Transit with Jimmy Carter to Cairo

After a fairly uneventful flight across the Atlantic and a 5 hour wait at de Gaulle, the passengers for our flight to Egypt began to assemble and we realized something was up, as there was a delay with boarding.  Then a small phalanx of “suits” marched to the front of the line, with an elderly gentleman in tow, who, on second glance, I recognized as Jimmy Carter.  This was confirmed on board as he made his way through the main cabin, shaking everyone’s hand (including mine and most of our students).  The old habits of politicians die hard. So we will be in good company in observing the elections.  Also in line to board was NBC’s Middle East correspondent Richard Engel, who was in Tahrir last year and was harassed by the police.  Clearly a lot of attention will be turned to Egypt this week, and it will be interesting to compare our own perceptions and experiences with what is being reported by the press and NGOs there.

Carter is an important if complex figure in Egypt, given the huge significance of the Camp David Accords.  Some in Egypt saw that has a betrayal and Sadat was assassinated for having made those compromises.  The country is still deeply ambivalent about the peace accord, although it is still seen as in Egypt’s interest to abide by it.  I’m curious to hear more about the various opinions of his efforts from the Egyptians we meet with.  Carter has certainly been active in his retirement and his work in supporting democracy globally is impressive.  Given the increase in the number of democracies globally,  I would imagine he is heartened by the developments in the Middle East and elsewhere.

And so we cross the wine-dark seas with Jimmy and his secret service agents, to get a glimpse of one momentous event, marking the course of Middle Eastern history and to get a better understanding of what democracy will look like in the land of the Nile.

Power and Social Change in Tahrir and at home

We're starting out the course by reading a few books as prep for the trip--Tarek Osman's Egypt on the Brink, Jeff Alexander's brief study of Performative Revolution in Egypt, and Sidney Tarrow's study of social movements, Power in Movement.  I'm starting my reading by revisiting Gene Sharp's study of the Politics of Nonviolent Action, which we'll bring with us on the road as well and read in Cairo, as many of the student organizers did as they worked through how to successfully challenge the corrupt and increasingly ineffective Mubarek regime.  Sharp is an interesting guy, kind of classic empirical social scientist who comes out of Harvard in the 1950s and 60s (and worked with, of all people, Thomas Schelling, the Dr. Stangelove of strategic studies who loved talking about nuclear war in the clinical language of game theory). Sharp's research also got funding from the U.S. Dept. of Defense, who was interested in better understanding the civilian resistance they were encountering in SE Asia and Central America.  Sharp's hero is Gandhi, and his work has apparently been of use to youth organizers from Serbia (the Otpor! youth movement against Milosevic) to Central Asia and Iran, and now Egypt and Bahrain.  He was up for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, and for good reason.

At the heart of his work is an understanding of political power which draws on one of my favorite political theorists, Hannah Arendt .  It understands power not as based on the possession of weapons or troops and the ability to inflict damage, but on the consent or agreement of the masses.  Armies and police and systems of economic exploitation only work if people agree to go along, and for this there must be some level of legitimacy in the system.  At a minimum, the soldiers must agree to fire on the people (as they have in Syria, but did not in Egypt).  State order rests on a thin veneer of threatened violence overlaid on a mass of soldiers, police, state employees, media, workers, and students who must agree to go along with the order emanating from the capital.  Once that consent is withdrawn, state power collapses, and governments of all stripes around the world today are engaged in "managing expectations" and maintaining enough legitimacy to keep most of the people happy most of the time.

There is a constant dance between the rulers and ruled as to how much the wealthy and powerful can extract or take from the ruled and the poor, and the threat of violence is only a small part of how this bargain gets struck.  The economic and political systems must be seen as legitimate in some sense, as guided by some values or logic to which we give our assent.  How far an elite can go in extracting resources from a people will depend in large part on how good a story they can tell about why this is necessary, and about the "natural order of things."  For instance, the idea that "anyone can make it in America" provides a powerful rationale for the few that actually do make it to keep their wealth.  In Egypt, the story that Mubarek was looking out for the interests of the country gradually fell apart, as the realities of torture, imprisonment, and lack of services or governmental accountability gradually became more and more apparent, and Mubarek grew increasingly distant from reality.  As Egyptians of all stripes grew increasingly frustrated with the ineffectiveness and unresponsiveness of the government, they began to look for ways to exercise power nonviolently, to pressure the regime to change, and Sharp provides a thorough laundry list of 198 (count 'em) different methods of nonviolently sticking it to the man.

But this work of opposing injustice is not just a matter of standing up to state power and its "monopoly on the legitimate use of force" (Weber's phrase).  It is a matter of justice and injustice, poverty and wealth, sustainability or environmental harm at all levels of society.  Sharp's focus is on the big stage--opposing and ending dictatorships.  But the work he describes can also be seen to operate within families, classrooms, campuses, workplaces, or local economies.  There is a tendency to frame political action in these grand Manichean terms--the noble people opposed to the evil dictator, with revolutionaries taking to the streets and putting their lives on the line.  But the situations in which this kind of action is really possible or called for are pretty few.  We can use Sharp and his discussion of power for thinking about the great "human project" of constantly assessing what is working and what isn't, learning from mistakes, assessing what kind of power we have in a situation, and working to change it. We each have some degree of power, based on our knowledge and ideas, particular skills and resources, interpersonal connections, and drive.  No one is completely powerless.  Within whatever "realm of power" we have, we can take action, even if we don't happen to be living at a time or place that is ripe for revolution.  I would argue that the vast majority of what we have that is good in the world has come from this much more small-scale, less dramatic kind of work, that slowly builds up a foundation on which people can live reasonably satisfying and meaningful lives.

