organization:american university in cairo

The Egyptian Egg Ovens Considered More Wondrous Than the Pyramids - Gastro Obscura
▻https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/egypt-egg-ovens

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Many aspects of Egyptian culture impressed the ancient Greeks, including their mathematics, papyrus-making, art, and egg-hatching. Aristotle was the first to mention that last innovation, writing that in Egypt, eggs “are hatched spontaneously in the ground, by being buried in dung heaps.” But 200 years later, the historian Diodorus Siculus cast Egyptian egg-hatching as wondrous. In his forty-book-long historical compendium Library of History, he wrote:

The most astonishing fact is that, by reason of their unusual application to such matters, the men [in Egypt] who have charge of poultry and geese, in addition to producing them in the natural way known to all mankind, raise them by their own hands, by virtue of a skill peculiar to them, in numbers beyond telling.

Aristotle and Diodorus were referring to Egyptian egg incubators, an ingenious system of mud ovens designed to replicate the conditions under a broody hen. With lots of heat, moisture, and periodical egg-turning, an egg oven could hatch as many as 4,500 fertilized eggs in two to three weeks, a volume that impressed foreigners for centuries. Western travelers mentioned the wondrous structures constantly in their writings about Egypt. In 1750, French entomologist René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur visited an egg incubator and declared that “Egypt ought to be prouder of them than her pyramids.”
Ancient Egyptian mural depicting food offerings (1422-1411 B.C.). Chicken did not become a feature of Egyptian diets until the fourth century B.C.
Ancient Egyptian mural depicting food offerings (1422-1411 B.C.). Chicken did not become a feature of Egyptian diets until the fourth century B.C. Public Domain

Egg incubators were quite a late invention, considering Egypt’s long history. According to Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, chickens were not a native bird of the Nile valley. They probably came from Asia—where they were domesticated from wild fowls 10,000 years ago—through Mesopotamia, or perhaps via trade ships that sailed to East Africa. It was only during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which lasted from 323 to 30 B.C., that chicken became a staple feature of Egyptian diets, says Ikram. In order to have a regular supply of chicken meat, Egyptians developed the first egg incubators.

From the outside, many incubators looked like smaller, more rounded versions of the pyramids. They sat upon rectangular brick foundations, and had conic-shaped chimneys with a circular opening at the top. That thousands of eggs could be hatched in a single oven was an impressive feat, considering that a broody hen can only hatch up to 15 eggs at a time. Incubator hatching also meant that hens could spend more time laying eggs.

Why Was an Italian Graduate Student Tortured and Murdered in Egypt? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/magazine/giulio-regeni-italian-graduate-student-tortured-murdered-egypt.html?_r=0

The target of the Egyptian police, that day in November 2015, was the street vendors selling socks, $2 sunglasses and fake jewelry, who clustered under the arcades of the elegant century-old buildings of Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb. Such raids were routine, but these vendors occupied an especially sensitive location. Just 100 yards away is the ornate palace where Egypt’s president, the military strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, welcomes foreign dignitaries. As the men hurriedly gathered their goods from mats and doorways, preparing to flee, they had an unlikely assistant: an Italian graduate student named Giulio Regeni.

He arrived in Cairo a few months earlier to conduct research for his doctorate at Cambridge. Raised in a small village near Trieste by a sales manager father and a schoolteacher mother, Regeni, a 28-year-old leftist, was enthralled by the revolutionary spirit of the Arab Spring. In 2011, when demonstrations erupted in Tahrir Square, leading to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, he was finishing a degree in Arabic and politics at Leeds University. He was in Cairo in 2013, working as an intern at a United Nations agency, when a second wave of protests led the military to oust Egypt’s newly elected president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, and put Sisi in charge. Like many Egyptians who had grown hostile to Morsi’s overreaching government, Regeni approved of this development. ‘‘It’s part of the revolutionary process,’’ he wrote an English friend, Bernard Goyder, in early August. Then, less than two weeks later, Sisi’s security forces killed 800 Morsi supporters in a single day, the worst state-sponsored massacre in Egypt’s history. It was the beginning of a long spiral of repression. Regeni soon left for England, where he started work for Oxford Analytica, a business-research firm.

