The Class of 2026 hosts many powerhouse students, including artist and UNICEF champion Lina Kamel, graduating with a degree in psychology and a minor in theatre. Kamel has spent her time at AUC blending her love for psychology and the arts, and channeling that passion into being a representative to the United Nations youth initiative in Egypt — Shabab Balad (main flagship program of Generation Unlimited in Egypt). 

Kamel has long loved the visual arts, creating sculptures and sharing them online. “Art has been a hobby since I was young, and during high school, I realized how powerful it could be when combined with psychology,” she shared. “I could use art to raise awareness of important topics, including mental health. AUC was the best place to mix the two disciplines. I only applied to AUC. I had a feeling that this was the place where I would thrive.” 

While at AUC, Kamel was involved heavily in the Psychology Association, where she organized events that advocated for mental health awareness — a topic she had been imbuing into her art and posting online. Her work eventually got her noticed by Generation Unlimited, a youth advocacy subset of the United Nations.

“I have my own platform where I create ‘visual representations’ and sculptures that convey meaningful messages to people, enabling me to communicate important subjects in a creative way that can be easily understood visually,” Kamel explained.  “My main aim is to help as many people as possible by portraying my ideas through art and by putting people's emotions that can't be seen or described on display through tangible artistic pieces to contribute to a real change in the community.”

While working with Generation Unlimited, Kamel developed sculptures that represented important topics that aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as climate change and mental health. When an Egypt specific branch of Generation Unlimited was announced, she was appointed as a champion, continuing to use her art and her platform to promote essential programs for youth. 

As a champion for Shabab Balad, Kamel works to promote and advocate the program’s work alongside other Egyptian youth who are prominent in their field, such as sports, art, business and advocacy. She turns her passion and platform into a source of guidance for Egyptian youth, directing them to Shabab Balad’s mission of learning and building their capacity for employment and livelihood.

Shabab Balad itself works to give youth access to career opportunities and fill the gap between unemployed recent graduates and unfilled positions. Shabab Balad also provides an environment where youth can undergo career development, assess their talents and find their place in the professional world through innovative and digital creativity.

The Shabab Balad Academy officially launched in December 2025, providing a physical and digital online space for youth to receive career guidance and support. Kamel played a large part in promoting the opening. “It was a huge milestone for me,” she elaborated. “Leading up to it, there was a lot of preparation and meetings where they took our advice on the academy setup, operation of learning services, and ensuring the initiative was youth-led. I presented our work to senior government officials, UN leaders, ambassadors and international partners. Now people can go to a physical space to learn new skills.

As a fresh AUC graduate, Kamel now knows more than ever how important the resources Shabab Balad provides are for her and her peers. “I am now in the situation of being a fresh grad and applying for jobs. This phase of life is difficult because suddenly all the support I had is completely gone. Shabab Balad can be that support for youth, so they can transform learning to earning.” 

Kamel plans to continue serving as a UNICEF champion and promoting the important work of Generation Unlimited and Shabab Balad. Eventually, she wants to become a child psychologist so she can continue mixing her love for art and psychology in an impactful way. As another step forward in her journey as a psychologist, she was awarded the Psychology Department award, crowning her four years at AUC. 

“AUC’s liberal arts education showed me how it was possible to blend all these different disciplines,” she concluded. “I was given the space to be creative, and that allowed me to succeed in everything I do. I am grateful for the opportunity of being an AUCian, as it fueled my passion to continue the work I do, given the fact that it actively supports and values extracurricular involvement and the idea of following one’s dreams.”

CAIRO — A nonprofit founded by two American University in Cairo alumni has raised more than $5 million for Syrian refugees in Jordan, its founders said, as the organization marked 11 years of operation this March.

Lexi Shereshewsky and Demetri Blaisdell, who met as AUC study abroad students in 2008 and later married, launched what was then called The Syria Fund in 2013, formally registering it as a U.S. nonprofit in 2015. In 2020, they renamed it The Azraq Fund. The organization focuses its work on South Azraq, a town in northern Jordan.

The fund currently supports approximately 150 families and more than 350 students, according to its 2024 annual report, operating through a close partnership with Nachmyat Eastern Badia Cooperative, an Azraq-based charity.

The two founders said their time living in the region drove them to act. Shereshewsky studied in Cairo and lived in Damascus, where she witnessed the early days of the Arab Spring and the escalating crisis in Syria.

“By 2012, things were really bad, and many of my friends in Syria were affected,” she said.

Blaisdell said the experience left a lasting sense of obligation. “We felt like we owed a debt of gratitude to a country that had been so generous to us.”

What began as a modest goal of raising $25,000 quickly expanded. The fund ultimately raised $75,000 in its first four months. Over the following decade, as displacement became prolonged, the organization shifted from emergency relief toward long-term programming. 

Today, education accounts for roughly 80 percent of expenses, with emergency aid and administration each representing 10 percent.

“We came when people were arriving with nothing,” Shereshewsky said. “Over time the focus became how to keep students in school and help them build opportunities for the future.”

