why does jamal write an essay about the government

Boy Overboard

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A young Afghan boy named Jamal is playing football (soccer) with local boys in his village. Trouble arises, however, when his sister Bibi tries to join them. Her hair is uncovered, and she is not accompanied by an adult, both of which are illegal in Afghanistan. She starts playing anyway and kicks the ball into the mine-laden desert. Jamal follows her, rescuing her and a ball from an active tank—and later, with his friend Yusuf’ s help, an inactive landmine .

When Jamal and Bibi get home, their dad reveals that their illegal school for girls has been discovered and that they need to flee the country. Jamal and Bibi spend the night in Yusuf’s grandfather ’s house, where Jamal dedicates himself to becoming a professional football player. He believes this will make it so his family doesn’t have to leave Afghanistan. He sneaks out to practice football on the street and Bibi follows him. Suddenly, their house explodes. Their dad finds them, and Jamal realizes the government was responsible for the attack. They say goodbye to Yusuf and his grandfather and Yusuf gifts Jamal his football.

Jamal’s dad drives his taxi to an empty building outside the city and their leaves to pick up their mom from the football stadium. Jamal misunderstands the situation and decides to follow him. At the stadium, Jamal and Bibi see soldiers dragging women onto the field, and they realize one of them is their mom. The soldiers aim their guns at the women, but a taxi pulls into the stadium, throwing burning oil at the soldiers. Their mom gets in the taxi, and Jamal and Bibi realize their dad is the driver.

The family reunites at the empty building and Jamal helps his dad paint the taxi to disguise it. Jamal’s dad sells the taxi, buying them illegal passage out of the country—the family plans to ultimately move to Australia. A smuggler carries the family out of Afghanistan and to a refugee camp, where Jamal meets a boy (later revealed to be Omar ) and hears from a Red Cross worker how great Australia is. Jamal and his family board a plane and Jamal realizes that not only are the men flying the plane smugglers, but that his mother sold her ancestor’s candlestick to buy their tickets. No one in his family seems happy, and Jamal feels their connection to the past has been broken.

Jamal and his family wait at the docks to board a boat to Australia. Boarding the boats is chaotic—after fighting with Omar and trying to rescue the football from the water, Jamal, Bibi, and Omar end up on a different ship than Jamal’s parents. Life on the boat is difficult, with little food and rampant seasickness. However, Jamal and Bibi befriend a girl named Rashida after saving her from a fire. She shares her food with them, including flour, which Jamal uses to bake bread. This lifts everyone’s spirits, but not for long. Midway through the trip, the smugglers stop the boat and demand more money. Thankfully, Rashida gives the smugglers an expensive watch that’s worth enough to pay for all of them—including Omar.

Bibi falls ill on her birthday and Jamal, Rashida, and Omar cheer her up with stories of Australia. Rashida reveals that she is originally from Australia, but her family moved to Afghanistan to take care of her grandparents. When the country stopped the family from returning home, her parents only had enough money to buy her way back.

A group of pirates board the boat, and Jamal disguises Bibi and Rashida as boys to protect them from being kidnapped. This ploy is successful, but when the pirates leave, the smugglers join them, abandoning everyone on the boat. The next day, a giant wave crashes onto the boat and it begins to sink. Jamal and Bibi help bail water, but they don’t make much progress. Thankfully, an Australian warship arrives and saves everyone on the boat.

Andrew , an Australian serviceman, reassures Jamal and Bibi and gives them food. However, when the warship docks, Jamal and Bibi are upset to find that their parents are not there. Andrew explains that they haven’t found the other boat but promises they will, and Jamal trusts him. The soldiers give the refugees tents to sleep in, and Jamal and Bibi play football against the servicemen while they wait for their parents to arrive. Soon, however, news reaches them that the other boat sank. Jamal tries to get a rescue boat launched, but none of the soldiers speak his language. Jamal also learns that the island they’re on is not actually Australia.

Jamal and Bibi are devastated by their parents’ death. Rashida brings them food and sits with them, but they don’t want to talk or eat. Jamal realizes just how alone he and Bibi are, and when Bibi falls asleep, he goes outside to plan for their future. Omar joins him, sharing details of his own painful past. Jamal realizes that people are more complicated than they might originally seem.

Bibi wakes Jamal excitedly the next morning, telling him the three survivors from the boat have arrived. Jamal follows her to the dock and is shocked to see his parents. Their family embraces, and their parents explain that the warship didn’t see them at first. They hug for a long time, and then Jamal and Bibi introduce Rashida and Omar to their parents.

Jamal talks with Andrew in his office, who apologizes for not telling him earlier about the island not being Australia. He explains sadly that Australia’s government no longer wants people from Afghanistan moving there, and Jamal consoles him. He tells Andrew that the secret of football is not giving up. Looking out the window at his family walking on the beach, Jamal feels happy and loved. Even though they’re not in Australia, to Jamal, it feels like they are.

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• 1. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt Which word BEST describes Jamal? goofy hard-working shy smart
• 2. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt Based on the author's description, which word BEST describes the writer that Jamal meets? careless generous demanding disappointing
• 3. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt What did Jamal do LAST? meet an author write an essay travel to Washington DC watch the speakers debate
• 4. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt Which detail from the passage makes Jamal into a realistic and believable character? Jamal was bitten by a radioactive spider and developed spider-powers. Jamal wins an essay contest and takes an educational trip to Washington, D.C. Jamal's x-ray eyes can see through the Senate floor to witness a real debate. Jamal was chosen to become a real representative of the United States Congress.
• 5. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt Why does Jamal write an essay about the government? The essay is his homework. He wants to work in government. He thinks the government needs to be improved. The essay is part of a letter to his congressman.
• 6. Multiple Choice Edit 2 minutes 1 pt This story MOST likely takes place in the present day. in the distant future. during the American Civil War. when America first became a country.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Finding Forrester — The Movie Finding Forrester: Summary

The Movie Finding Forrester: Summary

• Categories: Finding Forrester

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Words: 1002 |

Published: Sep 19, 2019

Words: 1002 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Finding Forrester Summary

Works cited.

• IMDb. (n.d.). Finding Forrester (2000). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181536/
• Berardinelli, J. (2000). Finding Forrester. Reelviews. Retrieved from http://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/finding-forrester
• Rotten Tomatoes. (n.d.). Finding Forrester (2000). Retrieved from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/finding_forrester
• Ebert, R. (2000). Finding Forrester movie review & film summary (2000). Roger Ebert. Retrieved from https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/finding-forrester-2000
• Schafer, S. (2001). The aesthetics of care in Finding Forrester. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 59(2), 179-189. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6245.00015
• Hemmeter, J. (2004). Finding Forrester: A review. Education Libraries, 27(2), 40-42. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3959652
• Curley, D. (2003). Lessons from Finding Forrester for teaching critical literacy. English Journal, 93(4), 77-83. https://doi.org/10.2307/821656
• Shaw, D. (2006). Caring in the classroom: Lessons from Finding Forrester. Educational Theory, 56(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00001.x
• Palmer, M. (2003). Finding Forrester: A review of a movie that touches on many themes in education. Journal of College Admission, 181, 20-24.
• Aarts, M. P. J., & Van Leeuwen, T. M. (2018). Finding Forrester: A film for education and the importance of using films in educational settings. Journal of Educational, Cultural and Psychological Studies, 17, 53-66. https://doi.org/10.7358/ecps-2018-017-aart

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Forrester and Jamel needed to develop a means to face the world in which they lived in spite of the fear facing them. How is that any different than the world filled with fear in which we live. Fear is double-sided sword. Forrester said, “We walk away from our dreams afraid we may fail, or worse yet, afraid we may succeed.”

