- Texas State University
Department of History
601 University Drive
San Marcos, TX 78666-4684
Elizabeth Bishop
Texas State University, History, Faculty Member
- Université d'Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed, Faculté des langues étrangères, Faculty Memberadd
During the Cold War, Iraq's policies with regard to Africa can best be understood as developing within the context of a rivalry between the Hashemite monarchy and Egypt's « free officers» revolution. This entailed a geographic shift, from... more
During the Cold War, Iraq's policies with regard to Africa can best be understood as developing within the context of a rivalry between the Hashemite monarchy and Egypt's « free officers» revolution. This entailed a geographic shift, from East to North Africa, from Ethiopia to Algeria. This also entailed struggle for control of the Arab world's message, as both nations launched broadcast stations, then clandestine stations. It became clear over time that the Hashemite monarchy used the issue of Algeria's national liberation struggle, to mask the political priorities of Iraq's national opposition. Résumé : Au cours de la guerre froide, les politiques de l'Irak à l'égard de l'Afrique peuvent être comprises dans le meilleur des cas comme étant dans le contexte d'une rivalité entre la monarchie hachémite et la révolution égyptienne "des officiers libres". Cela impliquait un changement géographique, de l'Est à l'Afrique du Nord, de l'Ethiopie à l'Algérie. Cela impliquait également une lutte pour la prise de contrôle du message transmis par le monde arabe, puisque que les deux nations avaient lancé des stations de radiodiffusion, puis des stations clandestines. Il s'est avéré avec le temps que la monarchie hachémite utilisait la lutte de libération nationale algérienne afin de voiler les priorités politiques de l'opposition nationale irakienne.
Research Interests: Postcolonial Studies, Media History, Ethiopian Studies, Cold War and Culture, Cold War, and 15 moreRadio, Colonialism, Palestine, Algerian war, French colonialism, Modern Egypt, Algerian War (History), Press and media history, Algerian Independence War, Algeria, French colonial Algeria, French Colonial History, Modern Egyptian History, Postcolonialism, and Hashemite Iraq
While Egypt has served as a model for history of prisons in the Arab world, a case study of Cold War Iraq is instructive. Under that country’s Hashemite monarchy, while the legal basis for political convictions was slim, prominent... more
While Egypt has served as a model for history of prisons in the Arab world, a case study of Cold War Iraq is instructive. Under that country’s Hashemite monarchy, while the legal basis for political convictions was slim, prominent political figures served multi-year prison sentences; as a result, the politics of penitentiaries were a key topic for liberal political activism against the monarchy and its servitors. Events at Kut al-Amara prison during 1953 are presented as an example.
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During the Arab revolutions that started during 2010, artists "spoke back to tyrants" using graffiti and street art. Following 25 January 2011 in Egypt, Cairo walls blossomed striking images, honoring the revolution's political goals and... more
During the Arab revolutions that started during 2010, artists "spoke back to tyrants" using graffiti and street art. Following 25 January 2011 in Egypt, Cairo walls blossomed striking images, honoring the revolution's political goals and martyrs. Spray-painted slogans, "Yesqut, yesqut Hosni Mubarak" ["down, down with Husni Mubarak"] appeared around the American University in Cairo's natural-sciences building, along Mohammed Mahmoud St. leading into Cairo's Midan al-Tahrir ["Liberation Square"]. While such forms street art were practically unknown under the Hosni Mubarak government, graffiti long has offered a means of expression for those who resist oppression.
Iraq's capital offers a counter-example, and this chapter considers free expression from the Cold War era. When U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower's new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, visited the country during 1953, it was to articulate his new concept for a "collective defense" plan uniting Iraq and Turkey. The Iraqi editors of the daily newspaper Al-Akbar reported that Dulles would also "pay an official visit to the Arab countries to acquaint himself with political conditions there and hold a series of talks to strengthen relations between the Arab world and the United States." The editors concluded, "how are the Arabs going to react regarding this international struggle for their territory, so that they would preserve their interest before anything else?"
The politics of public space in the capital of Iraq were contested. In Baghdad, citizens took advantage of innovative modalities to resist the global spread of the U.S.'s power. Even though in New York graffiti was identified with new forms of property, in Baghdad, leftist political activists used graffiti, writing, and street art to reclaim public space from the Hashemite monarch’s foreign allies. Garden walls surrounding suburban Baghdad homes sprouted drawings of hammers and sickles, with slogans: "Back home, criminal Dulles," and "Dogs of Wall Street, let us alone."
