Interviewers: So if we could just start by having you introduce yourself.

Bassam Haddad: My name is Bassam Haddad, I teach at George Mason University at Schar School of Policy and Government and I’m director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program also at George Mason University.

I: And how did you come to this work that you do, how did you get here?

BH: Which aspect, the economic work or the other work, nonprofit or—

I: I’d love to hear about both.

BH: Okay, how much time do you have?

I: Like 20 minutes—

BH: I—I’m just joking,

I: [Laughs]

BH: Because I’m old and I’ve been working constantly... So I have been teaching, of course, since I finished my PhD at Georgetown University, since 2002 and I have also at the same time been working on, of course, my book and my publications whereby I had to balance between teaching—I first taught at Georgetown for a year then went to St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia for three years then came back and got the directorship job at George Mason in 2007 and have been there ever since. I was writing my book during that period, which came out in 2011, 2012 on the political economy of authoritarian resilience in Syria and the business networks that purveyed countries like Syria, mostly developing countries. And now I’m working on my second book which is on the background of the Syrian Uprising as well as the dynamics of the Syrian Uprising and that is sort of one trajectory of what I do, it’s my main job.

On the other hand, I have also been—for now some 25 years—working in a nonprofit capacity to build institutions that produce knowledge. So since 1992, when I founded the Arab Studies Journal at Georgetown University, which became a peer-reviewed research journal several years after, that was the beginning of the nonprofit which is now a larger umbrella institution that includes five organizations. One of them is the Arab Studies Journal which was founded in 1992 and everything happened within that umbrella, it’s called the Arab Studies Institute.

And later we actually started a film collective which was launched in 2002 and we debuted our work by going to Iraq, to Baghdad, right after the invasion in 2003. We were the first team worldwide to actually enter after the invasion and document what Iraqis thought of their “president,” the US invasion, and the war. And we produced a film which became an award winning film, it became the best documentary at the Big Apple Film Festival in New York in 2004 or 2005—I don’t recall exactly—and became until today—and is until today—one of the more authentic films because we were able to capture the moment that very few others have been able to capture, document, and then produce in a film. That very virgin moment whereby a camera crew comes in and just opens the mic for you. And then we produced a couple other films including a larger project shot in eleven countries in six languages titled: What is Said About Arabs & Terrorism which is basically about the dominant discourse—in the United States primarily—on the question of terrorism and its relationship to the Arab and Muslim worlds. And then we produced another film, interestingly, on the question of refugees and immigrants in Europe titled The Other Threat and so on and so forth.

But we then got derailed because everyone in the nonprofit collective, which was mostly volunteer based—I mean totally volunteer base actually until 2012 when we started receiving some funding—we all got busy with our PhD’s or books or getting other things out. So we had a bit of a hiatus, not too long, and we were always working on the existing projects.

And then in 2007 or 2008 we created the research arm of the Arab Studies Institute, it’s titled: Forum on Arab and Muslim Affairs (FAMA). You can check it out at famanow.org, and that became the place where we do what other people might call think tankish stuff—but we don’t really like the word think tank and we don’t really produce for policy purposes—so it’s a research arm.

And then in 2010 we actually  launched Jadaliyya (jadaliyya.com) which is our online magazine that produces daily analysis on the Middle East, produced by academics for the broader public with the niche we were able to fill which allowed us to expand beyond our wildest dreams in a short period of time—even before the uprisings started. And that is because there was a huge gap in the production of books—in terms of knowledge production at that kind of… sometimes higher level, sometimes not really—but in all cases, a production that took a year or two, three, to actually come to four. And then on the other hand you had these daily blogs, or very personal blogs, or blogs that focused on security or international relations or foreign policy—but not much analysis happening on a weekly or daily basis. And then of course there’s the news. The news is not what we’re interested in we were interested in analyzing the news. And then in the middle there was this huge gap. Jadaliyya filled that gap not only in a way that represented “good analysis” and “alternative analysis”, but it also represented analysis from the region. A lot of our writers were from the region as well as from outside the region. So it wasn’t an outside-in analysis like many of the existing blogs and websites, it was an inside-out analysis, so we were read in the region as if we were a local paper or local publication. And that is what gave us our special edge. The other thing that gave us our special edge, of course, was the fact that we were publishing in arabic and in english—and then of course later in french and turkish. The point is that this combination of people from the region and from without, working from an inside-out perspective, the multilingual approach, the multidisciplinary approach, the fact that we added a lot of literature and poetry to our production—cultural material, not just the social science-y stuff (which added, as I mentioned what was even more sharp and analytically so at times). Those elements, on top of the fact that we were flexible on format—we weren’t looking for, you know, the “op-ed,” the 800-1200 words op-ed—we would publish short form and long form. We would publish arabic and english together, we would publish poetry and social science material together, it really became a new experience and attracted a lot of people.

