October, 2007 The Newsletter of

The Newsletter of
Middle East Studies Center, American University in Cairo
October, 2007
Review a book. Get a book for free.*
The MESC Newsletter is calling for reviews of the following books:
Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (2007).
Zaki Chehab, Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement (2007).
Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (2007).
Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007).
Eric Davis, Memories of a State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity (2005).
Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (2005).
Mearsheimer, J., and Walt, S., The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy(2007).
Madawi al-Rasheed, Contesting the Saudi State: Islamic Voices From a New Generation (2007).
Jillian Schwedler, Faith In Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (2006).
Email Rory McNamara at [email protected] by 18 October to make a request. Not all books listed will be reviewed; individuals chosen to review a book will be notified October 21.
*If permission to review a book is given, MESC will furnish the reviewer with a free copy of the book. Book reviews should be between 500 and 1,000 words in length, must meet other requirements, and are subject to approval of the MESC Newsletter Editorial Board. Reviews will appear in a future edition of the MESC Newsletter. Allow 4-6 weeks from time of permission until receipt
of book.
EMAIL YOUR REQUEST TO [email protected] BY OCTOBER 18
OCT. 2007
Page 3
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
4
FROM THE DIRECTOR
JOEL BEININ
5
SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM’S NEW TRAVAILS
CATHERINE BAYLIN
U.S. MIDDLE EAST STUDIES SCHOLARS UNDER FIRE
6
JACK BROWN
10
ARABIC CLASSES OUTSIDE AUC
RORY A. MCNAMARA
TURKEY’S EU PROSPECTS RECONSIDERED
12
KRISTEN ALFF
MESC EVENT-REPORT FROM MAHALLA AL-KUBRA
14
FRANCESCA RICCIARDONE
15
MEST STUDENT PROFILE: SHUANG WEN
CATHERINE BAYLIN
16
MESC CALENDAR
Cover photo by Farida Hammad
The views expressed here are those
of their authors and not necessarily
those of MESC, the editor, or the
Middle East Studies Program.
Faculty Advisors: J. Beinin, H. Sayed
Editor
Jack Brown
Assist. Editor Catherine Baylin
Assist. Editor Rory A. McNamara
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 4
FROM THE DIRECTOR
JOEL BEININ
From the Director
Welcome to the new
school year. Kull-i sana
w’intu tayyibin.
The school year began
with a new wave of political contestation in Egypt.
Since classes started we
have seen: a powerful
strike by the Misr Spinning and Weaving Co.
workers in Mahalla alKubra (see Francesca Ricciardone’s report on the
MESC seminar on this
topic in this issue); continuing strikes and protests by workers and
white-collar employees in
other sectors; charges
brought against several
newspaper editors for reporting on the rumors
about the President’s
health; suits brought by
several members of the
National Democratic Party
against Dr. Saad Eddin
Ibrahim, Professor of Sociology at AUC, for
“harming Egypt’s economic interests” after he
wrote an op-ed in the
Washington Post urging
Congress to cut military
aid to Egypt unless it improves its human rights
record; closure of the Association for Human
Rights Legal Aid; and continuation of a longrunning confrontation
between Egypt’s judges,
who persist in attempting
to exercise their constitutional responsibilities as
they understand them,
and the regime.
These events are the real
testing ground for the
progress of democracy in
Egypt. But, they have
been ignored or underreported by the western
media, with some notable
exceptions (for example,
Voice of America’s coverage of the Mahalla
strike). As usual, the
media focuses on high
politics and the comings
and goings of the powerful. This season, the
media has been filled
with speculation about
the belated and stillunfocused international
conference on the Palestinian-Israeli peace
which U.S. President
George W. Bush will host
in Annapolis, Maryland
later this fall. Its date,
its agenda, and the list of
invitees have yet to be
established. So it is too
early to pronounce definitively on its outcome.
However, there has been
relatively little discussion
in the Western press
about the high probability that this conference
will not produce a concrete plan to establish a
territorially contiguous,
sovereign Palestinian
state with its capital in
East Jerusalem along
with a just resolution of
the refugee question.
Even fewer have asked
why this is the case.
the other hand, may exercise their rights as citizens as they see fit.
How should we understand these rapidly unfolding and often confusing events? I suggest
adopting the maxim of
Euripides: “Question everything. Learn something.” One way of implementing this charge
would be to resist accepting without rigorous interrogation terms like
“peace process,”
“development,”
“economic growth,”
“reform,” and
“democratization.” These
terms are so commonly
used to describe the
situation in Egypt and
the broader Middle East
that we tend to accept
that they actually mean
something concrete. But
these are slippery terms
with multiple meanings
that often conceal as
much as they reveal.
It is one of the highest
objectives of the Middle
East Studies Program to
furnish our students
with the intellectual tools
to undertake such critical interrogations.
Joel Beinin
Most of the students in
the Middle East Studies
Program are foreigners.
As such we cannot and
should not play a significant role on the Egyptian
political scene. We can
witness the events and
express our opinions –
with all due caution and
respect. Egyptians, on
Director of Middle
East Studies
Resist accepting
without rigorous
interrogation terms
like “peace process,”
“development,”
“economic growth,”
“reform,” and
“democratization.”
These terms are so
commonly used...
that we tend to
accept that they
actually mean
something concrete.
