About the Center
Search
Alumni & Student News
MAAS Alumni: Gerald, Abdullah, el-Bassioni, Barnes, Frank, Ivaska, Lowrance, Baird, Mawlawi, Shapiro, Cooper, Buzbee, Stein, Cork, Bader, Eadeh, Jorgensen, Harris, Axelrod, McCary, Abdelnour.
Published in 2005
[No download available]
John Gerald (1982) has left his position with McCarthy-Tetreault in London and
moved to France, where he is working with the Aga Khan Foundation in Aiglemont.
Thabit Abdullah (1985) writes that his new book, A Short History of Iraq (Pear-
son-Longman, 2003) has been doing very well in Europe and North America, and
his book on Basra, Merchants, Mamluks and Murder (SUNY Press, 2001), is being
translated to Arabic. He is planning a second book on modern Iraq which will cover the period from 1988 to the present. He recently participated in a roundtable discussion of M.N. Pearson’s book, The Indian Ocean, which will be published in the Journal of Maritime History. He also participated in a conference on the "Persian Gulf in History" in October 2004 in Cyprus. He was featured in the History Channel’s recent documentary on Iraq entitled Kings: From Babylon To Baghdad, and appears regularly on NPR’s Marc Steiner Show. “I am still working with the Iraqi NGO al-Amal and planning to cast my fi rst vote when elections are held at the end of January. I’ve been waiting all my life to vote in Iraq so who cares if it’s a sham election? It can’t get worse than what you [in the US] just had!”
Nagla el-Bassioni (1991) writes: “In response to an email you sent out earlier this year on behalf of the YES program, I have agreed to take in a high school exchange student from Syria this year. I was upset to hear that they were having trouble placing the Arab and Muslim students this year. Ursula Sweid is a 17-year old student from Damascus. She is now enrolled in Marshall High School in Fairfax County where I live. So far, being a ‘host mom’ has been a wonderful experience. Ursula is doing well in school and is adjusting to the US. Her only complaint is that we are a bit behind on fashion and trends. In Syria, young adults like Ursula tend to follow European fashion, which is ahead of the US.”
Caroline Barnes (1992) writes: “After spending 10 years at the FBI as a counter-
terrorism and counterintelligence analyst, I served on the 9/11 Commission, as part of the team charged with assessing our domestic intelligence structure and counter-terrorism strategy before and after 9/11. We focused our investigation primarily on the FBI and Department of Justice, and interviewed scores of current and former state, local, and federal law-enforcement and intelligence community offi cials, as well as subject-matter experts outside the government. We planned public hearings and drafted statements presenting our preliminary fi ndings, ultimately presenting our results to the commissioners and making policy recommendations regarding the future organization of the FBI and broader intelligence community to fi ght terrorism. Currently, I am serving as the head of the Intelligence component of the New Jersey State Offi ce of Counter-Terrorism, managing a team of analysts that assesses the terrorist threat to the state of New Jersey.” She will be speaking at CCAS about her experience in the spring semester 2005.
Cornelia Frank (1992) has changed jobs within the UN, moving from the UN
Kosovo Mission to the Asia and Middle East Division within the Peacekeeping
Department at UNHQ, where she works as Political Affairs Offi cer/Special Assistant to the Director of the Division. Nazli Islam (1993) also works with the UN, having spent the last several years with UNHCR in Argentina, where she moved ten years ago. Any CCAS students, graduates or staff who head south are welcome to visit her. Marina Throne-Holst (1994) is in Burundi working with the new UN peacekeeping mission there.
[This blurb on Andy Ivaska (1995) showed up on the website for Concordia University (Montreal), where he is teaching.] He “has completed his Ph.D. in African History at the University of Michigan. His dissertation, entitled ‘Negotiating “Culture” in a Cosmopolitanism Capital: Urban Style, and the Tanzanian State in Colonial and Postcolonial Dar es Salaam,’ examines the wide range of social struggles that accompanied attempts by colonial and post-colonial states alike to define and control urban culture in 20th century Tanzania. An article arising out of this work and focusing on a 1968 state-sponsored campaign against ‘indecent’ dress in Dar es Salaam was recently published in the journal, Gender and History. His current research interests focus on histories of youth, popular culture, state formation, and urban social change in 20th century Africa.”
