Mabruk Derbesh

Academic Mentor: Timothy Mitchell, Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and Africa Studies and of International and Public Affairs

Research Topic:

The Impact of Political Change on the State of Academia including Academic Freedom in the Arab World: Libya as a Case Study

Mabruk Derbesh earned his PhD in Applied Management and Decision Science with an emphasis on Knowledge Management from Walden University. His research focuses on academic freedom in the Arab world. He argues that while academic freedom is still a novel concept in the Arab world, a global threat to academia and free thought is evident even within the liberal apparatus in the West.

In Libya, Mabruk was a faculty member at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, University of Tripoli, where he taught courses on management. He has written extensively in major Libyan magazines and newspapers, and is known for his distinguished Arabic writing style and harsh criticism of the static political discourse and religious extremism. He is the founder of the Libyan Institution of Academic and Intellectual Freedom.

Publications:

Mabruk Derbesh, "The Impact of Political Change on the State of Academia Including Academic Freedom in the Arab World: Libya as a Case Study", October 2019.

Talks:

"The Impact of Political Change on the State of Academic Freedom in Libya and the MENA Region"
June 29, 2020