Abu Aardvark's MENA Academy

Nov 6, 2024 | abuaardvark.substack.com | Marc Lynch

This is a sad day for America and the world. Like most of us, I’m still processing Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris last night. It’s not just that he won — it’s the wholesale shift to the right seen almost everywhere after the most extreme right wing campaign in American history. With the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court behind him, and his near certain escape from all of the lawsuits against him, there is a near complete absence of any checks on his power.

Oct 31, 2024 | abuaardvark.substack.com | Marc Lynch

In mid-September 2023, POMEPS Board members Laryssa Chomiak, Jillian Schwedler and Lisa Wedeen helped me to convene an extraordinary workshop at CEMAT (Tunis) about the Middle Eastern context and resonances of the anticolonial thinker Frantz Fanon.

Oct 14, 2024 | abuaardvark.substack.com | Marc Lynch

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Message has been a certifiable — and justiable — event in the national public discourse. The latest book by the author of “The Case for Reparations” includes four breathtakingly well-written essays about the purpose of his writing, his engagement with the world beyond the United States and his evolving mission as a writer.

Sep 3, 2024 | abuaardvark.substack.com | Marc Lynch

Yasser Munif, The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death (Pluto Press, 2020). Indiscriminate bombing and airstrikes which kill disproportionate numbers of civilians, women and children. Destroying hospitals and schools. Siege tactics to weaken and starve targeted populations, while encouraging the spread of contagious disease and debilitating the health care and water purification infrastructure.

Jul 8, 2024 | abuaardvark.substack.com | Marc Lynch

Keith Whittington, You Can’t Teach That!: The Battle Over University Classrooms (Wiley 2024). “American academic freedom is in peril,” warned Kate Starbird and Ryan Calo recently in the journal Science. They speak from hard-earned personal experience based on the backlash to their pathbreaking work studying online disinformation: “Academics researching online misinformation in the US are learning a hard lesson: Academic freedom cannot be taken for granted.