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Federalist Papers

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 22, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The Federalist Papers are a collection of essays written in the 1780s in support of the proposed U.S. Constitution and the strong federal government it advocated. In October 1787, the first in a series of 85 essays arguing for ratification of the Constitution appeared in the Independent Journal , under the pseudonym “Publius.” Addressed to “The People of the State of New York,” the essays were actually written by the statesmen Alexander Hamilton , James Madison and John Jay . They would be published serially from 1787-88 in several New York newspapers. The first 77 essays, including Madison’s famous Federalist 10 and Federalist 51 , appeared in book form in 1788. Titled The Federalist , it has been hailed as one of the most important political documents in U.S. history.

Articles of Confederation

As the first written constitution of the newly independent United States, the Articles of Confederation nominally granted Congress the power to conduct foreign policy, maintain armed forces and coin money.

But in practice, this centralized government body had little authority over the individual states, including no power to levy taxes or regulate commerce, which hampered the new nation’s ability to pay its outstanding debts from the Revolutionary War .

In May 1787, 55 delegates gathered in Philadelphia to address the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation and the problems that had arisen from this weakened central government.

A New Constitution

The document that emerged from the Constitutional Convention went far beyond amending the Articles, however. Instead, it established an entirely new system, including a robust central government divided into legislative , executive and judicial branches.

As soon as 39 delegates signed the proposed Constitution in September 1787, the document went to the states for ratification, igniting a furious debate between “Federalists,” who favored ratification of the Constitution as written, and “Antifederalists,” who opposed the Constitution and resisted giving stronger powers to the national government.

The Rise of Publius

In New York, opposition to the Constitution was particularly strong, and ratification was seen as particularly important. Immediately after the document was adopted, Antifederalists began publishing articles in the press criticizing it.

They argued that the document gave Congress excessive powers and that it could lead to the American people losing the hard-won liberties they had fought for and won in the Revolution.

In response to such critiques, the New York lawyer and statesman Alexander Hamilton, who had served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, decided to write a comprehensive series of essays defending the Constitution, and promoting its ratification.

Who Wrote the Federalist Papers?

As a collaborator, Hamilton recruited his fellow New Yorker John Jay, who had helped negotiate the treaty ending the war with Britain and served as secretary of foreign affairs under the Articles of Confederation. The two later enlisted the help of James Madison, another delegate to the Constitutional Convention who was in New York at the time serving in the Confederation Congress.

To avoid opening himself and Madison to charges of betraying the Convention’s confidentiality, Hamilton chose the pen name “Publius,” after a general who had helped found the Roman Republic. He wrote the first essay, which appeared in the Independent Journal, on October 27, 1787.

In it, Hamilton argued that the debate facing the nation was not only over ratification of the proposed Constitution, but over the question of “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”

After writing the next four essays on the failures of the Articles of Confederation in the realm of foreign affairs, Jay had to drop out of the project due to an attack of rheumatism; he would write only one more essay in the series. Madison wrote a total of 29 essays, while Hamilton wrote a staggering 51.

Federalist Papers Summary

In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Jay and Madison argued that the decentralization of power that existed under the Articles of Confederation prevented the new nation from becoming strong enough to compete on the world stage or to quell internal insurrections such as Shays’s Rebellion .

In addition to laying out the many ways in which they believed the Articles of Confederation didn’t work, Hamilton, Jay and Madison used the Federalist essays to explain key provisions of the proposed Constitution, as well as the nature of the republican form of government.

'Federalist 10'

In Federalist 10 , which became the most influential of all the essays, Madison argued against the French political philosopher Montesquieu ’s assertion that true democracy—including Montesquieu’s concept of the separation of powers—was feasible only for small states.

A larger republic, Madison suggested, could more easily balance the competing interests of the different factions or groups (or political parties ) within it. “Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests,” he wrote. “[Y]ou make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens[.]”

After emphasizing the central government’s weakness in law enforcement under the Articles of Confederation in Federalist 21-22 , Hamilton dove into a comprehensive defense of the proposed Constitution in the next 14 essays, devoting seven of them to the importance of the government’s power of taxation.

Madison followed with 20 essays devoted to the structure of the new government, including the need for checks and balances between the different powers.

'Federalist 51'

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison wrote memorably in Federalist 51 . “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

After Jay contributed one more essay on the powers of the Senate , Hamilton concluded the Federalist essays with 21 installments exploring the powers held by the three branches of government—legislative, executive and judiciary.

Impact of the Federalist Papers

Despite their outsized influence in the years to come, and their importance today as touchstones for understanding the Constitution and the founding principles of the U.S. government, the essays published as The Federalist in 1788 saw limited circulation outside of New York at the time they were written. They also fell short of convincing many New York voters, who sent far more Antifederalists than Federalists to the state ratification convention.

Still, in July 1788, a slim majority of New York delegates voted in favor of the Constitution, on the condition that amendments would be added securing certain additional rights. Though Hamilton had opposed this (writing in Federalist 84 that such a bill was unnecessary and could even be harmful) Madison himself would draft the Bill of Rights in 1789, while serving as a representative in the nation’s first Congress.

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Ron Chernow, Hamilton (Penguin, 2004). Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Simon & Schuster, 2010). “If Men Were Angels: Teaching the Constitution with the Federalist Papers.” Constitutional Rights Foundation . Dan T. Coenen, “Fifteen Curious Facts About the Federalist Papers.” University of Georgia School of Law , April 1, 2007. 

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Teaching & Learning

Should the supreme court care about tradition.

At Harvard Law’s Rappaport Forum, panelists debated SCOTUS’ reliance on history and tradition in Dobbs and Bruen

Are appeals to tradition and history by courts appropriate? If so – when? And how do they fit with originalism?

The Supreme Court of the United States has cited its interpretation of tradition in several recent decisions, including controversial cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health , which found no constitutional right to abortion, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen , which threw out a New York concealed carry law. In both opinions, the majority grounded its analysis on “history and tradition.”

But experts at Harvard Law School’s Rappaport Forum on Wednesday differed on whether tradition adds richness to the Court’s decisions — or stymies its ability to address modern problems.

“Discussion about the tradition about gun regulation for muskets really doesn’t tell us anything about a world of large magazine AR-15s,” argued panelist Kathleen Sullivan ‘81, the former dean of Stanford Law School and currently a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP.

