Posted on Facebook on June 16, 2013. Well, we’re nearly there, Hermippos. Day after tomorrow, it seems—that’s what the captain said. At least we’re sailing our seas, the waters of Cyprus, Syria, and Egypt, the beloved waters of our home countries. Why so silent? Ask your heart: didn’t you too feel happier the farther we got from Greece? What’s the point of fooling ourselves? That would hardly be properly Greek. It’s time we admitted the truth: we are Greeks also—what else are we?— but with Asiatic affections and feelings, affections and feelings sometimes alien to Hellenism. It isn’t right, Hermippos,…
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Published in Ahram Online on June 16, 2013 Intellectuals and the new director want the National Archives to be run by the army. Their reasons may differ, but that institution does not need tighter security, but rather to open its doors to the public The current dynamics at the Egyptian National Archives are truly peculiar.A few days after the minister of culture sacked a number of high-ranking ministry officials, and after he had involuntarily uttered telling words in his meeting with the staff of the Cairo Opera House, in which he said, “I was given instructions that must be followed,”…
Leave a CommentPublished in Ahram Online on June 8, 2013 The battle between Islamists and secular intellectuals over the cultural domain comes down to posts and a false struggle around identity, whereas the real culture crisis goes unremarked Since the new minister of culture, Alaa Abdel-Aziz, took up his post, conversations about the attitude he has adopted to prove himself have not ceased within Egypt’s cultural scene. The minister commenced his work in the ministry with a series of decisions to sack leading ministry figures, starting from the head of the General Egyptian Book Organisation, and then the head of the Fine…
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Talk titled “Transitional justice in Post-Revolutionary Egypt” delivered at the American University of Beirut’s Asfari Institute Inaugural Conference on Civic Participation and Citizenship: New spaces of civil society activism in the arab world. Date: June 5, 2013
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Published on May 25, 2013 Incompetence and inefficiency are not enough to annul the mandate of the ruling president, gained at the ballot box. But continuing the system of torture used by the former regime is Before midnight on Friday, 17 May 2013, I decided to go to Tahrir Square to sign the “Rebel” campaign’s petition, which asks for the withdrawal of confidence from President Mohamed Morsi El-Ayat. This was not an arbitrary decision, nor was it a product of the moment. It was the result of deep reflection as well as an appreciation for the importance of this campaign…
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Published in Ahram Online on May 19, 2013 Islamists have recently shown sudden interest in transitional justice. But this interest focuses on revenge, not achieving societal reconciliation, restructuring the police, and ending all human rights violations Suddenly, and in the same week, three of the largest Islamist movements started talking about transitional justice, demanding its implementation at once. Spokesman for the Salfist front, Hisham Kamal, asserted, “Mubarak should have been tried for all his crimes from the start, not only for killing protestors.” Political consultant to the El-Benaa wa El-Tanmia (Building and Development) Party, the political army of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya,…
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Posted on Facebook on May 18, 2013 One of the first people I met when I joined AUC as a professor three years ago was Salima Ikram. I was immediately captivated by her. I am not sure if it was the passion with which she speaks about her research interest — dog mummification in Ancient Egypt — her beautiful eyes, her Oxonian British accent or the animated way she speaks, using her hands freely. And the more I got to know her, the more captivated I became. But I always felt there was something uncanny about her, something unsaid, an unasked…
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Posted on Facebook on May 17, 2013 Yesterday, the AUC Library had a memorial service for Lesley Tweddle, who sadly passed away earlier this year after a long and ferocious struggle with cancer. I attended the service, and even though I had not prepared a written text, I did say a few words. I am reproducing them below in loving memory of this great woman. I joined AUC as an undergraduate student in 1981, a year after Mrs. Lesley (as I knew her) had. I remember meeting her in my very first week of my studies, as I joined the…
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Posted on Facebook on May 17, 2013 Sam, so here is my introduction to Jazz, and I thought I’d share it here for its invaluable educational value. It must have been the summer of 1987 in Marsa Matrouh when I met a young couple, an English man and his Egyptian girlfriend. They must have been in their early thirties, and I was just 23. I think her name was Clare, but I can’t remember his now. It was Rommel Beach (yes there is a beach by that name in that beautiful coastal city that the Soviets had ruined in the1960s by dredging an…
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Published in Ahram Online on May 13, 2013 The draft legislation on access to information ignores civil society recommendations and will lead to a toothless information watchdog that is beholden to ill-defined ‘national security’ interests At a news conference on 2 April, Judge Wael El-Rifaie, assistant for human rights affairs to the Minister of Justice, announced that the ministry had finished drafting a law entitled ‘the right to information.’ Al-Rifaie described the law as “a dream we always had, to achieve the goals of respecting a person’s right to knowledge.” As a member of civil society that discussed the drafts of…
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