Rethinking Revolution: Lessons from Tahrir for the 21st Century | Rusha Latif
The Institute for Middle East Studies invites you to join Rusha Latif for a discussion about her latest book Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution.
An activist ethnography, Tahrir’s Youth explores the themes of leadership and organization in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Following the trajectory of the movement from the perspective of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), the first and arguably most significant front born of the nationwide revolt, the presentation will challenge the notion that this was a purely spontaneous and leaderless uprising and highlight lessons from the protagonists behind this historic movement — lessons for everyone hoping to achieve revolutionary social change in the 21st century.
Join Rusha Latif as she challenges prevailing narratives about the 2011 Egyptian revolution and draws broader lessons for contemporary movements. You may participate in this conversation in-person or virtually.
Speaker
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Rusha Latif is an Egyptian American researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work focuses on social movements and revolutions, particularly in the Middle East, with an emphasis on leadership, organization, and collective action across lines of class, gender, religion, and ideology. Her book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (AUC Press, 2022), draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo during the 2011 uprising to examine activist agency in the absence of formal leadership. Her research has been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, and Jadaliyya.