The discussion, “Who Cares About Tradition? Constitutionalism After Dobbs and Bruen ,” featured Sullivan along with Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and William Baude, professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.

Before the event began, moderator Daphna Renan , the Peter B. Munroe and Mary J. Munroe Professor of Law at Harvard, acknowledged the recent passing of Jerome “Jerry” Rappaport ’49 M.P.A. ’63, who founded the Harvard Law School Forum as a student in 1946, and who, with his wife Phyllis, made the present-day Rappaport Forum possible. “I just want to acknowledge and thank Jerry and Phyllis Rappaport for their commitment to meaningful, robust, and civic discourse and for their extraordinary generosity.”

Renan then asked the panelists to think about how the Court is using history and tradition in cases like Dobbs and Bruen . “To what extent or in what ways does this mark a departure from prior judicial practice?”

“I think the basic problem that these cases represent is a version of the central problem of American constitutional law, which is that we have a very old and not very specific written Constitution. And so the fact that it’s not very specific means that there’s a lot of interpretive discretion,” said Greene.

“I think the basic problem that these cases represent is a version of the central problem of American constitutional law, which is that we have a very old and not very specific written Constitution.” Jamal Green, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Greene added that, “in a lot of ways, we as a people have evolved away from its initial assumptions and understandings. … And our particular history of political exclusion also means that those kind of initial assumptions and understandings don’t represent anything resembling an actual pluralistic, democratic polity.”

Greene said the Court’s emphasis on tradition in Dobbs and Bruen was nonetheless a departure. “The relevant history and tradition typically includes reliance on longstanding precedent, and neither Dobbs nor Bruen is interested in longstanding legal and political precedent.”

Is tradition different than originalism?

We’re used to arguments about originalism, and we’re used to competing theories of what the framers would have wanted, agreed Sullivan, who is also a former Harvard Law professor. “What’s new in this kind of traditionalism, as opposed to originalism, is … a look to decentralized social practices, vague and pervasive social norms, [and] differential regulatory practices among the states that can be aggregated to describe a particular regulatory trend or toleration trend. And that looks to a much more diverse set of sources, far beyond the founding documents and the authors and debaters of the founding documents.”

In some sense, though, it’s not entirely new, Sullivan said. “What is new is the granularity and the primacy of the traditionalist argument. Bruen actually jettisoned the notion that we would apply the traditional tiers of scrutiny, which are just an organizing device for how much justification must the government have to violate our rights, in favor of a historical framing approach.”

Considering tradition may not actually be at odds with the use of precedent, Baude countered. “Normal precedent looks to judicial decisions as the things in the past we care about. This kind of tradition you could see as widening the lens – we care about [a few other] things that happened in the past, not just what a court said, but what legislatures said, and that is another data point we will take into account when figuring out the law.”

“This kind of tradition you could see as widening the lens — we care about [a few other] things that happened in the past, not just what a court said, but what legislatures said…” William Baude, Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School

To Baude, the Court’s analyses are not a clear departure from past decision-making. “I wonder if there’s a little bit more of a connection between Bruen and some of the past practice, in the sense that Bruen is reminiscent of one-half of the double helix of a lot of the free speech precedents,” he said. “The free speech precedents seesaw between: ‘to what extent is the question some kind of balancing about the purpose of the First Amendment and the purpose of free speech’ and ‘to what extent is the question some kind of traditional historical exceptions to regulation?’”

“I totally agree that there is a debate within First Amendment law, and law around a number of other rights, about to what degree do we bake in the exceptions to the definition of the right,” Greene replied.

“I think one thing that’s different here … is fixing those exceptions at a point in 1868 or 1791, depending on whether it’s state or federal, [and] we don’t really do that with the First Amendment.” Instead, he added, exceptions have arisen over time, “and people were comfortable with it evolving over time.”

Renan then asked how looking at tradition fits within the idea of originalism.

 “I think originalism and traditionalism as we’ve been describing it are both alike in that they’re both reactionary,” said Sullivan. “They both are the dead hand of the past reaching forward to strangle more modern movements, and of course that carries with it bias, because the groups who generated both the original and the traditional history were dominated by an anti-democratic, concentrated group of essentially wealthy white men.”

“I think originalism and traditionalism as we’ve been describing it are both alike in that they’re both reactionary … They both are the dead hand of the past reaching forward to strangle more modern movements…” Kathleen Sullivan, Partner, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP

History and democracy

Turning to a question about whether incorporating tradition advances democracy, Greene said that he believed vague social practices might constitute a democratic consensus, but that in reality, it is very hard to know what that consensus was. And a survey of the past can be difficult because many kinds of people were left out of those debates. “Justice Thomas, in his majority opinion [in Bruen ] says we have made a decision in the past to bind ourselves to the Second Amendment,” Greene said. “But no — there is no such ‘we.’ ‘We’ did not do that. Some people did that, but they didn’t represent anyone relevant to today’s discussion.”

But if tradition moderates what could otherwise be absolutist interpretations of the constitutional text, “then it may well be more pro-democracy,” argued Baude. “If tradition tempers an approach to precedent that’s more focused on judges, to give more democratic branches the power to set precedent — if we do that carefully, that’s more consistent with democracy.”

Finally, Sullivan asserted that stare decisis, or reliance on past legal precedents, itself is a tradition – one worthy of respect and consideration by the Court. “If we found a message in a bottle from the past that said ‘no, actually, you’ve gotten the meaning of the Constitution all wrong for 50 years,’ and here is proof positive that you got it all wrong, and then you overturn [precedent] – maybe,” she said. “But if you’re just embracing one contested vision of past informal social and cultural norms, and a patchwork of legislative efforts and judicial efforts in a patchwork of states – if that’s your ground for overturning a decision of the Court… it’s not like it’s going to restore legitimacy for you to do that.”

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Introductory essay

Written by the educators who created Cyber-Influence and Power, a brief look at the key facts, tough questions and big ideas in their field. Begin this TED Study with a fascinating read that gives context and clarity to the material.

Each and every one of us has a vital part to play in building the kind of world in which government and technology serve the world’s people and not the other way around. Rebecca MacKinnon

Over the past 20 years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have transformed the globe, facilitating the international economic, political, and cultural connections and exchanges that are at the heart of contemporary globalization processes. The term ICT is broad in scope, encompassing both the technological infrastructure and products that facilitate the collection, storage, manipulation, and distribution of information in a variety of formats.

While there are many definitions of globalization, most would agree that the term refers to a variety of complex social processes that facilitate worldwide economic, cultural, and political connections and exchanges. The kinds of global connections ICTs give rise to mark a dramatic departure from the face-to-face, time and place dependent interactions that characterized communication throughout most of human history. ICTs have extended human interaction and increased our interconnectedness, making it possible for geographically dispersed people not only to share information at an ever-faster rate but also to organize and to take action in response to events occurring in places far from where they are physically situated.

While these complex webs of connections can facilitate positive collective action, they can also put us at risk. As TED speaker Ian Goldin observes, the complexity of our global connections creates a built-in fragility: What happens in one part of the world can very quickly affect everyone, everywhere.

