Fawaz Gerges – Pluralism, Transformation, Democracy and the Arab Spring

Dr. Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, was the keynote speaker for Arab Spring Symposium at the Army War College. In his inspiring lecture he engaged with the question of pluralism and democracy. According to him the Arab Spring is not ‘just’ a historical moment, but a specific revolutionary moment that is relevant for the whole world whereby millions of Arab have taken ownership of their own destiny and took their right of self-determination. A new world is being born according to him similar to the French Revolution even though we do not know yet where things will lead us to. How viable, how democratic, how durable and how pluralistic these changes will be remains to be seen, not as a matter of months of years but of decades. This is only the first step in which we see the beginning of the crumbling of the iron wall of authoritarianism in the Arab world that has been there for 60 or more years. You can watch his entire, interesting and very accessible lecture here:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr7P4_2Cixo]