Image via Bidoun

Tuesday evening at seven, join us at NYU’s Abu Dhabi Institute (19 Washington Square North) where our poetry editor, Robyn Creswell, will appear on a panel called “The Authoritarian Turn: On The State of the Egyptian Intelligentsia.” The panel, sponsored by New Directions and Bidoun, will

bring together a distinguished group of writers and scholars to reflect upon the predicament of the Egyptian intellectual in the year since President Mohamed Morsi’s dramatic fall. From Ibrahim himself to the bestselling author Alaa Al Aswany, countless writers and artists–many of them of historically contrarian bent–have expressed their support for a military-backed government whose abuses and excesses have on occasion surpassed those of the Mubarak era. How to begin to understand the role of the public intellectual in such times?

Robyn appears alongside Khaled Fahmy (American University in Cairo) and Mona El Ghobashy (an independent scholar); Negar Azimi moderates.