The proliferation of ICTs and the new webs of social connections they engender have had profound political implications for governments, citizens, and non-state actors alike. Each of the TEDTalks featured in this course explore some of these implications, highlighting the connections and tensions between technology and politics. Some speakers focus primarily on how anti-authoritarian protesters use technology to convene and organize supporters, while others expose how authoritarian governments use technology to manipulate and control individuals and groups. When viewed together as a unit, the contrasting voices reveal that technology is a contested site through which political power is both exercised and resisted.

Technology as liberator

The liberating potential of technology is a powerful theme taken up by several TED speakers in Cyber-Influence and Power . Journalist and Global Voices co-founder Rebecca MacKinnon, for example, begins her talk by playing the famous Orwell-inspired Apple advertisement from 1984. Apple created the ad to introduce Macintosh computers, but MacKinnon describes Apple's underlying narrative as follows: "technology created by innovative companies will set us all free." While MacKinnon examines this narrative with a critical eye, other TED speakers focus on the ways that ICTs can and do function positively as tools of social change, enabling citizens to challenge oppressive governments.

In a 2011 CNN interview, Egyptian protest leader, Google executive, and TED speaker Wael Ghonim claimed "if you want to free a society, just give them internet access. The young crowds are going to all go out and see and hear the unbiased media, see the truth about other nations and their own nation, and they are going to be able to communicate and collaborate together." (i). In this framework, the opportunities for global information sharing, borderless communication, and collaboration that ICTs make possible encourage the spread of democracy. As Ghonim argues, when citizens go online, they are likely to discover that their particular government's perspective is only one among many. Activists like Ghonim maintain that exposure to this online free exchange of ideas will make people less likely to accept government propaganda and more likely to challenge oppressive regimes.

A case in point is the controversy that erupted around Khaled Said, a young Egyptian man who died after being arrested by Egyptian police. The police claimed that Said suffocated when he attempted to swallow a bag of hashish; witnesses, however, reported that he was beaten to death by the police. Stories about the beating and photos of Said's disfigured body circulated widely in online communities, and Ghonim's Facebook group, titled "We are all Khaled Said," is widely credited with bringing attention to Said's death and fomenting the discontent that ultimately erupted in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, or what Ghonim refers to as "revolution 2.0."

Ghonim's Facebook group also illustrates how ICTs enable citizens to produce and broadcast information themselves. Many people already take for granted the ability to capture images and video via handheld devices and then upload that footage to platforms like YouTube. As TED speaker Clay Shirky points out, our ability to produce and widely distribute information constitutes a revolutionary change in media production and consumption patterns. The production of media has typically been very expensive and thus out of reach for most individuals; the average person was therefore primarily a consumer of media, reading books, listening to the radio, watching TV, going to movies, etc. Very few could independently publish their own books or create and distribute their own radio programs, television shows, or movies. ICTs have disrupted this configuration, putting media production in the hands of individual amateurs on a budget — or what Shirky refers to as members of "the former audience" — alongside the professionals backed by multi-billion dollar corporations. This "democratization of media" allows individuals to create massive amounts of information in a variety of formats and to distribute it almost instantly to a potentially global audience.

Shirky is especially interested in the Internet as "the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversations at the same time." This shift has important political implications. For example, in 2008 many Obama followers used Obama's own social networking site to express their unhappiness when the presidential candidate changed his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The outcry of his supporters did not force Obama to revert to his original position, but it did help him realize that he needed to address his supporters directly, acknowledging their disagreement on the issue and explaining his position. Shirky observes that this scenario was also notable because the Obama organization realized that "their role was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters." This tension between the use of technology in the service of the democratic impulse to convene citizens vs. the authoritarian impulse to control them runs throughout many of the TEDTalks in Cyber-Influence and Power.

A number of TED speakers explicitly examine the ways that ICTs give individual citizens the ability to document governmental abuses they witness and to upload this information to the Internet for a global audience. Thus, ICTs can empower citizens by giving them tools that can help keep their governments accountable. The former head of Al Jazeera and TED speaker Wadah Khanfar provides some very clear examples of the political power of technology in the hands of citizens. He describes how the revolution in Tunisia was delivered to the world via cell phones, cameras, and social media outlets, with the mainstream media relying on "citizen reporters" for details.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown's TEDTalk also highlights some of the ways citizens have used ICTs to keep their governments accountable. For example, Brown recounts how citizens in Zimbabwe used the cameras on their phones at polling places in order to discourage the Mugabe regime from engaging in electoral fraud. Similarly, Clay Shirky begins his TEDTalk with a discussion of how cameras on phones were used to combat voter suppression in the 2008 presidential election in the U.S. ICTs allowed citizens to be protectors of the democratic process, casting their individual votes but also, as Shirky observes, helping to "ensure the sanctity of the vote overall."

Technology as oppressor

While smart phones and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have arguably facilitated the overthrow of dictatorships in places like Tunisia and Egypt, lending credence to Gordon Brown's vision of technology as an engine of liberalism and pluralism, not everyone shares this view. As TED speaker and former religious extremist Maajid Nawaz points out, there is nothing inherently liberating about ICTs, given that they frequently are deployed to great effect by extremist organizations seeking social changes that are often inconsistent with democracy and human rights. Where once individual extremists might have felt isolated and alone, disconnected from like-minded people and thus unable to act in concert with others to pursue their agendas, ICTs allow them to connect with other extremists and to form communities around their ideas, narratives, and symbols.

Ian Goldin shares this concern, warning listeners about what he calls the "two Achilles heels of globalization": growing inequality and the fragility that is inherent in a complex integrated system. He points out that those who do not experience the benefits of globalization, who feel like they've been left out in one way or another, can potentially become incredibly dangerous. In a world where what happens in one place very quickly affects everyone else — and where technologies are getting ever smaller and more powerful — a single angry individual with access to technological resources has the potential to do more damage than ever before. The question becomes then, how do we manage the systemic risk inherent in today's technology-infused globalized world? According to Goldin, our current governance structures are "fossilized" and ill-equipped to deal with these issues.

Other critics of the notion that ICTs are inherently liberating point out that ICTs have been leveraged effectively by oppressive governments to solidify their own power and to manipulate, spy upon, and censor their citizens. Journalist and TED speaker Evgeny Morozov expresses scepticism about what he calls "iPod liberalism," or the belief that technology will necessarily lead to the fall of dictatorships and the emergence of democratic governments. Morozov uses the term "spinternet" to describe authoritarian governments' use of the Internet to provide their own "spin" on issues and events. Russia, China, and Iran, he argues, have all trained and paid bloggers to promote their ideological agendas in the online environment and/or or to attack people writing posts the government doesn't like in an effort to discredit them as spies or criminals who should not be trusted.

