, served as ambassador to the United Nations for Special Political Affairs, and as ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Previously, Mr. Williamson served in several other senior foreign policy positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including as assistant secretary of state for international organizations at the Department of State, and as an assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs in the White House.

Michael Abramowitz is director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He joined the Museum in 2009 after nearly 25 years at the Washington Post, where he served as White House correspondent and previously as national editor, helping supervise coverage of national politics, the federal government, social policy, and national security. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident fellow of the German Marshall Fund. He was also a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, based in Hoover’s Washington, DC, office. His areas of research are political theory, international relations, national security policy, and US politics. 

Lindberg is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches in the School of Foreign Service. From 1999 until it ceased publication in 2013, he was editor of the bimonthly journal Policy Review.

In 2007–8, Lindberg served as head of the expert group on international norms and institutions of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, a joint project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2005, Lindberg was the coordinator for the group Preventing and Responding to Genocide and Major Human Rights Abuses for the United States Institute of Peace's Task Force on the United Nations. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Princeton Project on National Security, for which he served as cochair of the working group on anti-Americanism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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. 

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