And then the uprisings started in 2010 in December and in January 2011, and that catapulted the entire publication to an entire different realm. Several orders of magnitude higher than what we were very satisfied with, say in November 2010 which was just a few months after we launched. And that became sort of our front—out store front for ASI. Nobody knew ASI existed, we haven’t really pushed the idea that there’s this umbrella—some people joke that we don’t want to do this because we don’t want to seem like a small empire. I mean at some level it’s partly that because we’re not interested in “bigness,” we’re interested in producing good knowledge and so on, but also because these organizations do different things and they’re not for profit. So the mentality of people in a mostly capitalized world and capitalized market—or marketized world, if you will—they like conglomerates, they like to bring things together and produce them as one because that increases profit. In the absence of our desire for profit there is no need to do that. But there is a need to connect the dots sometimes. That’s why now people are hearing more and more about the Arab Studies Institute. That became, of course, our fourth project or organization.

The fifth one was Tadween Publishing which was launched in 2012. It’s basically a publishing house that is innovative, new, interactive, that actually tries to go beyond the traditional publishing house—also to replicate what Jadaliyya has done in the realm of daily analysis, we are doing it, in Tadween, in the realm of publishing. So we do publish cartoons, novels, and things of this sort beyond the social sciences, and memoirs and so on—also in arabic and english. We have just recently started to push our arabic section in Tadween Publishing. You can see all of this in arabstudiesinstitute.org, everything is laid out, very simple, very straightforward.

The last project, that actually merged in 2014—and I promise I will stop there—sigh, okay the last project… it’s tiring. No wonder all my family and friends hate me—by the way I say this but the fact is that this journey involved hundreds of people. Until today, the Arab Studies Institute is a nonprofit solidarity based organization that has spread—basically through the United States, the Middle East, and Europe to an extent with 140, sometimes more people working on it in different capacities. So without that kind of teamwork and without that autonomy which we were very happy to provide to people that we trusted, we couldn’t have gotten here. And in fact, there’s no longer a “we” in the sense that the core had to exist in the beginning, but now it’s much more of a real collective. The “we” or the core sort of jumps into the field when something either breaks down or there’s a real shortage so there is a body of people—a group of people who are sort of irrationally committed—so they would jump in to save the day if needed in any of these organizations.

