Safwan Masri to discuss his recent book in Cairo

CAIRO – 18 April 2018: The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) hosts a lecture by Safwan Masri, executive vice president of Global Centers, about his book "Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly" on Tuesday May 10.

In a discussion titled "Understanding the Tunisian Anomaly: An Inquiry into a History of Reform", Masri will be revealing the experiences he went through while working on this academic and historical project.

In the book, Masri analyzes the factors that supported the Tunisian revolution through focusing on the Tunisian history. The book presents the elements that helped in reforming the Tunisian society such as education, religion, and women’s rights, pointing out that such factors were the main creator of the Tunisian history, and that most of these factors are almost missing now in the Arab region.

Masri strongly believes that the Tunisian revolution paved a hopeful way for the whole Arab region to peacefully move towards a real democratic atmosphere after years of repression, humanitarian disasters, and civil wars. However, that hopeful way unfortunately led some Arab countries to worse situations unlike Tunisia; Masri investigates the reasons that made Tunisia a special case in the region.

Masri is a professor and a senior research scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). He joined Columbia University in 1988 as a member of Columbia Business School and served as vice dean from 1993-2005. Masri is a scholar on education and contemporary geopolitics and society in the Arab world and is the author of "Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly" (Columbia University Press, 2017). He previously taught engineering at Stanford University and was a visiting professor at INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) in France.