Sherry Lowrance (1995) writes: “I finally finished that cursed dissertation and I’m now in a tenure-track job in the department of International Affairs at the Uni-
versity of Georgia. We have relocated to Athens, Georgia, and have settled in well
so far. Raumsie and Youssef are enjoying their new school/day care and getting used to having more space. We are having fun, though the job is a bit stressful. I have now entered the world of publish or perish!”
Allison Baird (1996) writes: “I’ve been thinking about GU recently as my family
hosted an Eid party in the town in which we live. Since my town is not terribly cul-
turally diverse, it was neat to do something different than the traditional holiday party. And our guests left knowing more about the Muslim world and that not all ‘Islamic Fundamentalists’ are terrorists. I’m still at Fidelity Investments doing product development, though not in the college savings area anymore. I was promoted to Vice President in the spring and am working on a project to launch Fidelity Retirement Income Advantage, a program that helps people plan for and live in retirement. Though I’ve strayed a bit from my formal education, it is an ever-present foundation from which I have built a successful and satisfying career.”
Sahar Mawlawi (1997) writes: “I am still working as the Director of the Advisory
Council on Arab Affairs for the City of Chicago. The fall was very busy, since No-
vember is offi cially Arab Heritage Month and the Advisory Council was extremely
busy preparing for it. I put together the Arab Heritage Month Calendar, which can
be viewed at: http://www.cityofchicago.org/HumanRelations/SpecialEvents/Arab-
HeritageMonth.pdf. On a personal note, Ali and I just had our second girl in No-
vember and we named her Rasha ("fawn" in Arabic). Her big sister Meena is very
happy with her...so far....”
Adam Shapiro (1997) spent some time in the Darfur region of Sudan in the fall
working on a documentary. He also wrote a piece in November for The Nation fol-
lowing the death of Palestinian president Yasser Arafat. See: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041129&a=shapiro.
Susannah Silverbrand Cooper (1997) writes: “I am following in John Buzbee’s (1997) footsteps studying Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Tunisia. In the summer, I will begin a three-year assignment at the US Embassy in Tunisia. Sean and I are looking forward to spending the next four years touring most of North Africa.”
Ewan Stein (2000) has started a PhD course in International Relations at the London School of Economics, studying under Fred Halliday. He writes: “It’s quite different here to in the States though, in that I start working on the dissertation immediately without a programme of coursework—so self-discipline will be the key!”
Dan Cork (2001) has left his position at National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) to begin work in January with the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity as Program Officer for the Middle East and North Africa (with a fo-
cus on Egypt, the Gulf, and Yemen). ACILS is one of four international institutions
(also including the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican
Institute and the Center for International Private Enterprise) funded by NED. All
work with local partners aims to develop and implement democracy programs in
sector-specifi c areas. “ACILS, an affi liate of the AFL-CIO, works with trade unions
in the developing world to promote core labor standards and the right of workers
to form democratic trade unions.” For further information, see: http://www.
solidaritycenter.org. Dan joins MAAS colleague Shawna Bader (2000), who works
on Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq with the Solidarity Center.
Julie Eadeh (2002) wrote in November: “I just got back from UAE and Oman for Eid. I am speaking at a conference in Abu Dhabi next week on human rights and giving the talk in Arabic. Professor Baccouche would be so proud! I am off to Beirut next year following six months of French in DC. Now, once I visit Libya and Iraq I will have seen all of the Near East!"
Kari Jorgensen (2003) spent much of the fall traveling with CHF International. After two months in North Sudan developing a relief program for Darfur (with lots
of great opportunities to use her Arabic), she moved on to Armenia, where she was
working on another proposal.
Robbie Harris (2003) has spent more than a year in Iraq, beginning in November 2003, most recently in Baghdad. “I started with a USAID project in Basra developing print journalism, local governance development, and writing internal reports. I am currently working with a project that is training Iraqi police officers in counter-terrorism and also training their diplomatic security corps/secret service. But my language skills have served me well. In Basra, they said, ‘For a Lebanese
woman, you sure do speak good English.......’ and here while interpreting once, they said, ‘Why do you speak Lebanese, why don’t you speak Arabic?’ I about fell
over laughing.”
Matthew Axelrod (2003) moved to Egypt in November for six months in the public affairs offi ce at the US Embassy. While there he has met up with MAASers Ian McCary (1995) [also at the Embassy] and Nada Abdelnour (2004).
Related Content
No related content exists for this item.