Morozov also points out that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are tools not only of revolutionaries but also of authoritarian governments who use them to gather open-source intelligence. "In the past," Morozov maintains, "it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. KGB...used to torture in order to get this data." Instead of focusing primarily on bringing Internet access and devices to the people in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, Morozov argues that we need to abandon our cyber-utopian assumptions and do more to actually empower intellectuals, dissidents, NGOs and other members of society, making sure that the "spinternet" does not prevent their voices from being heard.

The ICT Empowered Individual vs. The Nation State

In her TEDTalk "Let's Take Back the Internet," Rebecca MacKinnon argues that "the only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and…the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us." It is clearly not a given, however, that governments, organizations, and individuals will use technology benevolently. Part of the responsibility of citizenship in the globalized information age then is to work to ensure that both governments and technologies "serve the world's peoples." However, there is considerable disagreement about what that might look like.

WikiLeaks spokesperson and TED speaker Julian Assange, for example, argues that government secrecy is inconsistent with democratic values and is ultimately about deceiving and manipulating rather than serving the world's people. Others maintain that governments need to be able to keep secrets about some topics in order to protect their citizens or to act effectively in response to crises, oppressive regimes, terrorist organizations, etc. While some view Assange's use of technology as a way to hold governments accountable and to increase transparency, others see this use of technology as a criminal act with the potential to both undermine stable democracies and put innocent lives in danger.

ICTs and global citizenship

While there are no easy answers to the global political questions raised by the proliferation of ICTs, there are relatively new approaches to the questions that look promising, including the emergence of individuals who see themselves as global citizens — people who participate in a global civil society that transcends national boundaries. Technology facilitates global citizens' ability to learn about global issues, to connect with others who care about similar issues, and to organize and act meaningfully in response. However, global citizens are also aware that technology in and of itself is no panacea, and that it can be used to manipulate and oppress.

Global citizens fight against oppressive uses of technology, often with technology. Technology helps them not only to participate in global conversations that affect us all but also to amplify the voices of those who have been marginalized or altogether missing from such conversations. Moreover, global citizens are those who are willing to grapple with large and complex issues that are truly global in scope and who attempt to chart a course forward that benefits all people, regardless of their locations around the globe.

Gordon Brown implicitly alludes to the importance of global citizenship when he states that we need a global ethic of fairness and responsibility to inform global problem-solving. Human rights, disease, development, security, terrorism, climate change, and poverty are among the issues that cannot be addressed successfully by any one nation alone. Individual actors (nation states, NGOs, etc.) can help, but a collective of actors, both state and non-state, is required. Brown suggests that we must combine the power of a global ethic with the power to communicate and organize globally in order for us to address effectively the world's most pressing issues.

Individuals and groups today are able to exert influence that is disproportionate to their numbers and the size of their arsenals through their use of "soft power" techniques, as TED speakers Joseph Nye and Shashi Tharoor observe. This is consistent with Maajid Nawaz's discussion of the power of symbols and narratives. Small groups can develop powerful narratives that help shape the views and actions of people around the world. While governments are far more accustomed to exerting power through military force, they might achieve their interests more effectively by implementing soft power strategies designed to convince others that they want the same things. According to Nye, replacing a "zero-sum" approach (you must lose in order for me to win) with a "positive-sum" one (we can both win) creates opportunities for collaboration, which is necessary if we are to begin to deal with problems that are global in scope.

Let's get started

Collectively, the TEDTalks in this course explore how ICTs are used by and against governments, citizens, activists, revolutionaries, extremists, and other political actors in efforts both to preserve and disrupt the status quo. They highlight the ways that ICTs have opened up new forms of communication and activism as well as how the much-hailed revolutionary power of ICTs can and has been co-opted by oppressive regimes to reassert their control.

By listening to the contrasting voices of this diverse group of TED speakers, which includes activists, journalists, professors, politicians, and a former member of an extremist organization, we can begin to develop a more nuanced understanding of the ways that technology can be used both to facilitate and contest a wide variety of political movements. Global citizens who champion democracy would do well to explore these intersections among politics and technology, as understanding these connections is a necessary first step toward MacKinnon's laudable goal of building a world in which "government and technology serve the world's people and not the other way around."

Let's begin our exploration of the intersections among politics and technology in today's globalized world with a TEDTalk from Ian Goldin, the first Director of the 21st Century School, Oxford University's think tank/research center. Goldin's talk will set the stage for us, exploring the integrated, complex, and technology rich global landscape upon which the political struggles for power examined by other TED speakers play out.

Navigating our global future

i. "Welcome to Revolution 2.0, Ghonim Says," CNN, February 9, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/02/09/wael.ghonim.interview.cnn .

Relevant talks

Gordon Brown

Wiring a web for global good.

Clay Shirky

How social media can make history.

Wael Ghonim

Inside the egyptian revolution.

Wadah Khanfar

A historic moment in the arab world.

Evgeny Morozov

How the net aids dictatorships.

Maajid Nawaz

A global culture to fight extremism.

Rebecca MacKinnon

Let's take back the internet.

Julian Assange

Why the world needs wikileaks.

Global power shifts

Shashi Tharoor

Why nations should pursue soft power.

Tuesday, April 16

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Jamal sketches alternative to institutional neutrality in sit-down interview

SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal and her Columbia counterpart Keren Yarhi-Milo in conversation with University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.

Miriam waldvogel / the daily princetonian.

Institutions of higher learning are facing a question: what is the role of the university in highly contested political debates?

The ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza and responses to it on American college campuses has spurred increased discussion about institutional neutrality, the idea that universities should refrain from taking positions on contested issues. The idea has seemed attractive to some as universities have struggled to craft statements on the ongoing conflict.

As free speech advocates argue for universities to be more cagey on statements, in an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Amaney Jamal, dean of the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), presented a vision for universities to be facilitators in crafting meaningful dialogue, arguing for engagement rather than strict neutrality.

Jamal, a Palestinian-American,  recently co-wrote a guest essay published in The New York Times with Keren Yarhi-Milo, her counterpart at Columbia.

“Universities should not retreat into their ivory towers because the discourse has gotten toxic; on the contrary, the discourse will get more toxic if universities pull back,” they wrote. 

They continued this conversation at a Nov. 28 event moderated by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.

Jamal’s view presents an alternative to strict institutional neutrality, which calls for administrators to take a step back on contested issues. Jamal has been criticized for taking positions in her official capacity in the past. In 2022, Jamal sent a memo following the not-guilty verdict of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot three men during civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis. 

“I fail to comprehend the idea of a minor vigilante carrying a semi-automatic rifle across state lines, killing two people,   and being declared innocent by the U.S. justice system. Yesterday’s ruling sets a dangerous precedent,” Jamal wrote in the memo.

Jamal came under criticism from members of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), who criticized “the implications of a University administrator, speaking in her official capacity, promulgating to an entire community of students her moral evaluation of the outcome of a highly publicized and controversial trial.” Members noted the potential for Jamal’s memo to discourage students from expressing opposing views.

In the recent interview, Jamal defended the right of administrators to speak both in their capacity as faculty and in their roles as administrators. “So when you think about administrators like myself, what our role is in the University, in general, the first primary objective of our roles is always to foster engagement on certain topics,” she said.

