On a rainy moderate Thursday, Dr. Steven A. Cook, dressed in a
purple shirt and brown khakis, was sitting in this oriental-looking office in
the greenish, glassy Council on Foreign Relations building located on L
Street. The office was crammed with a
library completely filled with books on one side of the room, and a U-shaped
desk taking center stage with many family pictures and stationary everywhere on
top of it. At first sight, you can see a big portrait of Egypt's former
president Hosni Mubarak on the desk, with some other paintings adorned with
neat Arabic calligraphy are hung on the walls. This is where Cook spends his
day at work where he has served as the Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for
Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC since
2009.
"Hasib Sabbagh family endowed this
fellowship at the council for someone who does work on the Middle East,"
says Cook, 46, while sitting cross-legged in his rotating chair. "Hasib is
a Palestinian from Nablus and he started a construction business and he very
much believed in coexistence and peace in the region. He and his family have
been philanthropic in a variety of different and important ways."
"I taught at AU [American University] last fall," says Cook who has almost 25 years of expertise under his belt.
"I taught an undergraduate course on
Egyptian politics from 1882 to the present. Now I am teaching a graduate
seminar at George Washington on militaries and politics in the Middle East in
the Elliot school." But he feels teaching is not his cup of tea, let alone
his family and time-consuming job. "It is not really my thing. I have
family considerations and I am very interested in policy in some way. This is a
wonderful position that I have," he says referring to his job as a Middle
East expert.
Cook is such a tech-savvy scholar who keeps an active Twitter account of
more than 25 thousand followers. His tweets exquisitely mirror his sense of
humor. "I am a big Twitter user. I tweet quite a bit. Most of my tweets
are kind of snarky or funny," he remarks as he leans forward on his chair.
As a morning person, checking Twitter is his morning ritual that kicks off
his day into a good start. For him, Twitter is a useful tool to keep up with what is going on in the Middle East. "The good thing about Twitter is that
I can wake up at 5 o'clock is the morning and I have people tweeting
interesting article and interesting insights about the region. My morning
routine is Twitter, and then I check my email; I get tons of emails from the
region. By the time, I get here [to the office], I take a look at the articles
from the media of the region that I that I think interesting on that day,"
he says.
"The most rewarding part of my job is when I can have an influence
on the way people think about the world," says Cook who credits both his
parents and his college for his overwhelming interest in the world in general
and the Middle East in particular. "I think that there has been so much
about the Middle East for so long that has been written and said that that I think
it has created more misunderstanding that understanding," says Cook whose
sublime mission is to help clarify to the people, through his blogs, articles,
books or commentary, what is really going on in the Middle East, what the US
interests in the region are and how the US can think differently about its
foreign policy in the region.
One time, Cook was asked to lead a group of younger politicians to the
Middle East where they went to Egypt, Jordan, Palestinian territories, and
finally to Israel. When they came back and their flight landed in New York, one
young politician came and said to Cook, who was waiting in the baggage claim,
"I want to really thank you for putting together this program. But I had
very clear views about the Middle East. Now I am confused." Cook replied, "The way that I set up
this trip and the people that you meet is to confuse you. I am glad that I
accomplished what I've accomplished," referring to the fact that the
Middle East is not just black and while but rather a very diverse and
complicated region.
Born in New
York City, Cook grew just outside of New York in a small town called Plainview right in the middle
of Long Island. "I assume it is called Plainview because there is nothing
really to see there. It is pretty plain," he says while laughing and
grinning from ear to ear.
While people his age growing up in the insular world on Long Island in
the 1970s and the 1980s were mainly interested in girls, soccer and hockey, the
then six-grader Cook, whose parents were world travelers, was interested in
exploring the world and knowing more about world affairs. At the time, interest
in foreign affairs was like an oxymoron for youngsters, but not for Cook who
read the front page of the New York Times from a relatively young age. Yet all of
this happened for a reason. "I was in Middle school when the American
hostages were taken in Iran in November 1979. Suddenly, there were millions of
people in the streets in the city called Tehran in a country called Iran,
saying death to America. Why did anybody want death to America?" he
wondered. It did not make sense for him
as 12-year-old student and this triggered him to embark in a lifelong knowledge
journey that turned out to be a life career.
Cook was a unique student. "I was a very good student. The problem
with me as a student was that it was hard to motivate me to get me to get to my
homework but what really interested me was the world," he said. "I
wanted to do other things. But what really interested me was the world ad in
public schools in the United States, they don't teach you a lot about the
world. My favorite subject was social studies. I did world cultures, American
history, European history and the parts I liked most were world cultures,
European history. When I was a senior at high school, I took an advanced world
history. It is world affairs that were more interesting to me."
His learning, however, was focused on understanding, not on revenge. He
also developed special interest in history and political science that stood him
in a good stead at college. "I was not motivated by a desire to defend
America. It was more an interest to understand how the world and how people in
other cultures and places view the US and its history. When I was in school, I
was looking at the map and the US was placed in the middle of the map and the
world doesn't look that way. There were so many perspective and ideas. History
and political science are just fascinating," he explained.
After high school, Cook matriculated at Vassar College which was a
turning point in his life. "Vassar was very important to me," he
said. "I don't think that had I gone anywhere else, I'd not have been
sitting where I am sitting right now. Vassar did not make me a Middle East
expert but what it did is that it took a kid who is interested in the world,
brought those interests in the world out and turned them into passion." It
is the nature of the program he joined that worked miracles for him. "Vassar
had a very innovative international studies program that I was immediately
drawn to. I studied economics, history and political science at the same
time," he explained.
