Research & Commentary

In the June 2011 Bulletin, Dr. Michael Ryan discusses the implications of bin Ladin’s death for the remainder of the al-Qa’ida network. It also introduces new MEI scholars Dr. Daniel Serwer, who is interviewed on his career in technology and peacebuilding, and Dr. Charles Schmitz, who speaks about his work on Yemen.

Amidst the historic turmoil sweeping across the Arab world, in the March 2011 Bulletin, MEJ editor Michael Dunn addresses political empowerment through social media, scholar Wayne White is interviewed on recent political developments, and Joshua Stacher previews his forthcoming article on authoritarian politics and hereditary succession in Syria.

In the wake of the August 31 drawdown of US forces and the formation of a fragile unity government after months of negotiations, the December 2010 Bulletin features an argument from Ambassador David Mack for sustained US assistance to the Iraqi government, interviews with MEI Scholar Charles Dunne the political situation in Iraq and with Katherine Blue Carroll on her forthcoming MEJ article, and a summary of MEI’s 64th Annual Conference.

Like almost everything else during the uncertain period of the transitional government, the future of personal status law reform is at a crossroads in Egypt. The new constitution (assuming one will exist)^[1] may technically have little direct impact on how the country’s laws affect women’s lives, but the legislative process that emerges thereafter most certainly will.

As elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East, the youth-driven revolts in Tunisia and Egypt produced a tsunami in Morocco’s political landscape. On February 20, a movement took shape that publicly demanded a constitutional monarchy in which an elected and accountable government would have control over the country’s social, economic, and security policies. All across the country, it organized rallies in which tens of thousands of Moroccans participated.

“Knowledge and freedom carry no national identity…. There is no nation that has known light and preferred receding back.”

Ameen Rihani (The Rihani Essays, 421)

Ten months after a young fruit seller set himself alight in a small, marginalized town in central Tunisia, his compatriots will be voting in what many are hoping will be the country’s first free and fair elections. In the poll set for October 23, Tunisians will be electing a national constituent assembly that will be charged with writing the rules of the new political era. That assembly will spend up to a year writing a new constitution and deciding which form of government the country will have.

Join us for a discussion with Adel Abdellatif who, in his capacity as Chief of the UNDP's Regional Programme Division of the Regional Bureau for Arab States, oversees its flagship Arab Human Development Reports. Mr. Abdellatif will be discussing the dynamics of change in an Arab world undergoing seismic political transformations.

This Commentary was first published as an op-ed in Foreign Policy’s “Middle East Channel” on September 27, 2011

I. The Setting

*This Commentary first appeared in the National Journal online on September 22, 2011

When President Obama met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday, the two discussed cooperation on Syria, counter-terrorism and supporting the Arab spring. But a central theme of the talks, and what most concerns the U.S. at the moment, is a sharply deteriorating Turkish relationship with Israel that the U.S. hopes to reverse. Conversely, this deterioration was the source of much acclaim when Erdogan visited Arab spring countries last week.