On the first day of GENED 1008, Professor Cammett asked us: “Why do people take to the streets even when the costs are so high?” At the time, it seemed like a distant question. But by mid-semester, as student protests erupted across Harvard Yard in response to the war in Gaza, the question felt more immediate than anything I’d ever studied.
I’m from India—a country where mass protest is both a tradition and a necessity. I’ve seen farmers camp outside Parliament for months, students shut down campuses, and minority groups rally in defiance of discriminatory policies. But protests in the Middle East felt like something else—something more dangerous, more desperate. This course, “Power and Identity in the Middle East,” gave me the structure to understand the strategies, costs, and consequences of those protests. It also gave me the courage to reflect on my own positions more critically.
I have family working across the Middle East— in Dubai and Ethiopia, others who’ve lived in Iran. I grew up hearing very different perspectives on the region: some filtered through Indian diaspora pride (“look at what we’ve built in the Gulf!”), others through concern over growing authoritarianism or sectarianism. None of it prepared me for the complexity we encountered in class.
In the unit on high-risk protest, we studied Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria—not just the facts of revolution, but the emotions: fear, moral identity, and the tipping point where fear turns into action. Wendy Pearlman’s article on Syria, for instance, revealed how individuals redefined their personal identities to justify protest. That felt eerily familiar. Around that time, back on campus, some of my friends had begun publicly organizing around the war in Gaza. Others stayed silent, terrified of being doxxed or misunderstood. I saw peers wrestling with the same question Pearlman studied: When does silence feel more dangerous than speech?
There was no shortage of moral urgency at Harvard this year. Posters of kidnapped Israelis were ripped down and taped back up. Slogans and chants echoed across the Yard. I had conversations with people I deeply respect on both “sides” of the conflict, only to realize that such binary thinking is part of the problem. GENED 1008 made it clear: the Middle East defies easy categorization. It is not a monolith. Neither are the people who care about it.
I still remember our readings on the making of the post-colonial Middle East. Elizabeth Thompson’s work on “Justice Interrupted” showed how Western powers imposed flawed liberal frameworks that often ignored or actively suppressed local voices. The result: brittle institutions, simmering discontent. As I watched the Harvard community struggle to respond to the war—with administrative silence, delayed statements, and student activism—I kept returning to that idea. Whose voices are seen as legitimate? Who gets to define what counts as a political response?
Even in the classroom, I felt the weight of this. During section discussions, some students spoke passionately about Palestinian resistance; others referenced Israeli trauma and statehood. Our TFs worked hard to hold the space, but the tension was real. For me, coming from a country that has long balanced Muslim, Hindu, and secular identities—and sometimes failed spectacularly—I felt uniquely attuned to the fragility of pluralism. It’s easy to collapse into groupthink, easier still to disengage entirely. The harder path is to remain intellectually honest, emotionally open, and politically accountable. This course encouraged that.
One of the most transformative moments was the guest lecture by Professor Derek Penslar on Israel and Palestine. Instead of presenting a fixed narrative, he gave us layers: historical trauma, political pragmatism, and the broken promises of post-colonial statecraft. I walked away not with answers, but better questions. What does justice mean in a context where everyone feels wronged? What forms of resistance preserve life, and which destroy it?
By the end of the semester, I realized this course had altered something fundamental in me. I no longer looked at Middle Eastern politics as something foreign or “over there.” The region became a lens—a way to think about power, identity, and moral responsibility anywhere. Whether it was understanding democratic backsliding in Turkey or the economic reform plans in Saudi Arabia, I learned to ask: who benefits? Who decides? And what happens when the people decide to push back?
I also started seeing the connections to home. India, too, is grappling with rising authoritarianism, ethno-religious nationalism, and restrictions on dissent. I thought of how Muslim communities in India are increasingly marginalized, of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, and of how many people in my own circles were afraid to speak out. GENED 1008 gave me the vocabulary to describe what I saw: institutional decay, manufactured polarization, and the politics of fear.
Yet the course didn’t just dwell in critique. In our final unit on development, we studied how communities rebuild. From soccer leagues in post-ISIS Iraq to grassroots peace efforts in Lebanon, we saw glimpses of resilience. This course taught me how to read between the lines—of textbooks, speeches, news reports, and protest banners. It taught me that no protest is ever just about one thing; it’s about accumulated grievances, cultural memory, and the ever-shifting calculus of power.
When I think back to the tents and posters in the Yard now, I don’t just see slogans. I see a region in turmoil, a classroom in dialogue, and a student—myself—who is learning to listen harder, ask better questions, and imagine deeper solidarities.