Review of Jasmine Revolution debate, organised by IDEA

Launching the London 2011 Youth Policy Symposium, Intelligence Squared (in association with the British Council and IDEA) presented a debate at the Royal Society asking whether the Jasmine Revolution in North Africa will wither. Six brilliant speakers presented us with a thoroughly enjoyable evening, which presented some interesting questions and answered a few of them.

@intelligence2
Jasmine: peak flowering in June and July. Will the same be true for the Revolution? #iq2rev
2011-05-13, 13:29

The full motion for the debate was “The Jasmine Revolution Will Wither in North Africa: It Won't Meet the Expectations of Youth”, although there seemed to be some confusion about the subtitle – sometimes it was about economic dividends, sometimes about political ones, sometimes about expectations. This confusion was reflected in the variety of arguments that discretely missed each other like busy passengers on the Tube. Convening the debate was Nik Gowing, the main presenter of BBC World News since 1996, who brought an immediate calm and professionalism to the whole event. The audience, with no clear majority of any race, age or sex, pre-voted approximately 3:2 against the motion, but with around a quarter saying they weren’t sure.

Each speaker had the floor for 8-9 minutes and Nora Ayman, a 23-year-old corporate analyst at the National Bank of Egypt who was at the Egyptian revolution this year, was first to propose the motion. Ayman argued that the conditions are not yet right for democracy to flourish; there is no real dialogue, merely posturing. The defining value of democracy is hearing and listening to dissenting voices, which is not happening. Specifically in Egypt, she asserted, the media uses the tone of the old regime and there is a noticeable lack of education about the values and methods of democracy.

@intelligence2
Democracy takes time - just look at the histories of Western European countries, argues Nyman #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 18:34

The first speaker against the motion was Ahmed Naguib, the Advising and Exchange Director for AMIDEAST and a key player and mobiliser in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Naguib spoke in rallying, emotive tones about how “this revolution is unprecedented by all measures” and that “we will no longer tolerate dictatorship”. He argued that the immense sense of ownership the Egyptian people had felt will push them toward actively taking control of their economy and government; that where education had not previously been a priority, it is now; and that legislation is already on its way to improve civil liberties.

@pia_muzaffar
Ahmed Naguib: people of #Egypt now have sense of ownership of their country - won't tolerate corruption and poor governance anymore #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 18:44

The next speaker for the proposition was Norman Stone, Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, and previously of Oxford University. Professor Stone spoke frankly about a world where children gather like bunches of grapes and forty people live off one wage; this is not a world where one can just slap on a democracy sticker and have done with it. Democratic reforms, he argued, are no guarantee for long-term economic stability. In fact, history shows us that the very danger of revolutions is the instability that follows.

@Its_Zippy
Agreeing with Norman Stone - Egypt may not have the apparatus to sustain revolution. #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 18:49

Roger Cohen spoke next against the motion and was the first to really engage with anything his opponents had said. Professor Stone had said that we must believe in yesterday – only the Americans believe more in tomorrow. Cohen replied that he must then be an American, for he believes in tomorrow, when the alternative is the police state of yesterday. As a reporter for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, Cohen was at Tahrir Square and has experienced many other elements of the Arab Spring. He argued that the people have overcome their fear and that powerful emotions engulf the youth in these cascades of revolution. He spoke as if it was inevitable and the audience applauded and cheered him on.

@intelligence2
Cohen: the opposition aren't exercising sensible 'realism' - instead, they're guilty of 'pessimism' and 'cynicism' #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 18:55

@_mohamedm
Bravo Roger Cohen, excellent summation of the aspirations and hope of the revolutionaries in Egypt and elsewhere #Egypt #Jan25 #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 18:59

@schnitzelboy12
#rogercohen just slammed his opponents. What a legend #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 19:01

Responding to Cohen’s accusations of pessimism on the part of the proposition, Douglas Murray explained that they were actually cautious. They don’t wish for the revolutions to wither, but they also don’t share the thundering optimism clearly demonstrated by the opposition. This was just one of the straw men that Murray identified in Cohen’s arguments and effortlessly dispensed with before proceeding. I don’t think the audience were as convinced by this as I was, as Cohen had sat down to a roaring crowd. Murray is Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society and formerly Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, both non-partisan think tanks. He argued that there are many reasons to warn caution upon the Arab youth, mostly the lack of democratic accountability. From a wider perspective, open and free societies have a duty to help those emerging from closed ones, but the will to help is not present. We wish them well, he said, but we must warn them not to be led astray.

@intelligence2
Murray criticises response of international community to events in North Africa - reserving particular censure for Hilary Clinton #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 19:09

The final speaker against the motion was Fawaz Gerges, Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at LSE. This is just the beginning, this is a psychological rapture that has shattered political apathy in the Middle East, he argued; Arabs have been empowered and emboldened with international values in their hearts. An impassioned speech, extolling the undeniable power and force of these uprisings, ended the speakers’ command of the floor and gave the audience a chance to have their voices heard.

@Nanyatef
RT @intelligence2: Gerges emphasises the 'psychological rapture' - in other words, the fear in Arab people has now gone #iq2rev
2011-05-16, 19:30

During the audience’s questions I kept half an ear open, but voting had already started and I felt the speakers were no longer persuading us, only reiterating their positions. I reflected on the evening and how my pre-vote ‘For’ the motion had been a gut instinct and how my mind had not been pushed that hard away from that feeling. It seemed the rest of the audience were similarly stubborn, as the post-vote came out with only five ‘For’ votes converting to ‘Against’. However, the quarter of the room that were unsure in the pre-vote had been swayed into action and the vote ended 40 ‘For’ to 178 ‘Against’, with 12 continuing to abstain.

