Philip Rizk and The American University in Cairo
February 9, 2009 by cua_mac249
I have just begun a semester abroad at the American University in Cairo, an outsider in a university that is itself outside of Egyptian society. My hour-long rides on the bus to the outskirts of the city, where the brand new campus is located, bring to mind its inaccessibility to the vast majority of Egyptians and its official status as an oasis of free thought and intellectual endeavor (in addition to being something of an elite playground).
On Saturday night I arrived home to the dormitory to see a handful of students watching an unusually loud television in the main foyer, which was broadcasting the inauguration of the new campus, located in the elite outskirts of the city. On this day only those specially invited were even allowed on campus, and Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt’s first lady, made the following declaration (in impeccable English, it is worth noting):
“It is imperative that we work astutely with young people to address comprehensively the social, natural, cultural and ethnical contracts of our times. We need to prioritize securing human rights, from food to peace and to diversity. We must do more to promote dialogue and understanding across our nations, and highlight our common values and aspirations.”
On Sunday morning, I was greeted on campus with flyers and a general buzz surrounding Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German dual citizen and AUC graduate student who had just begun the semester when he was abducted by state security forces. Without charges or allegations, he was whisked away to an undisclosed location, and now his parents don’t even know where he is. According to Aida Seif al Dawla, the head of a group who counsels torture victims, “he is in the custody of State Security, which means illegal detention and a high probability of torture and ill treatment.”
Rizk had been organizing various demonstrations and political moves in support of Gaza, criticizing the Egyptian government’s actions during the Israeli incursion. At the time he had been working \to raise awareness of this issue within the town of Qalubya, north of Cairo, when he disappeared. He was last seen by the other demonstrators leaving the police station in a small, nondescript bus.
Despite now regular demonstrations on campus demanding that the AUC Board of Trustees use their influence to find him and secure his whereabouts, the general feeling on campus is both one of apathy among the general population, and awareness among his friends and colleagues that this is a firm warning against students who are thinking of getting involved in politics.
While the paradox of Suzanne Mubarak’s words and the actions of the police-state she represents seemed immediate and infuriating to an outsider like myself, it has been greeted with resignation by the majority of AUC students I have met. Many of Philip’s friends are in my classes, and one mentioned having told him of the risks of such work, suggesting that perhaps AUC should warn students about getting involved in the Palestinian issue. Our professor fired back “but how can we know where to draw a red line? Who could have predicted this?” It was clear that this professor, as well as others, have great sympathy for Philip, and like many are trying to negotiate the academic call to critique power and promote various freedoms in the context of a country like Egypt.
My initial temptations to ascribe this situation to an easy binary in which America is a “free country” and Egypt is a “Middle Eastern dictatorship” have not been satisfying. The university’s failure to adequately criticize the government for actions like Philip’s abduction are part of a larger dynamic, wherein Egypt’s human rights abuses, Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, and American support of both are all bound together, with AUC and students like me awkwardly positioned in the middle.
When a school that has “American” in its name allows the First Lady, the soft face of a dictatorship, to invoke American notions of freedom in its mission statement, how is it then implicated in illegal and abominable actions like Philip’s abduction? How are we as Americans implicated? What is our obligation to voice what our government supports abroad? What does our freedom within the U.S. demand that we do? My only answer was to write this post, and my ambivalence is excruciating.
How is this any different than our government sponsoring The School of the Americas in Georgia where we teach Latin American militants and then send them home where they tortre, maim and kill? How is this any different from our Army killing so many innocent victims in Iraq?
You say we have freedom in the United States, but I say we take away not only freedom but life from others in this world. Yes it is terrible what the Egyptians are doing to this Phillip. But please do not hold our country up as a shining example.
I did not mean to give that impression, so perhaps I need to be more clear. The difference between Egypt and America is that in the former, human rights abuses are openly committed at home, and in the latter, they are supported in a more veiled way abroad, (as in the examples you mention). The reason many want to see America as this “shining example” is that within the country, a certain amount of “freedom” exists, and yet we are directly responsible for such reprehensible deeds abroad. This is what I meant by my ambivalence…we have the freedom to speak in America, but not the freedom to be listened to. How, then, do we engage critically with what our government supports abroad in Egypt, Latin America, and most directly, Iraq?