Teaching the Arab Spring: Avi Spiegel Part of Effort at UCLA to Conceptualize Uprisings

Michele Dunne, Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council, lectures from UC Washington, DC. (Photo: Cody Saleh, CMED.)

How do you teach the Arab Spring?

 

A recent course on the Arab Spring taught invited specialists from around the country and UCLA to lecture on individual countries—some in person and some via a videoconferencing link. 

By Cody Saleh, Center for Middle East Development

“How do you teach the Arab Spring?” That was the question we asked ourselves six months ago when Professor of Political Science and Center for Middle East Development (CMED) Director Steven Spiegel finally agreed to take on a new class, after much haranguing from his graduate students. The subject needed—begged—to have its own class, but scarcely could a book be ordered, articles assigned, and slides prepared before some new event would change the course of Middle East politics (again).

How can you keep up with, much less teach, a class about an unfolding series of events whose consequences and significance are still unknown? The very name “Arab Spring” continues to be debated in some circles (a pet peeve of one of our speakers, it turns out).

Spiegel explains, “The problem I faced in designing [the] course was the freshness of the subject, which changed daily. And I believed strongly that individual country problems required specific answers and discussions with analysts dealing with these issues on an ongoing basis.”

The answer turned out to be elegant and simple: bring in the experts.

“In a standard class on U.S.-Middle East relations, students are exposed to the views of people who analyze U.S foreign policy. In this class, you heard directly from people whose analysis informs U.S. foreign policy. Everybody in this class—students and teachers alike—learned a tremendous amount. It was a privilege to be involved in this undertaking.”

Joshua Saidoff, teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate, UCLA Department of Political Science

To pull it off, CMED had to get tech savvy. As far back as August 2012, the idea of videoconferencing was floating around CMED as something we should “look into.” None of the group who worked on the course quite understood what this would entail; hardly any professors outside of the School of Engineering at UCLA had taken advantage of this technology. By November of last year, we were testing the connection between the videoconferencing facility at UCLA and the UC Washington Center, our counterpart 2,600 miles away in Washington, DC. It looked incredible and enabled a speaker to see and interact with a class and professor at UCLA. Spiegel adds, “I tried it once from Washington and it felt just like I was in Perloff 1102 [UCLA].”

While gaining experience with the technology, Spiegel and his teaching assistants Benjamin Radparvar and Joshua Saidoff cobbled together a syllabus. The 18 classes of an hour and 15 minutes each would cover the countries of the Arab Spring and the themes that they presented (see below).
Next came the selection of the experts. Their backgrounds spanned the breadth of political, academic and governmental institutions, from the State Department to think tanks like the Atlantic Council, from professors at the University of San Diego and George Washington University to our own UCLA graduate students, professors and CMED scholars.

“The sense of being together added to our ability to actually have a discussion, and not just a lecture,” remarks Spiegel. “First I engaged the speaker, and then members of the class asked questions and made comments. Remarkably, no guest bombed; all added to our collective knowledge and many students told me it was their most intriguing classroom experience at UCLA.”

Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, and Professor Spiegel lecture from Washington, DC. (Photo: Cody Saleh, CMED.)

Lessons learned
Videoconference lecturing is not for everyone. While the speaker and the class can see and hear one another, it takes a bit of learning to speak into a camera. The time limitation of an hour and 15 minutes also left little time to introduce a speaker and allow him or her to get comfortable with the technology, making two hours a more reasonable time frame. Despite these challenges, and the fact that some of the speakers weren’t necessarily used to lecturing in an academic setting, they adapted quite well.

However, technical difficulties come with the territory. Don Roby of the UCLA A/V Department gave the course excellent support, but a few unforeseeable problems gave us anxiety down to the last second. For professors considering the videoconferencing format for a course, be prepared to improvise. You may need to stand up and do some lecturing to fill the time until a connection is fixed.
Using a roster of invited speakers also means classes are unpredictable. We left it to the speakers to determine how much background information was needed to contextualize current events in their country or topic of expertise. Necessarily, there was a lot of variation among classes because each country addressed by the course has a unique history that influences how the Arab Spring is playing out within its borders. These variations can be problematic for students, who are responsible for deciphering what information is essential and, of course, what will end up on the all-important exam.

In addition, because the team that prepared the course did not know exactly what the speakers would cover, it was difficult to choose assigned readings.

