My name is Ahmed Yassine Abaakil, I am an undergraduate at Columbia University planning to double major in Philosophy and Middle Eastern, South Asian, & African Studies. My interests concern the nature of modern Islamic political and social thought in the context of the Muslim world, its epistemic and philosophical issues, and its relationship to premodern Islamic thought. My research with ACE seeks to demystify the causes for illiteracy and lack of education in Egypt and, in doing so, clarify the otherwise complex arena that is Middle Eastern politics.