CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies presented a discussion on the Arab Spring uprisings. This event took place on October 19.
The discussion consisted of six speakers, three professors, and three students.
The director of the CUNY Baccalaureate program started of by saying, "Mohamed Bouazizi sparked the revolution in Tunisia by setting himself on fire. This [in turn] sparked the Arab Spring."
Solmaz Sharif, a student journalist and political dissident from Iran, started the panelist discussion by assessing Iran's political situation.
She was asked many times why the protests in Egypt did not spread as strongly to Iran.
"In Egypt, America has a huge influence over the army. Therefore they were able to restrain them. In Iran, the army is not restrained by a Western country," said Sharif.
She also stated that protests were not as strong in Iran because "Iran doesn't kill as many people. They focus on torture to scare the people into submission."
Sharif claimed that the Green Movement would be more successful if there was more international attention focused on it.
The second Speaker, Raja Althaibani a Yemini-American Human Rights activist, spoke about Yemen.
"The government combats protests by turning off power all but for one hour of the day, and also by turning off the water supply," said Althaibani.
She originally thought the protest wouldn't be successful, partly because of the fact that people were hesitant of change.
She's very proud that nine months into this, no Yemenite has lifted a weapon even though everyone owns one.
As far as terrorism goes, she says that Yemen cultivates terrorism and there shouldn't be any worries about Al Queda taking over Yemen.
She also added people from Yemeni are very territorial, and won't let Al Queda take over.
"If America doesn't lend more support for them, Yemenites will start viewing America unfavorably," said Althaibani..
The third speaker was Ehab Zahriyeh, a freelance producer and TV correspondent covering the Middle East.
Reflecting on his visit to Egypt before the revolution, Zahriyeh remembered witnessing extreme poverty and a lack of political progress.
"Egyptians aren't happy with Mubarak gone, they consider him to be the head of the body." said Zahriyeh.
He believes that as long as democracy in Egypt prevails, the extreme closeness of Israel and Egypt will disappear.
The fourth speaker was Nancy Yousef, a Egyptian-American professor of English at Baruch College. She became some sort of pundit during the Egyptian Revolution because she is Egyptian and has a lot of family there.
She said the protest was a cultural and intellectual movement, but at the same time it was also the mass public. She believes the Revolution has been a success, but it may take a while for it to have the desired effect.
The fifth speaker, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College argued two things.
One reason could be because maybe the Egyptian Revolution never happened. The second being that it is similar to Occupy Wall Street (OWS).
He said the Revolution is similar to OWS because the economy was doing worse before both.
There has been police brutality at both, and it only accelerated the revolutions. There has been a huge amount of class-consciousness. For instance at OWS "We are the 99 percent."
There has been an outbreak founded on want for basic human dignity. And, both of them were a leaderless movement.
Professor Zachary Lockman, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University also spoke at the event.
He stressed that people in Egypt couldn't eat because the government raised the price of subsidies to extreme amounts.
Nancy said that she "was not able to say all she wanted, but that is usual in discussions".
Audience member James Aldworth was concerned that "what will happen after the revolution" was not discussed enough.