Emy Matesan of Wesleyan University talks about her latest book, The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia, with Marc Lynch on this week's podcast. In the book, she argues that Islamist groups alter their tactics in response to the perceived need for activism, shifts in the cost of violent versus nonviolent resistance, a ... Show More
Today
Syria: A Modern History (S. 15, Ep. 8)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Daniel Neep of the Arab Center Washington DC joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Syria: A Modern History. Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. In the ... Show More
39m 57s
Mar 10
West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East (S. 15, Ep. 7)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Mohammed Soliman of the Middle East Institute joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East. In the book, Soliman argues that it is time for the United States to move decisively away fr ... Show More
40m 20s
Feb 24
A Waning Crescent: Why the Era of Islamism is Coming to an End (S. 15, Ep. 6)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Mohammed M. Hafez of the Naval Postgraduate School joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new article, “A Waning Crescent: Why The Era of Islamism is Coming to an End.” In the episode, Hafez argues that "Islamism, in all its forms, has failed in ac ... Show More
39 m
Aug 2022
Keynote 1: Patrizia Manduchi on Antonio Gramsci, from Sardinia to the Arab World
This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can hel ... Show More
39m 13s
Sep 2021
Tunisia's Popular Authoritarian
This week on Babel, Jon speaks with Dr. Monica Marks, a professor of Middle East politics at NYU Abu Dhabi who has been thinking about Tunisia for almost 15 years. They discuss Tunisian President Kais Saied's recent moves to consolidate power, why Tunisians seem to support him, w ... Show More
37m 2s
Apr 2023
Tunisia’s democracy on the brink
Tunisia in North Africa was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings that shook or toppled authoritarian regimes in the region. But, after a decade of fragile democracy, in 2019 a new strongman, President Kais Saied, swept to power. He directed his campaign ... Show More
49m 5s
Nov 2020
Islam, islamisme, islamo-gauchisme: les territoires perdus du débat public?
<p>Dans cet épisode de <em>Poire et Cahuètes</em>, on se penche sur la thématique du terrorisme, après l'attentat de Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Et plus particulièrement sur la manière dont des penseurs et intellectuelles l'associent, ou non, à la religion musulmane.<br/></p>< ... Show More
18m 17s
Oct 2020
Danielle Haque, “Interrogating Secularism: Race and Religion in Arab Transnational Art and Literature” (Syracuse UP, 2019)
In many popular accounts of contemporary “Western” society there is an inherent contradiction between the principles underlying liberal secularism and Islam. This type of binary discourse about “religion” and “secular” naturalizes these differences and promotes the seeming rigidi ... Show More
56m 8s
Jun 2021
78/ Pedagogies of Liberation, Gender and the Syrian Revolution (with Banah Ghadbian)
<p>This is a conversation with Banah Ghadbian. She’s a Syrian activist whose dissertation “Ululating from the Underground: Syrian Women’s Protests, Performances, and Pedagogies under Siege” was the subject of our conversation. As usual, we ended up talking about a lot ... Show More
1h 57m