Margot Badran, a former Northwestern visiting professor, returned to campus to give a lecture about women during the Egyptian Revolution on Wednesday at 620 Library Place.
Badran, who taught religious studies at NU in 2003, is a senior fellow at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. She will be releasing a book focusing on gender and Islam in Africa this May.
The professor began her lecture, which was sponsored by the Program of African Studies, with a presentation of photos focusing on women protestors who gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“There was very much an emphasis on the combination of rights, justice, equality and women,” Badran said.
Badran holds both U.S. and Egyptian citizenships and said she generally returns to Egypt every year. In 2010, she went just as uprisings were breaking out across the country with people calling for the removal of dictator Hosni Mubarak.
“I was absolutely thrilled because I would have hated to miss this experience,” Badran said. “It was unbelievable, exciting, riveting, moving.”
Virginia DeLancey, a former faculty member at Northwestern, said she enjoyed the presentation because it brought up points that weren’t covered by the media.
Badran also shared her experiences marching for International Women’s Day on March 8.
“There were as many men as women,” she said. “Everybody wants the rights of whoever. Everybody. It’s all about us, the Egyptians.”
Badran and other female marchers were heckled by a group of male bystanders during the march, she said.
“They were very, very nasty,” she said. “(They said), ‘Go home, women. Your jobs are in the house. You have no business being out.’ They wanted to do anything to destroy this revolution.”
Mona Oraby, a first-year graduate student studying political science, said Badran’s lecture affirmed many things that she had read in the media.
“It was extremely exciting to see that at least 20 percent of the participants in the revolution were women,” Oraby said. “I’m hoping that in the next couple of months women will make a louder voice for themselves in politics or a larger space will be made for them.”