The UN estimates there are roughly 397,000 registered Syrian refugees in Jordan, nearly half of them children. Syrian refugee students face significant financial pressures that often force them to leave school and enter the workforce to support their families. 

Ebtessam, a 21-year-old Syrian university student now in her third year, said the fund’s programs helped her continue her education after fleeing to Jordan.

“When we first arrived in Jordan, we were out of school for about a year because we kept moving from place to place,” she said. “The center helped us make up for what we missed and supported us to continue our education.”

She said a scholarship made university possible. “Without the Azraq Fund, we would not have been able to go to university.” 

The organization said it has also created 23 jobs in Azraq, many of them for young Jordanian women in an area where unemployment is high. Most positions are teaching, administrative and support roles within the center.

The AUC Alumni Office, which first connected with the fund in 2017, said it is working to rebuild and expand that relationship.

Chief Alumni Engagement Officer Raymonda Raif said the office aims to highlight alumni achievements worldwide and create opportunities for collaboration.

With the organization having crossed into its second decade, its founders say they are focused on long-term sustainability amid declining humanitarian funding and a slowly changing situation on the ground in Syria.

Hiba Shbib is an integrated marketing communication junior, who wrote this article for the Media Writing class, taught by adjunct faculty member Adam Makary.

Photos courtesy of Lexi Shereshewsky.

Imagine having to flee your country in the middle of the night. What would you take with you? What would you leave behind? One thing you can never leave behind is your memories. Paradoxically, those memories are one of the hardest things to share: they leave no trace. 

Amira Ahmed (MA ’04), adjunct assistant professor and research fellow in the Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology and the Institute of Gender and Women Studies, is working to change not only how we archive migrant memory, but also how we approach refugee research as a whole. Her research examines cultural heritage-making practices along migration routes from Africa to Europe, focusing on the political agency and relationalities of migrants, refugees and their advocates. The project is called Traces of Mobility, Violence and Solidarity: Reconceptualizing Cultural Heritage Through the Lens of Migration and is multi-site collaborative research represented by AUC, Milan University in Italy, London Gold-Smith University, and Jendouba University in Tunisia.

“Traces of Mobility allows us to re-conceptualize cultural heritage from a migration perspective,” Ahmed shared. “We work with migrants and refugees to trace and document their memories, as well as the mobility and violence they might encounter during this journey. We document the solidarity they show in their displacement.”

Documenting a Shifting Heritage

The Traces program compares and analyzes the migrant experience in all stages, hosted across a multitude of countries. Egypt serves as an especially important location, as it can be both a sending, transit and receiving country for migrants. “We feel that migration is a journey,” Ahmed affirmed. “It needs to be studied in all locations and multiple locales.”

Ahmed’s own history as a migrant informs her approach to migration studies. She was born in Egypt to a Sudanese family, which has given her an important personal perspective. “As a part of the migrant community in Egypt, I already had a transnational network,” she explained. “So when I started to do interviews and focus groups, I was approached by members of the community asking us to organize events for them such as exhibitions, concerts and seminars. This started a shift in how we approached the research to be more open to the community around us and to have a participatory message. We’re giving migrants ownership and leadership over how they are expressing their own heritage.”

"We’re giving migrants ownership and leadership over how they are expressing their own heritage.”

The project is unique not only in its multi-loci infrastructure but also in its approach to heritage and memory making. For these researchers, heritage is dynamic and developing, unique to each individual and influenced by each place they have lived. It rethinks heritage through the lens of human mobility, while putting experiences of human rights violations at the center of analysis. Traces seeks to document these unique experiences through heritage archiving and mapping, as well as preserve heritage memory through cultural community-making.

“We tend to think about heritage as something that happened in the past, static, but this is actually not the case,” Ahmed explained. “Heritage is something that we have always been practicing and performing, and we continue to do it. Migration heritage is unlike the standard heritage of a region: It’s been changed through the experience of migration.”

The research seeks to place the participants front and center in the development of the Traces project.  They have ownership over how they express (the re-making) of their own heritage through a process called collaborative methodologies. 

“Collaborative methodologies are important in  migration studies,” Ahmed stated. “Research participants are not just here to share knowledge; they are an integral part of the study and should lead the development and course of the research. When it comes to migrants, it's especially crucial that knowledge building is on the grounds of equal engagement. Through these methodologies, we’re able to offer a space and strengthen the community through this project.”

Community Impact

The refugee communities have truly become the center of Traces, in both the events the project hosts and organizes as well as how migrants and refugees approach their own archive, which will be digitized for wider access. “The lives of refugees are a process that must be archived,” shared Angelina Daniel Seeka, one of the project collaborators. “Despite all the hardships they have been going through, refugees started rebuilding their lives from scratch. They started creating their own environment, their own groups — in hopes of finding a new place and forgetting what they have been through. This all must be documented.”

Seeka has been working with Ahmed to help document the stories of migrants and refugees both inside and outside of Egypt. Through the process of archiving, they’ve also developed a support network. “Within minutes, we are able to find out anything happening to refugees through social media and WhatsApp groups, allowing us to reach them and enabling them to contact us about any of our initiatives,” she shared.