Iraq's capital offers a counter-example, and this chapter considers free expression from the Cold War era. When U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower's new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, visited the country during 1953, it was to articulate his new concept for a "collective defense" plan uniting Iraq and Turkey. The Iraqi editors of the daily newspaper Al-Akbar reported that Dulles would also "pay an official visit to the Arab countries to acquaint himself with political conditions there and hold a series of talks to strengthen relations between the Arab world and the United States." The editors concluded, "how are the Arabs going to react regarding this international struggle for their territory, so that they would preserve their interest before anything else?"
The politics of public space in the capital of Iraq were contested. In Baghdad, citizens took advantage of innovative modalities to resist the global spread of the U.S.'s power. Even though in New York graffiti was identified with new forms of property, in Baghdad, leftist political activists used graffiti, writing, and street art to reclaim public space from the Hashemite monarch’s foreign allies. Garden walls surrounding suburban Baghdad homes sprouted drawings of hammers and sickles, with slogans: "Back home, criminal Dulles," and "Dogs of Wall Street, let us alone."
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After World War I, Iraq's Senate represented landholding classes, ensuring passage of the 1933 “Law Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators” to regulate landlord‐tenant relations; after World War II, however, the legislature’s... more
After World War I, Iraq's Senate represented landholding classes, ensuring passage of the 1933 “Law Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators” to regulate landlord‐tenant relations; after World War II, however, the legislature’s lower house resisted the Senate with regard to the question of taxation. How were the country’s new petroleum revenues to be disbursed? If these were directed to the national income, then they would become subject to the Constitutionally‐ordained parliamentary process which governed passage of the national budget; if, however, they were directed to the Development Board, their expenditure would remain (unaccountably) in the hands of the Cabinet members who had negotiated the new agreement with the petroleum companies. This discussion contextualizes petroleum’s role in Iraq’s tax system during the Hashemite monarchy, via Poland. There, taxation of Cepelia disadvantaged private contractors; after 1956, the folk art industries cooperative’s salary structure was revised, it reopened its own stores and took control of its own warehouses, and enjoyed a change in its tax status.
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Mohammed Fadhil al-Jamali (1903-1997) was a prominent, if controversial, Iraqi statesman of the Hashemite monarchy. One of Jamali’s texts occupies a space between autobiography and fiction; we will analyze it, with reference to diplomatic... more
Mohammed Fadhil al-Jamali (1903-1997) was a prominent, if controversial, Iraqi statesman of the Hashemite monarchy. One of Jamali’s texts occupies a space between autobiography and fiction; we will analyze it, with reference to diplomatic records and a novel published by one of his contemporaries, in order to keep the tension of auto/fiction clearly in view. In the shorter of his two autobiographical texts, he claimed the day he first shaved his beard and changed for “western dress” (effectively, his birth as a diplomat) was during his travel abroad for study: “The government of Iraq was invited to send six students to the American University in Beirut. I was chosen and thus, in the year 1921-1922, was part of the first education mission to be sent out by the Iraq government.” In the more lengthy of his two narratives, he identified the location for this transformation to have been a point on an itinerary through West Asia and its adjacent areas: “We went by the sea route … via Basra, Karachi, Bombay, Aden and Suez to Haifa; from there we took the train to Damascus and Beirut.” Having studied in Lebanon, he returned to Baghdad to teach high school, building up a political base in the Ministry of Education. This essay assesses an incident regarding a Cold War military assistance agreement signed between Iraq and the United States.
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In his analysis of a professional association and its tactics, John McCumber's Time in the Ditch asserts, "American philosophy during the McCarthy era seems to have confronted difficulties well beyond those faced by other disciplines"... more
In his analysis of a professional association and its tactics, John McCumber's Time in the Ditch asserts, "American philosophy during the McCarthy era seems to have confronted difficulties well beyond those faced by other disciplines" (2001: xviii). In response, Lewis Gordon developed a thesis around what he called a "teleological suspension of disciplinarity," a willingness to go beyond disciplines in the production of knowledge (2005). During the Cold War, ʻAlī Wardī completed his training at the University of Texas at Austin where he earned both graduate degrees. This essay addresses Wardī's early work in a series of historical and regional perspectives: first, referring to C. Wright Mills as a model for a “Texas Sociologist;” second, identifying Sociology Department faculty members whom Wardī thanked in his thesis; and through them, revealing a network of scholarship and activism identified with Cold War Texas.