Curious as he is, Cook was a student like no other at a college that was
a perfect fit for him. "I spent a lot of time in the library reading. I
was very good student in college. I was a better student in college that in
high school. I was really motivated by that intellectual environment created at
Vassar," he said.
When his plans to study abroad didn't work out, he did not give up and
went to study in American University's Washington Semester Program where he
studied the Middle East and world affairs. "I was supposed to go abroad to
Jerusalem but the first Intifada [uprising] broke up. My goal to go there is to
learn the language of the region. My parents said I was not permitted to go
because it was too dangerous and they know that I would get myself in some sort
of trouble. I was a trouble-maker.
Instead I spent a semester in Washington D.C. in American University's
Washington Semester Program," he explained.
Right after graduation, Cook hanged out in New York City with some
friends for a few months where he worked in the business sector but he did not
find his passion there. "I hated
it. It was so boring. So I moved to Washington and I found a job here in
Washington," he said in a tone reflecting his dislike to his former
business job.
In Washington D.C., he worked as a research fellow at the Brookings
Institution. Prior to that, he was a Soref research fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy where he met his wife. Now they have two little
daughters. "Everybody commented at our wedding that it was no secret that
I met my wife at work. We both were working at the same place. In the mid 1990,
she was a research associate and I was a junior fellow at the Washington
Institute for the Near East Policy," he said.
Cook managed later to travel to Jerusalem after graduation and achieve
his dream of exploring and learning the languages of the region. "When I
graduated from college, I came back to Washington, worked for a couple of years
in Washington, saved money and then I moved to Jerusalem. I used Jerusalem as my home base. I enrolled
in an Arabic class in east Jerusalem, I
enrolled in a Hebrew class in west Jerusalem, and I travelled all around. It was quite an
eye-opening experience. I spent the whole year there," he recalled as he
was holding his black glasses.
By the end of the year he spent in Jerusalem, he could speak a little
bit of Arabic. When he was accepted in
the Johns Hopkins school of Advanced International studies, his Arabic improved
dramatically thanks to his Jordanian teacher Saraya Haddad whom he described as
"the most amazing Arabic teacher."
Although many may shun studying a region as hectic and turbulent as the
Middle East, Cook found an opportunity out of that. "There is no good
news. It often seems hopeless. But the work is the work. It is fascinating to
think, write about and analyze the region. Now it is a great time to do that," he
remarks.
Cook has a blog called "For the Potomac to the Euphrates"
where he has been blogging for almost five years. "It allows me to do and
say things I can say and do in formal articles, I have been blogging basically
once a week but I should be doing it more. I do a piece on Monday and I do a
suggestion on weekend readings on Friday." For Cook is it more than just a
blog, it is the link that connects him with his readers. "I sit down on
Sunday evening after putting two little girls to bed and I write. I think what
is the fun things about the blog is that at least the way I write it I believe
that the people who get to read it can get to know me as a person rather than a
name connected to the Council on Foreign Relations. I let my personality come
through in the blog where I can't do that in some of the more formal things
that I write."
"Steven is one of the most wide-ranging bona fide experts on the
Middle East I know," says Amy Hawthorne, a senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council and a friend of his. "He works extensively on Egypt, Iraq,
and Turkey, as well as on Israel-Palestinian issues, Syria and other key issues
in the Middle East. In addition to being an excellent scholar and
analyst, Steven is a wonderful friend: supportive, loyal, and very,
very funny."
Cook is the author of the highly-acclaimed The Struggle for Egypt:
From Nasser to Tahrir Square in Fall 2011, which won the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy's gold medal in 2012, and Ruling But Not
Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey
in 2007. Writing to domestic and international audience, he puts himself in
their shoes when writing a book so that it can be reader-friendly, useful and
understandable. "What I always do
when I am writing is that I try to write not in a kind of jargon," he
said. "I try to write in a clear, accessible way, but keeping in mind keep
a sharp analytic edge to it that helps people understand the region."
"I called it a Struggle for
Egypt for a reason because Egypt has always been a richer, a more diverse
ideological environment," he said while pointing to a book on the desk
that turned to be the actual The Struggle for Egypt book.
"Dr. Cook writes with an insider perspective," said
Abdurrahman Mansour, a senior majoring in Political Science at Cairo
University. Cook always loves to hear from his readers, appreciates their
feedback and bear it in mind in his ensuing works. Referring to his book The
Struggle for Egypt, he said "I love to hear from Egyptians who read
the book. Egyptians reactions to the book are the most important for me. I am a
foreigner and I am writing about their country and I have learnt a lot. Most of
the feedback from Egyptian has been positive and I have learned a lot."
"His book on Egypt is one of the most readable and incisive studies
of modern Egypt and is sure to become a classic. He knows the
history and the contemporary policy context in Washington DC,"
says Hawthorne who considers Cook as a Mideast wonk whose tweets are very
hilarious.
Cook is now writing a new book now about "The Middle East after
the Arab Uprisings" that will come out in 2016."It is a big
project. It is taking a lot of work and a lot of my time. Although it is not
exclusive to the Arab world, I am including Turkey in the book," he said
giving a sneak peak of the content of this new book.
Looking forward and thinking about what the future holds for him, Cook
will write yet another book. "The book that I'd like to write after that,”
he says “is more about the United States and its encounters with the region
rather than countries in the region.”
This profile story is based on an interview I conducted with Prof. Steven Cook in spring 2015.
