CASAR Public Panel Discussion: US Midterm Elections: Expectations, ​Facts and ​Reality

Amr Adly

Associate Professor, Political Science Department,AUC

Amr Adly is Assistant Professor in the department of political science at The American University in Cairo (AUC). He worked as a researcher at the Middle East directions program at the European University Institute. He worked as a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research centered on political economy, development studies, and economic sociology of the Middle East, with a focus on Egypt.

Adly has taught political economy at AUC and Stanford University. He has also worked as a project manager at the center of democracy, development, and the rule of law at Stanford University, where he was a postdoctoral fellow.Adly is the author of cleft capitalism: the social origins of failed market-making in Egypt(Stanford University Press, 2020) and state reform and development in the Middle East: the cases of Turkey and Egypt (Routledge, 2012). He has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including Geoforum, Business and Politics, the journal of TurkishStudies, and Middle Eastern Studies. Adly is also a frequent contributor to print and online news sources, including Bloomberg, Jadaliyya, and Al-Shorouk.

Sean Lee

Assistant Professor, Political Science Department

The American University in Cairo

Sean Lee is an assistant professor of political science at The American University in Cairo (AUC). He received his PhD from the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. Previously, he was a Doctoral Fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut and a research affiliate with the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. His work focuses on minority communities during times of conflict, in particular in Lebanon and Syria. He has conducted fieldwork in Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia, Germany, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Alaa El Hadidi

Professor of Practice Department at the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy

The American University in Cairo

Alaa Elhadidi, is a former Egyptian diplomat and former ambassador to Turkey, Russia and Romania and is currently a professor of practice of international relations at The School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP) at The American University in Cairo (AUC).

He has an extensive background of over 30 years in foreign policy research and writing. From 2006 to 2007, he served as spokesperson for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2007 to 2010, he was the Egyptian ambassador to Turkey. Then, from 2010 to 2012, he was Egypt’s ambassador to Russia, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. And from 2012 to 2013, he was the spokesperson for the Egyptian prime minister.

Elhadidi was the director of the Institute for Diplomatic Studies in Cairo. Afterwards, he was appointed to be Egypt’s ambassador to Romania. In addition, he has notably held diplomatic assignments in different Egyptian cabinets of foreign ministers and Egypt’s embassies in the US and Jordan. 

Elhadidi got his bachelor's degree in political science from AUC and his PhD in political science from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was a fellow at the Centre for International Studies at Harvard University.