The Arab Spring, or Arab Awakening, made headlines in early 2011, with the first uprisings starting in Tunisia in December 2010 and in Egypt in January 2011, then spreading across the Middle East and Northern Africa in the spring. Some protests resulted in governments being overthrown and free elections being held for the first time ...

The Arab Spring: The Uprising and its Significance by Caryle Murphy ’68 I was in my mother’s living room in Massachusetts. The television was on low, and my ears barely caught the news: Tunisia’s long-time strongman, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, had fled his country. I rushed to turn up the volume, eager to know what was going ...

Women Marching for Revolution in Egypt: A Participatory Narrative By Dr. Margot Farranto Badran ’58 Historian Margot Farranto Badran ’58 was in Egypt at the start of the Revolution of 2011, later called the Arab Spring, where she was taking part in events and interviewing revolutionaries. As a young scholar in the making, not long out of ...

Monitoring Elections in Egypt: Barbara Bailey Kennelly ’58 by Tori Hornstein Indelible ink, sometimes known as election ink, does not wash off easily. In fact, that’s the point. Go home, scrub away, try as you might, that ink – stuck in your cuticle and around your fingernail – won’t go anywhere for two to three weeks. It may ...

Dr. Jane Dammen McAuliffe ’68: An Islamic Scholar Reflects on the Value of Interfaith Dialogues by Ann Pauley When Dr. Jane McAuliffe ’68 first learned of the uprisings in Tunisia and then in Egypt, the internationally renowned Islamic scholar reflected on the values of the Muslim faith and the Qur’an that she believes influenced, in part, the ...

U.S. Policy and the Arab Awakening by Dr. John Davis The decision by Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi to commit an act of self-immolation on December 20, 2010, as a form of protest against the corruption that dominated the country’s political system unleashed a tumultuous wave of protests and counter-protest violence that engulfed states in North Africa ...

Kheira Benkreira ’14: A Student Perspective by Jason H. Pier ’08, ’11 MA Trinity sophomore Kheira Benkreira was born in Algeria and moved to the United States when she was 3. Most of her family members still lives in Algeria and she visits them every two years. When she speaks of it, she refers to Algeria as ...