Correction appended.
Two armed guards stood near the door of a packed Smith-Buonanno Hall 201 last night as Maryam Al-Khawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist, approached the podium to speak. Melani Cammett, associate professor of political science and director of the Middle East Studies program, received "tons of e-mails" in the days leading up to the talk urging her to cancel, she said when introducing Al-Khawaja.
The messages Cammett received included concerns that the community would receive a biased view of the situation in Bahrain and allegations that Al-Khawaja and her family were extremists or even "Iranian terrorists," she said. The event was held as scheduled.
Al-Khawaja received a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants Program grant to study at the University last year and served as an Arabic teaching assistant. She began her talk by providing historical context for the ongoing uprising in Bahrain, which began Feb. 14, and then gave her firsthand account of the events. Though protesters originally intended to force the government to create a new constitution, they shifted their demand to total regime change after a demonstrator was killed by riot police, according to Al-Khawaja.
"Of course, there's a lot of inspiration that came from the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia," Al-Khawaja said. "But the way I see it is that the movement in Bahrain is very old," she added, citing long-standing tension between the Sunni royal family and the country's Shiite majority. Before other Middle Eastern demonstrations gave the Bahrainis hope, there had been "a wave of depression … where people felt that change wasn't something that could actually happen."
Al-Khawaja said the initial growth of the movement was "amazing to see." Demands to put the king on trial and remove the regime were particularly stunning in Bahrain, she said, where public opposition against the royal family is often met with serious discipline. "In Bahrain, that usually doesn't happen," she said. "They broke the barrier of fear that had been there before."
Although Al-Khawaja witnessed the beginnings of the uprising, she was forced to leave the country after receiving death threats through Twitter, which she referred to as "hate tweets," from users of the site. According to Al-Khawaja, she now receives at least 150 such tweets every day. She also received harassing tweets that did not contain death threats from the royal family.
Al-Khawaja has been cited in recent media coverage of the Bahrain uprising by news outlets including the New York Times and the Austrialian Broadcasting Corporation. While in the U.S., Al-Khawaja has met with officials at the Department of State to present reports on the situation in Bahrain and push for a stronger commitment of American support and involvement.
At Monday's talk, Al-Khawaja spoke extensively about the recently increasing perception among Bahraini protesters that the U.S. is involved in the conflict. "The Bahrainis are convinced that their government will not do anything unless there is a green light — or lack of a red light — from the U.S.," Al-Khawaja said. This opinion was fueled by a resurgence in violence against the protesters that began immediately after U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' visit to the island nation last week, she said.
For that notion to change, Al-Khawaja said the U.S. must take a stronger stance in the conflict. American students in particular "have the capacity to have an influence in the Middle East" through outreach to elected officials, she said.
Al-Khawaja was critical of students at the University and called it "unfortunate" that students "would rather sit in a classroom and discuss an issue than take real steps."
A previous version of this incorrectly stated that Maryam Al-Khawaja, a prominent Bahraini human rights activist, was forced to leave the country after receiving death threats from the royal family on Twitter. Though Al-Khawaja did receive death threats on Twitter, the tweets she received from the royal family were harassing but did not contain death threats. The Herald regrets the error.