OCT. 2007
Page 5
DR. SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM TAKES AN UNEXPECTED SABBATICAL
BY CATHERINE BAYLIN
In June, United States President George W. Bush stood
up in front of a conference of
democracy advocates from
around the world and referred to himself as a
“dissident” president because of internal American
resistance to his agenda.
Later at the conference,
President Bush spoke with
several of the attendees,
including AUC’s own Dr. Saad
Eddin Ibrahim, who apparently suggested the US
should place conditions on
some of the military aid that
the American government
supplies to the Egyptian government each year. This summer, the House of Representatives approved a bill that
would condition $200 million
of the $1.3 billion in military
and economic aid on Egypt’s
decreasing the flow of arms
smuggled to Palestinians in
Gaza and improving human
rights in Egypt. The bill subsequently died in the Senate.
After the ‘dissident’ president
hopped on Air Force One and
flew back to Washington,
some of the real dissidents in
the room had to face the
consequences of speaking
with Bush. Since the conference, Dr. Ibrahim has been
unable to return to Egypt due
to threats that he will be arrested. Nine criminal investigations have been opened
against him and the organization he heads, the Ibn
Khaldun Center for Development Studies. Private citizens with NDP affiliations
have accused him of treason
and harming the economic
interests of the state. Both
his lawyers and those close
to the regime suggested that
he remain abroad until it is
clear whether these cases
are headed for trial. He is
now dividing his time between Doha and Istanbul and
various lecture tours, most
recently in Switzerland and
Holland.
Dr. Ibrahim’s conversation
with President Bush and his
continued public calls for
conditioning American and
European aid to Egypt on
advances in human rights,
election monitoring, and judicial independence are only
two complaints on a laundry
list of objections that the
Egyptian government has to
his recent activities. Just
before the Prague conference in June, Dr. Ibrahim coorganized a conference in
Doha, Qatar entitled Democracy and Reform in the Arab
World. At the conference,
Sheikha Mousa announced
the creation of a $10 million
endowed fund to support civil
society and a freer press
throughout the region.
Dr. Ibrahim, a professor of
Sociology at AUC since 1975,
has had a long history of
advocacy that has led to trouble with the government. In
2001, he and 27 other civil
society activists were arrested, detained in undisclosed locations, held for
weeks, and eventually found
guilty of committing financial
offences and ‘tarnishing
Egypt’s image abroad’. It is
widely presumed that these
charges were politically motivated. The defendants, many
of whom were employees at
Dr. Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldun
Center for Development Studies or the Egyptian Women
Voters Support Center, were
active in election monitoring
and other projects that the
government found unwelcome. All 28 defendants
were sentenced to jail terms
repeatedly; Dr. Ibrahim
served 3 before being acquitted on all charges.
Now, as then, the hounding
of Ibrahim appears to be part
of a wider crackdown on dissident activity in Egypt. In the
past year, the government
has stepped up arrests
among groups supporting
labor rights, the Muslim
Brotherhood, the opposition
media, and civil society, including another employee at
the Ibn Khaldun Center who
was arrested the night after
returning from the conference in Doha, and was only
recently released.
There is speculation that the
regime is putting pressure on
all opposition movements as
the inevitable transfer of
presidential power draws
nearer. Arrests and media
campaigns against opposition leaders in the state
sponsored press could be
part of a broader campaign
to discredit public figures
who would object to naming
Gamal Mubarak as his father’s successor.
The situation
is further
complicated
by a chill in
official relations between Washington and
Cairo and
historically
high levels of
dislike of the
US. The
Bush administration is
widely seen by the opposition
as inconsistent and hypocritical in its support for the regime. In this climate, it is
unlikely that the dissident
journalists or other potential
political prisoners will welcome or receive the kind of
international support that
was forthcoming when Dr.
Ibrahim and others were
jailed earlier.
Both his lawyers
and those close
to the regime
suggested that
[Ibrahim] remain
abroad until it is
clear whether
these cases are
headed for trial.
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 6
ACADEMIC FREEDOM UNDER THREAT IN
AMERICAN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
JACK BROWN
Wars have a way of stripping
away the intellectual nuance
a society is otherwise capable of supporting, and the socalled War on Terror is no
exception. In American academia, some scholars of the
Middle East are paying a
heavy price for the country's
new focus on the region. For
professors who study the
Middle East, the years since
2001 have brought both
greater interest and greater
scrutiny. Over the past few
months, a series of highprofile campaigns have
ended or curtailed the university careers of well-known
critics of US policy in the region, and in particular the
vexed issue of Israel’s role in
that policy.
Most recently, Norman
Finkelstein, a prominent professor of Political Science at
DePaul University in Chicago,
was denied tenure and
abruptly fired after a savage
and defamatory campaign
based on his critical work on
Israel, the Holocaust, and the
Palestinian conflict. A similar
campaign is currently being
waged against Nadia Abu ElHaj, a professor of anthropology at Barnard College and
author of an award-winning
book about Israeli manipulation of archaeology for state
purposes. Last year, prominent Middle East historian
Juan Cole was denied a position at Yale University despite
the fact that the History and
Sociology departments had
already chosen him for appointment to a new interdisciplinary program. Dr. Cole fell
victim to a media campaign
to vilify him as anti-American
that also directly targeted the
university's donors.
general publishing silence on
the issue of Israel's outsized
role in American foreign policy; however, they may have
also lent a new sense of ur-
All three of these scholars
are featured prominently by
Campus
Watch,
Daniel
Pipes'
reprehensible initiative to
intimidate
professors
and stifle
criticism
of American and
Israeli
roles in
the Middle East
by focusing national
attention
on particular
targets.