Due to the way the project has developed through collaborative methodologies, a large range of events fall under the umbrella of Traces: music performances, community events and academic conferences. The French Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies in Sudan (CEDEJ Khartoum) conference, hosted in November 2025, invited Ahmed’s AUC class, Mobilities: Gender and Migration, to attend and learn about migrant scholarship. Students expressed a deep connection to the work being done and a more thorough understanding through hearing migrants directly share their experiences. 

“I feel satisfied because this project made a difference in so many people's lives, including our students from AUC,” Ahmed stated. “I have a good number of graduate and undergraduate students who are engaged in the project, and some of them who graduated are employed by the project.”

Traces has engaged heavily with AUC and wider migrant communities, bringing them together through unique and collaborative events. Dr. Kamal Yousif, a Sudanese migrant who has been in Cairo for three years, has brought his musical talents to AUC for Traces events. “The archival idea was to follow refugees and record their everyday life,” he shared. “The project traces the cultural heritage of refugees as they leave their homes, arrive in Egypt and build new lives there.

“As policymakers and scholars, we need to regard migrants and refugees as a resource not as a burden."

And it’s not only Sudanese refugees; there are South Sudanese, Yemeni refugees, Palestinian, Eritrean, Syrian and a lot more. Some organize their own cultural events, while at other times different nationalities collaborate and work together.”

“The collaborations are very vibrant,” Ahmed confirmed. “I really appreciate the space AUC has given us: beautiful, magnificent, historically valuable sites that we use during the project, especially the Main Campus in AUC Tahrir Square, have been home for us during the last three and a half years. Without a space like AUC, without the generosity of our staff, colleagues and administration, I don't think we would have been able to implement Traces in the way we did.”

The project’s publications and the digital archive created by Traces serves as an accessible testament to the power of refugee heritage sharing. It is the first step in what Ahmed hopes will be a wider transition in cultural understandings of migrants.

“As policymakers and scholars, we need to regard migrants and refugees as a resource not as a burden,” Ahmed concluded. “I would appreciate migration and refugee laws that enable migrants to work legally and contribute by paying taxes, just like citizens. I would also like their culture, human rights and ability to contribute to be fully recognized. I believe this is essential not only for their dignity and well-being, but also for the development of the host country they live in.”

For the first time, AUC will host a three-week public arts festival, Artozium, at the New Cairo campus. Packed with a myriad of events, Artozium brings free concerts and plays, film screenings, art workshops and exhibitions from June 10 to July 1. Interested attendees can register for these events and view the full Artozium schedule here.

Cairo’s historic art scene is centered downtown, and with more people moving to New Cairo, Artozium hopes to make AUC’s campus a hub for an emerging art scene east of the Nile, explained Wael El Mahallawy, music professor, chair of the Department of the Arts and general manager of Artozium.

“Artozium covers not only New Cairo but also the New Capital and Al Shorouk,” El Mahallawy said. “There are very few theaters, exhibition venues or galleries in this area, so the festival should attract a lot of people since they would have to travel downtown to watch these activities.”
 

Artozium features collaborations with cornerstones of Cairo’s art scene, including a screening of film shorts shown at the renowned Zawya Cinema, a performance by the Cairo Arab Choir, screenings from the Manassat Film Festival, performances by both the Reda Folklore Dance Troupe and the all-women Egyptian drum band Tablet El-Sett.

Attendees can also experiment and enhance their creative talents through art workshops on ceramics, filmmaking and puppetry, taught by AUC faculty and professionals in the field.

The festival’s name is a portmanteau of the words “art” and “symposium,” with the letter “z’” emphasizing the festival’s focus on developing Gen Z artists and creatives. 

“Our target is mainly Gen-Z, plus all the different ages,” said El Mahallawy. “We merged the five programs in our department — graphic design, visual art, film, music and theatre — into one big project.”

The festival will also feature an interactive standup comedy show by actor Tarek El Ebiary ’12 and a rousing percussion performance by the drummer Mostafa Abbas. Additionally, Artozium will display the exhibition, A Title Resembling an Unstable Image Exhibition. Curated by artist Ahmed Shawky Hassan, the installation showcases the work of emerging artists in  various mediums who explore cities as a constantly reshaping living structure.

The event will also celebrate the artists found within our AUC community. The exhibition Mashrou’ 26 showcases the creativity of the University’s 12th and largest graduating class in graphic design. Alumni will perform in the plays Gat Salima and El Masyada, with Hekaya Bel Maqloub featuring current undergraduate students and the Theatre Association will perform a showing of Neseet El Cheque. Student organizations Musicana and AUC’s Folklore Troupe will also conduct performances.

Graduating from AUC with a degree in psychology and minors in business and theatre, Ibrahim has launched head first into a multifaceted career, combining her love for helping others with the skills she’s gained throughout her education.