“Being exposed to the top researchers and officials in the country is what UCLA should be about. Not only were the lectures entertaining (most of the time), all of the information was so relevant and applicable that I am able to use it outside of the classroom. . . which is not necessarily something you get from other classes.”

Miri Gold, 3^rd-year UCLA undergraduate,
political science major

Finally, the readings occasionally contradicted the speakers or approached an event from a different angle. Yet this kind of inconsistency is useful because it teaches students that considerable disagreement exists over how to interpret an event, especially something as complex as the Arab Spring.

As a result, students learn to be critical of what they read and hear, even from experts. After all, isn’t that the point of an education?

Looking back at the course experience, Spiegel concludes, “Obviously, there are improvements to be made, but in sum, having guests ‘come to lecture’ in class from anywhere in the world enhances the experience. I certainly intend to use the method again where appropriate and useful.”

“International Relations of the Middle East”—Winter 2013 Lecture Schedule

Topic	Lecturer
Ottoman Empire to the Arab Spring	Professor Steven Spiegel, UCLA
Public Opinion	Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, and Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
(Social) Media & Identity	Yael Warshel, Visiting Scholar, UCLA Center for Middle East Development
The Arab Spring: An Introduction	Avi Spiegel, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations, University of California San Diego, and Fellow, Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas, Austin
Tunisia, Libya, and the Consulate Attacks	Karim Mezran, Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council
Egypt	Karim Haggag, career Egyptian diplomat, and Visiting Professor, Near East South Asia (NESA) Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University
Syria	Murhaf Jouejati, Professor of Middle East Studies, NESA Center, National Defense University, and Lecturer in Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University
Lebanon	Frederic C. Hof, former Special Advisor on the Transition in Syria, U.S. Department of State
Islamist Movements & the Arab Uprisings	Nathan Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University, and Nonresident Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Terrorism & the Middle East	David Rapoport, UCLA Professor Emeritus of Political Science, and Editor, "Terrorism and Political Violence" (journal)
Iran: From Constitutional Revolution to the Pahlavi Dynasty	Benjamin Radparvar, Ph. D. candidate, UCLA Department of Political Science
Iran: Origins of the Revolution to the Rise of the Islamic Republic	Benjamin Radparvar
Iran: War with Iraq, Khatami, The Nuclear Issue, the Green Movement and Ahmadinejad	Professor Steven Spiegel, UCLA
The GCC: The Arab Spring and the Politics of Survival in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait	Judith Yaphe, Distinguished Research Fellow for the Middle East, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, and Lecturer, Institute for Middle East Studies, George Washington University
Yemen	Abdu Alkebsi, Regional Director for Africa and MENA, Center for International Private Enterprise
Iraq: Was it the First Arab Spring?	Judith Yaphe
Obama and the Arab Spring	Michele Dunne, Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council
Turkey & Course Review	Asli Bali, Assistant Professor, UCLA School of Law; and Steven Spiegel

An earlier version of this article was originally published on the CMED blog,“The Middle Easterner,” on March 26, 2013.

Center for Middle East Development

Published: Monday, April 01, 2013

Teaching the Arab Spring: Avi Spiegel's Course on Middle East Politics Examined

Studying Middle East during Arab Spring: a professor’s course comes alive

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2011/Dec/25/a-professors-course-comes-alive/


AS TOLD TO U-T REPORTER Matthew T. Hall

Avi Spiegel, a sharp student of the Middle East, found himself in a new position in January: teaching a class on its history and politics as uprisings utterly changed both in one country after another.
Spiegel, 35, is an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego.

He welcomed his first-ever class one week after Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled that nation, ending 23 years of authoritarian rule and giving protesters in nearby countries something new: hope.

I arrived in San Diego the month the Arab Spring arrived.

Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia lit himself on fire in December, and I wasn’t here, but then when President Ben Ali stepped down on Jan. 14, I was here, and it was at that point that the Arab Spring really began.

It became clear that these young people were more than just protesters. They were literally marching themselves free of authoritarianism. So it was at that point when Ben Ali fell that I threw the syllabus up in the air and said we’ve got to remake this thing.

It would be as if you’re teaching a Politics in Germany class in the fall of 1989. And I would say this to my students over and over and over again — that we’re watching history unfold before our eyes.
I wanted to try to guide the students, help them understand why authoritarianism was so durable in the Middle East and why democracy was so elusive, what was happening and how could they better understand what was happening.

What was amazing is that the events in the Middle East tended to follow the syllabus and the syllabus tended to follow events in the Middle East, so that became a joke in the class.

