Waleed F. Mahdi is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, and is a student of development studies & social change at the university’s Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change. He is a Fulbright scholar and a MacArthur fellow with research interests in American/Middle East studies. A native of Yemen, he is currently leading the Yemeni American Society in Minnesota and proposing an undergraduate course “Arab Spring-American Echoes” to investigate the revolutionary wave that has swept Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Syria in the past two years.