In September 2015, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, alarmingly prophesied: “We are talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands.” In a short space of time his worries were confirmed. Today, Europe’s best bet against the mounting crisis seems to be to deploy the new regime in Turkey, … Continue reading »
Syria
Performing destruction: cultural heritage, looting and ISIS
If you use Twitter or Facebook, you’ve likely seen hundreds of news articles, reports, videos, and blog posts on the violent destruction of cultural heritage that has intensified in Syria during the past few months. As an archaeologist, my news-feeds are always a-buzz with the latest updates on all things archaeology — but it’s not what … Continue reading »
Three cheers for phallocracy!
I have been listening to all the arguments, pro and con, about military intervention in Syria, and I will of course be listening to the President’s speech. But to date I find much of the rhetoric from the President and his supporters, Congress, and the punditry not merely unpersuasive, but intellectually obtuse and even morally … Continue reading »
Obama’s political capital and the slippery slope of Syria
Even if the President musters enough votes to strike Syria, at what political cost? Any president has a limited amount of political capital to mobilize support for his agenda, in Congress and, more fundamentally, with the American people. This is especially true of a president in his second term of office. Which makes President Obama’s … Continue reading »
The trap of ‘democratization’ as ‘wishful thinking’: The state of the art in the Arab world
The global policy and academic worlds expect the Arab world to democratize. But is this expectation helping today? Are political systems in the contemporary developing world inevitably heading towards democracy, and will democracy triumph as an end product of the 21st century? Democracy studies, and more specifically the branch of transitology research, have in recent … Continue reading »