At AUC, Ibrahim got to try out a wide range of passions through the freedom of the liberal arts education. After graduating, she continued to take this love for multifaceted fields into her professional, academic, and personal life. She went on to get her Master of Education and Master of Arts in counseling psychology from Columbia’s Teachers College in New York City. While there, she started working as the programs and research coordinator for the Principles for Responsible Management Education team, a United Nations Global Compact initiative.

“It was the perfect position for me, as it focused on a little bit of business and also on psychology,” she explained. “We analyzed how we could bring a positive psychology lens into higher management education. Essentially, we were finding ways to make business schools more fun.”

Her work as a researcher for the United Nations took her around the world, from working across the United States to attending conferences across the U.S., Denmark and South Africa. After two years aiding the team, Ibrahim left her official position to pursue her true passion: psychology, working as an associate psychotherapist for the Soho Center for Mental Health Counseling.

“I really enjoy what I do now, and I still have so much room to make an impact,” Ibrahim assured. “I really want to primarily focus on working with Middle Eastern and Arab communities because I speak Arabic fluently and can provide that care to them with that cultural sensitivity. Coming here and being away from Egypt, I want to be next to my community. I like talking to people and helping them. It's what I feel like I'm good at, and it's what I try to do.”

Ibrahim is still actively engaged in research, however, as she’s helping to contribute to a book on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a publication date set for 2028.

Even with her blossoming life in New York, Ibrahim has not forgotten where she came from. It’s been almost a decade since Ibrahim started at AUC, but her college experience still has a profound effect. “Going to AUC was honestly a no brainer for me,” Ibrahim explained. “It gave me the courage to go after what I want and set me up on this path toward success.”

Her journey at AUC was bisected by COVID-19, but despite the confines of the pandemic, Ibrahim still took advantage of every opportunity available. She started off on the basketball team and eventually found her passion for theatre. Living on campus, she was able to become fully immersed in the campus community, from friends to extracurriculars to a wide range of classes.

“Coming in, I wasn't so sure about what I wanted to do,” Ibrahim explained. “So that's what I really liked about AUC; I was able to take such a diverse array of classes at a liberal arts school, like philosophy, English, anthropology, sociology; in addition to exploring psychology, business, and theatre classes and everything in between.”

“In all of this, I feel like AUC gave me a very well-rounded foundation,” she expressed. “It helped me a lot in my job: I was able to function in an area that was more business-oriented, but in a psychology-oriented way. I was also able to bring my theatre skills, my fun and my play into it. I could put on all my hats at the same time and use all my skills. So I really am grateful to AUC for all the opportunities it gave me and helped me develop this wonderful, balanced life.”

Lights, camera, action! AUC’s Falaki Mainstage Theater at the Tahrir Square campus will be hosting the acclaimed theatrical production Bakathir Museum, as a part of a new partnership between AUC and the Hadhramout Culture Foundation. The play will run on May 1 and 2, 2026, marking 115 years of the visionary writer Ali Ahmad Bakathir (1910–1969) and reviving his creative legacy through a contemporary theatrical vision. To register, click here.

Bakathir Museum is part of an ongoing series of cultural events launched at the Cairo Opera House in December 2025 under the theme “115 Years of Influence.” The initiative celebrates Bakathir’s literary legacy by reinterpreting it through contemporary tools to reach new audiences across the Arab world. 

Poet, novelist and playwright Ali Ahmad Bakathir is widely regarded as one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century Arabic literature. He shared Egypt’s State Appreciation Award with Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and produced memorable works, including the novel Wa Islamah and the epic Omar ibn al-Khattab. He was also the first to present a poetic Arabic translation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Directed by Ahmed Fouad, Bakathir Museum blends drama, music and modern visual media, sharing the work of Bakathir through a contemporary lens. Performed three times over the coming weekend, the production serves as a theatrical journey inside a “living museum,” where characters come alive and Bakathir’s ideas return to life on stage The play moves beyond conventional documentary approaches to engage today’s audiences through a vivid and intellectually resonant artistic language. 

“Partnerships like this one with the Hadhramout Culture Foundation are central to AUC’s mission,” said AUC President Ahmad Dallal. “One of the University’s enduring commitments is connecting knowledge across generations. By hosting Bakathir Museum, we bring a rich literary legacy into conversation with today’s students, intellectuals and scholars, bridging the past and the present,” Dallal added.

"One of the University’s enduring commitments is connecting knowledge across generations. By hosting Bakathir Museum, we bring a rich literary legacy into conversation with today’s students, intellectuals and scholars, bridging the past and the present."

Along with the theatrical performances, the Hadhramout Culture Foundation has launched the Bakathir Annual Award in Literature, dedicated this year to Arabic poetry for youth. The award aims to discover emerging poetic talent, connect younger generations with Bakathir’s blend of authenticity and innovation, and provide a competitive platform befitting the stature of Arabic literature.

The Hadhramout Culture Foundation is a nonprofit cultural organization dedicated to promoting cultural awareness and supporting sustainable creative projects that connect Arab heritage with a global audience. Through grant programs, literary initiatives and performing arts events, the foundation works to support writers, theatre practitioners and musicians while enhancing their presence locally, nationally and internationally. Their partnership with AUC marks the start of a collaboration that shares values of celebrating Arab tradition through literature, theatre and art. 