Jamal did use the term neutrality, but in a very different way than is traditionally understood in free speech circles, describing it as defining a space where diverse perspectives are welcome.

“We are neutral in that we want the dynamic conversation to happen here. We want to educate, but we want to be able to pull in those different perspectives,” she wrote.

So what kind of engagement does Jamal expect from administrators to foster an environment of open debate? Jamal was optimistic about the academic side of the University, and its potential to be the space for debate on contested issues.

“We have a lot of experts here in the school who work on this issue. A lot of our experts are being summoned to Washington D.C. to discuss this issue. A lot of our students care about it. Why don't we have a specific program on promoting peace for specifically the Palestine-Israeli conflict, since we have such great expertise?” she said.

She suggested that students involved in activism could engage in the academic debate, thereby “building on that momentum of student activism and passion, but trying to channel it now into sort of concrete measures moving forward,” she said. She noted the potential for students to write their junior papers and theses on the issue.

Yet nationally, the attention is on student activist movements and clashes with counter protestors rather than the academic debate. While the confrontational nature of the clashes has been more muted at Princeton, protests and rallies have still drawn the most attention.

Jamal described a role for the University to play in moderating the activist scene as well. Jamal told the ‘Prince’ that this entails providing students with historical context, specifically during protests, when discourse is reduced to simplified chants and slogans. She referenced the need for conversations surrounding chants such as “from the river to the sea,” which has faced backlash . 

Jamal said that the chant “probably emerged outside of the Palestinian territories, in the diaspora, and there’s different interpretations and definitions around it right now.”

“The way it was historically understood was that it was calling for the annihilation of the State of Israel,” she said, adding that the way activists are using it now is to say that “we want freedom for Palestinians within the the Israeli state or Palestinian-Israeli states, though it’s not about annihilation. But that's not how people are hearing it, so this is why we need a conversation.”

When asked why she believed there to be fewer confrontations between opposing student factions on Princeton’s campus, compared to some of its peer institutions, Jamal cited a smaller campus size. But she also tied the campus environment back to academics and the role administrators and faculty members played in continued efforts to “foster dialogue across this ‘divide,’” including SPIA’s “Conversations About Peace” discussion series in collaboration with Daniel C. Kurtzer, the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies.

In addition, Jamal said that Princeton has had more “Muslim-Jewish cooperation” on campus. 

“Structurally, for the longest time, as the Muslim student population was growing, the University was slow to bring on halal foods, so a lot of the Muslim students used to go to [the Center for Jewish Life] and probably still do, because kosher is also halal,” she said. “Muslims would be in the dining hall at CJL, and just by virtue of just being in the dining space, people would become friends. That’s another element of the Princeton on-campus presence and dining hall experience that I think enhances collaboration among the student body.” 

Jamal described a “rupture” in that relationship in light of recent conflict. 

“But it’s a different type of rupture. I’ve been here for 20 years. Sometimes when we had crises you’d see the divide be along Jewish versus Muslim, or Arab versus pro-Israeli Jewish students,” she said. “Now, the number of different groups is more dynamic and more diverse, which also means we need to think about new ways of fostering engagement.” 

Jamal remained optimistic about the ways that the academic apparatus of the school could bridge those divides.

“It’s sort of understood that students might be more emotional [right now], might be driven to go out and chant and say things, and they might be screaming past one another or not listening to one another. But at some point, this is going to die down a little bit, and where are we going to be? What is our role as an institution to make sure that we can sort of capture those sentiments and move into something positive that fosters that analytical, policy-oriented engagement?” she continued.

“My point there has been ‘why don’t you do something in neutral space that’s not what’s traditionally seen as the pro-Israeli space, or the pro-Palestinian space, but something neutral and around an event about how do we foster peace?’” she said.

In general, Jamal was skeptical about the quality of the discussion at the protests and in the media.

“Everything has been reduced to zero-sum understanding of this conflict,” she said. 

“The more sort of unhinged voices have taken over this conflict and the silent majority around the bell curve has been silenced and pushed off stage,” she said. “I think this is a moment where we want to reclaim our possession on the stage.”

She cited the 2022 Caterpillar referendum as a positive example of student activism, as it was, in her view, centered on students educating themselves to form their own opinions.

Jamal herself has had to contend with outside actors, after Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), an off-campus group, sent a truck with the message “DEAN JAMAL: WHY DO YOU CODDLE ANTISEMITISM?” Though the executive director of the group issued an apology to Jamal, saying he had sent the truck to pressure Jamal to condemn the Oct. 7 attack without knowing she had done so a week prior, she requested the ACF apologize publicly. 

When asked about the incident, Jamal said that the “worry, as for any administrator, is you don't want outside groups with political agendas coming to impose their will on college campuses in the United States.”

“That worries me because we in the University need to be able to do our job first and foremost, which is to educate and offer a diverse set of perspectives without trying to be conditioned by outside groups,” she said, highlighting the potential of the University environment itself.

Ultimately, Jamal sees the role of educators and administrative leaders as being central in pushing students to engage with each other with reason rather than provocation. She tied this idea to the reality beyond college campuses in her conversation with Yarhi-Milo, citing the central role of academic collaboration in the genesis of the Oslo Accords and the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli peace process in the 1990s. 

“It started with Israeli academics going to the West Bank to visit Palestinian academics in their home [when] it was forbidden to do so. Then Palestinians visited Israeli academics in their home, crossing the border into Israel, when it was outlawed.” 

With a week of programming organized by pro-Palestinian student groups ahead, including multiple teach-ins culminating in a “kick-off” rally in front of Nassau Hall this Friday, Dec. 1, the test of whether Jamal’s strategy of engagement can promote the type of debate she wants, will once again be put to the test. 

Elisabeth Stewart is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Princeton University Figure Skating Club brings Broadway to the ice

Prospect contributor Natalia Diaz reports on Princeton University Figure Skating's annual show, “Tiger on Ice.”

The COVID class: 2024 reflects on their time at Princeton

As the Class of 2024's time at Princeton draws to a close, the ‘Prince’ spoke to five seniors about their experience with COVID-19 at Princeton and how it impacted their class.

Can activism at Princeton ever be enough?

"I am realizing, now, that the solution is not to tacitly accept that “my existence is resistance,” but to actively turn my existence into resistance."

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Opinion Read Jamal Khashoggi’s columns for The Washington Post

Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist, was killed in Istanbul after walking into the consulate of Saudi Arabia, according to Turkish officials . In a statement released Saturday, Fred Hiatt, The Post’s editorial page editor, said that if true, this would represent “a monstrous and unfathomable act.”

Khashoggi had been writing a column for The Post’s Global Opinions section since last year. “He lamented that Saudi Arabia’s repression was becoming unbearable to the point of his decision to leave the country and live in exile in Washington,” wrote Karen Attiah , Khashoggi’s editor, on Wednesday.

Hiatt, in his statement, called Khashoggi a “committed, courageous journalist.”

