Contributor(s): Professor Lisa Anderson | This lecture is an examination of the recent uprisings in the Arab world, highlighting where they happened, where they succeeded and what they may mean for both the practice and the study of politics in the region. Lisa Anderson was appointed president of the American University in Cairo in January 2011. A specialist on politics in the Middle East and North Africa, Anderson served as the university's provost from 2008 to 2010. Prior to joining AUC in 2008, Anderson served as James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at Columbia University and is the former dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. She also served as the chair of the political science department at the university and as the director of Columbia's Middle East Institute. Before joining Columbia, she was assistant professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Anderson is the author of Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Columbia University Press, 2003), The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton University Press, 1986), and coeditor of The Origins of Arab Nationalism (Columbia 1991).