The goal
DePaul Professor Finkelstein lost his job for
of the
“uncollegial” criticism of other scholars.
Campus
Watch
project
and the
recent tenure campaigns (a
gency to Israel's defenders
number of which were led
within the academy.
from within academia by
Harvard law professor and
Israel backer Alan DershowOf course, campaigns against
itz) is, of course, to stifle acadissident scholars are not
demic debate about the role
new to American campuses.
of Israel in American foreign
Such campaigns were most
policy. That issue has taken
prominent during the
on much more prominence in
McCarthy anti-communist
the past year since the publicrusade of the 1950s, but
cation of John Mearsheimer
stretch much further back,
and Stephen Walt's The Isand indeed as long as the
rael Lobby and US Foreign
idea of tenure and academic
Policy and former US presifreedom have existed. Moddent Jimmy Carter's Peace
ern attitudes toward acaNot Apartheid. The appeardemic freedom in American
ance of these two works
universities began to take
seem to have breached a
shape in the late 19th and
Finkelstein was
denied tenure
and abruptly
fired after a
savage and
defamatory
campaign
based on his
critical work on
Israel, the
Holocaust, and
the Palestinian
conflict.
OCT. 2007
Page 7
early 20th century and were
heavily influenced by an influx of professors trained in
German universities. In Germany, the scholarly environment was based on the dual
notions of freedom to teach
and freedom to learn
(Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit). In the United States,
freedom to teach meant that
individual professors were, in
theory, free to teach and say
what they wanted without
fear of losing their jobs. It is
the responsibility of the university's governors to protect
the jobs of its professors
from outside pressure; however, other groups have long
played a role in the process.
The reality
of the
history of
academic
freedom in
America is
a mixed
bag.
Since its founding in 1915,
the American Association of
University Professors has
explicitly positioned itself as
the foremost defender of
academic freedom. In reality,
this role has been mixed with
a good deal of kowtowing to
national hysterias and demagoguery. Soon after its founding, the AAUP took up the
case of Scott Nearing, a socialist and professor at the
University of Pennsylvania
whose political loyalties and
pacifism were extremely unpopular in the years leading
up to the First World War. The
AAUP unsuccessfully fought
his firing from the university.
The organization's principles
did not survive into the war
itself however; as the national hysteria surrounding
the war effort built, it issued
a statement of principles
which declared such activities as anti-war organizing,
counseling draft resisters and
criticizing the war effort to be
beyond the pale of academic
freedom. From the 1930s on,
universities turned their attention to suppression of the
Communist threat, a hysteria
which saw its apotheosis in
the 1950s and cost many
academics their jobs and
reputations. By 1940, the
AAUP had shifted its academic freedom policy to exclude the protection of political speech with the general
public in order to support the
firing of academics suspected of Communist sympathies.
teaching and scholarship,
which, the university admitted, were exemplary. Rather,
it seems to stem from the
tone of his work, which was
'uncollegial' and
'inflammatory.' Finkelstein's
written scholarship focused
on carefully documented and
reasoned demolishing of
what he called
"the Holocaust
Industry"—
The reality
scholars who
of the
wrote about the
history of
Holocaust esacademic
sentially to
freedom
justify the curin Amerrent activities
ica then,
of the state of
is a mixed
Israel. Focusing
bag. On
on undermining
one level,
the work of
the United
other scholars,
States is
especially
a pretty
those who repgood
resent the
place for
dominant
scholars
strain of
to write
Michigan Professor Juan Cole lost a job thought in
and say
American sociwhat they offer at Yale after a letter-writing camety, is not, of
want. On paign directed to the school’s donors.
course, a recipe
another
for 'collegial'
level, war
writing, and is
hysteria and witch-hunts
almost by definition
have claimed numerous vic'inflammatory.' It is for pretims in the academy, and the
cisely this kind of writing that
body which defends scholars
the notion of academic freehas not been entirely imdom is necessary.
mune to the environment
around it. So it is heartening
that the AAUP has strongly
DePaul's decision to get rid of
protested Finkelstein's disFinkelstein seems to have
missal, writing in a letter to
stemmed largely from an
DePaul University's president
outside campaign led by Harthis summer stating that, "It
vard law professor Alan Deris entirely illegitimate for a
showitz. Dershowitz's vitriolic
university to deny tenure to a
campaign against Finkelstein
professor out of fear that his
also has a personal basis. In
published research, including
2003, Finkelstein accused
those that appear under the
the Harvard professor of plaUniversity of California Press,
giarizing large portions of a
might hurt a college's reputabook on Israel, by lifting doztion."
ens of quotations from an
earlier (and discredited) book
without attribution.
DePaul's decision to fire
Finkelstein was by all accounts unrelated to his
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
A similar campaign was
launched last year when Yale
University decided to hire
away Juan Cole, a star professor at the University of
Michigan
and author of
numerous highly
regarded
books on
Muslim
and Arab
history.
After the
decision
to hire
Cole was
mooted,
a series
Barnard Anthroof opinpology Professor
ion
Nadia Abu el Haj’s pieces
criticizing
tenure is at risk.
his political views
on the
war in Iraq and the IsraelPalestinian conflict were
floated in area newspapers.
