The Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict is pleased to announce the inaugural public lecture of the Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Professorship. On September 30, Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Egypt’s most prominent human rights activist and professor of sociology, will be joined by Dr. Christopher Taylor, professor of Islamic Studies and chair of the department of religious studies, to discuss “The Futures of Democracy in the Middle East: A Conversation with Saad Eddin Ibrahim.”
Through a generous three-year pilot grant from Jane and Bernard Wallerstein, the CRCC has received funding to invite distinguished scholars and public intellectuals to be in residence on Drew’s campus for varying periods of time. Distinguished Visiting Fellows will be people especially noted for their capacity to bring many disciplines into conversation with each other about the particular area of religion and culture in which they work. Fellows interact with both students and faculty in a variety of ways and serve as important catalysts for wide-ranging interdisciplinary conversations about different aspects of cultural and religious interaction. Drew has been able to bring Dr. Ibrahim to campus for the entire 2009-2010 academic year. As part of his service at Drew, he will teach a course on “Society, State, and Globalization in the Middle East.”
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a professor of Sociology. For most of his career he taught at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and he is also the founder and director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo. Egypt’s most prominent human rights activist, Professor Ibrahim was arrested by Egyptian state security officers in July, 2000 for attempting to monitor Egypt’s notoriously rigged election system. The arrest of Saad Eddin Ibrahim became a cause of international protest by Western governments, newspapers and major human rights organizations. Eventually the U.S. Congress and White House threatened to suspend all U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt unless Professor Ibrahim was released. The Egyptian supreme court ultimately did order his release, but the Egyptian government charged him again last year for “defaming Egypt” through his work for greater democracy in Egypt. In late August 2008 Dr. Ibrahim was convicted in abstentia and sentenced to prison if he should ever return to Egypt.
Professor Ibrahim first became famous for his scholarship on the sociology of Islamic extremism. He was the first Arab sociologist to study Islamic extremism and he was granted unprecedented access to Islamic radicals detained by the Egyptian government in the wake of the assassination of the late President Anwar al-Sadat. Dr. Ibrahim conducted pioneering work analyzing the socio-economic and educational background of these detainees. In the early 1980s Dr. Ibrahim was a close advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; however, Dr. Ibrahim’s growing condemnation of the failure of the Egyptian regime to adhere to international human rights standards resulted in a split between Dr. Ibrahim and Egypt’s president. He has written numerous important works on the future of democracy in the Islamic world.
The combination of Dr. Ibrahim’s scholarship and his personal story of commitment as an activist for greater human rights and democracy in Egypt and the Arab World make him a compelling figure. This will be an unusual opportunity for Drew students to interact with a major figure in the struggle for greater human rights and democracy in the Middle East. Dr. Ibrahim is what is often described as a scholar-practitioner; he doesn’t just research and write about human rights and democracy, but he is an active participant in the struggle for human rights and democracy.
Dr. Christopher Taylor, professor of Islamic Studies and chair of the department of religious studies at Drew, served as the Acting Executive Director of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad at the American University in Cairo. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and has authored several well-received ar