UNIVERSITY of WASHINGTON
Ana Mari Cauce
Professor of Psychology
PRESIDENT

October 9, 2018

Dear Members of the Supreme State Security Prosecution in the Arab Republic of Egypt:
I am writing as President of the University of Washington to express deep concern about the
arrest and continued detention of Waleed Salem in Cairo; Egypt. I wrote previously (May 30;
2018) to confirm that Mr. Salem is a Ph.D. student in good standing in the Department of
Political Science at our university. After investigating his record more thoroughly/ I now have
good reason to go much further in advocating on behalf of Mr. Salem and the research that he
was undertaking in Egypt.
After discussions with Mr. Salem's mentors, two highly esteemed Full Professors that I know well
both personally and professionally, I have come to better understand the nature of the research
he was undertaking. Mr. Salem's research aims to understand the changing roles and practices
of Egypt's judicial institutions from World II through the current period. The choice of Egypt as a
site of research is appropriate because Egypt's civil code and history ofjurisprudential principles
are extremely influential in the world and are especially important to scholars with particular
expertise in the Middle East, including Egyptian scholars and jurists. Moreover, Mr. Salem is an
Egyptian citizen who has been studying the Egyptian court system for many years, so he has a
strong foundation of understanding on which to build.
Mr. Salem specifically came to the University of Washington to advance and refine his analytical
skills and comparative knowledge about law and judicial institutions. He has studied under a
group of internationally celebrated scholars, including his dissertation advisors Professors
Michael McCann and Joel Migdal, who are associated with our outstanding "law and society"
program, one of the several most distinguished such programs in the United States.
Mr. Salem's dissertation research is very much grounded in the law and society intellectual
tradition. To better assure accuracy, this scholarly tradition emphasizes qualitative empirical
research grounded in direct interaction with the legal actors under study. Accordingly, Mr.
Salem's effort to understand the motivations and practices of judicial officers in the Egyptian
governmental process depends greatly on personal interviews with judges, prosecutors, and

301 Gerberding Hall • Box 351230 • Seattle, Washington 98195-1230 • 206.543.5010 • president@uw.edu

 other government officials as well as study of archival records and media accounts. This
research activity is precisely what Mr. Salem was doing when he was apprehended. His aim was
to document carefully how Egyptian courts work and put that knowledge to work in building
generalizable, comparatively based analytical theory regarding how and to what effect judicial
institutions participate as partners in governance in different state systems.
I am proud to note that the University of Washington is widely recognized as among the most
distinguished institutions of higher learning in the world. According to the 2018 Academic
Ranking of World Universities/ the University of Washington is ranked No. 14 in the world, and
No. 3 among U.S. public universities. Our university faculty are widely recognized for their
insistence on high standards of impartial/ sophisticated empirical study and analysis. The letters
submitted by international professional academic associations (American Political Science
Association/ Law and Society Association/ etc.) on behalf of Mr. Salem reflect the high respect for
our institution and speak to the quality of research by Mr. Salem as an individual scholar. These
letters make clear that he is widely known as a serious, cautious, and diligent academic
researcher.

In sum, Mr. Salem's important research offers great promise for advancing social scientific
knowledge. We are concerned that the detention of Mr. Salem undercuts his potential research
contributions to that collective knowledge. It also sends a chilling message to other scholars and
students who might wish to advance research and knowledge production in Egypt.
We appeal to your sense of justice to produce the appropriate outcome by freeing Mr. Salem.
Sincerely,

Ana Man Cauce
President, University of Washington
Professor of Psychology