Tahrir's Youth
Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution
"A much needed contribution to the 21st century's pattern of uprisings"
― Gilbert Achcar, author of The People Want
"Required reading for anyone interested in Egypt’s uprising or the future of revolutionary movements"
― Joshua Stacher, author of Watermelon Democracy
January 25, 2011, was a watershed moment for Egypt and a transformative experience for the young men and women who changed the course of their nation’s history. Tahrir’s Youth tells the story of the organized youth behind the mass uprising. Timely and necessary, this study not only illuminates the uprising’s leadership dynamics but also demonstrates the need for imagining new modes of revolutionary organizing for the twenty-first century.
About the Author
Rusha Latif is an Egyptian-American researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work focuses on social movements and revolutions, particularly in the Middle East, with an emphasis on leadership, organization, and collective action across lines of class, gender, religion, and ideology. Her book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (AUC Press, 2022), draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo during the 2011 uprising to examine activist agency in the absence of formal leadership. Her research has been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, and Jadaliyya, and she has guest lectured at leading institutions nationally and internationally, including Stanford, Yale, and Oxford.
