Contribution description:

How do the Arab revolutions give birth to alternative education initiatives? What’s the significance of political training in repressive contexts? How do social actors translate their “waiting for the revolution” into long-term practices of self- and social change?

Paper long abstract:

Al Sharq Academia is an online platform that offers a range of academic courses in social sciences and humanities in Arabic to enhance political action among civil and political activists in the Middle East. In addition, they work on developing long term strategies to consolidate the values of pluralism and justice among activists from the region. While its original idea was inspired by the events of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the Academia started in 2017 in Istanbul, a city that hosts displaced populations after the ‘Arab Spring’.

The academia provides convenient, context-related content in Middle Eastern politics. It aims at opening virtual learning spaces and disseminating critical knowledge in Arabic. I explore the kinds of questions on the role of knowledge in social change that the academia staff struggle with. I show the debates they go through while discussing which topics to be presented in the academia and why, what's relevant and what's not.