Advocating For Voices in the Middle East
Earlier this month, human rights defender and Master of Human Rights (‘23) alumnus Mohamed Mandour returned to the University of Minnesota to deliver this year’s Scallen Lecture. The Scallen Lecture highlights leaders and thinkers who defend human rights at great odds and great personal risk. During his visit to campus, Mandour reflected on his human rights journey and the role the MHR program has played in his career.
A Career Fighting for Freedom of Expression
Currently a Middle East and Northern Africa researcher at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mohamed Mandour specializes in exile activism, transnational repression, digital repression, and press freedom in the MENA region. Previously, he worked as a Bassem Sabry research fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. He has published multiple award-winning articles on activism and minority speech and is considered an emerging expert on U.S. military assistance in the MENA region by the Forum on the Arms Trade.
With a background in engineering, Mandour first embarked on his human rights journey during the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt in January of 2011. Inspired to fight for freedom of expression after witnessing police harassment of a student activist on his college campus, he later became active in Egyptian civil society under General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s military junta. After being forced into exile, he conducted research on Egyptian human rights issues in Tunisia and the United States.
In 2021, Mandour joined the Master of Human Rights program at the U and began his formal human rights advocacy education. He served as an HRP graduate research student and worked on projects related to academic censorship and transnational repression. One of these research projects addressed the censorship international students at the University of Minnesota face from their home governments. Mandour completed his degree program in 2023, then joined the Committee to Protect Journalists in Washington, DC.
Challenges and Takeaways from the 2024 Scallen Lecture
Mandour’s lecture, titled, “Is the Middle East Able to Speak? A Conversation with Mohamed Mandour on Global Freedom of Expression,” explored the ways authoritarian governments exploit Internet platforms to censor academics, journalists, and critics abroad. During the lecture, he highlighted how the October 7th attacks and Israel’s war on Gaza have magnified challenges to freedom of expression. Since the start of the conflict, Mandour has focused on investigating the human rights abuses Palestinian journalists face under bombardment. He also works to combat the censorship of Israeli journalists who resist conforming to a national narrative. He argues that press freedom is vital to representing the true reality on the ground during conflict and confronting potential media bias. At the time of writing, ninety-five journalists have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, an “unprecedented loss” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Ninety are Palestinian.
Mandour hopes his research will lead to changes in policy aimed at safeguarding human rights in the Middle East. He advocates for the amplifying of marginalized voices and the public shaming of violators of human rights. He hopes people who attended the 2024 Scallen Lecture come away with greater knowledge about the conditions Palestinian journalists face, as well as the ways U.S. foreign policy contributes to the current conflict. Mandour wishes people will view these issues not as occurring “far away, but also impacting U.S. universities.” A threat to human rights in the Middle East is a threat to human rights everywhere in the world—including right here at home.