For example, the week that Lara Logan, the CBS News reporter, was assaulted in Cairo, we were scheduled to read about women’s rights in the class and looking at research in political science linking political stagnation in the Middle East to lapses in women’s rights.
So that was, you know, unbelievable.

And then the week that instability really started to come to Libya and oil prices were rising — this was March — we were scheduled to read about the resource curse and the theory of the rentier state, the idea that oil revenue hinders democratization.

Two months later, on the night before I was scheduled to lecture about al-Qaeda in class, the president called a news conference. I emailed my students at 6 p.m. May 1 and said turn on your TVs.
Bin Laden was dead. This was literally the week we were talking about al-Qaeda.

Students were engaged. They were able to see the news in a way that I hope other people weren’t, and really understand it not just as current events but really critically engage it the way academics are supposed to.

It was serendipitous. I mean, really. Not only that but the students were the same age as the people making the news.

History sometimes seems distant, and sometimes political science can seem distant also as you’re studying about governments and institutions and elites. But in this case we weren’t.

We were studying about young people just like them using the same technologies that
they were using. So a lot of my students would get on Facebook and check out the same sites that the protesters were using to mobilize, follow the protesters and the protest movements on Twitter.
So that was the goal: to try to bring that world home to them.

And I remember these two students leaving class and they were talking about (how) they were at a party and they met these friends and they were talking about the Middle East with them and trying to predict with them: Which leader do you think is going to fall next?

And these guys had no idea what the students were talking about. I remember they were just so dismayed that people weren’t following it as closely as they were. So for me, the idea that they were at a party thinking about this stuff, nothing better for a professor.

Initially, I had planned a textbook introduction to Middle East politics, looking at the variety of political systems and institutions and influences. Still a fascinating class, I think, because the region is fascinating. But certainly not as geared around that single overarching question that became so crucial.

This is the question that historians will be grappling with for many years to come. The question is why, at that moment, with this one man?

In my time in the Middle East, I’ve known hundreds of Mohamed Bouazizi’s, hundreds of young people, unemployed, overeducated, aggravated, feeling as if they have no future, just disgusted by the corruption, by the overarching power of the internal security forces.

I mean, this is in every country I’ve visited. I’ve known so many of these people. So why is it that this single, unlikely fruit seller in this tiny town in tiny Tunisia, why is it that he was able at that moment to spark a revolution?

In 2011, the first two months we were averaging one deposed authoritarian leader a month. We had Ben Ali in January and (Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak in February.
 
And then who knew what was going to happen?

The whole semester was a teachable moment.

At the end of the class, I was saying to my students that building a democracy is a lot like marriage. Starting a new marriage is difficult. Repairing a broken one is sometimes even more difficult, but it’s worth it.

It didn’t end when the semester ended and it won’t end on Dec. 31, 2011. It will continue for many years.

matthew.hall@uniontrib.com (619) 293-1335 Twitter @SDuncovered Facebook matthewthall

**

For more on Avi Spiegel's syllabi, see his teaching site.  Homepage here

Teaching the Arab Spring: Avi Spiegel Teaching Profile

USD professors give insight on the Arab Spring

 

It’s been a while since Avi Spiegel crossed paths with a razor. The burgeoning stubble on his face is threatening to break out into a beard at any moment. His brisk gait barely slows as he unlocks his office door and jettisons an armful of documents onto the desk in one deft motion.

“It’s been a hectic last few months,” Spiegel says with an apologetic grin. “Which you can probably tell by looking at my office.”

Moving boxes stacked on the floor are half-empty. The walls are bare except for unadorned picture hooks. Only the desk — overflowing with papers, folders, books and an Apple laptop — bears any sign of active habitation.

Spiegel has had more pressing matters to consider. He did, after all, begin teaching a USD course called “Politics in the Middle East” precisely when conventional sociopolitical wisdom about the region took an abrupt detour out the window.

“The entire class was set up around the question of why authoritarianism is so durable and democracy so elusive in the Middle East,” Spiegel points out. “That’s one of the core questions that scholars have been looking at for years. Which is why this is such a pivotal moment.”

The groundswell of revolutionary fervor started in Tunisia, then quickly gripped Egypt and continued to spread during this so-called Arab Spring throughout the Middle East and North Africa. In a matter of days, countries that barely registered on the global radar were thrust into the spotlight.

