Film screening 6:00pm
Panel discussion to follow featuring:
Lillie Paquette, Director
Samer Shehata, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University

This is the story of the struggle for democracy in Egypt that led to the historic uprising in January-February 2011. Filmed on the ground in Egypt over the preceding fourteen months, this story is told through the eyes of Egypt’s youth activists, labor movements and political opposition figures. It is an account of their struggle against extraordinary odds to remove an uncompromising US-backed authoritarian regime determined to stay in power. Going beyond the recent headlines, this documentary offers the background story of years of mounting political resentment against the ruling regime. The film follows the efforts of democracy activists and the political opposition as they used Facebook and Twitter to organize and express themselves in increasingly outspoken ways, even at great personal risk. Emblematic of this growing opposition were the words spray-painted on a subway wall in English, “We are Egypt”. The story also explores why the US has provided over thirty years of political, economic, and military support to the dictatorship, and what the implications of political change in Egypt are for US strategic interests in the Middle East region. Documented during 2009 and 2010, the film unfolds with the opposition and labor movements gaining political momentum as the country prepared for the parliamentary elections that took place on November 28, 2010. Presidential elections had been scheduled for later in 2011, but everything changed when the peaceful revolution began on January 25. “We are Egypt” tells why it happened.

About the Director
Lillie Paquette is a specialist in international affairs with an MA in Global Studies from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where she focused on mass media, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Paquette has followed developments in Middle East-US relations since her first visit to Egypt in 2002 as part of a Fulbright funded “Dialogue of Civilizations” student exchange program. For several years, she worked on Middle East and North Africa programs at the Washington DC-based nonprofit, International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), where she specialized in US State Department-funded media and civil society development programs. Over the past year, Paquette worked in Cairo where she filmed "We are Egypt - Voices of Egypt’s Youth Opposition Movement”. During her year in Egypt, she was also a video news reporter and producer for Reuters’ Cairo office, where she processed global video news reports and video footage for worldwide clients and consumers. She is an alumna of Docs In Progress in Silver Spring, MD, where she studied documentary film production and appreciation.

About the Panelists
Samer S. Shehata is an Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He teaches courses on Arab and Middle East politics, Islamist politics, comparative politics, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, Egyptian politics, culture and politics in the Arab world, and other subjects. ]

Before coming to Georgetown Dr. Shehata spent one year as a Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University and another as Director of Graduate Studies at New York University’s Center for Near Eastern Studies. He received a PhD from the Politics Department at Princeton University in 2000. Dr. Shehata has also taught at Columbia University, New York University, and the American University in Cairo.

Dr. Shehata’s research interests include Middle East politics, Islamist politics and movements, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, the political economy of the Middle East, social class and labor, “development”, authoritarian elections, Egyptian politics, ethnography, and the Hajj. He has published widely in both academic and policy journals. Dr. Shehata has been interviewed for commentary by a wide range of media including CNN, BBC, Lehrer News Hour, NPR, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, FOX, C-Span, CBC, Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, Al Arabiyya, Egyptian Satellite TV, Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC), New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Guardian, Le Monde, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Dr. Shehata has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation’s Middle East Research Competition, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Research Center in Egypt, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Carnegie Corporation.

Adel Iskandar is a scholar of Arab studies whose research focuses on media and communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (Basic Books). Iskandar's work deals with media, identity and politics and has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His latest publication is an edited volume entitled Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press). His two forthcoming works are books on the role of new media and dissidence in the Arab world. Iskandar teaches at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture and Technology program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

This event is part of the CCAS أحداث  (In the News) Series