A decade after the Arab Spring, Westerners’ perceptions of events and Arabs’ perceptions of themselves remain muddled.
![Protesters demonstrate against Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis on January 14, 2011 [File: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]](/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/RTXWKI3.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
Safwan Masri is Executive Vice President for Global Centers and Global Development at Columbia University, and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia’s S... chool of International and Public Affairs. A lifetime member of the Council for Foreign Relations and an honorary fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, Masri is the author of Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly (Columbia University Press, 2017).
A decade after the Arab Spring, Westerners’ perceptions of events and Arabs’ perceptions of themselves remain muddled.