In this interview for STATUS/الوضع, host Danny Postel speaks with Joel Beinin about is recent book Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. This interview is part of the MENA Dialogues series produced by the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University.
Joel Beinin is Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University. He has been involved with the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) since the 1970s and remains a contributing editor to its magazine, Middle East Report. In 2002 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He is series editor of Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures with Stanford University Press. His many books include Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (co-authored with Zachary Lockman, 1987), The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (1998), Was the Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in Eqypt and Israel, 1948-1965 (1990), Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (2001), The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (2010), Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa(co-edited with Frédéric Vairel, 2011; 2nd edition, 2013), and Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt (2016).
Danny Postel is the Assistant Director of the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University. He is co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (2011), The Syria Dilemma (2013), and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (2017). He worked for several years in the labor movement, as Communications Coordinator for Interfaith Worker Justice and as Communications Specialist for Stand Up! Chicago, a coalition of labor unions and grassroots community organizations. He is the producer of the MENA Dialogues series and the former producer of Middle East Dialogues series.