Long story short, 2014, we realized that our production, even video production, documentary production—which produces documentaries that are 40-50 minutes long or an hour and a half long—was not really the way people are consuming knowledge as much anymore. Even in the documentary world people are going for the shorter segments—which is not making us happy but this is the reality. In print, lots of publications are running out of “business” and moving to something else which is online, which is why we also wanted to create Jadaliyya. But then, in the past several years as a function of multimedia, the number of people who are accessing news and knowledge through audio/visual media has been increasing. Podcasts are a great example,—and actually it’s a “respectable” example because you’re still interested in the content (you want to hear what people are saying). For the most part, the podcasts out there are substantive—or at least, you know, basically they’re not hollywood. We still always thank the universe we have a sort of low threshold of hollywood to always compare things to because it’s not yet hollywood—although we’re slowly moving there in some respects and some areas. So we produced what we call now Status—or Al-Wadaa in arabic—it’s also bilingual—actually multilingual, but it’s mainly in arabic and english. It’s an audio magazine. We called it the audio journal first but then we moved to audio magazine because… I’m not sure exactly why actually but I think there was a discussion about how if we call it journal it’s gonna make people yawn by the time you reach the L in the word journal so we called in an audio magazine because people think “Oh, magazine! Pictures!” but then they listen and it’s actually quite substantive. The point is that that was launched in 2014 and brought to the audience that we have—and even a broader audience—similar to what we have in Jadaliyya, for instance, but in audio. And it represented, usually casual conversations with people in the region and here, in arabic and in english, in ways that ultimately represents, if you will, the critical version of NPR on the East. And it actually grew very quickly and now we’re on itunes, we publish an issue once every three months usually but we publish things in between. We get to sometimes more than 1000 downloads a day and it really allowed us to compliment our production of hard copy text, text on websites—on the internet—with an audio visual dimension that comes out regularly. And now we’re moving slowly into video without abandoning audio. And all of these things are what we do in a daily basis across the board while maintaining our jobs. And the genius of it is that, you know, ASI’s not about plumbing and then we have our economic jobs like they’re two realms—it’s actually what we do. So I work on Syria and when I do the interviews and the editing and the writing—I edit a lot on Syria—so it compliments my academic job and my academic interests. It actually enhances my academic position because I’m able to actually reach out more beyond, you know, the sort of library research experience. So that helped a lot which is why we’re able to maintain a group of what, arguably is today—because we started a while ago and we worked with—well we were graduate students and we worked with graduate students and undergrads—but today, a lot of the people who stuck around even after we told them “Okay, you’re done. Thank you very much, you’re one year stint—or internship sometimes, you know—is over.” But actually a lot of them stick around or leave and come back because of the kind of energy and synergy they find at the Arab Studies Institute with the lack of hierarchy, with the presence of ample solidarity and in-clear message that is not dogmatic but is actually quite, you know, stimulating. Not without faults, not without mistakes, not without all kinds of imperfections which we are very keen on working on. Because that’s all we have is our solidarity based on these things. We don’t have salaries, we don’t have perks (except, you know, reciprocity visa vi all kinds of needs that everyone seeks like recommendations, support, reading of material, feedback, networking…).

So at this point we’re basically on—not on automatic—but we’re trying to stop the expansion and basically enhance the deepening which is our project for the long haul. So we always assume—this is gonna sound violent so if people are not interested in this thing they can just stop listening for a couple seconds—but we always assume that we all drown in a sort of ship or on a cruise, everybody at ASI. Somebody should be able to come in, look at the standard operating procedures for every aspect of what we’re doing in all the organizations and be able to continue. So we need to have some way of people having access to the know how, but also we need to have established institutional sustenance which is why we finally succumb to—in 2011,2012—to basically seeking and receiving funding. In fact the first funding opportunity we had was not one that we sought. We were contacted as Jadaliyya and asked if we are looking for funding and we’re like: “Oh. Yeah. We are.” And then we actually were able to get that and then build a portfolio of sorts that allows us to sustain our work on a yearly basis from funding from sources that are frankly mainstream and not necessarily as radical or as progressive, sometimes, as we are. But there are considered from our point of view acceptable sources so long as we don’t have any strings attached, not only in terms of direct strings attached but also indirect strings attached, which means we don’t have to sort of limit what we do in order to satisfy the next round. Which is why we are keen on also not going crazy and making fundraising our priority. That sort of ends up not enslaving us, but subordinating what we do. So it’s a delicate position. And here we are.

