Sean L. Yom, a summer 2012 POMEPS Travel-Research-Engagement (TRE) grantee, recently published “Tribal Politics in Contemporary Jordan: The Case of the Hirak Movement” in The Middle East Journal. His article, based on TRE-supported research, examines the wave of Jordanian political opposition that emerged in 2011 encompassing nearly 40 East Bank tribal youth activist groups known as Hirak. Yom writes, “Staging weekly demonstrations and rallies for over two years, the tribal youth’s bold and diffuse activism remains one of the most important untold stories about Jordan during the Arab uprisings.”
For more from Yom’s TRE research read “Jordan’s new politics of tribal dissent” on the Middle East Channel.
Yom is an assistant professor of political science at Temple University. He is the author of “Jordan: the Ruse of Reform” and “Resilient Royals: How Arab Monarchies Hang On” in Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). He is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a member of the research council at the International Forum for Democratic Studies. — C.K.