“We are not merely commemorating a figure from the past; we are investing in the future of Arab culture,” shared Abdullah Ahmed Bugshan, chairman of the Founders Board of Hadhramout Culture Foundation. “Focusing on younger generations through theatre and the annual literary award is the true guarantee of sustaining Bakathir’s renewed influence.”

When Sophie Termaat first stepped onto the AUC campus in the Spring of 2024, she had no idea that the place where she was studying abroad would soon become her home. An undergraduate at Boston College, Sophie’s semester at AUC was transformative for her international relations studies. In fact, it was so impactful that she returned to AUC in Fall 2025 to pursue a master’s in comparative Middle East politics and society (CMEPS).

“Within the first couple weeks of being at AUC, I knew that I wanted to come back. So when I was looking at different master's programs, this one was clearly the best fit,” Termaat shared. 

The CMEPS program is a partnership between AUC and the Institute of Political Science at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen in Germany. The first year of the program is entirely at AUC, followed by a third semester in Germany, and a fourth back in Egypt. Termaat appreciates the comparative lens, and also the opportunity to be back in the region she fell in love with while living in Dubai as a kid and then again during her study abroad at AUC. 

“I always wanted to come back to the region because of the people and culture,” she stated. “AUC was the perfect fit, and my study abroad confirmed that it was the ideal place to continue my academic journey.”

“I always wanted to come back to the region because of the people and culture. AUC was the perfect fit, and my study abroad confirmed that it was the ideal place to continue my academic journey.”

Like many study-abroad students, Termaat found her place at AUC, making close friends within the international student community and traveling extensively throughout Egypt. She explained how excited she was when she first got to Egypt in 2024: “I didn’t sleep! There was so much to do.” Some of the highlights of her AUC experience included joining Student Union trips throughout Egypt, attending on-campus lectures from visiting professors, and enjoying the campus atmosphere (especially the pool!), which together made her study-abroad semester unforgettable.

After she settled into life in Cairo, she realized that living in Egypt not only enriched her understanding of Islamic culture, but also her academic scope. “I got to meet people from so many backgrounds and through AUC, I genuinely grew in my intellect.” 

“My study abroad showed me that I get a very different education here than in the U.S., not just because of the topics that are covered, but also the diversity of the student body,” Termaat expressed. “I don't only learn from the professors, but also from the students and their experiences. We touched on a lot of things that just weren't really discussed in my undergrad, but are super important for the field. Learning Middle Eastern studies in the Middle East by Middle Eastern professors has definitely made me grow as a student and as a person.”

Life as a master’s student is definitely different from that of an undergraduate. For one, the community of learners around Termaat is incredibly dedicated, which continues to deepen her experience. “Everyone in my classes is getting their master’s because they genuinely want to learn,” she explained. “Also, everyone has their own niche at this point. So whether it's authoritarianism or sectarianism, we all have the things that we're good at, which is nice because we can share with and learn from each other.”

Termaat has developed her own niche, which is American interventionism, imperial power structures and their unintended effects on sectarian dynamics and regional security in the Middle East. These areas blend her background and perspectives while contributing needed research to the field of Middle East studies. Her passion for her work shines through, as she discussed state formation and the economic lens of security studies. 

“It's really important to decolonize our thinking when we talk about the Middle East. As an American, I think the content that I learned in undergrad was as accurate as it might have been, but it wasn't portraying the region holistically,” Termaat elaborated. “Studying the region with faculty whose scholarship is grounded in lived, regional and linguistic expertise offers a very different kind of depth is very different  from learning it from a professor who just studied it. It's much more well-rounded and has given me a more holistic and critically grounded education.”

“Studying the region with faculty whose scholarship is grounded in lived, regional and linguistic expertise offers a very different kind of depth is very different  from learning it from a professor who just studied it. It's much more well-rounded and has given me a more holistic and critically grounded education.”

Termaat’s initial study-abroad experience helped her understand these gaps in her education  and gave her the resources to patch those gaps. Through both formal lessons and informal conversations with colleagues, she was able to add depth to her understanding of the Arab world, and is now continuing to do so everyday. 

“There are so many opportunities in Egypt and through AUC,” she affirmed. “For all students who come to study here, not just those interested in Middle East politics, take those opportunities, go on as many adventures as possible and continue to let yourself be challenged.”

Under the shade of the AUC Tahrir Square gardens, students from Sudan, Egypt, the United Kingdom and beyond shared proverbs in their native languages. The exercise brought together undergraduates from the Core Curriculum Global Studies course — Digital Literacies, AI Literacy and Intercultural Learning — and CASA@AUC fellows studying Translation in the Age of AI to explore sociolinguistics, translation and cross-cultural meaning in Arabic.

Niobe Tsoutsouris studies Arabic in the CASA@program, a rigorous, yearlong Arabic-language program designed for advanced Arabic learners; she called the chance to speak with peers her age incredible. “There’s no other way to learn the Arabic I should be speaking as a 22 year old,” Tsoutsouris said. 

