GU-Q Professor’s New Book Analyzes Arab Youths Restlessness in Modern World

Georgetown University Professor Joshua Mitchell is author of the new book Tocqueville in Arabia: Dilemmas in a Democratic Age. In his book, Mitchell, who is currently teaching at Georgetown’s Qatar campus, analyzes the challenges young people in the Middle East face in the modern world.“Students in today’s Arab world speak fondly of their family traditions and culture yet, at the same time, they seem to be leaving behind the communal and civic connections that shape their identities. Students in Qatar, for example, are pulled in two very different directions,” says Mitchell.Mitchell helped establish Georgetown’s campus in Qatar. He was also acting Chancellor of the American University in Iraq, between 2008 and 2010. He is based at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. By working in both the West and the Middle East, Mitchell has a unique perspective on his topic. He describes the book as part memoir, part geopolitical analysis, and part rumination on the souls of the young.Of particular interest in Tocqueville in Arabia is Mitchell’s description of a psychological restlessness in today’s Arab youth, a condition he says resembles Tocqueville’s predictions, from nearly two centuries ago, of the condition of those in transition between the aristocratic and democratic ages in France, the rest of Europe, and in America.Mitchell is an educator, and his book is written from the perspective of an educator. In fact, the premise of his book is that if you really want to know what a civilization holds dear then look at what it teaches its young people.Published by The University of Chicago Press, Tocqueville in Arabia is described by Dr. Yossi Shain as “an enticing and courageous reading of contemporary life among the younger generation in the Middle East, and a sober account of the challenges to modernity that lay ahead.”