After faculty committees
voted to hire him nonetheless, activists wrote letters to
dozens of Yale's prominent
donors "urging them to make
their disapproval of Cole's
hiring known." As his hiring
was being discussed by the
tenure committee, "the letter's recipients apparently
weighed in," according to The
Jewish Week; Cole was denied the position despite the
support of the relevant departments.
This month, Columbia University, site of a long-running
(though unsuccessful) campaign to get rid of Palestinian-American political science
professor Joseph Massad,
will decide the fate of Nadia
Abu El-Haj, an anthropology
professor at Columbia's affiliate Barnard College. Like
Finkelstein, she is up for tenure, and like him, she is un-
der attack by self-appointed
defenders of Israel for her
scholarship. Her work addresses how Israeli archaeologists built the case for a
Jewish state by searching for
evidence of ancient Jewish
civilization in Palestine.
Not every victim of the present environment is so deserving of sympathy. Ward
Churchill, former chair of the
Ethnic Studies department at
the University of Colorado at
Boulder, came under attack
for repeating Malcolm X's
famous remark that the
"chickens had come home to
roost" this time in reference
to September 11, 2001.
While the motivation for the
ensuing academic and press
campaign against him may
well have been to stifle his
freedom of speech, subsequent investigations by the
university and other scholars
revealed a convincing pattern
of falsified research and possible plagiarism.
Critics of Cole, Finkelstein
and Abu el Haj, however,
have no such ammunition.
They are attacking people
who appear to be exemplary,
if politically controversial,
scholars. The current fraught
political climate will undoubtedly pass with time, but it
meanwhile reveals once
again that the American tradition of academic freedom,
like much else, is conditioned
upon avoiding the most politically unpopular positions.
Page 8
Controverisal Scholarship?
Selected books by the scholars discussed in this article
Nadia Abu El-Haj
In 2001, she published
Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and
Territorial Self-Fashioning in
Israeli Society, which won
the Middle East Studies
Association’s Albert Hourani
award for
the year’s
best book
on the Middle East. In
Israel as
elsewhere,
archaeology
has been
more than a
mere scientific discipline since
the earliest
years of the
British Mandate (and
Zionist colonization);
indeed it
has always
been something of a
national
(and nationalist) obsession.
Facts on the Ground investigated the way Israeli archaeology establishes historical ‘facts’ which then
circulate into other social
spaces; in other words, how
a seemingly narrow scientific discipline legitimates
and reinforces social dis-
courses about, for example,
Jews’ historical ‘right’ to Palestine. The online petition to
deny Abu El-Haj tenure
(launched, incidentally, by a
West Bank settler) used
some quite shocking distortions of Facts on the Ground,
quoting it as asserting, for
example, ‘that the ancient
Israelite kingdoms are a
"pure political fabrication."’;
in fact the book says the
opposite: “the modern Jewish/Israeli belief in ancient
Israelite origins is not understood as pure political fabrication.”
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Norman Finkelstein
In 1996, Daniel Goldhagen, a
young professor at Harvard,
published Hitler’s Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, an
academic book which
achieved the kind of popular
mass-market sales most
professors only dream of. A
year later, Finkelstein and
Ruth Birn published a pair of
carefully researched reviews
which, in the eyes of many
professional historians, demolished the theoretical and
research underpinnings of
Goldhagen’s book so thoroughly as to render the book
worthless. These reviews,
published in 1998 as A Nation on Trial: The
Goldhagen Thesis
and Historical Truth,
raised difficult questions about how
such slipshod and
misleading scholarship as Goldhagen’s
could not only be
published but receive adulatory reviews across the
country. Finkelstein
classifies Goldhagen’s work as essentially a Zionist version of the
Holocaust, and
subsequently
wrote a book
on the ways
contemporary
Zionism wields
the Holocaust
as a cudgel
against its
critics: The
Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the
Exploitation of
Jewish Suffering.
Page 9
Juan Cole
Cole’s latest book, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the
Middle East, has the rare
virtue of being a work of serious scholarship and theory
which is also an entertaining
read, as when it discusses
Egyptian scholars’
bemusement and
ridicule of the absurd
and incomprehensible French proclamations issued in broken Arabic by Napoleon’s Maltese translators. By mining
French, Egyptian and
Ottoman archives
with equal interest
(though with notably
more success on the French
side), Cole emerges with a
first-rate retelling of the original Western attempt at occupying and colonizing the Middle East, told from all sides of
the story. It is explicitly in-
tended as a cautionary parable for the ongoing American occupiers of Iraq. Earlier
important works include Colonialism and Revolution in the
Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's 'Urabi
Movement, which carefully
explores this 19th
century protonationalist Egyptian
uprising, and Sacred
Space And Holy War:
The Politics, Culture
and History of Shi'ite
Islam.
OCT. 2007
Studying Arabic in
Cairo: Some
Options
by Rory A. McNamara
Learning Arabic comes hand
in hand with Middle East
Studies, especially in Cairo.
MESC students are fortunate
to have at their disposal the
university’s renowned Arabic
Language Institute which is
among the most successful
institutions in the world in
teaching Arabic to non-native
learners.
Nevertheless, it can often be
difficult to get a seat in ALNG
classes and they are subject
to demand (for example, this
fall semester no 300-level
classes or any course above
212 is being offered). Moreover, AUC’s Arabic classes
are markedly more expensive
than local alternatives, especially since tuition is now
calculated on a per credit
basis rather than a flat-fee.
