Before speaking at the Levantine Cultural Center on Wednesday night, Mark LeVine, a history professor at UC Irvine and the author of “Heavy Metal Islam,” discussed the unusual plane ride to Egypt during the revolution there. Watch below for segment from the interview.
The event, a fundraiser for the nonprofit, Free Tunisia, also featured Egyptian and Tunisian speakers, who spoke about their countries histories and their revolutions – propelled by youth determined to oust their longtime autocrat leaders. Levantine Center co-founder Jordan Elgrably, whose recent opinion piece in Al Jazeera says, among other things, that “Israel should be integrated into the mosaic of the Middle East. It is time to end the conflict that began with the belief that Arabs and Jews are historic enemies,” helped organize the event.