Around the Table
Inside the Egyptian Revolution TA B L E TA L K W I T H TA R E K M A S O U D ’ 9 3 By Julie Quinn
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The Exeter Bulletin
FALL 2013
FRED CARLSON
arek Masoud studies one of the world’s most dynamic—and volatile—regions, the Middle East, in particular Egypt. An associate professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a Middle East specialist, Masoud focuses his research on political development in countries that are poor and, as he puts it, “unfree.” Armed with an A.B. from Brown and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale, he wages an intellectual battle to uncover the processes by which governments can become more accountable and responsive to the needs of their citizens. The so-called Arab Spring, a series of popular uprisings that began in 2011, has provided him equal measures of hope and frustration: As fledgling democracies fight for their lives in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, democracy has failed to take root at all in several of the region’s other countries. The origins of Masoud’s interest in the politics and development of the Middle East can be found in his experience as a student at Exeter. “My parents are both from Egypt, and though I was born in the U.S., I spent my formative years, from 9 to 16, in Saudi Arabia,” he says. “I have always been very deeply interested in the politics of that part of the world. Though my parents sent me to Exeter expecting that I would become a doctor, it was Exeter more than anything else that planted the seeds of my current career. “My favorite classes at Exeter were in writing and history. I still remember, and in my teaching try to emulate, Jack Herney and Arthur Gilchrist, both of whom were masters at fostering constructive debate. Outside of the classroom, I spent a lot of time arguing with my friends about the Middle East— this was right after the first Gulf War—and defending my [Muslim] religion, which even then was associated in American minds with terrorism and violence. Those arguments were sometimes painful, but they were painful because I was clearly most passionate about them. By the time I was a sophomore at Brown, I had worked up the courage to tell my parents that I was probably not going to be a doctor. Their response was that I could abandon medicine if I got a doctorate. “I love my career—teaching and writing about Arab and Muslim politics—because I believe it is critical for people in what is still the world’s most powerful nation to have a proper understanding of the people and politics of the region. The United States has a long history of intervention in that part of the world, sometimes for good, and sometimes for ill. It’s axiomatic that we’d do better by the region, and ourselves, if we understood it better.” Masoud’s scholarly and popular writings all further that goal. He has just finished a book on political Islam in Egypt, which explores how the Muslim Brotherhood steadily rose to power over 80-odd