For example, a six-credit
“semi-intensive”
Arabic
course at AUC which in past
years was covered by the flatrate tuition so long as a student was enrolled in less
than 15 total credits now
costs a not-so-paltry $4,038
per semester.* The MESC is
now trying to negotiate a
revision or modification of
this fee structure.
This is Cairo, though, and
MESC students falling between the Arabic cracks or
simply looking to cut costs
have many options at their
disposal. Since quality of
instruction is a subjective
judgment,
and
depends
largely on personal preferences and relationships with
instructors no matter where
Page 10
one studies, it is difficult to
rate language schools using
any objective criteria. Trial
and error may be the only
way to find out what best
suits each student.
Still, looking for a quality
place to study Arabic doesn’t
have to be a complete stab in
the dark.In the hopes of helping Cairo neophytes learn
from the experience of others, the following abbreviated
list of alternative Arabic
schools briefly details some
of the options which former
and present MESC students
have found to be the most
fruitful. In addition to these
options, students may be
well-served to seek out Arabic language tutoring or language exchanges with individuals seeking to trade Arabic instruction for practice in
English.
In rough order of popularity
with previous MESC students:
ILI (International
Language Institute)
What they offer: MSA,
ECA, Combined Programs
Course
schedule:
Courses run either 4 or 5
weeks. MSA classes meet for
10 hours per week and ECA
meet 8 hours/week. Both
tracks offer classes four days
per week.
Costs: 32 hours for $256;
40 hours for $320; 50 hours
for $400
What others say:
It
seems that most MESC students taking Arabic outside
of AUC start at ILI. Many
seem to end there too – in
one way or another. Many
don’t feel compelled to look
elsewhere as they are content with the ILI program.
Indeed, several former students have commented that
they benefited more from ILI
classes than from those at
AUC. On the other hand, at
least one former student was
forced to leave ILI once his
grasp of ‘Amiya progressed
beyond the level of Egyptian
Colloquial ILI could teach.
On another note, ILI’s MSA
program can be deceptively
fast says one former student: “the (MSA) instruction
can make you feel like your
covering a lot, but you really
aren’t.” On the whole
though, ILI seems like a
solid choice for both MSA
and ECA although you’ll
probably find little difference other than schedule
and a few LE between ILI
and its main competition,
Kalimat (see below).
Location:
4 Mahmoud
Azmy St. (off Ahmed Orabi
St.), El-Sahafeyeen
Contact Info: phone
33463087 and 33028358;
email [email protected];
web www.arabicegypt.com
*See PDF File “Tuition Fees, Academic Year 2007/2008” on http://www.aucegypt.edu/Students.html Note
the difference in tuition between International Graduate Tuition for 6 credits ($4,038) and the International
Graduate tuition for 12 credits ($8,076). This difference is $4,038.
Kalimat Language
and Culture
Centre
What they offer: MSA,
ECA, Combined Programs
Course
Schedule:
Classes are generally held
Monday through Thursday. A
16-day MSA course covers
48 hours of instruction and a
16-day ECA course meets for
a total of 32 hours. A nonintensive ECA class meets
twice a week for two hours.
Costs:
16 hours of ECA
(non-intensive) for LE 580;
32 hours of ECA for LE
1,160; 48 hours of MSA for
LE 1,740; 80 hours of MSA
and ECA combined for LE
2,900
What others say: Very
similar to ILI in price, classes
offered, and in quality of
instruction; but former students of both schools rate
Kalimat’s MSA program
slightly higher than that of
ILI. However, in the inevitable comparison with ILI, the
consensus seems to favor
ILI’s ECA program as Kalimat
frustratingly uses both transliterated and Arabic scripts.
Regardless, Kalimat seems
like a safe choice and has
certainly contented many
OCT. 2007
MESC graduates. A note
about the competition between ILI and Kalimat: opinion is so split that you’re better off trying for yourself
based on schedule and location. As for intensive programs, Kalimat offers MSA in
the morning and ECA in the
afternoon and vice versa for
ILI.
Location: 22 Muhammad
Mahmoud Shabaan St., Mohandiseen
Contact Info: phone
37618136; email
[email protected]; web
www.kalimategypt.com
Page 11
students have mixed feelings
about Fajr. On the one hand,
the price is right and some
have had favorable impressions of the quality of instruction. On the other hand,
some have tellingly stated
“You get what you pay for.”
For those who live in Madinat
Nasr or its surrounds or in
Maadi and are looking for
close-to-home Arabic, then
Fajr could be worth a shot.
Otherwise, with all the other
options – including getting a
tutor – there seems to be
little other than price to distinguish Fajr from the competition. Also, the selection of
Fajr’s ECA courses seems
questionable.
Location:
Fajr Center for
the Arabic Language
What they offer: MSA,
ECA
Course schedule: MSA
‘group classes’
are five
weeks of five day of three
hours each; MSA one-on-one
instruction has five (6 hours/
day), ten (3 hours/day), and
fifteen (2 hours/day) week
options each consisting of a
total of 75 hours
Costs:
The ‘group class’
option costs $85 in all locations, but strangely the oneon-one classes vary in price
by location. 75 hours costs
$350 in Dokki, $300 in
Maadi, and $250 in Madinat
Nasr.
What others say: Former
All over Cairo:
the main branch is in Madinat Nasr and will be more
suitable to MESC students
after AUC moves next year.
The branch closest to downtown and most students is
located at 3 Rashdan St. in
Dokki. There is also a branch
in Maadi: 63 al-Nady St. (alArab Square).