From afar, Regeni followed Sisi’s government closely. He wrote reports on North Africa, analyzing political and economic trends, and after a year had saved enough money to start on his doctorate in development studies at Cambridge. He decided to focus on Egypt’s independent unions, whose series of unprecedented strikes, starting in 2006, had primed the public for the revolt against Mubarak; now, with the Arab Spring in tatters, Regeni saw the unions as a fragile hope for Egypt’s battered democracy. After 2011 their numbers exploded, multiplying from four to thousands. There were unions for everything: butchers and theater attendants, well diggers and miners, gas-bill collectors and extras in the trashy TV soap operas that played during the holy month of Ramadan. There was even an Independent Trade Union for Dwarfs. Guided by his supervisor, a noted Egyptian academic at Cambridge who had written critically of Sisi, Regeni chose to study the street vendors — young men from distant villages who scratched out a living on the sidewalks of Cairo. Regeni plunged into their world, hoping to assess their union’s potential to drive political and social change.

But by 2015 that kind of cultural immersion, long favored by budding Arabists, was no longer easy. A pall of suspicion had fallen over Cairo. The press had been muzzled, lawyers and journalists were regularly harassed and informants filled Cairo’s downtown cafes. The police raided the office where Regeni conducted interviews; wild tales of foreign conspiracies regularly aired on government TV channels.

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Manon 31 minutes ago
Thank you for shedding light on the horrible death of my compatriot and the responsibilities of the Egyptian authorities.
Emanuele Cerizza 31 minutes ago
Great reporting. Thank you Mr. Declan Walsh for this solid view on Giulio Regeni’s ill fated death. More and more we Italians have to...
oxerio 32 minutes ago
If a foreign person come in NY or Palermo or Shanghai or Mexico City and became to investigate about local gang, or local mafia’s...
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Regeni was undeterred. Proficient in five languages, he was insatiably curious and exuded a low-intensity charm that attracted a wide circle of friends. From 12 to 14, he served as youth mayor of his hometown, Fiumicello. He prided himself on his ability to navigate different cultures, and he relished Cairo’s unruly street life: the smoky cafes, the endless hustle, the candy-colored party boats that plied the Nile at night. He registered as a visiting scholar at American University in Cairo and found a room in Dokki, a traffic-choked neighborhood between the Pyramids and the Nile, where he shared an apartment with two young professionals: Juliane Schoki, who taught German, and Mohamed El Sayad, a lawyer at one of Cairo’s oldest law firms. Dokki was an unfashionable address, but it was just two subway stops from downtown Cairo with its maze of cheap hotels, dive bars and crumbling apartment blocks encircling Tahrir Square. Regeni soon befriended writers and artists and practiced his Arabic at Abou Tarek, a four-story neon-lit emporium that is Cairo’s most famous spot for koshary, the traditional Egyptian dish of rice, lentils and pasta.

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Egypt: Informants at American University of Cairo? | MadaMasr

▻http://www.madamasr.com/en/2016/12/21/feature/politics/informants-at-auc

As an institution championing the American model of liberal arts education, the American University in Cairo (AUC) is known for allowing a margin of academic freedom which is largely absent in other Egyptian universities. This leniency appears particularly evident in regards to security intervention in student activities and academic freedom.

Emad Shahin, universitaire réputé, accusé d’espionnage en Egypte - NYTimes.com
Il répond.

►http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/world/middleeast/egypt.html?_r=0

Mobilisation sur Twitter de journalistes et sources sérieuses qui affirment que Emad Shahin est irréprochable. Comme Amr Hamzawy - lui aussi poursuivi- , il a dénoncé la brutale répression à l’égard des Frères musulmans.

An internationally respected Egyptian political scientist said Wednesday that prosecutors had filed espionage charges against him, making him the second such scholar targeted this month in a widening crackdown on dissent against last summer’s military takeover.

Emad Shahin, a scholar of political Islam who has taught at Harvard, Notre Dame and the American University in Cairo and edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, was charged along with several senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood with conspiring with foreign organizations to undermine Egypt’s national security. He is listed as Defendant 33 in a lengthy criminal complaint that also names former President Mohamed Morsi, who was deposed in the takeover.

The charges against Mr. Shahin were filed more than two weeks ago, but they have come to light just as prosecutors have also charged Amr Hamzawy, a liberal political scientist and former lawmaker, with the crime of insulting the judiciary because he questioned a ruling against a group of Western nonprofit organizations.

Both men were among the few public critics of the bloody crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters after the military takeover.

