Qifa Nabki
Arab Spring
Upcoming Conferences
Just a quick note to mention a few upcoming talks I’m giving (which is a none-too-subtle way to apologize for the slow posting these days): Poetic Forces: Creative Change in and Beyond the Arab Spring (Tuesday, March 12, 5:30 PM, Granoff Center, Martinos Auditorium, Brown University) Very much looking forward to this event, which will … Continue reading
Okab Sakr, Purveyor of Fine Armaments & Explosives
It’s a little late in the game for me to hide the fact that I’ve long cultivated an unhealthy obsession with Okab Sakr and his formidable rhetorical skills. His performances on the Lebanese evening talk show circuit are the stuff of legend (see here and here for only a couple of my purplest paeans to … Continue reading
Camille Otrakji and Elias Muhanna Talk Syria at Bloggingheads.tv (Part II)
I recorded another segment with Camille Otrakji for Bloggingheads about Syria. Some of you may remember the first conversation we had last year, and the interview I did with Camille (which generated 724 comments). In this discussion, we look at the deepening conflict and what — if anything — can be done to bring the … Continue reading
What WikiLeaks Tells Us About Assad’s Foreign Policy Record
Al-Akhbar has published an article of mine about the Assad regime’s relations with the West and its foreign policy objectives, as revealed by the original WikiLeaks cache of US diplomatic cables. Needless to say, this article is a response of sorts to Amal Saad-Ghorayeb’s multi-part series which argues that Arab intellectuals should support Assad because … Continue reading
On Revolutions, Past and Present
Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British historian and politician, once had this to say about the French Revolution and its discontents (as Roy Mottahedeh reminds us in the preface to his The Mantle of the Prophet): “A traveller falls in with a berry which he has never before seen. He tastes it, and finds it sweet and … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…