Guests – What Future for the Arab World?

Azyz Amami is a human rights and civil liberties activist. Amami emerged as one of the leaders during the 2011 Tunisian Revolution and has been repeatedly  arrested for his political work and activism. He is currently writing a book about his experiences during the uprising.

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Mohamed Larbi Zitout is an Algerian human rights advocate.

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Karim Ben Abdallah is a Tunisian cyber-activist and blogger.

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Mohamed Guito’n is a Tunisian rapper known for his political lyrics and songs about Tunisia’s post-revolutionary landscape.

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Mouheb Ben Garoui is the founder and president of I Watch, a Tunis-based anti-corruption government watchdog.

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Ramzi Bettaieb is a Tunisian journalist and activist, and part of the writers’ collective ‘Nawaat.’ He was arrested while covering an anti-government protest in 2012 d went on a hunger strike to protest his detention.

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Bruce Riedel is director of the Brookings Institution Intelligence Project. Previously he served on the White House National Security Counsel. He is a counter-terrorism expert and is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst.

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Sheri Berman is the chair of the political science department at Barnard College. She is an expert on State development and democratic consolidation. She is also the author of ‘The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century.’

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Fawaz Gerges is a professor of Middle Eastern Politics at the London School of Economics. He is the author of  ‘The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World’ and ‘Obama and the Middle East: The End of America’s Moment?’  

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Abdullah al-Shayji is a professor of International Relations and chairman of the American Studies unit at Kuwait University. Al-Shjayji advised the Kuwaiti government and the military on topics related to strategic and security issues on Iran, Iraq and crisis management.

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Marwan Kabalan is a Syrian academic and writer, and an expert on International Relations. He is an associate political analyst at the Doha Institute’s Arab Centre for Research. His research has focused on US-Syria relations, Turkey-Syrian relations and the country’s political economy.

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Rami Khouri is a writer, journalist and academic. He is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the AmericanUniversity of Beirut. Khoury was executive editor at the Beirut-based ‘Daily Star’ newspaper.

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Michel Kilo is a Syrian opposition leader, writer and political activist. Kilo founded the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change. He spent three years in jail for signing the Beirut-Damascus Declaration in 2006 calling for the normalisation of relations between Syria and Lebanon and the end to Syrian dominance of its tiny neighbour.

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Anas El Gomati is the founder and research director of the Sadeq Institute, a prominent Libyan think tank. His research focuses on governance and security issues. His publications include ‘Freedom or Survival?’, a study of non-violent solutions to the recent Libyan conflict.

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Jon B. Alterman is the director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the US department of state and as a special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

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Khalil al-Anani is an adjunct professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He is a leading academic expert on Islamist movements, Egyptian politics, and democratization in the Middle East.  His books include ‘Unpacking the Muslim Brotherhood: Religion, Identity, and Politics’, ‘Elections and Democratization in the Middle East’,  ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: Gerontocracy Fighting against Time’ and ‘Political Islam in the Middle East: Past, Present, and Future.’