Professor Bennoune Featured on Open Democracy and Marginalia Review

Professor Karima Bennoune contributed content to two online forums: an essay for the website Open Democracy, and an interview featured on the website The Marginalia Review.

In her essay on Open Democracy on July 16, Bennoune compared Algeria and Egypt, writing, "What then are the real lessons of Algeria for Egypt and other countries today?  First and foremost, it is a gross error to underestimate the danger posed by movements that wield God as a political weapon, that are overtly committed to inequality.  I cannot often enough cite the words of education reformer Salah Chouaki who wrote shortly before his assassination by Algeria's GIA, ‘the most dangerous and deadly illusion... is to underestimate fundamentalism, the mortal enemy of our people.'"

In the Marginalia Review interview published on July 15, Bennoune addresses topics including women, democracy and human rights in post-"Arab Spring" north Africa, saying, "I do think real democracy and the indivisible human rights international law guarantees to all are as relevant in this region as anywhere else.  I reject - as do rights activists here - the fashionable cultural relativism sometimes applied to suggest that people in this region are too different to qualify for these ideals."

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools.  She joined the King Hall faculty from Rutgers School of Law-Newark in 2012.

Open Democracy essay, "Algeria: the real lessons for Egypt"

Marginalia Review interview

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