Arabic was at the center of tension in the Middle Eastern cultural landscape for the first half of the twentieth century, with colonial narratives dismissing it as inferior and inappropriate for science education, and nationalist activists asserting its importance as a source of cultural authenticity. This paper furthers the panel’s consideration of anti-colonial struggle by revealing how Arabic language reform countered colonial discourse by asserting the value of Arabic, and furthered the formation of a language on which pan-Arab and pan-Islamic nationalisms could be built, in both the Mashriq and Maghrib. The state language academies founded across the region, including in Damascus (1919), Jordan (1924), Cairo (1932), and Rabat (1961), were central to Arabic language reform. Also important, though less recognized, are earlier activist language associations comprised of concerned teachers, school inspectors, religious scholars, and other Arabic professionals. The paper focuses primarily on Egypt, where British educational policies marginalizing Arabic led to nationalist protest and a 1907 agreement that increased coverage of Arabic, religion, and national history in Egyptian government schools. Largely excluded from mainstream histories, however, is the subsequent role played by language professionals, in Egypt and elsewhere. The paper reveals that, shortly after the 1907 agreement, graduates of Egypt’s training school for Arabic teachers, Dar al-‘Ulum, launched an array of Arabic reform projects, beginning a tradition of reform that continues through today. This paper examines how language experts defended Arabic against colonial narratives of inferiority, reforming it such that it could be taught more easily in an expanding school system and inventing authentic vocabulary for new technologies. It ties together successive reform initiatives and their transnational implications by focusing on Egyptian educationalist and poet Ali al-Jarim. He was a founding member of the Cairo Arabic Academy, though his contributions to the organization have been unfairly characterized as reactionary by more liberal figures such as Taha Husayn. The paper is based on full runs of rare periodicals associated with Arabic language professionals, as well as al-Jarim’s collected works. The paper argues that language reform efforts formed an essential part of anti-colonial resistance because they helped establish the relevance of local culture within rapidly modernizing states and societies, and as a result they should be seen in parallel with both Islamic modernist defense of Islam and nationalist anti-colonial agitation.