Mahmoud Amin El Alem

El Alem returned to Egypt after President Anwar Sadat died in 1984.

Upon his release, he moved to Oxford, where he taught at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University. He later accepted the invitation of his friend Jacques Berque to take charge of a chair on contemporary Arab thought in Paris; he became a lecturer at the University of Paris VIII (1974–1985) and at the École Normale. In Paris, he also launched "The Arab Left" newspaper, which published debates among left-wing activists.

His 1955 book Fi al-Thaqafa al-Misriyya (On Egyptian Culture), co-authored with 'Abd al-'Azim 'Anis, applied Marxist literary criticism to contemporary Egyptian cultural works.

El Alem was expelled from the King Fuad University in 1954 for his political positions, which prevented from defending his doctoral thesis. Thereafter, he became a political prisoner from 1959–1963 because of his refusal to dissolve the Egyptian Communist Party into the Socialist Union set up by then President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Alongside Ismael Sabri Abdallah and Fouad Mursi, Al Elem later sought to support Arab nationalism through building an alliance between communists and nationalists to face the economic and political challenges of the Arab world.

In the 1940s, El Alem rose to public prominence as a famous Egyptian communist leader. However, due to his political activism, he was arrested and convicted multiple times.

Mahmoud Amin El Alem (1922–2009) (alternative spelling: Mahmud Amin al-'Alim) was an award-winning Egyptian cultural critic and leading Marxist theorist. He was a leading public intellectual in Egypt in his day. El Alem was also the head of the administrative board of Akhbar el-Yom and editor of several newspapers and magazines, including Rose al-Yūsuf, ar-Risala al-gadida, Magallat al-musawwir, and Qadaya fikriyya.