POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sharan Grewal of the College of William and Mary and the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book Soldiers of Democracy? Military Legacies and the Arab Spring. The book argues that a military's behavior under democracy is shaped by how it had been treated under autocracy. This scholarly volume illustrates this theory through detailed case studies of Egypt and Tunisia and drawing on over 140 interviews with civilian and military leaders, and three surveys of military personnel.  Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Maged Mandour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. His book follows President Sisi's regime in the aftermath of the coup that brought him to power, as a chronology of the devastating political, economic, and social consequences of direct military rule. Mandour explains exactly how Sisi operates and what makes his regime so different, and so dangerous, compared to those that came before. It shows, for the first time, how Egypt has been pushed to the brink of the abyss and why this will change the country for decades to come. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Brahim El Guabli of Williams College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence. The book shows how Moroccan cultural production has become an other-archive: a set of textual, sonic, embodied, and visual sites that recover real or reimagined voices of these formerly suppressed and silenced constituencies of Moroccan society. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”—a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and the death of King Hassan II in 1999—to examine the transformative roles memory and trauma play in reconstructing stories of three historically marginalized groups in Moroccan history: Berbers/Imazighen, Jews, and political prisoners.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Adam Shatz of Bard College joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, The Rebel's Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon.  In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Frantz Fanon’s journey as a prominent intellectual activist of the postcolonial era. Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life—and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Anita Gohdes of the Hertie School joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence. Gohdes looks at how digital technology supports traditional, violent state repression. Her book draws on theory and evidence to examine the link between censorship, surveillance, and violent repression, with large-scale analyses of fine-grained data on the Syrian conflict, qualitative case evidence from Iran, and the first global comparative analysis of Internet outages and state repression. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week’s episode of the podcast, Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland joins Marc Lynch to discuss the Middle East Scholar Barometer. The Middle East Scholar Barometer is a project of University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll and George Washington University’s Project on Middle East Political Science. It aims to probe the assessments of scholars of the Middle East, particularly members of the American Political Science Association specializing on the Middle East and North Africa and members of Middle East Studies Association, on critical issues of the day. Telhami discusses the origins of the Middle East Scholar Barometer, how it’s run and what it measures. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sarah Parkinson of Johns Hopkins University joins Marc Lynch to discuss some of her latest publications. Her article, The Ghosts of Lebanon: To See What Lies Ahead in Gaza, Look Back to Israel’s 1982 Invasion, in the Foreign Affairs Journal,  looks at the lessons of Israel’s disastrous 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon—and what they suggest about the outcome of Israel’s current campaign in Gaza. (Starts at 0:09). The journal article, “It’s Just How Things Are Done”: Social Ecologies of Sexual Violence in Humanitarian Aid, explores how patterns of sexual violence have come to light in crisis zones perpetrated by humanitarian aid workers. Finally, in her journal article, Unreported Realities: The Political Economy of Media-Sourced Data, Sarah Parkinson discusses the gap between scholars’ expectations of media-sourced data and the realities those data actually represent. (Starts at 31:18). Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Anne Irfan of University of College London joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System (Starts at 0:33). This book is a groundbreaking international history of Palestinian refugee politics. Irfan traces the history and politics of UNRWA’s interactions with Palestinian communities, particularly in the refugee camps where it functioned as a surrogate state. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sumita Pahwa of Scripps College, joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Politics as Worship: Righteous Activism and the Egyptian Muslim Brothers. Sumita Pahwa explores the question of why leading Islamist movements like the Egyptian Muslim Brothers embrace electoral politics while insisting that their main goal is “working for God,” and how they reconcile political with spiritual goals. She examines the movement’s internal debates on preaching, activism, and social reform from the 1980s through the 2000s. She explains how framing political work as ethical conduct, essential for building pious Muslim individuals as well as an Islamic political order, became central to the organization’s functioning. Use the code 05PAW23 for 40% off through Nov 15 when purchaisng the book through the linked press site. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Sarah El Kazaz of SOAS, University of London, joins Marc Lynch to discuss her new book, Politics in the Crevices: Urban Design and the Making of Property Markets in Cairo and Istanbul. In this transnational ethnography of neighborhoods undergoing contested rapid transformations, Sarah El Kazaz reveals how the battle for housing has shifted away from traditional political arenas onto private crevices of the city. She raises critical questions about the role of market reforms in redistributing resources and challenges readers to rethink neoliberalism and the fundamental ways it shapes cities and polities. Music for this season’s podcast was created by Malika Zarra. You can find more of her work on Instagram and Linktree.