The Atlantic Council hosted an event for the release of their new issue brief titled "Egypt's Litigious Transition." The event featured Mahmoud Hamad, author of the issue brief and Assistant Professor at Drake University, and Yussef Auf, a nonresident fellow at The Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East. The event was moderated by Dr. Michele Dunne, Director of The Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle ...

The Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) held a panel discussion on the role of human rights in Tunisia’s constitution-writing process titled “Human Rights in Tunisia’s Transition: A View from the Field” featuring Amel Azzouz, a deputy in Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly from the Ennahda party; Amna Guellali, Human Rights Watch Tunisia Researcher; Stephen McInerney, Executive Director of POMED; and Joyce Kasee, ...

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted a panel discussion titled "Amidst Iraq's Turmoil: What Can We Do?" The event featured Ambassador James Jeffrey, the Philip Solondz Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Daniel Serwer, Senior Research Professor of Conflict Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; Mike Pillinger, Chief of Mission in Iraq for the International Organization for Migration; and ...

In an interview with Egyptian channel CBC, Michelle Dunne, Director of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, and Tamara Wittes, Director of the Brookings' Saban Center for the Middle East discuss the current situation in Egypt. Topics of focus include U.S. policy towards Egypt, the Egyptian opposition, and ongoing negotiations between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund.

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted an event titled "The Stakes in Egypt: Political Action and Democratic Change." The event featured a presentation from Amr Hamzawy, founder of the Free Egypt Party, and was moderated by Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment. For full event notes continue reading or click here for the PDF. Amr Hamzawy began by discussing the events that have unfolded in Egypt over the past week. ...

The Young Scholars on Turkey Program in association with the SETA Foundation hosted a discussion on the domestic drivers of Turkey's democratic transformation. The event featured Sener Akturk, Assistant Professor at Koc University in Istanbul and author of Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey, a new book recently published by Cambridge University. The Q&A was moderated by Kadir Ustun, Research Director at the SETA Foundation at ...

The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) hosted a public discussion focused on political reform and security in Algeria featuring SAIS faculty members, Profs. William Zartman and Eamonn Gearon. The event was moderated by Prof. Daniele Moro. For full event notes, continue reading or click here for the PDF. Dr. William Zartman began the discussion with remarks about the struggle between reform and stability in the Middle East and North ...

Comedian Bassem Youssef, often referred to as Egypt's Jon Stewart, spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday about  the charges filed against him and being questioned by Egyptian authorities over the weekend.

Writing for The New Yorker, Dexter Filkins suggests that the recent resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati was "sparked by the civil war" in Syria. While Mikati's decision to resign followed disagreements over internal issues, like the establishment of an election supervisory body, the country's politics are increasingly polarized by loyalties to the opposing parties of the Syrian conflict. Specifically, Filkins argues that Hezbollah's opposition to extending  the term of Major General Ashraf Rifi, ...

Larry Diamond, in a piece for the Wilson Quarterly entitled "Why Wait for Democracy," argues that it is time to retire the notion that non-Western states are not "ready" for democracy. Refuting the policy and intellectual elites' fears and reservations about the uprisings in the Arab world beginning in 2011 - lack of democratic experience, security challenges, fear of Islamic radicalism, to name a few - Diamond links today's apprehensions ...

On Tuesday, March 5, 2013, the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at The Johns Hopkins University and the Maghreb Center hosted a conference titled "Constitutionalism and Human Rights in Tunisia: the Islamist-led Democratic Transition Post-Arab Spring." The opening remarks for the conference were conducted by Dr. Nejib Ayachi, President of the Maghreb Center, Dr. Mohammed Mattar, Executive Director of The Protection Project at SAIS, and Issam Saliba, Secretary of ...