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Labor relations in Hashemite Iraq cannot be separated from domestic and regional politics, nor from the rise in global consumption of petroleum. As Albert Badre pointed out, in the Arab world management came “overwhelmingly from a society... more
Labor relations in Hashemite Iraq cannot be separated from domestic and regional politics, nor from the rise in global consumption of petroleum. As Albert Badre pointed out, in the Arab world management came “overwhelmingly from a society with traditions and ideals that differed considerably from those which animate the society providing the labor force” (Badre, 1957, p. 19). In Iraq, most industrial managers were British, with smaller numbers of Americans, French, and German citizens. The petroleum market had expanded in an unprecedented way during the first decade after World War II. While in 1945, 7.8 million barrels were consumed every day; by 1957, the market absorbed18.3 million barrels on a quotidian basis (Badre 1957, p. 5). The United Kingdom and France were the most significant consumers of Iraqi petroleum, purchasing together a little less than half of all the country’s exports (Statistical Abstract 1955, p. 236).
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Citizens of the Arab Middle East have taken part in a wave of democracy movements; in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia at least, their protests have resulted in regime change. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s personal experiences in one of these... more
Citizens of the Arab Middle East have taken part in a wave of democracy movements; in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia at least, their protests have resulted in regime change. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s personal experiences in one of these countries, and informed by his concept of “biopolitics,” this essay connects Egyptians’ current liberation struggle with their earlier revolution in 1952, in order to compare these experiences with Iraqis’ 1958 Tammuz revolution. Were new social media as important, as the level of funding dedicated to the military? And what is the role of diplomacy in a revolutionary moment?
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Historians have begun to abandon the nation-state frame of reference and to recognize the significance of borderlands and border crossing for electoral politics; master narratives such as self and other, domestic and foreign, nationalist... more
Historians have begun to abandon the nation-state frame of reference and to recognize the significance of borderlands and border crossing for electoral politics; master narratives such as self and other, domestic and foreign, nationalist and internationalist, have been redirected to new forms of transnational identity (Andrews 2013, Azaransky 2013, Walsh 2008). The present article follows this lead by asserting that border crossings between Iran and Iraq were never simply the sum total of transits by heads of state; indeed, such journeys framed political possibilities within Iraq. During the summer of 1953, the Zahedi coup in Tehran initiated a series of strikes over the border that challenged the newly crowned Hashemite King Faisal II in Iraq, as well as his administration’s vision of a petroleum-based modernity for the country’s working classes. To advance this position, the author identifies and explicates three different forms of border-crossing: the cross-border transits of heads of state are contrasted with those of conscripted soldiers, elderly pilgrims, and middle-class families and the domestic workers they employed. It becomes clear that the Iraqi left’s political imaginary also enjoyed a solid base in the neighboring jurisdiction.
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During the Cold War, the Zagros Mountain range assumed new significance, both as potential bulwark to “communist expansion” (as when the U.S. Strategic Air Command relocated to the region) and as an index of governance. Strategic... more
During the Cold War, the Zagros Mountain range assumed new significance, both as potential bulwark to “communist expansion” (as when the U.S. Strategic Air Command relocated to the region) and as an index of governance. Strategic concepts were built on the heritage of nineteenth century Ottoman adoption of the “total war” doctrine, which found new lease on life through a 1955 agreement between Turkey and Iraq. Junior officers in Iraq’s Army, local internationalists and nationalists across the region resented its implications. During Iraq’s 1958 revolution, documents relating to the Zagros defense line were released from Baghdad Pact offices, to be subsequently published in the Soviet Union.
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After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, $6.6 billion in Iraqi petroleum revenues disappeared; during the Second World War, too, Iraq’s share of $3 billion was rolled into “development aid” in a program conceptualized in Great Britain. This essay... more
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, $6.6 billion in Iraqi petroleum revenues disappeared; during the Second World War, too, Iraq’s share of $3 billion was rolled into “development aid” in a program conceptualized in Great Britain. This essay compares the ethics of Iraq’s experience with bilateral relations, with the role of various international organizations.
