Under the title “Political Contestation and New Social Forces in the Middle East and North Africa,” the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy convened its 2018 annual conference on April 27 and 28 at Stanford University. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars from across several disciplines, the conference examined how dynamics of governance and modes of political participation have evolved in recent years in light of the resurgence of authoritarian trends throughout the region.

Image

The conference’s second panel, tilted “Situating Gender in the Law and the Economy,” featured Texas Christian University Historian Hanan Hammad, who assessed the achievements of the movement to fight gender-based violence in Egypt. Focusing on Gulf Cooperation Council states, Alessandra Gonzales, a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, analyzed the differences in female executive hiring practices across local and foreign firms. Stanford University Political Scientist and FSI Senior Fellow Lisa Blaydes presented findings from her research on women’s attitudes toward Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Egypt.

Image

The fourth panel of the conference, “The Economy, the State, and New Social Actors,” featured George Washington University Associate Professor of Geography Mona Atia, who presented on territorial restructuring and the politics governing poverty in Morocco. Amr Adly, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, analyzed the relationship between the state and big business in Egypt after the 2013 military coup. Rice University Professor of Economics Mahmoud El-Gamal shared findings from his research on the economic determinants of democratization and de-democratization trends in Egypt during the past decade.

Image

The conference included a special session featuring former fellows of the American Middle Eastern Network at Stanford (AMENDS), an organization dedicated to promoting understanding around the Middle East, and supporting young leaders working to ignite concrete social and economic development in the region. AMENDS affiliates from five different MENA countries shared with the Stanford community their experiences in working toward social change in their respective countries.

In a panel discussion titled “The Khashoggi Affair and Saudi Arabia’s War Against Dissent,” Stanford University scholars examined the context for of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and implications of his murder for U.S.-Saudi relations. Organized by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) and moderated by Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, the panel, dated November 6, 2018, featured Janine Zacharia, the Carlos Kelly McClatchy Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Communication, and Hesham Sallam Associate-Director of ARD and Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Before introducing the panel, Diamond discussed Jamal Khashoggi’s journalistic contributions and advocacy for freedom in the Middle East. He also strongly asserted that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (commonly known as MBS), ordered Khashoggi’s murder in an attempt to stifle media opposition towards his regime. He noted that Khashoggi advocated peaceful political reform that would make Saudi Arabia more prosperous and tolerant. In a brief video filmed during Khashoggi’s visit to Stanford last year, the Saudi journalist provided a measured critique of MBS, remarking that the prince’s leadership was well-intentioned, but too impulsive.

Janine Zacharia

Zacharia and Sallam criticized the Trump administration’s response to the killing, and the president’s failure to unequivocally condemn Khashoggi’s apparent murder or to hold MBS accountable. Zacharia said she worried the United States, under President Trump, may no longer be willing to come to the aid of American journalists abroad. Sallam observed that Trump’s tepid denunciation of the killing—in which he declared Khashoggi’s disappearance to be “the worst cover-up in history”—will only encourage other Arab autocrats to silence dissenters with greater subtlety and enthusiasm. The only appropriate response, according to Diamond, is for the American government to freeze MBS’s assets and ban him from entering the United States. Otherwise Saudi Arabia will interpret American passivity as a license to commit further human rights abuses without fear of punishment.

Hesham Sallam

Islamism has imitated, or colluded with, the state autocracies it claims to oppose. It has failed to suggest its own answers to economic problems, social justice, education or corruption, writes Hicham Alaoui in Le Monde diplomatique. Click here to read the full article, which is based on research that Alaoui presented at UC Berkeley and CDDRL on October 10 and 11, respectively.

"We must make it clear, not only to the Saudi monarchy but to all the world’s dictators, that they cannot murder their opponents with impunity," writes Larry Diamond. Read here.