Three months after the January 25 Revolution in Egypt, President Obama's approach to the Middle East is hopelessly adrift. He is hesitant to truly embrace the Arab freedom movements, failing to lead Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and lacking effective diplomacy to counter Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The Arab Uprising has shaken the way we understand politics, communications and public diplomacy. Social media may have played a role in the unrest, but pretending that the uprising is a social media revolution is as imaginary as the existence of the Empress of Mancha.

In a speech at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States believes there is no reason why the Middle East "cannot be among the most progressive, prosperous, peaceful, successful regions in the world.

In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year.

The Arab Spring is in its third month, and some already express concern about its next phase. In Tunisia things are moving too slowly. In Egypt, the moment of the revolution has been replaced by the routines of national politics, and the revolutionaries are frustrated.

What Eastern European intellectuals and civic actors understood by civil society was not just the 18th-century concept of the rule of law, but also the notion of horizontal self-organized groups and institutions in the public sphere that could limit the power of the state by constructing a democratic space separate from state and its ideological institutions.

Growing aspirations of youth in MENA regarding economic opportunities and political rights very quickly raised the bar for what governments need to do. To shed light on the implications of these changes and opportunities in the region and its inclusion in a global economy, the World Bank will host a discussion titled Arab Voices and Views...

In past sessions of the Al Jazeera Forum, held each year in the network's Qatar hometown, reform in the Arab world was discussed with an air of resignation: "Someday...maybe."