Segment of Interview with AUC History professor Michael Reimer

Segment of Interview with AUC History professor Michael Reimer by IngyH

Interview with Michael Reimer (March 22nd 2011) for: The January 25th Revolution and Changes in Egyptian Society


Were you in Egypt during the protests?
Yes, I was in Egypt during the entire period of the protests.

Did you actually go to Tahrir Square?
I was in Tahrir Square a few times. Well, actually just twice before the president's resignation. And, it was February 1st or February 2nd I was there, just before the incident with the camels and the horses and such. I wasn't there on that day. And one other time and I can't remember the exact date but anyway... We did see, and I was with some other people, and we did see on the first occasion some clashes between police and demonstrators, and then the second occasion was actually a very peaceful day. It was the Tuesday before the clash with the Baltagiyya.

The history course that you're teaching right now, Isqat al Nizam, this was your idea to start teaching that?
It was actually an idea that was sparked by the provost. Because the provost here at AUC, Dr. Medhat Haroun, had circulated to all the faculty a suggestion that we set up some special, either, courses or workshops or seminars relating to the revolution as a way of contributing as a university to the dialogue about what had happened and what was going to happen in Egypt as the constitution was changed and as the discussion about changing the political and the cultural atmosphere in the country, so it was my idea originally to set up some kind of course where we could compare Egypt's revolution with other revolutions. But it could not have happened without the support of my colleagues and so it's a team taught course, and every week we have a different lecturer who is presenting on a different topic of comparison for Egypt, with Egypt's revolution.

Can you tell me what are you hoping to teach students through that course and what you are hoping they will learn. 
Well I think what we want the students to learn is that there are many different trajectories that a revolution can follow. There's not just one kind of revolution as it were, there isn't a single pattern that all revolutions conform to, in other words. And one of the things that came out in our discussion on the very first day, we had a panel, and some students wanted the panel, which consisted mainly of professors, although we did have a student on the panel as well, to sort of tell them what should happen now or what had to happen thinking that there's somehow a law that all revolutions have to follow. And what we tried to convey to the students was, first of all, there is no such law that the revolution has to follow, or a pre-ordained path, and secondly what happens is determined to a large extent by what the students and other Egyptians actually want to happen, what they're willing to sacrifice in order for something to happen. So, we wanted to stress the fact that there is a certain open-endedness to any kind of revolutionary situation. And one can look around and see models of things, or revolutions that perhaps Egypt wants to follow, and other models that it wants to avoid. But in each case there are, by studying revolutions we can sort of see, well, who benefits, who doesn't benefit, what groups tend to be involved, what groups tend to be excluded or marginalized by revolutions. I would say one thing that I certainly hope our students would learn is that a determined minority often times can, you might say, take hold of a revolution and lead it in a particular path. Unless people are willing to stand up, to object, or to try and lead it into a different way, often times revolutions do actually tend to be taken over by one group that has a very clear ideology and a very clear goal in mind, whereas other people are sort of dithering and not following through. Yes that can happen with a revolution, it doesn't have to happen, there have been revolutions where that hasn't happened but it is a potential outcome of a revolution. 

Final Project Promo: The January 25th Revolution and Changes in Egyptian Society

 FINAL PROJECT PROMO by IngyH

Alexandria - 2/4/2011
Photo: Ingy Hassieb

Music

Omar Khairat - Al Ayam 

SOT_Michael Reimer - History Professor at the American University in Cairo: Democracy is what produces the changes in behavior that we have seen and that I think will continue to improve people's behaviors in all sorts of ways. 

ANNC: The January 25th Uprising has undoubtedly affected Egyptian politics, but how and if it's going to affect society remains to be seen. 

Attend the listening session at AUC's New Cairo campus on Sunday May 22nd and Wednesday May 25th at 10 a.m. each day, in the BEC building room 1060. 

Podcast #1: Audio Book

 PODCAST #1 - LOLITA by IngyH


An excerpt from Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita

"My heart beat like a drum as she sat down, cool skirt ballooning, subsiding, on the sofa next to me, and played with her glossy fruit. She tossed it up into the sun-dusted air, and caught it -- it made a cupped polished plop. 


Humbert Humbert intercepted the apple.

'Give it back,' she pleaded, showing the marbled flush of her palms. I produced Delicious. She grasped it and bit into it, and my heart was like snow under thin crimson skin, and with the monkeyish nimbleness that was so typical of that American nymphet, she snatched out of my abstract grip the magazine I had opened (pity no film had recorded the curious pattern, the monogrammic linkage of our simultaneous or overlapping moves). Rapidly, hardly hampered by the disfigured apple she held, Lo flipped violently through the pages in search of something she wished Humbert to see. Found it at last. I faked interest by bringing my head so close that her hair touched my temple and her arm brushed my cheek as she wiped her lips with her wrist. Because of the burnished mist through which I peered at the picture, I was slow in reacting to it, and her bare knees rubbed and knocked impatiently against each other. Dimly, there came into view: a surrealist painter relaxing, supine, on a beach, and near him, likewise supine, a plaster replica of the Venus di Milo, half-buried in sand. Picture of the Week, said the legend. I whisked the whole obscene thing away. Next moment, in a sham effort to retrieve it, she was all over me. Caught her by her thin knobby wrist. The magazine escaped to the floor like a flustered fowl. She twisted herself free, recoiled, and lay back in the right-hand corner of the davenport. Then, with perfect simplicity, the impudent little child extended her legs across my lap.
  
 By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden's attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick... "

Music: Flames - VAST

Audio Essay: This I believe about the new Egypt

  AUDIO ESSAY #1 - This I believe by IngyH

I believe the new Egypt should be just. Fair and just.

Growing up my mother taught me about fairness. She said all human beings are born equal, that a person’s worth is not measured by the amount of money they have, their profession, or their social class. She told me to treat people the way I would want to be treated… with respect.

As I grew older I realized what my mother taught me could not be further away from reality in Egypt.

I came to understand that people in my country are not only measured by their social class, but are defined by it. Citizenship rights are only attainable to those who can afford them.

When I turned sixteen and had to get my ID card I simply went to a guy, who knew a guy, who knew my family. He took me to the front of the line and asked the administrator to finish my paperwork and take my photograph.

In less than half an hour I walked out of the office, ID card in hand. All it took was a few folded notes disguised as handshakes.

Those who didn’t know someone who knew someone who could help them out, who didn’t have twenties to spare, waited in the back of the line either to be told to come back another time or to be treated with absolute disrespect by the person handling their papers.

It was more or less the same procedure for my driver’s license, and renewing my passport.

Some call it bribery; others call it charity, a way of helping those less fortunate.

Somewhere along the line, the helping hand began buying people reverence. An individual’s esteem was judged by the size of his pocket.

In the new Egypt, people will not be bought and sold. In the new Egypt I want to stand in line with others, to see everyone treated properly, not for their connections but for the simple fact that they’ve done nothing to deserve otherwise. Egyptians should not have to feel like foreigners inside their own country.

No one should be above the law, not the doorman and not the president. They will be equals, one and the same, praised for their good deeds, reprimanded for their mistakes.

The way Tahrir Square was between January 25th and February 11th is what the new Egypt should be like, a land of parallels, of equality, of equally important Egyptians, worth the same in each other’s eyes.

This I believe.