“He writes out of a sense of love for his country and deep faith in human dignity and freedom,” Hiatt said. “We have been enormously proud to publish his writing.”

Read excerpts from some of Khashoggi’s columns below.

Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable. – Sept. 18, 2017

When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised? With young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to power, he promised an embrace of social and economic reform. He spoke of making our country more open and tolerant and promised that he would address the things that hold back our progress, such as the ban on women driving. But all I see now is the recent wave of arrests. Last week, about 30 people were reportedly rounded up by authorities, ahead of the crown prince’s ascension to the throne. Some of the arrested are good friends of mine, and the effort represents the public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to express opinions contrary to those of my country’s leadership. … It was painful for me several years ago when several friends were arrested. I said nothing. I didn’t want to lose my job or my freedom. I worried about my family. I have made a different choice now. I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice. To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince wants to ‘crush extremists.’ But he’s punishing the wrong people. – Oct. 31, 2017

Prince Mohammed is right to go after extremists. But he is going after the wrong people. Dozens of Saudi intellectuals, clerics, journalists, and social media stars have been arrested in the past 2 months — the majority of whom, at worst, are mildly critical of the government.  Meanwhile, many members of the Council of Senior Scholars (“Ulema”) have extremist ideas. Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, who is highly regarded by Prince Mohamed, has said on Saudi TV that Shiites are not Muslims. Sheikh Saleh Al-Lohaidan, also highly regarded, has given legal advice that the Muslim ruler is not bound to consult others. Their reactionary opinions about democracy, pluralism or even women driving, are protected by royal decree from counter argument or criticism. How can we become more moderate when such extremist views are tolerated? How can we progress as a nation when those offering constructive feedback and (often humorous) dissent are banished? [ Read more ]

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is acting like Putin – Nov. 5, 2017

Corruption in Saudi Arabia is quite different from  corruption in most other countries, as it is not limited to a “bribe” in return for a contract, or expensive gift for the family member of a government official or prince, or use of a private jet that is charged to the government so a family can go on vacation. Instead, in Saudi Arabia, senior officials and princes become billionaires as contracts are either enormously inflated or, at worst, a complete mirage. In 2004, Lawrence Wright wrote in the New Yorker about “The Kingdom of Silence” where a massive sewer project in Jeddah was really a series of manhole covers across the city with no actual pipes underneath. I, as the editor of a major paper at the time, can say that we all knew, and we never reported on it. [ Read more ]

Saudi Arabia is creating a total mess in Lebanon – Nov. 13, 2017

Today, Saudi Arabia alone is the most politically stable and economically secure country in the region. Neither the kingdom nor our conflict-ridden region can afford to see my country lose its footing. MBS’s rash actions are deepening tensions and undermining the security of the Gulf states and the region as a whole. [ Read more ]

With Ali Abdullah Saleh’s death, Saudi Arabia is paying the price for betraying the Arab Spring – Dec. 5, 2017

The choice of waging even more war is tempting for those in Riyadh who want an overwhelming defeat for the Houthis and to get them out of the political game, but it will be very costly — not only for the kingdom but for the Yemeni people who are already suffering immensely. This conflict is the horrific result of  preventing the people of Yemen from achieving their desire for freedom. Now the Houthi has become a significant force, and they do not hold the values ​​of the Arab Spring based on power sharing. The world is watching Yemen; not only should the Saudis  stop the war, but there should be pressure for the Iranians to stop their support for the Houthis; both sides must accept a Yemeni formula to share power. Perhaps the fall of Saleh the tyrant is a chance for peace in Yemen. [ Read more ]

Why Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should be worried about Iran’s protests – Jan. 3, 2018

It is still too early to judge how the events in Iran will unfold. If the hard-liners succeed in suppressing the protests, they will continue their expansionist policy, which could mean an escalation of the confrontation with Saudi Arabia. If the regime or [Hassan] Rouhani’s government falls, the chants heard in a number of Iranian cities — “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life will only be sacrificed for Iran” — could become the country’s foreign policy. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince already controlled the nation’s media. Now he’s squeezing it even further. – Feb. 7, 2018

When many of Saudi Arabia’s media tycoons ended up in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton along with more than 300 royals, senior officials and wealthy businessmen accused of corruption, many people assumed that the kingdom’s strongman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aims to control the media, too. This is far from true, simply because he already does. [ Read more ]

What Saudi Arabia’s crown prince can learn from Queen Elizabeth II – Feb. 28, 2018 (co-bylined with Robert Lacey)

MBS’s downsizing and relative humbling of the House of Saud is welcome news. But maybe he should learn from the British royal house that has earned true stature, respect and success by trying a little humility himself. If MBS can listen to his critics and acknowledge that they, too, love their country, he can actually enhance his power. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

Why Saudi Arabia’s crown prince should visit Detroit – March 20, 2018 (co-bylined with Robert Lacey)

Many inner cities in Saudi Arabia fester today as Detroit once did — they are miserable Third World slums that completely mock the oil riches of the kingdom. So, before MBS ventures into building new cities, perhaps he should deal with the old ones. During his visit to Egypt, which kicked off his current global tour, the crown prince revealed his shared dream with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi of building a prosperous region in northern Saudi Arabia stretching across the Gulf of Aqaba to Egypt — a “Riviera of the Red Sea” to attract millions of tourists yearly. Yet since neither Saudi Arabia nor Egypt has a free press, no one asked the two leaders about Egypt’s numerous tourist destinations, such as Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada and El Gouna. All have gorgeous beaches on the very same coast and a chronic lack of tourists; they are sad shadows of the resorts they used to be. Surely that problem should be addressed before splashing out precious government funds on still more cities in the sand. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

By blaming 1979 for Saudi Arabia’s problems, the crown prince is peddling revisionist history – April 3, 2018

In Saudi Arabia at the moment, people simply don’t dare to speak. The country has seen the blacklisting of those who dare raise their voices, the imprisonment of moderately critical intellectuals and religious figures, and the alleged anti-corruption crackdown on royals and other business leaders. Liberals whose work was once censored or banned by Wahhabi hard-liners have turned the tables: They now ban what they see as hard-line, such as the censorship of various books at the Riyadh International Book Fair last month. One may applaud such an about-face. But shouldn’t we aspire to allow the marketplace of ideas to be open? I agree with MBS that the nation should return to its pre-1979 climate, when the government restricted hard-line Wahhabi traditions. Women today should have the same rights as men. And all citizens should have the right to speak their minds without fear of imprisonment. But replacing old tactics of intolerance with new ways of repression is not the answer. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

What Saudi Arabia can learn from ‘Black Panther’ — April 17, 2018

This Wednesday, Disney’s blockbuster “Black Panther” will be shown in theaters in Saudi Arabia, officially ending a decades-long ban on movie theaters in the country. This may seem odd to Americans who have grown up with cinema and popcorn, but to many Saudis it’s a huge step toward normalization. For too long, hard-line religious figures have preached that cinema would bring about the collapse of all moral values. When the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman decided to end the ban, he also effectively stopped the preachers from repeating such foolishness. By taking the lead to remove the ban, he proved that the government has the final say when it comes to deciding what’s permissible or not, and that some things should be left up to the personal choice of citizens, not the clergy. … At the end of the film, the young king of Wakanda chooses to use his country’s power to engage with the world for the greater good. Will Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who likely will soon become king of his country, use his power to bring peace to the world around him? [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]  

