Mona Eltahawy Is an Award-Winning Columnist and an International Public Speaker on Arab and Muslim Issues

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© Dirk Eusterbrock Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York. She is a columnist for Canada's Toronto Star, Israel's The Jerusalem Report and Denmark's Politiken. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune and she has appeared as a guest analyst in several media outlets. Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Ms Eltahawy was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. Ms Eltahawy was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel. Her public speaking has taken her around the world, including to the first TEDWomen where she spoke about the virtues of confusion in breaking stereotypes of Muslim women. In 2010 the Anna Lindh Foundation awarded her its Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism and the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver gave her its Anvil of Freedom Award. In 2009, the European Union awarded her its Samir Kassir Prize for Freedom of the Press for her opinion writing and Search for Common Ground named her a winner of its Eliav-Sartawi Award for Middle Eastern Journalism. Ms. Eltahawy is a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She has taught as an adjunct at the New School in New York, the University of Oklahoma and the U.N.-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica. Mona was born on Aug. 1, 1967 in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family. http://www.monaeltahawy.com/.

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Digital Feminism in the Arab Gulf
MIT Center for Intnl Studies | Starr Forum: Digital Feminism in the Arab Gulf MICHELLE I'm Michelle English, and on behalf of the MIT Center for International Studies, welcome you to ENGLISH: today's Starr Forum. Before we get started, I'd like to mention that this is our last planned event for the fall. However, we do have many, many events planned for the spring. So if you haven't already, please take time to sign up to get our event notices. Today's talk on digital feminism in the Arab Gulf states is co-sponsored by the MIT Women's and Gender Studies program, the MIT History department, and the MIT Press bookstore. In typical fashion, our talk will conclude with Q&A with the audience. And for those asking questions, please line up behind the microphones. We ask that you to be considerate of time and others who want to ask questions. And please also identify yourself and your affiliation before asking your question. Our featured speaker is Mona Eltahawy, an award winning columnist and international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues and global feminism. She is based in Cairo and New York City. Her commentaries have appeared in multiple publications and she is a regular guest analyst on television and radio shows. During the Egypt Revolution in 2011, she appeared on most major media outlets, leading the feminist website Jezebel to describe her as the woman explaining Egypt to the West. In November 2011, Egyptian riot police beat her, breaking her left arm and right hand, and sexually assaulted her, and she was detained for 12 hours by the Interior Ministry and Military Intelligence.
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