On 10 January 2019, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo delivered a speech at the American University in Cairo (AUC) rebutting President Barack Obama's 2009 ‘A New Beginning’ address. Speaking at Egypt's public Cairo University while addressing the broader Muslim world, Obama sought to turn a page in US–Middle East relations after George W. Bush's destructive, over militarised interventionist post-9/11 policies. In contrast, Pompeo boldly declared that ‘the United States under President Trump has reasserted its traditional role as a force for good in this region.’ He outlined the recommitment of US support for its ‘traditional’ allies, including Egypt under the increasingly authoritarian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israel and the Arab Gulf states. Pompeo identified the regional menaces the US sought to confront, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and ‘radical Islamist terrorism’. In seeking to justify continuing US force projection in the region, Pompeo noted: ‘For those who fret about the use of American power, remember this: America has always been, and always will be, a liberating force, not an occupying power.’ Pompeo concluded his remarks by declaring that institutions such as the American University in Cairo and the one in Beirut, both founded by American Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century, were ‘symbols of America's innate goodness, of our hopes for you, and of the better future we desire for all nations of the Middle East’.

Unfortunately, Pompeo's simplistic and superficial view of these hybrid Arab-American institutions erases any suggestion of how they might serve as models for a more effective and less destructive US policy in the Middle East. At their best, the cosmopolitan faculty and diverse students at these institutions strive to support multiple ways of doing things, such as creating knowl-edge and accommodating cultural and political difference. Such norms, under threat from university administrators, could suggest an alternative model for US policy in the Middle East. Rather than seeking to impose and sustain an US-dominated order, the US could work to repair the damage inflicted by past policies, help resolve regional conflicts, and build regional and global institutions that allow states and societies to mitigate the sources of insecurity they experience in an increasingly multipolar global system.