Egypt’s Free-Speech Backlash
[ A street poster from Cairo that reads, “My God, my freedom, O my country.” Photo: NEMO. [The Internationalist column in The Boston Globe Ideas.] CAIRO — Every night, Egypt’s current comedic...
View ArticleThe Triple Threat to Egyptian Press Freedom
A reader peruses the front cover of the revolutionary Tahrir newspaper (Photo: Amr Dalsh/Reuters) [Originally published in The Atlantic.] As the Arab uprisings continue, war and state repression aren’t...
View ArticleBiggest New Worry in Egypt: The Police
Egyptian security forces strip and beat a protester in the Cabinet clashes of December 2011. [Originally published in The Atlantic.] CAIRO – History doesn’t operate in perfect analogies, but I couldn’t...
View ArticleMissing in Egypt’s Latest Revolution: The People
A member of the Tamarod petition drive against Morsi gestures with an Egyptian flag in front of army soldiers in Cairo on July 3, 2013. (Amr Dalsh/Reuters) [Originally published in The Atlantic.]...
View ArticleCatching up on Egypt
Some standouts from the 40 open tabs in my browser: Baheyya pins down the nefarious rhetoric of Sisi and the coup-sters: she observes that the meaningless cheerleading phrase “legitimacy of the people”...
View ArticleWhat will give Egypt’s leader ‘legitimacy’?
[Originally published in The Boston Globe Ideas section.] CAIRO — The troop of bearded Islamists carried wooden clubs and wore motorcycle helmets. They marched in time beneath a sweltering noonday sun,...
View ArticleThe Secret History of Democratic Thought in the Middle East
Supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi protested at the Republican Guard building in Nasr City, Cairo. AP PHOTO/HASSAN AMMAR [Published in The Boston Globe Ideas.] IS DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE in the...
View ArticleProcessing the Arab Revolts
While finishing work on my book manuscript I came across this video from an October 2013 talk I gave at Claremont MacKenna College. I share it here mainly so that my mother can watch it, but it...
View ArticleAlaa Abdel Fattah on this moment of suspended hope
Alaa Abdel Fattah has been one of the most interesting thinkers and actors of the Egyptian revolution. He knows politics, history and street activism, and he’s put his body and his mind fully into the...
View ArticleDespite Strategic Convergence, Israel-Egypt Ties Face Tactical Strains
[Briefing for World Politics Review.] Egypt’s Tahrir Square uprising in January 2011 sent waves of anxiety coursing through the Israeli establishment. By mid-February, a close partner had been deposed...
View ArticleDown but not out: Egypt’s revolutionary youth
Egyptian youths shout slogans against the country’s ruling military council during a demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Nov. 30, 2011 (AP photo by Bela Szandelszky). [Published in World...
View ArticleWayback Machine: Designing a new Egypt
Khalil Hamra/AP photo Back in the spring of 2011, the vistas of possibility lay wide open. What kind of new government would Egyptians decide after they shocked the body politic out of its stupor with...
View ArticleFour years after Tahrir, what would make another uprising?
An anti-Mubarak protester in Tahrir Square, in November 2014 (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters) [Published in The Atlantic.] CAIRO—Four years after the revolution he helped lead, Basem Kamel has noticeably...
View ArticleEgypt panel at Center for American Progress
A great session in Washington that featured retired General Jim Matthis, then the panel discussing the CAP report on Egypt (Brian Katulis, Mokhtar Awad, Amy Hawthorne, Michael Hanna), and then a...
View ArticleThe Broken Dream of Tahrir Square
Basem Kamel in Cairo. Photo: Rena Effendi/Institut/DER SPIEGEL [Der Spiegel published this update on a trio of revolutionaries four years after Tahrir Square. I extended the reporting for Once Upon a...
View ArticleMax Strasser on Once Upon a Revolution
[Review essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books] When the Sun Falls over Tahrir March 28th, 2015 By Max Strasser SOMETIME IN THE SUMMER of 2011, I was sitting with a few friends at a café on the edge...
View ArticleEgypt’s Sisi Is Getting Pretty Good … at Being a Dictator
Photo credit: MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images [Published in Foreign Policy.] The outrageous death sentences in Egypt over the weekend, and the muted reaction from Western governments, suggest that...
View ArticleWhy Youth Was Not Enough in Egypt
Posting video from Tahrir Square, February 2011. Ed Ou for The New York Times [Read original in The New York Times Book Review.] GENERATION REVOLUTION On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in...
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