Challenges and Opportunities in Tunisia's Democratic Transition

Date: 

Monday, March 26, 2012, 4:30pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

Nye A, Taubman Building, Fifth Floor, Harvard Kennedy School

Moncef Cheikh-RouhouGovernance and Economics
Moncef Cheikh-Rouhou, Leading Member of the Tunisian Progressive Democratic Party
Co-Sponsored by the Moroccan Studies Program at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

About the Speaker
Moncef Cheikh-Rouhou is a member of the Tunisian constituent assembly, representing Tunis. He is from the Progressive Democratic Party, arguably the most important opposition party. Cheikh-Rouhou is also one of Tunisia’s most prominent economists. He holds a MBA and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and is a professor of international finance at HEC in Paris. Although he is a member of the opposition, the Nahdha minister of regional development has sought his guidance on economic policy. Before teaching and politics, Cheikh-Rouhou managed a Tunisian-Saudi investment bank and chaired the first merchant bank in the Maghreb.

Cheikh-Rouhou is the son of Habib Cheikh-Rouhou, who, in the 1950s, was a prominent anti-French activist. Habib Cheikh-Rouhou later founded Assabeh, an opposition newspaper under Bourguiba. Moncef inherited the paper and ran it until the government shut it down in 2000, forcing Moncef into exile in Paris. Cheikh-Rouhou returned after the revolution to join PDP.