The collaboration is part of the Tuesdays in Tahrir initiative, which supports leveraging the historic AUC Tahrir Square campus for hands-on learning experiences.

“During this intercultural encounter, students met for cross-cultural insight building around language and translation,” said Maha Bali ’01, professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching and the Core Curriculum course instructor. Shereen El Ezabi is a senior instructor II in the Department of Arabic Language Instruction and teaches the CASA@AUC course. El Ezabi said the collaboration helped her students "come away with new, nuanced Arabic words and idioms to experiment with, over and above the intercultural understanding they gained and the social interaction they enjoyed."

Undergraduate students who hailed from across the Arabic-speaking world were eager to speak with CASA@AUC international fellows, whose advanced Arabic skills enriched the exchange. “I enjoyed just the very different experience of talking to someone from a whole other country and background, yet talking my native language. It was such an unfamiliar experience but in a good way,” said Global Studies student Zeina Mostafa.

Bali has taught the Digital Literacies, AI Literacy and Intercultural Learning course since 2017. Her students typically spend part of the semester interacting in English with peers from international universities. Last year, her class connected with an American university in English, “but in this case, it's reversed, since the interaction is with students who are fluent Arabic speakers,” Bali said.

In several activities, undergraduate students and CASA@AUC fellows discussed sociolinguistics, sharing cultural expressions difficult to translate into Arabic and explaining how each represents different aspects of their cultures. The activity revealed phrases that AUC student Omar Ibrahim didn’t expect to have in common with foreigners. “We found that there are proverbs in Poland and the U.S. similar to the ones we grew up hearing in Egypt. I could feel the hybridity because we were all speaking the same language even though we all came from different places,” Ibrahim said.

For student Ismail Tolba, the experience broke down his preconceived notions of Arabic. “I went in assuming a kind of natural ownership over my own language, and I left humbled. Hearing foreigners speak Arabic at a level that surpassed my own familiarity with the classical roots of the language forced me to question an assumption I hadn’t realized I was carrying — that native speakers are automatically the most competent custodians of their tongue,” Tolba said.

Yet even for advanced learners, adapting to the accents of native Arabic speakers was a new challenge. Tsoutsouris remembers adjusting to the accent of a Sudanese student. “It was cool listening to her,” she said. “I could understand her just fine, but I had to shift my brain a little bit to stay attuned to what she was saying.” 

CASA@AUC fellow Eli Siegel-Bernstein spoke with AUC students about how they approach pursuing a liberal arts education in Egypt. “This characterized my own educational experience at Wesleyan University, which is a classic American liberal arts school,” he said.

El Ezabi also said a number of undergraduate students asked if similar advanced Arabic courses were offered on New Cairo’s campus.  

“I was very glad to see how the Egyptian and Arab undergraduate students seemed thrilled to see their own language so actively sought and so highly valued by others,” El Ezabi said. “Many expressed that this rekindled their interest in their own language which has been largely overshadowed by English, especially in their academic and professional pursuits.”

With the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, News@AUC spoke with Ibrahim Awad, research professor in global affairs and director of AUC’s Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, to examine the migratory, economic and political consequences of the conflict in the region.

Growing Refugee Crisis

A large mass displacement of international refugees depends on how long the conflict lasts, the level of violence and whether both seriously affect Iranian society, Awad noted. 

Nevertheless, he signaled that internal displacement is already occurring in Iran and Lebanon. According to a UNHCR estimate, between 600,000 to 1 million Iranian households are temporarily displaced due to the conflict, which has killed 1,400 people in Iran and 826 in Lebanon. Initial estimates of 100,000 people fled Tehran in the first two days of the war. With Israel announcing a ground incursion into Lebanon, 815,000 people from Beirut and southern Lebanon have also been displaced. 

Awad noted that Gulf states have a large population of migrant workers from the Arab World, Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe whom work in all the sectors of their economies and send remittances home. For countries that receive large amounts of remittances, this could hurt economies abroad.

“If economic activity is affected in the Gulf for a long period of time, the enterprises that hire migrant workers might not be able to keep them,” he said. “This affects employment because some workers may return to their countries of origin, constituting pressures on their labor markets. It will also affect remittances that they send to their countries of origin, and these remittances are important sources of foreign exchange in most cases.”

Economic Repercussions 

Stopping the war and finding a solution acceptable to both parties in the conflict is the only way to avoid a severe economic impact, Awad declared.

“If the war continues, the economic repercussions will be heavier and heavier,” he said. “So there’s no way to mitigate these repercussions while the war is going on.” He listed rising oil,  gas, food prices and inflation more generally as well as a slowdown of international trade as factors that will impact the global economy.”

Awad explained that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will spark repercussions in the Suez Canal and regional economies, noting how the Egyptian pound fell from EGP 47 to 52 against the dollar in the past week. On March 10, the price of gasoline rose from EGP 10 to EGP 13 per cubic metre. “These are the economic reasons why the region, including Egypt, wanted to avoid this war at all costs,” he stated.