“It’s exhilarating, there’s no doubt about it,” says Necla Tschirgi. “When you see a situation that’s basically been frozen in time change so dramatically, it’s certainly a momentous period in history.”
The seismic shift in geopolitics just happened to coincide with the arrival of two professors at USD — Spiegel and Tschirgi — whose academic expertise is steeped with years of experience in the region. Given their grassroots experience, neither professor was surprised about the underlying causes of the widespread insurrection against long-standing authoritarian regimes known for the often-brutal subjugation of their citizenries.

“It was entirely predictable,” Tschirgi says, “and yet nobody saw it coming.”

What shocked Middle East scholars and foreign policy experts was how suddenly governments either disintegrated or were severely shaken given the iron-fisted leadership of rulers like Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

“It’s not just that these leaders fell but how quickly it happened,” Spiegel says. “To see these regimes that were so firmly entrenched collapse basically overnight — and by young people literally marching themselves free of authoritarianism in a matter of weeks — is unbelievable.”

That tangible immediacy — along with the use of technologies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — has translated into a surge of enthusiasm within USD classrooms. “I’ve never seen students more interested, more engaged, more captivated,” Spiegel says. “As a professor, you can’t ask for anything more.”

In the days, weeks and months since the Arab Spring first began, Tschirgi and Spiegel have been called upon repeatedly to provide commentary and analysis. It’s a task for which both are uniquely qualified.

Tschirgi, a native of Turkey, studied political science at the American University of Beirut, taught at the American University of Cairo and has worked for organizations like the International Peace Academy and the Peacebuilding Support Office at the United Nations.

Spiegel, who is fluent in Arabic, has spent years conducting research (including for his PhD dissertation at Oxford) into the changing dynamics of young Islamist movements throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

“I’ve been listening to — and focusing on the mobilizing potential of — young people on the ground in the Middle East for a long time,” Spiegel says. “A lot of the signs and rhetoric coming from the protestors were very familiar to me. Still, I think all of us are still trying to make sense of why it happened, why so quickly, why now and what it means for the future.”

Spiegel is in a unique position to provide answers with his up-coming book, The Next Islamist Generation: Religion, Politics and the Future of the Middle East. And as this chapter in Middle East history continues to unfold—with particular uncertainty surrounding Libya, Syria and the repercussions of Osama bin Laden’s demise — there is an opportunity for academics like Spiegel and Tschirgi to provide intellectual context going forward.

“This is really the moment for academics and scholars to contribute to ongoing policy debates,” Spiegel says. “The endings of these revolutions have not yet been written.”

**

For more on Avi Spiegel's syllabi, see his teaching site.  Homepage here

"Islamists in a Changing Middle East" now available on Amazon: Avi Spiegel Contributor to Marc Lynch's Collection

Islamists in a Changing Middle East  

Marc Lynch (Editor)

Available at Amazon

From Amazon.com: "The election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed el-Morsi as President of Egypt has sharpened the focus on the role of Islamist movements in a rapidly changing Middle East.  Social and political movements based on a political reading of Islam have for decades been among the largest, best organized and most effective forces in many Arab countries.  Since the Arab uprisings last year, they have faced new opportunities and challenges -- from elections in Tunisia and Egypt to fighting in Syria and Libya.  Islamists in a Changing Middle East brings together reporting and analysis from nearly two dozen of the world's top experts on such movements.  Collecting essays originally published in ForeignPolicy.com's Middle East Channel, this collection offers well-informed, timely and highly readable analysis of a major trend reshaping a vital region of the world.

Contributors:  Marc Lynch (Editor), Najla Abdurrahman, Christopher Alexander, Khalil el-Anani, Omar Ashour, Lauren Bohn, Lauren Bonnefoy, Nathan Brown, Melanie Cammett, Erik Churchill,  Isobel Coleman, Kristin Diwan, Brian Fishman, Shadi Hamid, Michael Wahid Hanna, Sean Kane, Stephane Lacroix, Laila al-Lalami, Monica Marks, Toby Mathiessen, Hisham al-Miraati,  Phillip Mudd, Gwenn Okruhulik, Karina Piser,  Michael Robbins, Nir Rosen, Olivier Roy, Randa Slim, Avi Spiegel,  Robert Springborg,  Lindsey Stephensen, Mark Tessler, Sarah Topol,  James Traub, Madeleine Wells, Stacey Yadav, Piotr Zalewski, Aaron Zelin