The historian and Arabist Jean-Pierre Filiu will discuss his latest book published in the US, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy, with Alfred Stepan, Professor of Government at Columbia University and founding Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion.

In his disturbing and timely From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2015) Jean-Pierre Filiu lays bare the strategies and tactics employed by the Middle Eastern autocracies that set out to crush the democratic uprisings of the ‘Arab Revolution.’ In pursuit of these goals, they turned to shadowy intelligence agencies and internal security arms of the so-called ‘Deep State,’ as well as to street gangs and militias to enforce their will. They discredited and split their opponents while boosting Salafi-Jihadi groups such as Islamic State. They also released hardline Islamists from prison and secretly armed and funded them. The Arab counter-revolution surprised most observers, who underestimated its leaders’ ferocious readiness to literally burn down their countries in order to cling to absolute power.

The historian and Arabist, Jean-Pierre Filiu, is an associate professor at Sciences Po (Paris). He was a career diplomat from 1988 to 2006 and has served as an adviser to the Prime minister (2000-2002), the Minister of Defense (1991-93), and to the Minister of Interior (1990-91). In 2012, Filiu was appointed by President Hollande as one of the members of the committee in charge of the White Book for Defense and National Security. His recent publications include Arab Revolution, Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising (Hurst, 2011), Apocalypse in Islam (University of California Press, 2011), Gaza (Oxford University Press, 2014), From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy (Oxford University Press, 2015), and the graphic novel Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, (SelfMadeHero, 2014 with illustrations by David B.).

Professor Alfred Stepan has been the Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford, and the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of fifteen books on such subjects as failed and successful democratic transitions, civil-military relations, and religion and society. He is an elected Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He had made six visits to Tunisia since the fall of Ben Ali. His political commentary has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist.