Concluding the Arab Uprising Project

Presented by the Project Co-Organizers
Bassam Haddad and Amaney Jamal

Organized by: Arab Studies Institute, Princeton’s Arab Barometer, and George Mason’s Middle East and Islamic Studies Program.

WWW.THEARABUPRISINGS.ORG

About the Project

December 17, 2020 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia. Beginning in 2011, mass uprisings swept North Africa and the Middle East, spreading from the shores of Tunisia to Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and the Eastern Province of the Arabian Peninsula. A “second wave” of mass protests and uprisings manifested during 2019 in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The persistence of demands for popular sovereignty even in the face of re-entrenched authoritarianism, imperial intervention, and civil strife is a critical chapter in regional and global history.

In an effort to mark, interrogate, and reflect on the Arab uprisings, we launched a yearlong set of events, reflections, and conversations. We have also compiled and categorized in a dedicated portal a variety of resources for educators, researchers, students, and journalists to understand the decade of political upheaval historically and in the lived present.

Co-Organizers

Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. Bassam is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and is Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. @4bassam

Amaney A. Jamal is Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics,and Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Jamal also directs the Workshop on Arab Political Development, and the Bobst-AUB Collaborative Initiative. She is the former President of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS). The focus of her current research is on the drivers of political behavior in the Arab world, Muslim immigration to the US and Europe, and the effect of inequality and poverty  on political outcomes. Jamal’s books include: Barriers to Democracy (2007), which explores the role of civic associations in promoting democratic effects in the Arab world (winner of the 2008 APSA Best Book Award in comparative democratization). She is co-editor of Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (2007) and Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9/11 (2009). Her most recent book, Of Empires and Citizens, was published by Princeton University Press (2012). Jamal is co-principal investigator of the Arab Barometer Project, winner of the Best Dataset in the Field of Comparative Politics (Lijphart/Przeworski/Verba Dataset Award 2010); co-PI of the Detroit Arab American Study, a sister survey to the Detroit Area Study; and senior advisor on the Pew Research Center projects focusing on Islam in America (2006) Global Islam (2010) and Islam in America (2017). Ph.D. University of Michigan. In 2005, Jamal was named a Carnegie Scholar.

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