Arab Higher Education and Research post–2011. An Interview with Sari Hanafi

Abstract

The upheavals of 2011 and subsequent developments in the MENA region have had substantial effects on universities and research centers within Arab world and in other neighboring countries where similar developments are taking shape (security issues, stricter political control/lesser levels of political control and repression, changing levels of funding, changing focus of donors etc.). META had the opportunity to talk with Sari Hanafi about the repercussions of these developments for scholarly work within the MENA region.Sari Hanafi is currently a Professor of Sociology and chair of the department of sociology, anthropology and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is also the editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic). He is the Vice President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) and Vice President of the board of the Arab Council of Social Science. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on the political and economic sociology of the Palestinian diaspora and refugees; sociology of migration; transnationalism; politics of scientific research; civil society and elite formation and transitional justice. His last book is Arab Research and Knowledge Society: New Critical Perspective (with R. Arvanitis) (in Arabic, Beirut: CAUS and forthcoming in English with Routledge).