Overall, I felt the speakers who had had more direct contact with the revolutionaries were the ones who had more confidence in the revolutions. I wondered whether they were better informed, or if they had just got caught up in the spirit of the thing. I wondered what kind of a person you have to be to see your world turned upside down all around you and not to get carried away with it.

How to accidentally become a social entrepreneur

Guest Blog on enternships.com

March 18, 2011, 8:19 am

This week’s guest blog is from Will Bentinck, a recent graduate who found himself drawn to social enterprise. Here he explains his story of how he ‘created his own job’ and how his experience as an ‘entern’ inspired and helped him on his journey as a serial social entrepreneur.

I finished my degree last summer and spent several months job hunting and claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). This is not an experience I recommend, particularly because I grew out of getting an allowance when I was ten. And it’s really boring. I hated it. So, instead of trying to get hired by someone else, I created my own job. The interview was a doddle.

I had quickly got sick of trying to be heard over the cacophony of voices screaming,

“Please give me a job! I am keen to work in a dynamic industry; I have dynamic transferable skills and am a dynamic team player!”

My CV wasn’t perfect (as I kept being told by my very helpful, perfect-CV lawyer friend) and I had to do something worthwhile (I’m not motivated solely by money, much to my surprise); so I set out to do two things: get an internship or three and start my own organisation.

Aside: There is on-going commentary about internships only being for people from wealthier backgrounds because they can afford to work for no money, but you can do internships even when you’re claiming JSA (there are some rules) and it is probably the most effective thing you can do for your career other than sleeping with a CEO. (I’m a CEO by the way.)

So I went to w4mp.org(Work for an MP) and looked at their job listings (I wasn’t clever enough to use enternships.com). I found an internship at a debating website (read that again, it doesn’t say dating website). Debatewise.org aims to create crowd-sourced debates and, among other things, use them to influence policy. I applied, went for interview and quickly started peppering my job hunting with some interning at a desk in Shoreditch. Around the same time, a friend of mine introduced me to an idea in a pub.

“I had this idea…” is a phrase I hear a lot. These ideas usually involve monkeys and occasionally spaceships. This idea was a little more far-fetched. Alex (beardy Glaswegian autodidact) wanted to continue the work of Lord Shaftesbury and rekindle the Ragged Schools, the precursor of state primary education. Except Alex wanted to create the Ragged University.

We’ve all been in a pub or café and found that we’ve learned something from the person we’ve been talking to. The Ragged University’s primary goal is to expand that experience so that one person is passing on their knowledge to a whole room. It gives a platform for communities to educate themselves, it increases social capital (I didn’t know what it meant either), it encourages civic engagement and allows people who would otherwise be distant from education to engage with topics and attitudes they never would have been exposed to. And it’s free.

“That’s a frightfully good idea!” I thought (I’m quite posh) and the idea quickly turned into action – raggeduniversity.com.

If you take anything away from this article other than eye strain, let it be this compound statement: It has never before been easier to start something; it has never before been cheaper to share your ideas with an almost inevitably growing market; it has never before made more sense to take an idea, mix it with some friends and make some entrepreneurial cake.

It’s quite an experience being part of a team of your friends creating, developing, repairing, adjusting, re-launching, publicising and then maintaining an idea that is so much bigger than you originally conceived. I could write for hours about my experiences with the Ragged University, but I will share only one observation here (please write to me if you want to know of any others).

Don’t get too big for your boots, but make sure you wear big boots.

I’ll rephrase that: Implement your idea on a manageable scale, but implement it hard. This is similar to the advice not to bite off more than you can chew, but with the added instruction not to talk with your mouth full.

My internship at Debatewise went well. Debatewise was an entrepreneurial endeavour itself, the brainchild of the brilliant David Crane. His idea got picked up by IDEA, ironically, and after a couple of years of them funding the site, he has now taken over their UK operations; or rather, our UK operations, because he gave me a real job when we became a charity at the beginning of the year. So internships can turn into jobs too – especially internships with start-ups and entrepreneurs (I think they call them enternships).

Blatant plug: IDEA (the International Debate Education Association) UK are hiring enterns right now. We promote informed public debate to help people build more open, participatory societies. There’s a massive revamp of our website going on and we need help with all sorts of things, from code to prose. There’s a job advert on this very site, so sign up immediately!

The Ragged University would have happened without me; IDEA would have a UK branch even if I’d never worked for David; I was just there at the right time and grabbed at those great opportunities. However, the lessons I learned from those experiences (and keep learning) enabled me to substantially contribute to my next project – Levantine Links.

The lawyer friend I mentioned earlier (Ben) went to Syria a couple of summers in a row, to the Syriac Orthodox community in the north east, to teach English and learn Arabic. Ben kept telling me he wanted to set up a recruitment process in the UK to send top graduates out to do the same thing. He kept talking about it. And talking. I kept pushing and pushing him to actually do it and eventually we sat down and started planning.

We achieved more in eight hours that day than I had contributed to the Ragged University in eight months. When we work together, we are astonishingly efficient and productive. I am new to this entrepreneur stuff, I’ve only been at it since last summer, but I am sure that the following lesson will prove to be the most valuable one I ever learn.

Who you work with will define your business, its successes and its failures. So work with people who inspire you with their brilliance, yet acknowledge and defer to your areas of expertise.

If you’re one of those people, I want to work with you; whether that’s at the Ragged University, at IDEA or in Syria. Drop me a line and let’s make some cake.

Enternships.com gives you the opportunity to work with other people and learn how to be better at doing your own thing. While you wait for that world-changing idea to come along, you can intern in brilliant buildings, with passionate people, doing awesome activities.

Let’s make some cake.