Well it’s tricky. It’s tricky because a lot of people are not immediately interested in what’s happening abroad, even if we have troops... US, you know, young men and women fighting abroad. So it’s tricky. And then even when you know about it and you’re somewhat interested it’s like a blur, you know? Most college students couldn’t even identify Iraq on the map—the majority actually, he overwhelming majority, not just 50 plus percent. So that was sort of our wakeup call in 2003. So what I think the best way to understand… the empathy has a lot to do with our local conditions at home in the United States. However, I think the answer is actually more structural than our ability and will to do something, and of course we need to do that. We need to always make understanding the world in which we live more stimulating and more interesting and more relevant to our lives. But what I think has been happening is that, structurally speaking, the conditions in the United States have actually gotten young people to be more and more interested in the rest of the world because things are not as “well” as they have been for perhaps a couple of other generations before that. So there is an interest now, there is a real interest. And there is actually less of a tendency to drink the US kool-aid in terms of what we are and in terms of our place in the world and our actual actions in the world, so that is very positive. That has been complimented by a lot of efforts, you know, people and institutions doing good work regard knowledge production on the region, on foreign policy actually also played a role. And the third thing in the case of the Middle East, of Middle East Studies—I’m saying the third thing as if I’m really organized and prepared but I didn’t think about this earlier, I’m thinking about this as I share with you—the third thing actually has been the actual event or protracted set of events called the Arab Uprisings. When young people in the United States saw hundreds of thousands and millions of people in the streets in these countries that they thought, you know, were very happy and content with authoritarianism go to the street and fight bare, you know, fight with their bare bodies, fight, like, a regime that is shooting at them while they are seeking a better, more dignified world. For them, you know, that was inspiring. And those reverberations that we witnessed everywhere from Portugal to Wisconsin are real. They’re not just a coincidence. And they represented the part of the influence and the effect the Arab Uprisings had. So I think these are all good examples of what happened to increase the interest, but the second one is actually the aspect we can control. The one by where we are actually actively trying to promote what has happened, for instance, yesterday, the discussion on Syria here at Oberlin and by my talk on Syria that also tries to connect, globally speaking, local economic change and formulas with global ones and American ones, actually also help people understand the connections that divide—that basically separated these two worlds, the east and the west, whatever these two things are is actually slowly, not disappearing but, you know, slowly fading.

I: And what did you want to share with the Oberlin students the most as part of a speaker for this global interest imposeum?

BH: I actually, it’s kind of mushy… is mushy the word?

I: I think I know what you mean.

BH: Yeah. I love coming here. I’ve been here a couple of times before and I’ve always enjoyed the—you know it’s just the intellect, because the intellect in also impressive in the sense that people are focused and sharp and ask really good questions, but also I just felt that people cared at Oberlin. I have given talks many places in the United States and I do regularly and there are places like that, but there are very few. And Oberlin has been a place where I encountered a caring, impassioned, and sharp student body that was interested in the topics as if they were their own. Whether or not the level of knowledge, basically, reached, you know, an expertise level or just an introductory level, there is a desire to learn, there is a desire to empathize. Not sympathize. Empathize. And there’s a desire to sort of do something about the world. After every lecture, discussion, class—cause I’m also showing up at classes and talking and meeting people at cafes and lunches and talking about varies issues—there’s a desire to actually do something. And that is really remarkable. And it’s not coming from this sort of… only this sort of radical desire to change the system, you know, and overhaul and revolutionize—which I’m not against, actually. But it’s not that kind of fervor, you know? It’s actually across the spectrum. It’s sober and it just seems that it’s likely to be effective. And maybe I’m over romanticizing this because I really like Oberlin and like the scenery and the setting, but the fact is that the student body here is remarkable and you guys should be proud of it. I mean I’m not exaggerating in that sense… Did I kiss up enough?

I: [Laughs]

BH: No I mean it, I actually mean it.

I: It’s nice to hear.

BH: You’re like, “Really, we’re like that?” Go on, what I said about the time earlier with the campus rate, you know we just got a call we can go on. I mean how can I top that?

I: Yeah, I think we got everything we need. That was a lovely note to end on.

BH: No it’s serious, I meant it, like I’m in connection with you guys and interaction has been lovely, like pleasant—oh sh*t I wanted to say pleasant. I would love to have that interview, it’s so cool I feel like it’s my hug to Oberlin.

[Transcribed by John Kallas]