AGS Students Start a Middle East Society

Based on an initiative by AGS students under the impulse of Professors Mariam Habibi and Joav Toker, the AGS Middle East Society was started this Fall as a platform for information and discussion about Middle Eastern politics, culture, and current issues. Activities include regular guest talks by specialists on the topic along with screenings or debates; they are open to students, faculty, and the wider public.

Professor Mariam Habibi, who brings her support and expertise to this initiative, says: "One of the objectives of the AGS Middle East Society is to foster a more diverse – and through that, more accurate – understanding of the Middle East in an international relations perspective. This understanding should balance insiders' and outsiders' points of view, for the reality of the Middle East is both internal and external."

The Middle East Society was inaugurated on September 24th, with an introduction talk and reception hosted by Ahmed Samy Lotf, an Egyptian-born and world-travelled candidate in the Master of International Relations and Diplomacy program at AGS, and Ryan Mills, a student in the AGS/Arcadia Study Abroad in Paris program, who worked as an Iraqi linguist for the US Naval Intelligence between 2008 and 2014.

"The term Middle East is not a Middle Eastern term; it was coined by the West," said Ahmed Samy Lotf. "Reflected by this term, what we are seeing is a tendency to refer to this region of the world as one global entity, thus reducing it to its essentials and simply ignoring all of its rich diversity. This essentialization bias is not specific to the Western perspective, it also happens from within the Middle East itself, especially with the Arab majority."

Giving an illustration of this diversity through the multiplicity of languages, Ryan Mills shared his experience as an Arabic linguist specializing in the Iraqi dialect, having worked during six years with Iraqi native Arabic speakers, specifically Christians, Chaldeans and Assyrians from one city in Iraq. He explained: "Iraq is roughly the size of the portion of France that lies between Paris and the Belgian border. In just that tiny part, there might be six different legitimate languages. Each of them forms the core of a specific cultural identity."

Ahmed Samy Lotf continues: "Better understanding the diversity of the Middle East will allow the future policy-makers that many of us, AGS students, are, to connect with Middle Eastern people at a human level. At the end of the day, decision-making is done by human beings, so taking into consideration the human diversity of a region will help us to do good politics."

The first guest speaker of the AGS Middle East Society was Kendal Nezan, President of the Kurdish Institute of Paris, who came on October 8th to present on the Kurds' history, culture, current issues and political prospects.

The following event, on November 12^th, was a talk by International Affairs journalist Diane Jean about the Turkish elections. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris who works for Australian News Agency Newzulu, Diane Jean covered the Taksim protests in 2013. She gave insight on why and how the AKP and Turkey's strongman and president Recep Tayyip Erdogan have tightened their grip on power.

The next Middle East Society event will be held Thursday, November 4th, will focus on the Human Rights situation of the Middle East through the case study of Bahrain, one of the countries that participated in the Arab Spring. Three guest speakers will discuss this topic: Hussein Jawed, Chairman of the European-Bahraini Organisation for Human Rights (EBOHR), Mohamed Sultan, human right activist in the Bahrain Center for Human rights, and Said Yousif, Vice-president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, social media activist and supporter for refugees in Germany.

Professor Eileen Servidio-Delabre, the president of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at AGS, emphasizes the importance of this initiative as part of AGS's educational process and mission, which aims at fostering tolerance and peace through understanding and knowledge of the Other. She says: "I am grateful to our students for hosting these types of events that correspond to AGS's philosophy and goals. Events that encourage our students to ask questions that they would not have otherwise thought of asking. Events that help them to understand differently the countries, cultures and religions they are studying in their courses."

For more information or to attend an event of the AGS Middle East Society: info@ags.edu