Clinton School graduate Malcolm Glover (’06), a reporter and anchor for KUAR radio in Little Rock, wrote a commentary about a recent trip he took to Egypt. As it turns out, Glover vacationed to the country just before its historic democratic revolution:
Calls for revolution in that region hit a fever pitch midway through my trip. On January 14, after almost a month of demonstrations, the people of Tunisia ousted their president of 23 years. At the time, many of us knew that such a decisive victory for the protesters would have ramifications for some of Tunisia’s neighbors. Yet none of us realized how quickly change would come.
A few days after I returned to Arkansas, the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 began. Thousands of Egyptians, who were fed-up with governmental policies and wanted economic and social reforms, participated in a series of street demonstrations, marches, rallies and other acts of civil disobedience, violent clashes, and labor strikes that lasted for 18 days and led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.
Seeing the revolution from afar was bittersweet. The journalist in me wanted to be where the action was. Yet after reading about and watching the violence and utter chaos, I knew I had visited and left Egypt at the right time. I was also saddened by reports of looting and theft at the museum in Cairo, a place filled with thousands of priceless Egyptian antiquities that I saw firsthand only a week earlier.