Saudi Arabia’s reformers now face a terrible choice – May 21, 2018

It is appalling to see 60- and 70-year-old icons of reform being  branded as “traitors” on the front pages of Saudi newspapers. Women and men who championed many of the same social freedoms — including women driving — that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is now advancing were arrested in Saudi Arabia last week.  The crackdown has shocked even the government’s most stalwart defenders. The arrests illuminate the predicament confronting all Saudis. We are being asked to abandon any hope of political freedom, and to keep quiet about arrests and travel bans that impact not only the critics but also their families. We are expected to vigorously applaud social reforms and heap praise on the crown prince while avoiding any reference to the pioneering Saudis who dared to address these issues decades ago. … The message is clear to all: Activism of any sort has to be within the government, and no independent voice or counter-opinion will be allowed. Everyone must stick to the party line. Is there no other way for us?  Must we choose between movie theaters and our rights as citizens to speak out, whether in support of or critical of our government’s actions?  Do we only voice glowing references to our leader’s decisions, his vision of our future, in exchange for the right to live and travel freely — for ourselves and our wives, husbands and children too? I have been told that I need to accept, with gratitude, the social reforms that I have long called for while keeping silent on other matters — ranging from the Yemen quagmire, hastily executed economic reforms, the blockade of Qatar, discussions about an alliance with Israel to counter Iran, and last year’s imprisonment of dozens of Saudi intellectuals and clerics. This is the choice I’ve woken up to each morning ever since last June, when I left Saudi Arabia for the last time after being silenced by the government for six months. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

Saudi Arabia’s women can finally drive. But the crown prince needs to do much more. – June 25, 2018

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman deserves consider credit for bringing the matter to a close the right way. While previous leaders were reluctant to take up the issue, he faced it head-on and did the right thing for Saudi Arabia. At the same time, I hope he will not forget the brave actions of each and every Saudi who individually worked hard for freedom and modernization. He should order the release of Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan and the other brave women who campaigned for women’s right to drive. They should be allowed to finally witness the results of their tears and toil. [ Read more ]

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince must restore dignity to his country — by ending Yemen’s cruel war – Sept. 11, 2018

The longer this cruel war lasts in Yemen, the more permanent the damage will be. The people of Yemen will be busy fighting poverty, cholera and water scarcity and rebuilding their country. The crown prince must bring an end to the violence and restore the dignity of the birthplace of Islam. [ Read more ] [ Read in Arabic ]

Turkish president calls Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance ‘very, very upsetting’

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Turkey concludes Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed by ‘murder’ team, sources say

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Middle East

Why israel is losing the war of global public opinion over its tactics in gaza.

NPR's Michel Martin talks to Ami Ayalon, former head of Israel's domestic security service, about Israeli leaders' political mistakes as the tide of global opinion turns against them.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children, since Israel's war in Gaza began, according to health authorities there. Ami Ayalon is a former director of Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet. In an essay published by Foreign Affairs this week, he argues that global opinion is turning against Israel, but he still believes the war is justified.

AMI AYALON: It's a war of defense, and it is a response to the horror, violence. Hamas do not recognize our right to a state, a Jewish state, on the land of Israel.

FADEL: Speaking to our co-host, Michel Martin, Ayalon says Israel is currently winning on the battlefield but will ultimately lose the war if they don't maintain the support of the international community and lay out a plan for peace.

AYALON: The major mistake that our leaders did is that on the second or the third day after the 7 of October, our Cabinet ministers decided not to discuss the day after. Once we do not know to describe the day after, we do not have any concept of victory, we do not have any political goal. We tend to forget that, you know, war is only a means to achieve a better political reality. This is the definition of victory. Our leaders do not understand that when we fight a war against a terror - ideological, theological, radical terror organization, we are fighting in two dimensions. One is a battlefield, but in order to defeat Hamas, we have to win the war of ideas. And we cannot do it by the use of military power. The only way to do it is to create or to present a better idea.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Can that still happen?

AYALON: Of course. The first question that we have to ask is why - why Palestinians are fighting. My answer is very, very simple. They see themselves as a people. We do not recognize them as a people who deserve a self-determination and a state alongside of Israel, but what Biden is telling us now - and I believe that he is totally right - that we have to launch again the negotiation, in order to create hope among Palestinians.

MARTIN: Can I ask, based on your experience as the former director of the Israeli Security Agency, did the scale of the October 7 attack surprise you?

AYALON: No, it did not surprise me because 50 years earlier, on the 6 of October, the October War started, and we lost 2,000 and almost 700 people. And what we learned after Yom Kippur is that our security doctrine should be based on, yes, a major and very powerful military organization, IDF, but in addition, we have to use diplomacy. And this is something that we forgot, because I think that most Israelis do not understand that victory for Israel is to see, on the other side of the border, a Palestinian state, because once they will have a state, they will have something to lose, and if I learn something in the Shin Bet, the most dangerous enemy is an enemy that has nothing to lose. This is exactly what we saw on the 7 of October.

MARTIN: The leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, Chuck Schumer, said recently that, you know, he feels that Netanyahu needs to step down, that a new government needs to take place in order to achieve these results. Do you agree with that?

AYALON: I totally agree. I think that Netanyahu - he's a great leader, but this is a leader who leads his people to a dead end. He is leading us to the end of Zionism. If we shall follow Netanyahu, we shall go on, you know, building settlements, and we shall face an ongoing war that nobody, nobody knows when it will end. The only way for us, first of all, to defeat Hamas - because for Hamas, it's a nightmare - this is the end of the of the dream of Greater Palestine, so in order to defeat Hamas, the ideology of Hamas, we have to present a better future in which most Palestinians will believe.

MARTIN: Do you have hope that a better day will be possible?

AYALON: Yes, I have hope, because I was the deputy and then the commander of the navy and, later, the director of the Israeli Shin Bet. I was sitting with Palestinians who are in our jails. We saw them as terrorists, but they became my friends - you know, Jibril Rajoub and Mohammad Dahlan - and we cooperated. And they told me every day, we are doing everything in order to stop terror, Jewish terror and Palestinian terror, just because we believe that on the end of the road, we shall see, we shall have our freedom, our state alongside Israel. The moment that our people will not believe, forget about us. And if you ask me what happened, when the diplomacy collapsed, this is exactly what happened. They lost hope, and when they do not have hope, we shall not have security.

MARTIN: That is Ami Ayalon. He is a former commander of the Israeli navy and a former director of the Israeli Security Agency, the Shin Bet. We are talking about a piece that he's just published in Foreign Affairs. Admiral Ayalon, thank you so much for speaking with us.

AYALON: Thank you.

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