I have recently started writing a column for the Al Fanar site (a bilingual site that cover higher education issues across the Arab world). For the second installment, I met with a Moroccan professor, journalist and activist who is in the center of a controversy here over freedom of speech. Maati Monjib, a historian and a leading figure of the February 20 protest movement, was banned from leaving the country last month. 

Mr. Monjib said the ban is an attempt to intimidate him: “They want me to stop my activism, to discredit me, and to silence others.”

Our meeting took place in the offices of a human rights NGO in Rabat—a dilapidated apartment decorated with bright traditional tiles and graffiti.  Monjib is alert and combative, despite the fact that for part of the interview he sat in a wheelchair and that two days before this he was hospitalized. He received a steady stream of phone calls, answering friends’ inquiries with: “I’m OK. I’m resisting!” A petition of support has been signed by prominent Moroccan and foreign academics. The Middle East Studies Association has written to the king and the prime minister of Morocco to request an end to the travel ban.

Freedom of expression and academic freedom will be issues of concern for me. So will any promising new educational initiatives and ground-breaking research, as well as the cultural and scholarly debates of the day in the region.