As protests continue to spread in the Middle East, Colgate professor of political science Bruce Rutherford said, “At this point the movement toward democracy in the Middle East is unstoppable.”
“The example in Egypt has been extremely powerful. It has been broadcast throughout the Arab world, and a generation of young people have been shaped by it,” said Rutherford.
“The old regimes may hang on for two, three, five or ten years, but they will change as the young people who are demonstrating grow older and move into positions of leadership. The key question is whether the process of change will be orderly and whether existing leaders will be smart enough to accommodate the growing demands for democracy peacefully. Or will they try to suppress these demands by force and make the process more violent.”
The author of Egypt After Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World (Princeton University Press, 2008), Rutherford directs and teaches in the college’s program in Middle Eastern & Islamic Civilization Studies, which includes courses in history, political science, religion, anthropology and language.
“Student interest in the Middle East is quite high, which is very encouraging,” said Rutherford. “A teacher needs to be aware that students in the U.S. are coming to class with assumptions about Islam and the Middle East that are usually a little negative — that this is a part of the world that’s dangerous and threatening. We have to work against that and help students to understand the history, culture, and politics of the region and the opportunities for coexistence.”
More than 50 news media outlets have contacted Rutherford for expert commentary since protests began in Tunisia and Egypt and sparked further demonstrations in countries such as Bahrain, Libya, Iran and Yemen.
As the pro-democracy movement spread, Rutherford was also the featured speaker at a campus panel discussion sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Rutherford taught and worked as a journalist in Alexandria, Egypt, before he entered graduate school. Throughout the protests in Egypt he was in regular contact via Twitter and Facebook with three of his former research assistants who were among the protestors in Tahrir Square.
The demonstrators’ widespread use of social media “turned out to be an enormous advantage,” said Rutherford.
“The centralized security apparatus had no idea how to deal with a decentralized opposition that didn’t have a single leadership or headquarters or newspaper. Creative and entrepreneurial young people found weaknesses in this massive, hulking security apparatus that they were able to exploit.”