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David DeBartolo02/27/2009
MAAS Student Co-founds Project on Middle East Democracy
In 2005 and 2006, a group of MAAS students began to meet regularly outside of class because they were “frustrated with the tone of the debate about U.S. democracy promotion in the Middle East,” current MAAS student David DeBartolo said via email.
“We shared a belief that democracy could work in the Middle East, and that the U.S. could have a positive impact on the development of it there. But we were unhappy that the Iraq war had come to stand for U.S. efforts to promote democracy in the region, rather than peaceful means,” he said.
According to DeBartolo, the group of graduate students agreed with some of the Bush Administration’s rhetoric—“that the U.S. legacy of supporting authoritarian regimes had brought neither stability nor democracy, and that genuinely and consistently supporting democratic reform in the Middle East was both consistent with America's values and in America's long-term national interest”—but it fundamentally disagreed with the methods the administration had used to achieve those ends.
Rather than remain unsatisfied, the students channeled their frustration into positive action, organizing panel discussions on Georgetown’s campus with experts such as Michele Dunne, Tarik Yousef, Samer Shehata, and John Esposito.
“We wanted to scrutinize America's actual impact on political reform in the region, listen to Middle Easterners' views about that impact, and search for ways to change America's impact on reform for the better,” DeBartolo said.
The students quickly expanded their program of dialogue, holding panels at other D.C.-area universities and eventually hosting three conferences in Rabat, Cairo, and Amman in the spring of 2007. These conferences brought together young Americans and Middle Easterners to discuss the U.S. role in democratic reform in the region and to devise recommendations for the U.S. government to improve the nation’s impact.
And thus the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) was born.
Thanks to the work of DeBartolo, 2006 MAAS alum (and POMED Director of Research) Shadi Hamid, Executive Director Andrew Albertson, Advocacy Director Stephen McInerney, and many of POMED’s staff members, the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization was able to start an advocacy program on Capitol Hill as well as a research program focusing on the impact of U.S. policies in the Middle East, in addition to expanding its dialogue programs.
Having graduated from Harvard in 2003, DeBartolo is currently pursuing a joint JD/MAAS at Georgetown University. He cites the MAAS program as integral to his understanding of the issues that confront the Middle East.
“MAAS has fundamentally shaped my perspective towards the Middle East, so much so that I cannot even contemplate how I would view the region in the absence of my immensely valuable experience in the program,” he said. “The intimate, warm, and collegial atmosphere between MAAS professors and students is unique in my educational experience and fosters an incredibly vibrant climate of intellectual curiosity and exploration.”
In only a few years, POMED has made great strides in promoting dialogue on U.S. policy in the Middle East and in building alliances on Capitol Hill. However, DeBartolo sees room for growth.
“In the future, I hope that we succeed in building a powerful advocacy organization that can influence a wide range of U.S. policies towards the Middle East to make them more supportive of democratic reform,” he said.
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