Contact info: Madinat
Nasr: phone 22750066;
Dokki: phone 37486068;
Maadi: phone 23597254; all
branches:
email
[email protected];
web
www.fajr.com
lesson plans are flexible and
if you don’t jive with a certain
teacher, find another one.
The location is perhaps the
most convenient of all language schools for AUC students as it is in Garden City
on the Coniche – much easier than a taxi ride to Mohandiseen, Dokki, or almost anywhere else where Arabic is
taught.
Diwan Center for
the Arabic Language
What they offer:
MSA,
ECA, and will tailor classes to
specific requests
Course Schedule:
flexible schedules to meet individual needs but established
hours are also offered 2.5
hours per day for five days a
week over the course of a
month (‘regular’) or 5 hours
per day for five days a week
for the course of a month
(‘intensive’)
Costs: For MSA, one-on-one
tutelage costs LE 50 per
hour, two-student classes go
for LE 40/hour, and group
classes (subject to demand)
cost LE 24/hour. Across the
board, ECA is LE 4 per hour
cheaper than MSA.
What others say: Current
students note that while Diwan is slightly costlier than
stalwarts such as ILI and
Kalimat, class size is markedly smaller than the competition--if you can find a group
class at all (at the time of
inquiry, however no such
classes were being offered!)
and the quality of instruction
is satisfactory. Another advantage is that as you pay by
the hour; you won’t find yourself committed to paying for a
class you don’t like – daily
Location: 1071 Corniche alNil, Garden City
Contact Info: phone
27922556; email
[email protected]; web
www.arabiccairo.com
OCT. 2007
Page 12
LEAVING THE MIDDLE EAST:
TURKEY’S EU AMBITIONS
KRISTEN ALFF
Turkey’s prospects for joining
the European Union will be
resolved in two spheres –
one external and one internal. Turkey’s external management of the Cyprus question and border disputes with
its Greek and Iraqi neighbors
(over the Mosul wilayet) have
been integral to its EU candidacy since its inception in
1999. Perhaps more exigent
in recent years, however, is
Turkey’s domestic political
constitution. Under critical
scrutiny is how Turkey compares when evaluated
against EU standards of democratization, rule of law,
women’s liberation, and
treatment of national and
ethnic minorities. These domains overlap in respect to
the Kurdish minority group
straddling the Iraqi, Iranian
and Syrian borders: EU membership in 2015 for Turkey
would mean solving the
“Kurdish question” once and
for all.
When measured against the
EU’s universal set of participating state standards, outlined in the ‘Copenhagen
Criteria,’ Turkey comes up
short. More recent European
Union Progress Reports indicate that Turkey requires
“revolutionary changes” in
respect to minorities and
political and social freedoms.
Indeed, for one, the report
cited “significant political
influence” exercised by the
military as an impediment to
reform and reported violations of freedom of expression. A policy still intact from
earlier periods is the Turkish
Armed Forces Internal Service Law, which contains
articles granting the military a
singular degree of domestic
political hegemony, especially
in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast
(EU Progress Report 2007).
The Gendarmerie under this
law is part of the army and
operates under the General
Staff as well as under the
Ministry of Interior in terms of
it law-enforcement duties.
Underlying these violations of
EU norms, the EU analysis
found that the current state –
much like the regimes before
it – makes threats of physical
coercion towards individuals
who employ any public “antiTurkish” or “anti-government
rhetoric” (EU Progress Report
2007).
Many of Turkey’s unresolved
difficulties, according to the
EU, concern this idea of “antiTurkishness.” In varying degrees, from Mustafa Kemal
onwards, the ruling and military apparatuses in Turkey
have sustained a policy of
susbsuming all distinctive
ethnicities under the collective ‘Turkish’ identity mandated by the state. Indeed,
most of the human rights
violations that the EU is most
adamant about reversing are
those having to do with the
freedom of expression and
the crime of insulting the
Republic or its organs and
institutions. Foremost in the
dialogue between the EU and
the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AK Party)
concerning a drafting of a
new constitution is a swift
amendment to Article 301 of
the Penal Code. At present,
the Article allows the Turkish
General Assemblies of the
Civil and Penal Chambers of
the Court of Cassation to
confirm prison sentences for
journalists and individuals
like Orhan Pamuk giving
voice to alternative identities
in Turkey –the most sensitive
being Kurdish and Armenian.
Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has emphasized military reforms over freedom of
expression.
Turkey’s new president, Abdullah Gul, has responded to
EU proposals with commitments to human rights for
minorities and promises to
find answers to the “Kurdish
question.” Yet, Prime Minister
Erdoğan’s AK Party continues
to find Article 301 less pressing than military reforms,
which Erdoğan has expressed
as the government’s utmost
priority, over EU progress.
In more recent months, adhering to the EU standards of
governance has proven to be
a challenge for the new political party. Despite threats
from a strong and independent military, there has also
been an increase in antiKurdish and anti-Western
sentiments as a result of the
breakdown in TurkishAmerican relations. Since the
Truman Doctrine, promulgated in 1947, America has
Recent European
Union Progress
Reports indicate
that Turkey
requires
“revolutionary
changes” in respect
to minorities and
political and social
freedoms.
