Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent shifts in the college and job markets have made American middle-class parents anxious about their children’s futures. Research shows that these parents practice strategic behaviors that give their children academic advantages over working class children. However, research has not yet explored how parents strategize to gain competitive advantages over other families within the middle class. In this research, I identify two different strategies middle-class parents use to help their children succeed, using in-depth interviews with 36 mothers and fathers in 18 families. Drawing on theories of class and competition, this research will contribute to knowledge about how the middle class maintains its privilege despite heightened competition. These findings will also augment understandings of the gender and power dimensions behind family practices. Finally, this study will add to knowledge about how individuals negotiate between their religious values and economic concerns.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper will provide an analysis of the Greater Middle East Initiative that is being launched by President Goerge W. Bush. The paper will examine contemporary American foreign policy objectives in the Middle East and discuss the prospects for implementation such an agenda in the next decade.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the reactions of the Arab intelligentsia to the latest US proposals for promoting democracy in the Arab World, as embodied in the March 2004 ?Greater Middle East Initiative.? (Hereafter GMEI). To gauge the opinions of Arab intellectuals, the paper employs a simple and qualitative research method that involves a careful reading of all the editorials that have appeared in four Lebanese (al-Nahar, al-Safir, al-Anwar, al-Mustaqbal) and two London-based, Arabic-language (al-Hayat, al-Sharq al-Awsat) dailies, between mid-February and end of August 2004 (when regional interest in the GMEI dwindled). The publication by al-Hayat newspaper (13 Feb. 2004, p. 10) of the leaked text of the GMEI (in Arabic translation) triggered an avalanche of opinion pieces in the Arab Press that criticized the Initiative, casting doubts over the intensions of the George W. Bush Administration that sponsored it. The reactions of most Arab governments to the GMEI were no more favorable. It is this paper?s contention that Arab intellectuals? hostility towards the GMEI is, by and large, the product of a closed and negative image of the US that particularly affects perceptions of US Middle East policy. Through a qualitative analysis of the contents of hundreds of editorials and opinion pieces written by Arab opinion shapers (university professors, heads of research centers, renowned journalists and politicians) on the subject of the GMEI, this paper identifies three broad themes that dominate the negative image of the US: 1) US foreign policy is guided by interests (national security and access to oil) rather than principles or ideals (promotion of democracy and human rights); 2) US rhetoric about democracy is a mere smoke screen to conceal more sinister plans for exerting hegemony over the Arab and Islamic Worlds; and 3) the real interests of the US (as defined by Arab intellectuals) would not be served by a democratic Middle East. The paper is not interested in the accuracy of the image of the US (all images distort reality); but rather in its origins, resistance to change in the face of dissonant information, and implications for the prospects of democracy in the Middle East region and for US-Arab relations. As for the paper?s organization, part one outlines the background and basic elements of the GMEI, while part two summarizes the criticisms leveled against it by Arab intellectuals, highlighting the three aforementioned themes that characterize the negative image of the US. In order not to portray the Arab intelligentsia as a monolithic anti-American group, part three examines the views of the very few Arab intellectuals who wrote in defense of the GMEI. Painting with a broad brush, part four looks at the backgrounds and belief systems of Arab intellectuals, as well as at US policy towards the region since the twentieth century, in an attempt to understand the origins and persistence of this negative image of the US. The conclusion discusses briefly the prospects for democracy in the Arab World in light of such negative elite views about US global and regional intensions and speculates on what the US can do (if anything) to modify elite perceptions of its Middle East policy as a prelude to changing regional public opinion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: As the process of market transition in Eastern and Central Europe continues, the proportion of people who report that they favor the socialist system has grown. The article examines the sources of this post-communist nostalgia among middle class, middle aged Poles, the social group which is commonly thought to have been the chief beneficiary of the process of market-transition. While positive attitudes towards socialism are reported by vast majorities of respondents in all opinion surveys, nostalgic attitudes are frequently scorned by the media and in the public discourse and therefore are subject to self-censorship. The present article examines the mechanism of social suppression of nostalgia. We argue that the main source of nostalgic attitudes is the merging of economic and social status that has occurred in the course of transformation. Under socialism, many occupations enjoyed extraordinary social prestige, despite low salaries. The ongoing fusion of social and economic status gives those less financially successful a feeling of being deprived of both social position and of economic well-being. This hypothesis is verified through a series of interviews and through the analysis of alternative explanations of nostalgia, for example, theories claiming that post-socialist societies have been affected by collective amnesia. We argue that post-communist nostalgia has substantive reasons and is likely to transform itself into a more militant opposition to the principles underlying the transition to market-based economy.

Publication Type: Poetry
Abstract: Originally Lebanese, this poet has moved to the Midwest five years ago. Her poems lament her awayness and explore identity in a world that increasingly marginalizes Arab roots. She celebrates what she remembers as beautiful in her homeland, without being naive about the reality of corrupt governments and false initiations of war. She includes romantic notions of resistence and revolution, as well as her passion for her language, Arabic. She uses Arabic words in some of her poems to emphasize her attachment to land and culture, notions that otherwise would be compromised in another language.