Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, Author at Syndication Bureau

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is the founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation, an independent initiative established to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region through the establishment of a prominent and publicly accessible art collection in the UAE. The foundation currently has exhibitions at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Al Qassemi is also a columnist whose articles have appeared in The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Open Democracy, The National and The Globe and Mail, as well as other publications. In addition, he is a prolific commentator on Arab affairs on Twitter. His tweets rose in particular prominence during the Arab Spring, and became a major news source that rivalled the major news networks at the time. Time magazine listed his Twitter account among the “140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2011.”

Al Qassemi was an MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow, and in 2014 Arabian Business placed him on its list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Arabs, under the Thinkers category. He continues both to write and tweet about the Arab world from his home in Sharjah, as well as from overseas, where he frequently lectures. In the Spring of 2017, Al Qassemi was a practitioner in residence at the Hagop Kevorkian Center of Near East Studies at New York University, where he offered a special course entitled “Politics of Middle Eastern Art.”

Articles By Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi

Revisiting the Arab Charter for Human Rights By Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi - Apr 18, 2018

In the autumn of 1995, as I was seated in class at the American University of Paris, our professor started discussing the recently concluded Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing. In the background, slides were shown of world reaction. One of them was a cringe-worthy Arabic-language caricature from a popular newspaper, in which the … Continue reading “Revisiting the Arab Charter for Human Rights”

Can Coding Be the Next Arab Doctrine? By Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi - Feb 21, 2018

Gamal Abdel Nasser’s fiery speeches on pan-Arabism inspired a generation of youth to look toward each other as one large nation. It didn’t last. Cue the other extreme, and more recently Arab nations have sought to build tight bonds of loyalty among the young. But this, too, is feeling the strain. Neither idea managed to … Continue reading “Can Coding Be the Next Arab Doctrine?”

As Saudi Arabia Reforms, Its Neighbors Will Need to Adjust By Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi - Jan 25, 2018

Saudi Arabia, unfairly or not, long has been considered by many in the investment community as an unattractive destination for their funds and by expatriates as a difficult place to live. Foreign investors have complained about the lack of adequate transparency, and many professionals who worked and lived there did so despite, and not because … Continue reading “As Saudi Arabia Reforms, Its Neighbors Will Need to Adjust”