Why do contemporary Arab autocracies aim to shape youth into socially engaged citizens who volunteer and take responsibility for solving social problems? Traditionally, autocrats are hardly known for seeking more empowered citizens, typically preferring obedience and mass conformity. However, in the Arab World, regimes that have borne the brunt of the Arab uprisings have resorted to engaging youth in dialogue (e.g. Egypt’s World Youth Forum) and encourage youth to assume civic responsibility. In Jordan, King Abdullah has publically lauded “active citizenship.” The Ministry of Youth today works less with recreation and patriotic education and more with social entrepreneurship and “Innovation Camps.” A new national law, moreover, obliges all students in public Universities to volunteer. This paper addresses this puzzle by drawing on evidence from an ethnography of Jordan’s regime-led Youth Empowerment Sector, focusing primarily on the Crown Prince Foundation, a growing outfit that seeks to empower youth in various programs while breeding attachments to the successor to the throne. A secondary source of data comes from participant observations from volunteering that I conducted with local youth-run NGOs. Recently, Calvert Jones (2015) has argued that autocrats seek socially engaged youth because they carry personal preferences to shape citizens according to liberal ideals. Other scholars have understood Arab autocrats’ tendency to allow citizens to assume civic responsibility as a kind of safety valve (Yom 2005, Brumberg 2003), through which citizens vent grievances and frustrations while the state maintains strict political “limits to empowerment” (Wiktorowicz 2000). By contrast, this paper argues that it is precisely in actual forms of empowerment, by which youth acquire useful skills and confidence to volunteer and set up social enterprises, that a critical act of interpellation takes place that has far-reaching depoliticizing implications. The sector depoliticizes youth through atomization, whereby every individual is charged with being her own change-maker; it depoliticizes through problem framing, whereby sanctioned social problems, typically locally focused and politically de-contextualized, are always already given; and, finally, it de-politicizes by responsibilizing youth themselves, thereby shifting the will to change towards the individual and away from structural impediments emerging from authoritarianism in the form of corruption, nepotism, and neglect. Through such depoliticizing techniques, the state-led Youth Empowerment Sector, with its moral magnetism and incitement to positive engagement, may contain – or at least suspend – the spread among youth of the politically explosive combination of hopelessness, apathy and protracted “waithood” to enter socially accepted forms of adulthood.

The Kuwaiti diwaniya has often been described as a democratic space, where government and opposition members garner support (Tétreault, 2000). A male-only space in its inception, it also provides networking opportunities for economic elites. As an extension of the home, this private space is protected by constitution and law from interference. While the diwaniya has undergone changes over time, mostly in physical appearance (Chay, 2016), it has not adapted much to societal changes. Women, though marginally included in diwaniyas during elections (see Stephenson, 2011), have still not been integrated into the traditional patriarchal institution, mirroring their inability to penetrate the National Assembly despite political enfranchisement in 2005. Also, the implicit invitational aspect of the diwaniya contributes to its exclusion of “others,” often resulting in echo-chambers rather than spaces for true democratic dialogue. Youth are identified in numerous state reports as crucial drivers for political and, primarily, economic change. Though education is named as the space to secure such change, little has been done to reform the education system, which remains highly centralized, didactic, segregated, and, judging by Kuwait’s consistently low international rankings, ineffective (Fishbein et al, 2021). How to engage Kuwaiti youth remains elusive (Lakshminarayanan, 2020). However, cyberspace allows interactions across groups that segregated schools and diwaniyas prohibit, and young people are creating their own spaces and means of engagement. This paper explores three online and hybrid “diwaniyas” created by Kuwaiti youth. Described by the founders as “the evolution of the diwaniya” and “more democratic diwaniya[s],” each retains crucial features of the traditional institution, while throwing off more constraining elements. We conducted semi-structured interviews with the founders (Patton, 2002), as well as critical discourse analysis of the diwaniyas’ online platforms (Bouvier & Machin, 2018); data analysis uncovered three major themes. First is the three diwaniyas’ retention of the “private” designation despite holding in-person meetings in public and being in the most public arena – the internet. The second theme is inclusion. Women feature much more prominently, particularly as invited speakers and audience members; however, their inclusion is still evolving, with founders aware that they need to do more. In addition, there is more bridging of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, though expatriates are still largely absent. A final element of these diwaniyas is the founders’ recognition of the need to listen. While traditional diwaniyas were venues to be heard – active listening to “others” is a significant shift in these more democratic spaces.

