Join the Global Studies Center for a series of conversations with writers and artists exiled from their country and now living in Pittsburgh through the Pittsburgh Network for threatened Scholars (PiNTS) Each has a compelling story resisting and responding to violence, injustice and oppression. They will share their journey and their narrative art form.
Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)-Georgetown University
The Palestinian case is extreme, but it is only one among many in the Arab/Muslim world of democracy denied. The gains made by pro-democracy movements in the 2010-2011 “Arab Spring” have all been reversed, and anti-democratic forces have spread beyond the Arab/Muslim world. This conference will address the lessons learned from these and other cases, critique the policies that have allowed anti-democratic forces to proliferate, and recommend policies based on those lessons and critiques.
Global Studies Center, Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange
Abdelrahman ElGendy is a writer and former Egyptian political prisoner. Arrested from a protest in Cairo, he spent six years and three months behind bars between October 6, 2013, and January 13, 2020. Incarcerated at 17 and released at 24, he started and earned a mechanical engineering BSc from Ain Shams University in Egypt while in prison. His smuggled prison writings circulated online until picked up and published in 2018 by Mada Masr, an independent journalism platform in Egypt.