About one-fifth of the world’s oil production is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed by the war. Oil prices are currently volatile, with the price of crude surging to $110 a barrel on Monday, still higher than the pre-war price of $73. 

Awad emphasized that a closed Strait of Hormuz could make Europe’s opposition to importing Russian oil and gas increasingly difficult if the war continues, causing pressure for large oil-importing countries in the European continent and beyond. The closure sparked the United States to ease sanctions for countries purchasing Russian oil and petroleum, a move rejected by Germany, France, Norway and the United Kingdom. A closure of the strait could also raise the price of foodstuffs worldwide, Awad explained, as it will prevent shipments of natural gas used to manufacture fertilizers. 

Awad also noted that regional tourism is likely to drop sharply, while the closure of airspace across Gulf states has disrupted international travel, causing financial strain for airlines and economic pressure on tourism-dependent countries like Egypt. These shifts reflect how regional instability can quickly translate into rising inflation, strained household budgets and challenges to local economies.

“Instability in the region has consequences, even if instability is, in fact, far from Egypt,” Awad affirmed.

Political Repercussions

“No one currently knows how the war will progress or end,” Awad said, laying out three scenarios for the lasting impact of the conflict:

1. The fragmentation of Iran: “A fragmented Iran could have dire repercussions. Dealing with several small political units is difficult because they have different interests, and this could have very destabilizing effects on the region.”
2. Israel rising as a regional superpower: “Israel wants to end Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities as well as weaken non-state actors that are close in the region. But this could all come under a broader objective of being the superpower in the region, which could also have a destabilizing effect because Middle East countries will not accept that.”
3. The Iranian government stays intact and acquires a nuclear weapon: “One possibility is that the current Iranian regime remains in power but decides to acquire a nuclear weapon, despite having repeatedly stated that it has not done so. Of course, the bombardment and war will certainly weaken Iran in the region if it stays in power.”

Awad argued that if the war ends with Iran intact and a regime change that accommodates U.S. interests, the situation can still be volatile because “it isn’t only the United States that has objectives to realize out of this war. Israel has its own objectives that might not be in step with the United States.” 

Conflict Resolution

Awad emphasized the importance of a joint solution to end the conflict and not a unilateral declaration of victory. For example, if President Donald Trump did declare victory, the Iranian government may not accept an end to the conflict without a guaranteed change to the pre-war status quo, Awad noted.

“They do not want to go back to the status quo when they were suffering from sanctions for decades and decades,” he said.

Awad expressed skepticism about the ability of the United Nations Security Council to pass a vote to end the war due to the structural veto power of member states. “International organizations are paralyzed by their most important members,” Awad said, citing the United States issuing six vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions demanding a ceasefire in Gaza as an example of this limitation. “The UN General Assembly is just a way for member states to apply pressure by expressing the will of the international community.”

The U.S. and Israel-Iran war has raised criticisms of violations of international law. The United Nations called for an investigation into the February 28 U.S. strike on an Iranian school in Minab, which killed at least 165 schoolgirls. “This provoked a response from Iran, which couldn’t reach the United States, so it launched missiles toward its neighbors in the Gulf,” said Awad. 

“All of these actions contradict international law, but unfortunately, international organizations cannot take effective action because of the flaw in how such organizations were conceived,” he added. “They gave decision-making power to the most powerful countries, who will not act against themselves.”

Awad believes the war could end through intervention or collective action by a coalition of regional powers from around the world. 

“Europe would not like to have another flow of refugees, so you can imagine that a coalition of countries may cautiously intervene,” he said. 

Can data be sexist? Does artificial intelligence have the ability to discriminate? 

As AI has developed rapidly over the past decade, researchers have discovered the real-world harm of potential bias in the data and the ways it disproportionately affects women and marginalized groups. Through the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at  the Onsi Sawiris School of Business, and its flagship initiative the MENA Observatory on Responsible AI, Nagla Rizk ’83, ’87, professor of economics and founding director of A2K4D, is leading the Feminist AI Research Network’s MENA hub. The network aims to develop AI systems and algorithms in a way that is inclusive, creating new opportunities and innovative solutions to correct inequalities.

So what is feminist AI? Rizk explained, “Feminist AI refers to the act of deconstructing oppressive systems, dismantling historic biases and engrained inequalities, then building inclusive AI structures that are based on principles of justice, transparency, agency, pluralism and more.” In short, it is the development and maintenance of artificial intelligence systems that ensure fairness across genders. AI has the potential to amplify biases and generate new ones. Feminist AI works to deconstruct these biases and create innovative solutions from within the data and algorithm design, addressing these inequalities. 

Feminist AI is closely linked to the principle of  “intersectionality” which refers to the  “interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems discrimination or disadvantage.” Rizk added, “It is, in short, when oppression is linked.”

AI: Friend or Foe?

Humans have implicit biases, and when we create algorithms and AI models that rely on big data, those biases can unintentionally be amplified. Rizk seeks to find places where there may be  data blur, data bias and data invisibility—and address these issues from the root.

