"The Arab Spring: A Path to Democracy?," a CNN Dialogues event, will be Thursday, Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. at the Woodruff Health Sciences Administration Building.

The uncertainty and power-altering struggles that continue to unfold from the political uprisings that ignited in 2010 and 2011 in North Africa and the Middle East are the focus of the forum.

Scholars, journalists and activists will explore democracy, women's rights, the role of Islamists, and the role of social media in the uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain to Yemen in a discussion moderated by CNN International anchor Hala Gorani.

Panelists for this discussion include:

• Lamees Dhaif, journalist and activist who has been active in the Bahraini resistance campaign. She has been banned from writing by the Bahraini government since the beginning of the democracy movement there;

• Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian democracy activist, author and director of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa. Ghonim is credited with helping to organize young Egyptians to protest the prior regime, encouraged by a Facebook page he created to protest the death of a political detainee held by the police;

• Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Emory associate professor of political science, specializing in political opposition movements and political integration in the Arab World.

This is the first CNN Dialogues event of 2012. Admission is free; but registration is required.

CNN Dialogues is a partnership between CNN, Emory's James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study for Race and Difference and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights for a series of community discussions on major topics shaping the times.