The Arab Spring took the world by surprise five years ago this December — at this MFU talk we will hear from scholars and activists working on the Middle East about their take on what is going on now, how people in the region make sense of the wars in their countries, and how we can make sense of them in the context of what is going on in the rest of the world.
From Iraq and Syria to Palestine and Israel, it seems like the region’s conflicts are becoming ever more complex and intractable, and the recent Paris attacks have again prompted discussions of greater international intervention, bombing campaigns, radicalisation, and the grand narratives of Islam versus the West.
So how can we make sense of these wars, and what is going on?
