Milad Hanna

Hanna received his bachelors in civil engineering from Cairo University in 1945, and from 1945 to 1947, he lectured at Alexandria University.[7] Hanna, inspired by Coptic nationalist and politician Makram Ebeid, who was also MP for his district, moved to Scotland in 1947 to pursue a PhD at the University of St. Andrews, which he received in 1950.[8]

Upon his return to Egypt, Hanna became an assistant manager with the Roads and Bridges Authority, supervising the construction of the Sohag-Akhmim Bridge in Upper Egypt,[7] After that, Hanna started his main career as an academic in 1953 teaching at Ain Shams in Cairo, where he became full professor in 1984.[8]

As many engineers in Egypt do, Hanna set up his own consultancy in 1955 naming it his 'second wife', which brought him "economic security" to be able to pursue his political efforts.[8]

In his late thirties, Hanna joined the Nationalist Movement (al-haraka al-qawmiya) against the British occupation of Egypt.[8] After Egypt's independence and the July 1952 Revolution, Hanna was asked by Free Officer Khaled Mohieddin in 1957 to write on housing issues for the government owned newspaper Al Messa.[9]

In the wake of Egypt's defeat to Israel in the 1967 Naksa, Hanna joined student protests in 1968 against the acquittal of a number of officers. As a professor, security reports recorded his dissent and reached interior minister Sharawi Gomaa, who would have either imprisoned Hanna, or at best had him expelled from university had a high level friend not intervened.[9] This close encounter established a long friendship between Hanna and Gomaa, where the latter asked for reports and insights into housing issues that reached him through his post as secretary general of the secret Vanguards Organisation (al-tanzim al-tali'i), or president Gamal Abdel Nasser himself.

Hanna's career as a policy analyst would be formalised in 1976 when was invited by Mohieldiin as a founding member of the Leftist Tagamuu' Party, joining its policy committee and becoming its external relations manager.[8]

However, his opposition to policies would this time land him in jail in the infamous September Arrests of 1981: writing against the housing policies of then housing minister, Osman Ahmed Osman,[9] and his outburst at president Sadat's speech on the 1980 May 15 anniversary proclaiming himself the Muslim president of a Muslim Egypt, which Hanna saw as making the country exclusionary to Copts.[8]

Sadat's assassination only one month later led to the swift release of those arrested including Hanna, who in June 1984 was one of the presidential appointees to that year's parliament (lower house), where he was elected as head of the Housing Committee. Hanna resigned from the committee after only two years when he felt his views were not welcome, and from political life in 1987 when parliament was dissolved, focusing on his work as an engineer, columnist and writer.[8]