Research Interests: Development Studies, International Development, Iraqi History, Postcolonial Studies, Cold War, and 11 moreUnited Nations, Economic Development, Iraq, Cold War International Relations, Cold War history, United Nations Development Programme, History of Iraq, Petroleum Economics, Postwar Europe, History of Modern Iraq, and Hashemite Iraq
This innovative approach narrates one of the crises of the late Hashemite monarchy from Wien. The Austrian capital (still under Soviet military occupation) took an unexpectedly-prominent role as the setting for both Iraq's centrist and... more
This innovative approach narrates one of the crises of the late Hashemite monarchy from Wien. The Austrian capital (still under Soviet military occupation) took an unexpectedly-prominent role as the setting for both Iraq's centrist and extremist politics. During 1954, Hassan Abdul Rahman (serving as Minister of Social Affairs) accompanied his son for medical treatment. A member of the United Popular Front political group, his party’s Executive Committee demanded that the Cabinet lift martial law within 10 days; Abdul Rahman’s resignation opened the way for imposition of authoritarian controls in Iraq. Later that same year (following passage of the notorious decrees 16, 17, 18, and 19) a series of activists who had been deprived of their civil status turned up at the Soviet Embassy in Vienna.
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Was Iraq’s heritage British, or Ottoman? Between 1922 and 1958, the country was a constitutional monarchy under Hashemite rulers; external observers considered its organic law one of the most advanced among all the Arab states, and its... more
Was Iraq’s heritage British, or Ottoman? Between 1922 and 1958, the country was a constitutional monarchy under Hashemite rulers; external observers considered its organic law one of the most advanced among all the Arab states, and its diplomats to have exercised an independent foreign policy unmatched in the region. On such a basis, Bernard Lewis observed that democracy fared well under the region’s constitutional monarchies, established under British guidance. The elections of September 1954 to Iraq’s Chamber of Deputies provide the means to assess Lewis’s observation; three factors are considered (the electoral law, the status of the opposition political parties, and status of Kurdish populations) in a general discussion of Britain’s influence on political modernity in the Middle East. The data consulted includes government documents, memoirs, and transcripts of contemporary radio broadcasts; as an alternative to Lewis, the Hashemite monarchy is assessed using Rashid Khalidi’s description of 1912 elections to the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.
Research Interests: Media Studies, Iraqi History, Methodology, Women's Rights, Mediated Discourse Analysis, and 30 moreNationalism, Federalism, Social Media, Political Institutions, Iraq, Comparative Federalism, Media, Islam, Democracy, Elections, Elections and Voting Behavior, Arab world, Orientalism, Journalism Studies, Territorial politics, History of Iraq, Bernard Lewis, Ottomans, Rights, Community Radio, Clash of Civilization, West, Elections and Representation, Iraqi politics, Democracy In the Arab World, What Went Wrong, Bloody Borders, Parties and Party Systems, History of Modern Iraq, and Hashemite Iraq
Hashemite Iraq was better integrated into the global cinema that other countries. Baghdad audiences loved film noir, and the US succeeded in misplacing the UK as a source of newsreels, as well. During the Cold War's first decade,... more
Hashemite Iraq was better integrated into the global cinema that other countries. Baghdad audiences loved film noir, and the US succeeded in misplacing the UK as a source of newsreels, as well. During the Cold War's first decade, Hollywood continued to pump inexpensive productions and aged celluloid through Iraq, including films made under US government contracts. Local viewers responded thoughtfully to such films, engaging themes such as responsibility and guilt. Against this general background, specific allegations that testing of weapons delivery systems for germ warfare continued after the end of the Korean War, are assessed in the light that public health authors reported a series of outbreaks of meningitis among audiences in Baghdad cinemas.
Research Interests: Iraqi History, Literature and cinema, Italian Cinema, American Cinema, Asymmetrical Warfare, and 10 moreCinema, 'Third Cinema' Theory and Third World Radical Films, Cinema and the City, Warfare and Technology, Iraq (Area Studies), Korean War, Cinema Studies, History of Iraq, History of Modern Iraq, and Hashemite Iraq
A micro-history of Iraq’s left during a few momentous years before the 14 Tammuz 1958 revolution indicates local factors which contributed toward the left’s participation. During this period, the local communist party developed an... more
A micro-history of Iraq’s left during a few momentous years before the 14 Tammuz 1958 revolution indicates local factors which contributed toward the left’s participation. During this period, the local communist party developed an independent cadre, its own local and global policies, and sources of funding outside the USSR. Even though the USSR later claimed that October 1917 inspired events which happened in the Arab world, the Iraqi revolution was neither particularly indebted to the Third International, nor to the USSR. That said, the USSR served local progressives as an “alternate mondernity” to that of the Hashemite monarchy, with its ersatz liberal institutions and rigged elections.