Le journaliste Borzou Daragahi publie un communiqué de l’universitaire (Facebook)

Statement to my Students, Family and Friends
January 23, 2014

It was with severe shock that I received news that I have been named in a case known as the “Grand Espionage,” which also included former President Mohamed Morsi and senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. These claims are baseless and politically motivated.

The indictment listed far-fetched charges that my friends and associates would regard not merely as improbable but as beyond preposterous. The charges include: espionage, leading an illegal organization, providing a banned organization with information and financial support, calling for the suspension of the constitution, preventing state institutions and authorities from performing their functions, harming national unity and social harmony, and causing to change the government by force.

I categorically and emphatically deny all the charges, and I challenge the State Security Prosecutor to present real evidence to substantiate these fabricated charges. I am an academic and have been independent throughout my life. I am an advocate for democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and a fervent supporter of the main objectives of the January 25 Revolution in Egypt, namely freedom, dignity, and social justice.

For the record, I definitively state that I have never been a member of the Society of the Muslim Brothers at any point in my life, and I have never provided it with any financial or material support as alleged in the so-called indictment.

Furthermore, the indictment stated that I was “at large”. This could not have been farther from the truth, as I have never been subpoenaed by any prosecutor even though I have been living in Egypt since 2011. I have openly traveled abroad many times during this period to participate in conferences and attend academic events without ever being stopped or prohibited from leaving or entering the country, especially over the past few months. My workplace, the American University in Cairo, is well known to the authorities. I have never left or changed my place of residence, which is also well known to the government, and I have never been banned from travel or placed on a watch list as I left and entered the country several times during the past month. I appeared on television interviews as an analyst and a commentator to discuss the delicate political situation in Egypt and have always maintained a public presence. I am neither at large nor was I unwilling to appear before any interrogator had I received a formal subpoena and guarantees for fair proceedings, due-process of law, and a fair trial.

Though I have always been a fervent critic of authoritarian rule in Egypt, I have always expressed strong support for peaceful protests to restore democracy and express popular opposition against government repression.

Needless to say I am a well-known academic and intellectual with a long record of teaching and scholarly achievements. I received my PhD from the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and have been a faculty member at prominent universities in the US, Egypt, and the Middle East, including the American University in Cairo, Harvard, Georgetown, Notre Dame, George Washington, and Boston Universities. I have produced major scholarly works including being the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics.

I have been critical of the course of political events in Egypt since last summer and can only conclude that such criticism—entirely restricted to word and utterly unconnected to any organized group, faction, or party—is my true offense. Like many fellow Egyptians, I am supportive of peaceful mobilization in defense of democracy, freedom, equal rights, and inclusion. I will continue to advocate such values, exercising a right to protest that is enshrined in Egyptian law and, in recent years, deeply engrained in Egyptian practice.

Emad Shahin, Ph.D.

Professor of Public Policy, The American University in Cairo
Henry R. Luce Associate Professor, University of Notre Dame (2009-2012)
Visiting Associate Professor, Harvard University (2006-2009)
Faculty Affiliate, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Belfer Center (2007-2008)
Editor in Chief, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics
Member of the Academic Advisory Board, Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding, Georgetown University
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, Oxford Research Directions (Since 2011)
Advisory editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Member of the Academic Board, Al-Hadara Center, Cairo, Egypt
Member of Alexandria Library Scientific Board for the Production of “Selections of Modern Islamic Heritage” (Since 2012)
Foreign Reference Member, University of Oslo (since 2007)
Member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council (2008)

Egypt Ideology Devolves Into Anarchy Amid Vendettas

▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-14/anarchists-fight-islamists-as-egypt-drifts-into-violence.html

“The inherent risk is that the state is eroding and the alternatives that are emerging are steeped in conflict and chaos,” said Ashraf el-Sherif, a political science lecturer at the American University in Cairo. “Part of the agenda of some of these groups is to deter other political groups, so the possibility of a confrontation becomes real.”

The Sound of Student Struggle by sarrahsworld on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free
►http://soundcloud.com/sarrahsworld/the-sound-of-student-struggle

January 25th 2011, a day that changed many lives in Egypt. the uprising that resulted in the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year rule. But after he stepped down on the 11th of February, the change was not only affecting the government and the political spectrum, but significant changes took place at one institition in particular. the American University in Cairo.