The degree and type of change needed depends on the amount of injustice or other problems that need fixing, from the most mundane problems of disrespect in interpersonal relations to the grandest crimes against humanity.  In some cases there may be little need for change and in some cases what may be called for (as it was in Egypt in 2011) is revolution, but there is always room for improvement.  This is, as far as I can tell, our work as humans, as educators, and as citizens--to slowly and methodically work on the problems we face and experience, chipping away at the injustice, poverty, ecological damage, or simple foolishness with which we are confronted.  In Cairo we will be learning about some of the more dramatic examples of that work--taking to the streets and bringing down a dictator.  But we'll be thinking as well about no only what made Tahrir Square so effective, but also what creativity, passion, and nonviolent action we can bring to bear within our own sphere of influence.  We'll be meeting with people working in the slums of Cairo, building biogas cookstoves and recycling initiatives.  We'll meet with young microcredit entrepreneurs and ecotourism operations, working to create economic opportunities for the least advantaged while doing as little harm to the environment as they can.  This is part of what we calling the "critical pedagogy of place"--an approach to teaching and learning that is always working on addressing the real and immediate issues of the time and place within which we are living and learning.

Historic elections

It is just 10 days until Egyptians go to the polls to vote in an election for President in which the outcome is not a foregone conclusion.  None of the leading candidates is a military figure, and they represent substantially different views and ideologies.  In other words, there is a real choice.  Arguably this is the first time in the 6,000 year history of that country that this will happen, and a dozen Augsburg College "Auggies" will be there in Cairo to witness this.  Although there will certainly be some dissent and protest on any given Friday, the overwhelming sense I get from Egyptians is that they want this election to go well (as they did with the parliamentary elections), to show the world that they can have legitimate, orderly selection of a new regime.

The two leading candidates, Amr Moussa and Abdel Fatouh had the first (4 hour!) presidential debate on May 10, with their views reflecting two different responses to the revolution.  Moussa represents those who want stability and order, and generally have had enough of all the protests, viewing them more as trouble-makers and unruly youth.  Moussa has fairly strong ties to the Mubarek regime, having served as Foreign Minister for over a decade, and been a major figure in Egyptian foreign policy for the past 30 years.  He was considered as a possible challenger to Mubarek in the 2005, but did not run.  If he is elected, it will be another blow to the people of Tahrir, whose parties and leaders did not fare well in the parliamentary elections.  In the short run he would likely be able to get the economy "back on its feet" a bit faster than Fatouh, but in the long run, he would not likely do as much to address the problems of economic injustice in the country.

Fatouh is positioning himself as the candidate of the revolution, a champion of the protestors and "their" candidate to a much greater degree.  He has an interesting background, and I find him quite an interesting character, defying easy categorization.  He was imprisoned for five years for opposition to the regime, was a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, then kicked out for his independent stance, is a fairly liberal and tolerant Muslim, and now endorsed by the Nour party (with its base in the religiously conservative Salafis).  He is a proponent of "reformist Islam" that is open to women having an equal role in politics, religious pluralism, nonviolence, and justice.  Fatouh rightly stands up for Islam against the critiques and stilted views held by the Western media.  In contrast to Moussa, for whom Egypt is still an "Arab Republic," Fatouh would certainly elevate the Muslim identity of Egypt.  Although the U.S. and Israel are not happy about this prospect, it would put the plight of the poor and dispossessed at the heart of the government's policies, and that really needs to be the priority.

Religion is of course an important element of the election, although I would argue it is not that different from the role of religion in the U.S., where Christianity clearly dominates the American political scene (even with the First Amendment in place).  In the U.S. the religious litmus-test for Presidents has been pretty iron-clad for the last 200 years, so it would seem odd for us to be critiquing Egypt for considering the faith of its candidates in the election.  Mitt Romney may not be a mainstream Christian, but he certainly isn't a Muslim (and the odd claims that Obama was a Muslim indicate the deep-seated antipathy to that faith in the U.S.)  The real issue of course is not so much the faith of the chief executive, but, as eloquently stated by JFK during the 1960 campaign, how those views might be reflected in policy.  Certainly the Saudi and Iranian versions of Islamic rule have many really repressive elements, but these can be attributed as much to non-religious dimensions of those regimes as to any particular teachings in the Koran.  Saudi oppression is backed by the U.S. and by oil money;  Iranian repression by U.S. sanctions and oil and natural gas money.  Egypt is neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran, and the form of Islam there has predominantly been open, tolerant, and moderate.  The real good that Islam and the mosques in Egypt have done in addressing the pressing needs of the poor provide a strong basis for public policy that will carry forward the demands of Tahrir.

In any case, the Egyptian people, God willing or Inshaa Allah, will have a real choice to make on May 23 & 24, and we will be paying close attention and reporting in on what we see when they do.