Courses

• Seminar in International Law and Democracy

Background

• Recipient, Danish Pundik Freedom Prize, Nov. 2008
• Founder of the Arab Organization for Human Rights
• Founder, Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies (Cairo, Egypt)
• Member, Board of Advisors to The Project on Middle East Democracy

Biography

• Recipient, Danish Pundik Freedom Prize, Nov. 2008
• Founder of the Arab Organization for Human Rights
• Founder, Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies (Cairo, Egypt)
• Member, Board of Advisors to The Project on Middle East Democracy

Saad Eddin Ibrahim is a prominent Egyptian Social Scientist, Human Rights Defender, and a Democracy Advocate. He has more than 30 authored or edited books and more than a hundred scholarly articles. He has taught at DePauw, UCLA, Columbia, NYU, American Universities of Beirut (AUB) and in Cairo (AUC), Istanbul Kulture University, and currently is a Visiting Professor at Indiana University. Ibrahim has founded and/or directed a number of Think Tanks, Policy Institutes and Advocacy Organizations in the Arab World - namely the Arab Human Rights Organization (AHRO), the Arab Thought Forum (ATF), the Arab Board for Childhood and Development (ABCD), the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies (IKCD), the Arab Democracy Foundation (ADF), and Voices for a Democratic Egypt (VDE).

But his claim to international fame, as he puts it, was accidental. When Egypt's President Mubarak became alarmed by Dr. Ibrahim's growing activism, Mubarak hounded him in courts and imprisoned him between 2000 and 2003. Though ultimately acquitted by Egypt's High Court and exonerated of all charges, the Mubarak regime has resumed its relentless campaign to silence him. On August 21, 2008, Dr. Ibrahim was convicted by a Cairo Misdemeanors Court and sentenced in absentia to two years with hard labor. This time, the charge was "tarnishing Egypt's image abroad" and the evidence was an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post, August 21, 2007, titled "Egypt's Unchecked Repression." Sixteen more legal suits against him are still pending in various Egyptian courts. If convicted in all of them, he would spend at least 50 years behind bars. Approaching 70, Dr. Ibrahim says he wouldn't mind it if only there were a Divine guarantee that he would live that long!

On balance, Ibrahim has collected some 21 Awards and Honorary Degrees from all corners of the world, the last of which is the Danish Pundik Freedom Prize to be bestowed on him in Copenhagen on November 12, 2008.

Interests

• International Democracy