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:ID: 6f45727c-4b2a-4ed3-bafe-a7a5a25d1672
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#+title: 2015-09-14

* CSLA awards :academia:CSLA:@personal:
:PROPERTIES:
:CREATED: [2015-09-14 Mon 10:23]
:MODIFIED: [2015-09-15 Tue]
:IMPORTED: [2023-02-08 Wed 19:22]
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What are your long-term professional goals? How will a Master’s degree in your chosen field help you achieve these goals?

My previous experiences advocating policies in Egypt in 2011 and 2012 have showed me how knowing a subject is crucial at setting the discussion level. In my mind, the limited success of civil society presenting itself as an alternative was in great part related to the lack of specific, achievable, and relevant policies in response to the binary of traditional and Islamist authoritarianism. Save for police reform and a few social policies, there has been no actual debate based on alternatives in a society and economy that is full of challenges.

I would like to see Egypt's democratic civil society offering this alternative and growing because it is. I would take part in building this dynamic in an organisational capacity, but also in my area of expertise as a specialist. In addition to giving me the chance to better consider the deeper relationship between technology and human rights, a masters degree in society and technology studies will give me a better understanding of the complexity of policy making in functioning democracies, which coupled with my expertise in an Egyptian context will help me affect incremental change.

Describe your engagement with civil society in your home country.

In 2005, I took six months off to look at ways I can contribute to something bigger. With an interest in the Arabic content on the web, I helped start the Arabic Wikipedia, the Egyptian blogsphere and citizen journalism movement. The democratic opening Egypt had at the moment was an opportunity to support local and international civil society working on Egypt using technology for social change, and help human rights defenders improve their digital privacy. This collective dynamic was ramp-up to what later became known as the Arab Spring.

Since 2011, I focused on policy work, and as Civil Liberties Director in the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, I coordinated teams that responded to challenges and opportunities related to the entire set of information rights. Collectively we wrote amendments to the Telecom Act following Egypt's internet kill-switch, freedom of information, and have led advocacy efforts of those. Individually, I also responded to government policies related to surveillance, cyber crime, and censorship. Documents obtained from State Security Investigations HQ in 2011 showing negotiations to purchase hacking tools were leaked by me. This rippled in the world-wide effort by civil society organisations to regulate exports of digital arms. In addition, I speak inside Egypt and internationally about technology and human rights, particularly focusing on protecting individuals where rule of law and due process are weaker. Currently, I am conducting a thorough base-line research on the telecom sector in Egypt: its economic, its legal framework, and its actual policy application.

In my management capacity, I coordinated the work of a team that looked at issues as varied as gender and women rights, freedom of religion and belief, equality and non-discrimination, citizenship, and national security and counter-terrorism.

How have your personal experience, family history, and social background shaped your professional goals?

The son of middle-class parents and a father who chose sculpture and design as a life occupation, our family's life was interrupted in 1990 when we found ourselves, refugees in our home country away from a life my parents built in then-occupied Kuwait. This meant that my middle-aged parents had to start their lives all over again, a fact that has affected their lives and security until today. It has meant that their children has would get good education, although not the top-notch, and will be able to learn about the world, but not always have immediate access to all they need to be an active part of it, not unless they take the extra step of empowering themselves.

This experience has impacted me, a child of ten at the time, with two main lessons: 1) that what appears as a stable is almost always not so, and 2) that winning on the account of others, or on the account of the environment, is not really winning in the end. These were reasons I was never part of the for-profit sector, not even as a freelance contractor, and despite my bachelor in bank management. They were also a reason why as a young adult I became part of the nascent movement for democracy and human rights in Egypt.

The two lessons I learned at ten remain true today, as I am currently unable to return to Cairo, a situation that hopefully will be temporary. Winning with others, and not on their account, seems to be an increasingly popular idea in our troubled present.

How do you define a civil society leader? Please share two or three examples of leaders you admire and explain why you admire them.

A civil society leader is a person who has a clear vision for a future that allows people more autonomy and control over their lives, that brings them together in federation, and that allows them to grow by extending solidarity to others. A vision is not enough, however. Leaders show a clear path that leads to where the vision is. A leader needs to be able to strategically read where they are, plan a route that goes from here to there, and be able to read signs on the road and change course according to need.

Two of the people whose work affected me deeply are David Holmgren and Richard Stallman. Holmgren, one of the two originators of the concept, practice and body of knowledge known as permaculture, has an acute understanding the the underlying problems of our modern life, one that integrates climate change, peak oil, depleting resources and population climax together, and suggests meeting this crisis with a practice and a body of knowledge that focuses on sustainability and resource regeneration.

While Holmgren has his eye on the main goal, Stallman aims at the low-hanging fruit. He sees software as the easiest entry point to building a new world in the shell of the old, and after 25 years, the Free Software Movement has grown to power not only the most critical of computers including the largest part of the internet, but has also allowed for more complex and more physical free technologies to emerge: from wikipedia and citizen journalism, to open-source hardware, 3d printing and home manufacturing. The commons he seeded in software is becoming a physical reality.

Both Holmgren and Stallman do not sit on boards or control organisations. Their style of leadership focuses on creating a break-through process, in contrast with structures, that allows individuals to contribute now, gain immediate benefit, and grow virally. This type of solutions are, in my mind, what will characterize civil society leaders in the future.
