“issues relevant to democratization,” this required students to think for themselves about what
events in a country’s news might be construed as attempts to advance or limit democratization.
For example, did mass demonstrations occur, and what were the issues in the demonstration?
Were people taking the government to court, or were courts ruling on issues related to
democratization, such as associational freedoms? Due to the lack of free political competition for
Arab national political institutions, analysts often see elections for, and events in, professional
syndicates such as the lawyers’ or doctors’ syndicates as indicators of larger political sympathies
and these syndicates are often involved in protests against the government, so they were also
good institutions for students to watch.
The other rounds of the assignment, in 2002 and 2005, combined questions on domestic
issues with questions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. These rounds paired an Israeli daily (Ha’aretz
or the Jerusalem Post) with either an Arab daily (The Daily Star of Lebanon) or an Arab weekly
(al-Ahram Weekly of Egypt) and an Arab monthly (Palestine Report). The main questions here
were the following: what are the key points of difference between the Israeli and the Arab papers
in their coverage of Palestinian/Israeli or Arab/Israeli issues? Do they cover the same events as
news items? Do there seem to be unspoken assumptions/presumptions which underlie the
coverage and editorials in each paper? The second half of the assignment focused on domestic
policies in a single country. In the 2005 assignment, in keeping with the course theme of
prospects for Arab democratization, students were asked specific questions about
democratization-related events in one of their countries. For example, in a period in which new
municipal elections were leading to Hamas victories and the Palestinian parliament was showing
increasing autonomy vis-à-vis president Abbas, Palestine Report readers were asked to comment
on the major developments in Palestinian domestic politics and to assess whether things were
heading in the direction of more of less democracy. The 2002 assignment was less structured: it
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Convention