OCT. 2007
backed its NATO ally in Kurdish matters. The deterioration
of this once strategic alliance
has come about in response
to each side’s differing interests in Iraq, and most recently the Iraq war. While
Turkey still makes a bogey of
Kurdish nationalism and
fears Kurdish separatism,
America, now, is actively supporting the Kurds in their new
role as one of three
“geographical” regions of an
Iraqi federation and doing
little, in Turkey’s opinion, to
quell PKK activities over the
Turkish border from its Northern Iraqi base.
A major source of anxiety for
Turkey is Iraqi-Kurdistan’s
autonomy – Kurdish selfdetermination there may
invoke similar calls within
Turkey’s borders. Compounded with that is the topic
of oil. The oil of Kirkuk is
what Erdoğan and the AKP
government fear will provide
the means to economically
support an independent Kurdistan.
The militant Kurdish separatist PKK is the third major
element of concern for the
Turkish government, and
perhaps the most potent of
them because it represents a
culmination of Turkish fears
of dismemberment and the
end of national integrity. Erdoğan has had to rescind
some of his party’s more EUfriendly policy shifts in response to the PKK and the
fear of Kurdish uprisings on
whole. The aggressive revival
of the PKK since 2004 in
Turkey, paired with the understanding of the continued
need to move ahead on EU
considerations, has become
a balancing act in which Erdoğan has had difficulty
Page 13
maintaining a sense of equilibrium. One tactical move
has culminated in frequent
cross-border attacks by Turkish troops in Iraq.
The US and the EU need to
be aware of their role in the
stability and potential opening up of the European state.
There is most obviously Turkish popular support for EU
The AK Party’s ‘anti-Kurdish’
membership both within the
reaction to the prospect of
public sphere and within the
federalism in Iraq has damgovernaged its rapment and
port with the
the miliEU and the
tary. What
US. Frequent
will happen
meetings in
next has
the US with
yet to be
top AK Party
deterofficials,
mined, but
however, still
with diaattest to
logue beTurkey’s wish
tween the
to remain
Kurds, the
amicable to
Americans,
foreign diathe Turks
logue, espeand the EU,
cially when it
could give
concerns EU
the Kurds
demands.
the cultural
and political freeThe most
dom that
favorable
New Turkish President Abdullah
will reconscenario
Gul has promised to find answers cile them to
would be
their situato the “Kurdish Question,” but
Turkey’s
tion.
with little success so far
accession
‘Strong’
into the EU.
state and
The benefits
democracy
of this outcome are plenty,
promotion has figured greatly
one of which would be Turon the agendas of these govkey’s reforms in respect to
ernments; all parties must
the Kurds. Compliance with
recognize that it is their reEU standards would inevitasponsibility to ensure that
bly necessitate Kurdish acthis window of opportunity is
commodation. The need for
not decisively closed.
Turkey’s hefty military personnel – now dedicated to
countering “anti-Turkishness”
– would be significantly lightened. Furthermore, Iraq
would have fewer disturbances in its northern regions. Membership in the EU
would guarantee better security on the EU’s external border and Turkey would no
longer have a need to fear
Kurdish encroachment.
Turkey’s
accession
into the
EU...would
inevitably
necessitate
Kurdish
accommoda
tion.
WWW.AUCEGYPT.EDU/ACADEMIC/MESC/
Page 14
Middle East Studies Center Event
Al-Dustur Journalist Mostafa Bassiouny on Recent Mahalla Strike
Francesca Ricciardone
On October 2, 2007 the
workers of the Misr Textile
Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla al-Kubra
successfully negotiated an
agreement with the Government of Egypt that formally
asserts the sharing of company profits through proportional workers’ bonus payments, and guarantees the
disbursement of bonus-pay in
arrears. This agreement
concluded the first in a series
of scheduled negotiations
resulting from the workers’
successful 6-day strike.
On October 3, journalist Mostafa Bassiouny came to the
Middle East Studies Center
and spoke about his observations at Mahalla to a crowd of
about 40 members of the
AUC community. Bassiouny
spoke in Arabic and excellent
translation was provided by
Dr. Sameh Naguib of the
Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology Department.
Mustafa Bassiouny is the
labor reporter for the Egyptian independent daily paper
Al-Dustur, and has been
closely following the waves of
strikes that have rolled
through Egypt since a milemarker December 2006
strike at the same factory in
Mahalla. Director of Middle
East Studies Joel Beinin’s
brief narration of the public
company’s historical significance in the labor movement
and an energetic questionand-answer period bookended Bassiouny’s talk.
Bassiouny noted that while
workers usually stage sit-ins
to express their demands – a
form of contestation that
sometimes results in increased production – the
workers at Mahalla chose to
go on strike, halting production completely. The success
of this strike appeared to
heighten workers’ consciousness of their economic power
across Egypt’s governorates,
sectors, and industries. In
Beinin’s words, there had
been a transformation in the
way workers chose to redress
their grievances; from ‘a culture of petition’ to ‘a culture
of protest.’
Bassiouny’s observations
from the most recent strike in
Mahalla provide further evidence of this increased confidence. The workers’ set of
demands encompassed a
broader range of concerns,
including linking wages to
company performance and
transportation issues. The
strike showed more preparation: it was announced in
advance on 23 September,
and was started by the night
shift in order to ensure a
base of support to encourage
the participation of the day
shift. Indeed, far more workers participated in the September protest: while in December there were at times
as few as 100 workers sitting-in at the factory, in September there were never less
than 5,000.
