Lisa Anderson was the president of the American University in Cairo in 2010 when the anti-government uprising known as the Arab Spring began in Tunisia. Anderson’s Egyptian faculty members told her “this could never happen in Egypt” because of the vast cultural differences between Tunisia and Egypt.
Anderson and others came to realize that assumption was incorrect, and before long, the government of President Hosni Mubarak was toppled as the violent protests spread across much of the Middle East.
Anderson, now a professor emeritus of international relations at Columbia University, recounted this and other key details of the history of the region in a classroom discussion on George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus on Thursday, February 21, in advance of a major talk on Friday evening at Merten Hall.
Some 40 students in Schar School of Policy and Government assistant professor Heba F. El-Shazli’s GOVT 332: Governments and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa class were treated to an hour-long talk followed by 30 minutes of questions with one of the foremost policy experts of that region and an eyewitness to the Arab Spring uprising.
Anderson, who was making her Schar School debut, said after the Mubarak regime was toppled “Egypt was not equipped to figure out how to appoint the next leader” with free elections. “This hadn’t happened in 7,000 years,” she added jokingly.
Anderson recounted the development of cultures in the Middle East and the influence of European control—and the loss of it—as to how it shaped the various societies. The bottom line, she said, was “conditions were ripe for the [Islamic movement] to walk right in.”
The talk was sponsored by the Schar School, the Middle East and Islamic Studies unit, the Arab Studies Institute, and Phi Beta Kappa, and was hosted by Schar School professor Jack A. Goldstone.