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This essay explores the nature of the relationship between Pharaonic art and Egyptian society, and “formalist” art and Soviet society, through a series of martial themes. Queen Ahhotep I’s “golden flies,” which attracted Nasser’s... more
This essay explores the nature of the relationship between Pharaonic art and Egyptian society, and “formalist” art and Soviet society, through a series of martial themes. Queen Ahhotep I’s “golden flies,” which attracted Nasser’s attention and Khrushchev’s response, were New Kingdom military decorations found in a woman’s tomb. In the Egyptian Museum, the “golden flies” evoked a military history stretching from the New Kingdom to the Cold War. Khrushchev’s wartime experience on the Soviet Union’s western front reflects the overlap between administrative power and military conquest; similarly, what Nasser saw and heard during the 1948 Palestine campaign underscored the value of advanced weapons systems. By the time Khrushchev visited the Egyptian Museum during 1964, the Soviet Union had replaced Great Britain as Egypt’s leading weapons supplier.
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Research Interests: Environmental Engineering, Geology, Hydrogeology, Philosophy of Technology, Hydrology, and 14 moreWater resources, Environmental Management, Literature and Politics, Egypt, Modern Egypt, Planning, Algeria, Tunisia, North Africa, Egypt, Arab Spring, middle east, Arab studies, Nile River Basin, Nile River, Morocco. Culture, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
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Research Interests: Social Movements, Gender Studies, Ethics, Feminist Theory, Marxism, and 33 moreLiterature, Popular Culture, Queer Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Sexuality, Gender, Sigmund Freud, Feminism, Michel Foucault, Egypt, Postcolonial Feminism, Political Economy of Development, Media, Democratisation, Social and Political Philosophy, Solidarity Economy, Hannah Arendt, Poststructuralist Theory, Film, U.S. Foreign Policy, Neo-liberalism, Statecraft, Contentious Politics, Mubarak, Democracy Assistance, International Politics of the Middle East, Egyptian Politics, Foreign assistance, Theories of Socialism, Egipt, Antiglobalization Social Movements, Popular Uprising, and Latin American feminisms
Nubians’ displacement by government development intervention was reconceptualized as one aspect of the larger issue of displaced persons. Hansen and Oliver-Smith’s Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: problems and responses of... more
Nubians’ displacement by government development intervention was reconceptualized as one aspect of the larger issue of displaced persons. Hansen and Oliver-Smith’s Involuntary Migration and Resettlement: problems and responses of displaced people (1982) identified displacement in the name of development as a form of violence on underprivileged populations and migration—not as a passive reaction to events—but a form of social action. Coining the term, ‘environmental refugees,’ these two authors also point out that droughts, famines, and other ‘technosocial disasters’ are facilitated by hazardous environmental conditions that lead to markedly different human and material costs of disasters throughout the world. As Shami (1993) pointed out, women, children, and men experience displacement and resettlement differently, and so too do the strategies they pursue differ. Readdressing Nubians’ experience in the form of a case study, Shami indicated that, rather than being a temporary transition, processes of displacement extend beyond the period of study, and that displacement and labor migration were mutually-reinforcing social events, and that displacement should be considered at the household/family and community, as well as at the level of national development strategies.
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The American Institute for MaghribStudies invites scholars to submit papers for an interactive conference to be held in Tunisia on the theme of “Making Space in the Maghrib.” The aim of this conference is to develop an... more
The American Institute for MaghribStudies invites scholars to submit papers for an interactive conference to be held in Tunisia on the theme of “Making Space in the Maghrib.” The aim of this conference is to develop an interdisciplinary suite of papers examining processes of space-making into, out of, and within northern Africa (broadly defined) at various levels of analysis, throughout all historical periods, and through multiple theoretical frameworks across the humanities and social sciences.