The workers also exercised
sensitivity to the extended
community of the Mahalla
factory. The textile company
houses water, electric, and
garage facilities that service
the surrounding town of Ma-
The success of
this strike
appeared to
halla al-Kubra. During the
strike, the workers took care
to keep these services operational. In turn, vendors in
Mahalla expressed to Bassiouny their support of the
strike; although the freeze in
factory activity temporarily
crippled local commerce, the
shopkeepers’ economic interests ultimately hinged upon
the workers’ victory.
heighten
The Egyptian government’s
initial reaction to the strike
was described by Bassiouny
as one of avoidance, or denial. Authorities declared
that the factory would be
officially closed from 23 September through 30 September, effectively making any
worker present subject to
police action. Bassiouny
reported that police threats,
however, actually increased
the number of participating
strikers. Each evening after
iftar, Mahalla’s male and
female workers would drum
on barrels, whistle, and call
out through the night; a message to the police that they
were awake and waiting. The
workers maintained control
over the factory grounds and
its gates, allowing strikers
and journalists in and out.
governorates,
workers’
consciousness
of their
economic
power across
Egypt’s
sectors, and
industries.
the increased levels of alternative
organization, as does the Egyptian
government’s concession to negotiate with the workers’ representatives other than the official trade
union mouthpieces. It is this concession that Bassiouny considers
the greatest success of the September strike at Mahalla.
———————————————————-
Special Thanks to Dr. Sameh
The length of the strike ofNaguib from the Sociology Defered the opportunity to department for his live translavelop more organization
tion.
among the Mahalla workers.
These workers generally consider themselves illrepresented by the trade
union representatives instated through the allegedly
corrupt elections directly
preceding the December
strike. Bassiouny’s narrative
stresses the significance of
OCT. 2007
Page 15
MIDDLE EAST STUDIES PROGRAM STUDENT PROFILE
by CATHERINE BAYLIN
misleading.
MES: Last summer you traveled to Lebanon to cover the
war with between Hezbollah
and Israel. What prompted
you to take the risk?
Shuang Wen, 28
Manchuria, China
4th semester at AUC
MES: What did you study as
an undergraduate?
SW: I always loved novels, so
I studied English literature.
The first non-Chinese novel I
ever read was Gone with the
Wind (in Chinese translation)
when I was in high school. I
loved Scarlett because she
was so different from a typical Chinese girl. She was
independent and resilient.
MES: What career did you
pursue with your degree?
SW: With foreign language
skills, a common path in
China was to become a translator. I went to a UN sponsored graduate school for
interpreters and translators,
specializing in simultaneous
interpreting for international
conferences. At that point, I
thought becoming a translator for the UN would be glorious. It’s great fun to play with
words. But then I realized
that even if you are the best
translator, you are still repeating what someone else
says. So after my M.A., I went
to work in China’s first 24/7
news channel (Phoenix Satellite Television, in Hong Kong),
as a journalist, so that I could
say what I wanted to say. I
was also the first full-time
simultaneous interpreter for
television news coverage in
China.
MES: Why did you first come
to the Middle East?
SW: I was assigned to the
Middle East twice in 2005, to
cover the first Palestinian
presidential election after
Yasser Arafat’s death and the
Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
My feature story series about
the Gaza withdrawal was a
submitted entry for the 2006
International Emmy Award.
MES: What prompted you to
study the region?
SW: Now I can say that at
that time, I only saw a very
superficial layer of the Middle
East. I knew nothing about
the region except for current
events. As a young journalist,
I went to the field, talked to
people and took it as the
whole truth, but it was not.
It’s still very important to
hear people speak from their
heart, but I also need to have
more in-depth knowledge to
give my audience a full picture. China has 1.3 billion
people. I was aware that if I
didn’t know much in-depth
about the Middle East, my
reports could be potentially
SW: Journalistic instinct! “We
(journalists) were called thrill
freaks, death-wishers,
wound-seekers, war-lovers…”
That is the first sentence of a
book called The War Correspondent, by Greg McLaughlin. It is, in a sense, true. ‘No
news is good news’ for people in general, but it’s bad
news for journalists. That’s
the nature of our job. I spent
three weeks in Lebanon covering the refugee flows from
Southern Lebanon to Beirut.
The Lebanese are amazing. I
really didn’t want to leave the
war, because of them.
MES: What will you do after
graduating from AUC?
SW: I am not sure yet, but I
may go into documentary
films.
MES: Final question…what is
your favorite thing about
living in Cairo?
SW: Definitely faluka rides on
the Nile! It’s the place where I
can retreat and reflect, and…
take a nap.
OCTOBER
SUN
14
21
2007
MON
TUE
WED
THU
FRI
SAT
8
9
10
11
12
13
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16
17
18
19
20
PhD
roundtable at
MESC
Last day
for book
review
requests
24
25
26
27
22
23
Coming up this Month
October 17, 6-7:30, MESC conference
room - Round table discussion with Dr.
Beinin about Ph. D. programs
* October 30, 6 - 8, Oriental Hall - Civil
Society and Egyptian Public Debate on
Gender (public lecture by Mona Eltahawy)'
* November 4-5, 9 - 6, Oriental Hall—
American Studies Center Conference:
Are Islam and Democracy Compatible?
* November 5, 5:30-7:30, Blue Room My Space, Her Space, Our space:
MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
OFFICE
5 Youssef El Guindi St. Apt. #4
Phone: (+20-2) 2797-5994
E-mail: [email protected]