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Category: Academic publications

The perils of conducting academic research in Sisi’s Egypt

The perils of conducting academic research in Sisi’s Egypt

Published 16/01/2022

(This chapter was originally published in Italian on 13 January in Minnena 2: Repressione, disinformazione e ricerca tra Egitto e Italia, edited by Lorenzo Casini and Daniela Melfa.) The tragic fate that Giulio Regeni met in Cairo in January 2016 is a grim blot on Egypt’s record of protecting academic research. While academic freedom is not sacrosanct in Egypt, never before has a researcher, national or foreigner, been abducted, tortured, and murdered because of their research, no matter how delicate or sensitive their subject matter is. Five years after Regeni’s brutal murder, the Egyptian authorities have yet to identify, let…

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Global Middle East

Published 17/03/2021

Webinar of the book launch (on 12 March 2021) of Global Middle East: Into the 21st Century (edited by Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera, University of California Press, 2021). Presentations by Ahmed Kanna, Ahmad Shokr, Asef Bayat, Amro Ali, Fatemeh Keshavarz, Hamid Dabashi, John Tofik Karam, Khaled Fahmy, Laleh Khalili, Linda Herrera, Michael Frishkopf, Sami Zubaida, Ted Swedenburg, and Waleed Hazbun. My presentation on the “Gamal Abdel Nasser” chapter is from 31:52​ to 37:53​. Asef Bayat: The Book’s Table of Contents with time of presentation: 1. INTRODUCTION “Global Middle East, ” Asef Bayat (0:00​-7:31​) Linda Herrera (7:32​-13:50​) Nations without Borders…

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Hosni Mubarak

Published 28/02/2020

Entry in the Oxford Companion to Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, c2013), Joel Krieger, editor in chief. Born on 4 May 1928 in the Nile delta village of Kafr al-Mouseilha, Hosni Mubarak received his education in small schools in his home village. Upon finishing high school, he joined the Egyptian Military Academy, from which he graduated on 2 February 1949. He then joined the air force and received his commission as a pilot officer on 13 March 1950. Throughout his education, and unlike many of the young cadets of his generation, he did not develop any political interests…

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“State paradox”: Adam Sabra’s review of In Quest of Justice

“State paradox”: Adam Sabra’s review of In Quest of Justice

Published 06/04/2019

Adam Sabra published the following review of In Quest of Justice in al-Ahram Weekly, issue 1437, 4-10 April 2019. Khaled Fahmy’s fascinating and important new book addresses fundamental questions about the nature of Egypt’s modernity. Tracing the origins of forensic medicine to the middle of the 19th century (1830-1880), Fahmy offers a revisionist account of the origins of the modern Egyptian state and its relationship to Islamic law. Critical of modernisation theories of both the right and left as well as of Islamist critiques of the legitimacy of Egypt’s path to modernity, Fahmy suggests that Egypt under the descendants of…

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Advanced praise for In Quest of Justice

Advanced praise for In Quest of Justice

Published 19/07/2018

In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt  Due to be published by University of California Press in October 2018 Rights: Available worldwide Pages: 408 ISBN: 9780520279032 Trim Size: 6 x 9 Illustrations: 10 bw figures ORDER ONLINE AND SAVE 30% www.ucpress.edu/9780520279032 Use source code 17M6662 at checkout       “Fahmy rewrites the narrative of legal and institutional development by bringing in the Egyptian state with its new capacities and its elite as actors with clear interests and strategies of their own, as well as the broader Egyptian population whose protests and accommodations shaped this…

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Adventures in the Archives (1)

Adventures in the Archives (1)

Published 04/07/2017

Last semester, spring 2017, I taught a class at Harvard on Arabic paleography and archival skills. Each week, we’d read a couple of Arabic, hand-written archival documents that I had culled from the Egyptian National Archives. The documents were mostly from the 19th century, although some dated from the 16th and 17th centuries. I’d have the documents transcribed and the quaint and odd words explained in advance. On their part, the students were supposed to a. translate the document,  and b. practice reading it at home and be prepared to read it in class from the original, hand-written text. The documents…

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