One on one with Dr. Salah Bassiouni

Q. Why did you decide to hold a public meeting about Egypt and the Revolution? A. I was approached by both colleagues and students to give a talk to the campus and the community about the 2011 Revolution in Egypt. Dr. Tim Dunn and Ms. Penny Kelsey suggested I give this talk as a part of the 50-minute Lecture Series at UW-Waukesha. I said I would be more than happy to do so. Being a native of Egypt, I considered this lecture an educational opportunity and a service for my students and the community. I also felt that it was an obligation to share with my audience accurate information and a deep analysis to what had occurred in Egypt during this 2011 revolution.

Q. When did you move to America and why?

A. I came to the United States in 1981 as a visiting professor to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to spend two years at their Department of Sociology. I already had a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, which I received from Alexandria University in Egypt. I decided to complete a second Ph.D. in Sociology at Northwestern. After completing my second doctorate degree, I decided to stay and teach. It was then that accepted a tenure track position in the UW Colleges. I started teaching at UW-Marinette in 1992. I was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1996. I then moved to UW-Waukesha in 1998. In addition, I became a Naturalized U.S. citizen in November 1999.

Q. When living in Egypt, what were your thoughts on the government and how have they evolved since?

A. To be frank, Egypt has been run by different incarnations of army officers since the early 1950s. It eventually evolved into a dictatorship with one party rule and it has been a police state ever since. (Please note: one of the fundamental demands of the 2011 Revolution is to end this police state and to instate a functioning democratic government). During these regimes, there was very little respect for human rights, freedom of expression, or free press. The Egyptian people have suffered a great deal in the last sixty years under these brutal regimes. Mubarak's brutal regime forced the Egyptian people to live under a state of emergency, or martial law, for the last 30 years. This gave Mubarak and his enforcers the absolute authority to arrest, detain, and torture anyone without a trial, visitation or access to attorney for as long as the Mubarak government wanted. The tragedy was that the Mubarak regime abused and brutalized the Egyptian people, with the knowledge and full support of the U.S, U.K., France, Germany, and many other Western nations. They considered Mubarak their best friend and close allies.

Q. Do you currently have family living in Egypt?

A. Yes, I do. Since the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution, on January 25th and up until now, some members of my family here have updated us about what was going on in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. They provided us with many facts that our media outlets did not cover.

Q. Did Egypt's government continue to influence/affect you after you had left?

A. Not really. Once I began working on my second Ph.D., I became increasingly occupied with successfully completing it, taking care of my wonderful family (my wife and my three daughters) and becoming a U.S. citizen. After I joined the UW Colleges, I became completely occupied, in addition of taking care of my family, with my teaching obligations, research, professional development activities, community service, and working towards promotion and tenure. I first visited Egypt fifteen years later, in 2003. Since then, I have visited Egypt twice: once in 2006 and once in 2009.


Q. After the fall of Mubarak's regime, what now? In other words, what does the future hold for Egypt?

A. Egypt is faced with many challenges at this point. About 60% of its population is under 30 years old. Young people are eager for freedom but they also need a lot of services such as health care, education, jobs, housing, etc. You cannot achieve these legitimate demands overnight. You cannot transform a society of 85 million people with modest resources, a poor educational system, a deteriorating infrastructure, and limited job opportunities (all products of a 30-year dictatorship) to a democracy overnight. The road to a democracy, as we know it, is challenging and certainly will not be easy. It will take time, patience, a great deal of learning, some ups and downs, successes and failures. However, I am confident that all Egyptians, young and old, Muslim and Christian, men and women, will have the patience and determination to guide Egypt to a brighter and more prosperous future. Overall, I am optimistic about the future of Egypt. It is after all the "Mother of Civilization" and it has contributed a great deal to our world over the last 7000 years.

Q. What should the U.S. start looking out for, as well as other counties in times ahead?

A. At this point, the following three suggestions are the most important ones that I would put forward. First, the U.S. should change its foreign policy towards the Middle East. We need to embrace and support freedom and democracy in the region. Second, we must also work very hard to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, once and for all. The peoples of the region strongly believe that the U.S. should seriously help the Palestinians to have their own Palestinian State in order for peace and prosperity for all to prevail. Third, the U.S. should stop supporting brutal dictators and their corrupt regimes in the region. Instead, we should spread freedom, help emerging democracies, defend human rights, and respect the peoples' cultures, beliefs, values and traditions in this important part of the world.