Heirs of the Arab spring
THE ARAB SPRING BEGAN IN TUNISIA, where 28 days of protests ended 24 years of a dictator’s rule. The next day, Jan. 15, 2011, students in Yemen called for demonstrations against the strongman there. A dictator fell in Egypt, then in Libya. A change of season appeared to be bringing democracy to an arid stretch of the planet where it had never quite blossomed.
It proved a false spring. Today Egypt has a different dictator, and Yemen, Libya and Syria have wars. But read on. The passion for change—for dignity—lives on in the generation that led the way into the streets a decade ago.
LARA SABRA, 22, LEBANON
Even before the votes had been counted, the makeshift campaign headquarters of the Secular Club near the American University of Beirut (AUB) rang with chants of “Revolution!” For the first time since Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, a party not affiliated with the country’s sectarian rulers was about to win student elections.
“I never imagined we would win the number of seats we did,” says Lara Sabra, the club’s president. “Even though the political ideology of the club has become more popular now, it was still surprising.” It was also a trend. Independents won 4 of 9 seats at Rafik Hariri University, 14 of 30 at the Lebanese American University and 85 of 101 at St. Joseph University.
Student elections in Lebanon—where there is no reliable polling—are often seen as a bellwether of national sentiment. They can also be volatile affairs: they did not take place at AUB through Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, during which its campus was shelled. As recently as 2007, four students
