Middle Eastern Studies Program, Historical Studies Program, and Dean of the College Present

What’s in a Leak?: The Struggle for Information Justice in the Modern Middle East

In the late 19th century, an explosion of communication technologies and mass media made it possible to transmit more information across greater distances than ever before. State authorities panicked as older forms of official secrecy frayed, and began developing new forms of information control. For citizens, urgent questions emerged: What did people have a right to know? What was the state entitled to conceal? In Cairo, Egypt, these questions burst into the public eye at the 1896 trial of a telegraph operator and a celebrity publisher who were accused of spreading a military leak. The watershed case exposed rising anti-colonial fervor, government officials’ inability to grasp technology, and profoundly different ideas of the public good. This episode demonstrates the urgency of studying information in its own right—its flow, its obstacles, its ephemeral forms. It also introduces a new lens for understanding the 20th-century Middle East that can help us explain the myths and silences that have haunted frustrated struggles for justice for over a century.

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For more information, call 845-758-7667, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Hegeman 204A

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