“Technology has the potential to advance development, inclusion and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, there is also a peril,” Rizk stated. “As humans build AI models–with data and algorithms at their core—in every link of this chain lies a trigger for potential inequality. This could negatively impact women and marginalized groups. So it's important to think of inclusion when designing AI models.”

Data can be biased against women on both the micro and macro scales. For example, if you do an image search for the word  ‘doctor’ on Google, 36% of results are women, whereas if you search up ‘domestic helper,’ 96% of results are women. Expanding out, Amazon’s AI hiring tools were more likely to prefer male candidates, as they were trained on male-dominated data from the tech industry. Apple-approved credit cards for candidates based on a biased data set would grant men 10-20 times higher credit than their wives. “These structural flaws in the data compound systemic issues that women already face, such as gender-based hiring, pay gaps and lack of financial security,” said Rizk.

Data also has ways of forgetting women. For example, the first iteration of Apple’s health app did not include women’s monthly health cycles. Additionally, there have been cases when diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, AI models have reproduced gender biases that exist in the real world and are less likely to take women’s symptoms seriously. “If women are invisible in the data, they will be invisible in the policy,” Rizk warned.

 “If women are invisible in the data, they will be invisible in the policy."

“If we don't adopt a feminist sensitive approach to technology, we risk leaving behind a key part of the population. We also risk running into problems that will need to be fixed later after they’ve already caused damage,” explained Rizk. “The important point is that feminist AI is proactive. It is transformational.”

The Feminist AI MENA hub is working within the larger network now labelled as “Catalyzing Inclusive AI Research Network” with support from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Feminist AI research strives to take forward-looking steps that dismantle patriarchal structures, oppressive systems and historical inequalities inherent in technology and society in both the digital and analogue worlds. The hub’s work seeks to support the construction of inclusive systems that overcome biases, based on feminist principles, addressing  intersectionality, and ensuring diversity in representation and justice in the building, deployment and impact of AI.

A MENA-Specific Approach to AI and Gender

From research to large scale collaborations with NGOs and government partners, the Feminist AI MENA hub is working to catalyze inclusive AI for development. Rizk emphasized the importance of looking at AI and gender inequality in the MENA-specific context, “The MENA region has its own nuances which require a region-specific response.”

One example of the work supported by the hub is research developing Arabic feminist data sets as part of a larger project to apply data feminism principles to assess bias in English and Arabic Natural Language processing. Another is work supported by the hub to develop an AI tutoring system to assist teachers to teach math in Arabic to girls of different ages in underprivileged community schools in Upper Egypt (Sa’eed). There, girls unfortunately do not receive the same schooling opportunities as boys and require additional support. In both examples, AI is used as a tool that, if properly controlled for potential biases, promotes equal opportunity between the genders. 

Encouraging STEM education for women is crucial to increase the gender balance in the design of technology. In the MENA region, the gender gap is much more pronounced in the area of STEM work than it is in STEM education. This is termed “the gender paradox.” The absence of women in STEM work creates a “feedback loop” where the algorithm is not gender sensitive and ends up discriminating against women. This is both a product of the culture and cycles back into it. 

“If we don't adopt a feminist sensitive approach to technology, we risk leaving behind a key part of the population."

Examples of algorithmic biases in MENA can be found in implicit biases in gig work app algorithms evidenced by the hub’s research on gig work, following earlier research on women in ride sharing in Egypt, and work with research partners in the region. In ride sharing apps, the fact that bonuses are determined by algorithms based on the number of hours of work automatically means that women will be discriminated against as they put in less work hours due to their home care responsibilities. To make up for that, women end up driving at odd surge hours, subjecting themselves to safety hazards, especially in remote areas with limited connectivity. Because they carry the labor of being care givers, women are likely to be punished by ride-sharing app algorithms. This compounds the challenges of this work, which is already precarious lacking job security, social protection and insurance. With the region experiencing the highest global female unemployment rate and the lowest global female labor participation rate, these women end up being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

By performing evidence-based research directly in the region, the Feminist AI MENA hub can better support transformational technology development and bring those findings to the international feminist AI network. “Technology is a product of society, and should respond to the needs of society. What we hope for is that technology is informed by what is going on in reality.” Therefore, added Rizk, “the technology for the MENA region has to speak to the needs of the MENA region.”

Rizk and her colleagues plan on continuing to develop region-sensitive research, and bringing their findings to policy makers, civil society, and the international research network. Outside of the hub, Rizk is taking these principles into the classroom through teaching the course Feminist AI: Technology, Gender and Development. “It gave students a different perspective on using technology,” Rizk said, describing the impact she saw in her students. “We had two male students conduct research on the need to use feminist AI principles in FinTech. To me, it was really fulfilling to have students be aware of how you could actually implement principles of responsible AI.”

“We want to raise awareness and deliver a message of fairness, justice and inclusion,” Rizk concluded. “To be a feminist, you must always be sympathetic to all marginalized communities, not just to women. Therefore, technology must be inclusive to all. We work towards that future.”