Research, People, Politics & society, Profiles

Watching history unfold: Student POVs on the 'Arab Spring'

By Cathy Cockrell

Popular protests aimed at toppling rulers and promoting democracy have swept across North Africa and the Middle East since December 2010. Led largely by young people and aided in significant part by social media, these rebellions first took down Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Now, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and many other Arab nations remain in the grip of upheaval, while the armed conflict in Libya has provoked a controversial intervention by the United States and its allies.

What do students at Berkeley — with its long tradition of student political engagement and its active Muslim student population — make of the events of the so-called “Arab Spring”? What do they think about the Obama adminstration’s response and protesters’ use of social media to organize and communicate?

We made three visits to Sproul Plaza and other parts of campus to hear directly from students. Here’s what 12 of them had to say (photos by Melani King).

Fatema Al Zeera
Family ties: A lot of the information I get about the uprising, it’s first-hand experiences. My parents are still there, my brother, my whole family.… Living in Bahrain, a lot of people I went to school with, interacted with, there was this general dissatisfaction with how the government operates. You’d hear about a lot of injustice that is going on, with the government. There are these polarities — people who are really, really rich and are part of the monarchy, and then there’s the really, really poor. Hear more from Fatema