Prior to 2006, citizenship education in Kuwait formal education was centred on the notions of muwāṭana, or ‘(national) citizenship’, and waṭaniyya, ‘nationalism’. In 2006, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Education created a new citizenship curriculum underpinned by human rights, intending to “create a thick knowledge framework with awareness and understanding of the constitution and human rights” (MoE, 2008). While citizenship education policies like these in some Arab countries include cosmopolitan concepts of citizenship and human rights, they often co-exist and are undermined by nationalist and conservative values (Akar & Chelala, 2015; Al-Nakib, 2015). Despite these tensions, there is little empirical evidence on young Kuwaitis’ views regarding their citizenship. Our study explored Kuwaiti secondary school students’ conceptualisations of their citizenship identities, duties and rights, and how these relate to concepts of citizenship taught in the national curriculum. Data was collected from two public schools and a private American school. 109 students expressed their perceptions of their identities, citizenship, their rights, and where they feel most heard in a series of individual and group workshop activities. Our study incorporated a constructivist, dialogical approach to classroom group work as data collection that recognized students’ ‘cultures of communication’ (Christensen, 2004). We found that, despite learning about cosmopolitan, ‘maximal’ citizenship (McLaughlin, 1992) and human rights through either the national Kuwaiti or a Western curriculum, students conceptualised their citizenship mainly in nationalistic terms. Most identified with their national, regional, religious and familial communities; this resonates with characteristics of Kuwait’s constitution highlighted in the curriculum, which states that Kuwait is an Arab Muslim country, where Islamic sharia is a main source of legislation. Students demonstrated an understanding of and agreement with what they are taught about citizenship identities and human rights. However, they were simultaneously critical about the fulfillment of their human rights claimed to be protected by Kuwait in their Constitution and Human Rights textbook, and felt that they do not fully enjoy these rights and freedoms. The results illustrate that young people’s civic identities are deeply nationalistic and influenced by cultural and religious tradition, while also inclusive of a critical cosmopolitan lens highlighting the problematic citizenship status and rights of women and non-Kuwaitis. Students’ cogent dissections of the gaps between the citizenship “haves” and “have-nots” suggests a sophisticated understanding of the differentiated and unequal civic realities in Kuwait. Our findings reveal significant tensions and fragmentations in Kuwaiti youth civic identity formation that warrant further study.

Every student deserves equal access to quality education regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, geographic, gender, location, or whether s/he/they has/have a physical and/or cognitive disability (Slade, 2017). Yet, accessibility to education for students with disabilities can oftentimes be inaccessible. This paper offers a preliminary investigation of accessibility in public schools and higher institutions of learning for students with disabilities in Jordan. For the purpose of this paper, the definition of accessibility is confined to the architectural and structural environment and physical barriers faced by students with disabilities in public schools and institutions of higher education. The objectives of this descriptive, mixed methods analysis are twofold. First, it aims to better understand the existing accessibility and environmental related issues in Jordanian public schools and higher institutions of learning. This is carried out by examining the availability and paucity of reliable data concerning enrollment, attendance, and accessibility, education expenditure and budgetary allocations, and different types of environmental barriers in schools and institutions of higher learning, in order to better understand the existing accessibility and environmental related issues in Jordanian public schools and higher institutions of learning. The results indicate that in order to ameliorate physical accessibility in education, effective changes need to be considered and implemented. Second, it investigates the ways in which Jordan is attempting to reduce the amount of these physical barriers. This is accomplished by investigating various components found in the ‘10-Year Strategy for Inclusive Education’ addressing environmental barriers and accessibility in public schools and initiated by Prince Mired Raad Zeid Al-Hussein of Jordan and the Ministry of Education. This strategy “is a translation of the provisions of the Law on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities No. (20) of 2017 and a reflection of the significance of this topic” (MoE, 2020). The aim of this strategy is to implement an inclusive system in public education suitable for everyone. The components being investigated include the ways in which the Ministry of Education intends to approach raising awareness and advocating for students with disabilities, collecting and reporting reliable enrollment and attendance data, and assessing and collating public school expenditure. Overall, this analysis contributes to the pool of limited research that offers insight into issues of physical barriers and accessibility in Jordanian public schools and higher institutions of learning.

The traditional educational system in Iran went through a wide range of adjustments and reforms over the past two centuries until modern methods were adopted. In the beginning, the privilege of education was predictably limited to men. Only in 1907 did Iranian women finally gain formal access to public education when a primary school was established for girls in Tehran. It was through the efforts of a group of individuals who rallied around the issue of educational reform that public access to education was expanded to an unprecedented extent. Touran Mirhadi (1927 – 2016) was one individual who made learning possible by emphasizing children’s status and providing them with the required materials. Lovingly nicknamed “The Grandmother of Progressive Education in Iran,” she contended that a nourishing and learned society cannot be constructed without addressing the needs of children. She spent most of her life designing and modifying pedagogical methods to make education easier and more accessible for all Iranian children. Even though Mirhadi established children’s book exhibitions, the Children’s Book Council of Iran, and the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, there is scant scholarly work analyzing this trailblazing woman’s further contributions. Biographies in general and women’s life narratives, in particular, are rare in Iran. Some literary critics have called the genre a misfit within the context of Iranian literary history. This paper seeks to introduce this educational advocate to a larger audience since no biography of this trailblazer woman exists in English. Through a close study of Mirhadi’s life and services, this paper will outline how Touran Mirhadi’s innovative educational methods and ground-breaking organizations contributed towards shifting traditional modes of education toward modern methods. Using interpretative analysis, this paper will argue that the role of this pioneering woman was crucial in normalizing modern public education in Iran.