The Arab world is experiencing a period of profound change. Wars, geopolitical rivalries, and overlapping crises are challenging the foundations of political stability and reconfiguring longstanding patterns of state–society relations.

How should we make sense of the historical significance of this moment? How might it shape the future of political change and stability in the region?

To explore these questions, join CDDRL's Program on Arab Reform and Development (ARD) for a wide-ranging conversation with renowned historian and leading Middle East scholar Joel Beinin, in dialogue with ARD Associate Director Hesham Sallam. Drawing on decades of scholarship, Beinin will reflect on how the region’s current crises fit within broader historical patterns, and what they may signal for future trajectories.

Joel Beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus at Stanford . His research and writing focus on the social and cultural history and political economy of modern Egypt, Palestine, and Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970, A.M. from Harvard University in 1974, and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. He taught at Stanford from 1983 to 2019 with a hiatus as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo in 2006-08.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He is the author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University.