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Research Interests: Migration, Anthropology of Children and Childhood, Lebanon, History of Childhood and Youth, Diaspora, and 17 moreReturn Migration, Networking, Yemen (History), Middle East, Remittances, Childhood studies, Yemen Development, Ameen Rihani, Arab-American Identity, Lebanese, Brain Drain, Arab-American Studies, Arab-American Literature, Yemen politics, Yemen politics, Homeland Relations, and Gulf Countries
Research Interests: Sociology, Translation Studies, Marxism, Translation and Ideology, Community Development, and 21 moreLiterature and Politics, Translation History, Algerian war, Egypt, Environmental Sustainability, Fanon, Translation and literature, Culture in the Soviet Union, Thaw-era Soviet Union, Algerian War (History), Frantz Fanon, Frantz Fanon (Literature), Literary translation, Algeria: language and national identity, Algerian Independence War, Algeria, Tunisia, Algerian Literature, North Africa, Forms of Fanonism, and Morocco. Culture
In terms of the challenges faced by Muslim diasporas in North America and Europe, this chapter will address the experiences of Muslim and policing in Illinois. While Chicago is frequently called a “second city,” the experiences of... more
In terms of the challenges faced by Muslim diasporas in North America and Europe, this chapter will address the experiences of Muslim and policing in Illinois. While Chicago is frequently called a “second city,” the experiences of Illinois Muslims contrast with those in New York. Currently, among the 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S. (2010 census), the percentage of Muslims is higher in the State of Illinois (2,800 per 100,000 population) than in New York State (2,028). And the experience of both Illinois and New York Muslims with law enforcement has to be analyzed in the context of recent developments in policing. Over the past twenty-five years, more and more police departments have adopted community-oriented policing (CAP) to direct their interactions with local stakeholders. CAP encourages police to actively engage residents in a working partnership in order to promote public safety and reduce crime by eliminating some of the conditions that can foster crime. To be successful, CAP requires communities’ trust and cooperation; it encounters its greatest challenges among immigrants.
In New York, a Police Department surveillance unit cataloged information on Muslim communities. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped the New York Police Department (NYPD) develop a Demographics Unit -- or Zone Assessment Unit—after 11 September, in order to monitor Muslim-owned businesses, mosques, and community centers. According to the Associated Press, entire New York mosques were designated "terrorism enterprises" justify the use of invasive methods to spy on congregants and imams. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the CLEAR Project at the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School, filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, claiming that the program was both discriminatory and unconstitutional. In addition, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that it harmed national security by sowing mistrust for law enforcement among Muslim communities. It took a new commissioner at the NYPD, William J. Bratton, to shutter the surveillance program.
Chicago’s experience was different. During 2010, the Illinois State Police appointed a Muslim chaplain. At the time, the department had 37 volunteer clergy who provided spiritual support for troopers, employees and their families. Initially, local groups praised the appointment of Kifah Mustapha as a gesture toward diversity among the force’s 2,000 officers. However, a Washington DC-based think tank—the Investigative Project on Terrorism—subsequently alleged that the Chicago-area imam was linked to the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that he had raised funds for the Holy Land Foundation, citing internal documents and unindicted co-conspirators. Mustapha, who had undergone State Police training, and had been issued with state identification and a bulletproof vest, found his appointment rescinded. The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Chicago, deems this to be an example of discrimination against Muslims, particularly as Mustapha was not formally accused of wrongdoing.
In New York, a Police Department surveillance unit cataloged information on Muslim communities. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped the New York Police Department (NYPD) develop a Demographics Unit -- or Zone Assessment Unit—after 11 September, in order to monitor Muslim-owned businesses, mosques, and community centers. According to the Associated Press, entire New York mosques were designated "terrorism enterprises" justify the use of invasive methods to spy on congregants and imams. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the CLEAR Project at the City University of New York (CUNY) Law School, filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, claiming that the program was both discriminatory and unconstitutional. In addition, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that it harmed national security by sowing mistrust for law enforcement among Muslim communities. It took a new commissioner at the NYPD, William J. Bratton, to shutter the surveillance program.
Chicago’s experience was different. During 2010, the Illinois State Police appointed a Muslim chaplain. At the time, the department had 37 volunteer clergy who provided spiritual support for troopers, employees and their families. Initially, local groups praised the appointment of Kifah Mustapha as a gesture toward diversity among the force’s 2,000 officers. However, a Washington DC-based think tank—the Investigative Project on Terrorism—subsequently alleged that the Chicago-area imam was linked to the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that he had raised funds for the Holy Land Foundation, citing internal documents and unindicted co-conspirators. Mustapha, who had undergone State Police training, and had been issued with state identification and a bulletproof vest, found his appointment rescinded. The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Chicago, deems this to be an example of discrimination against Muslims, particularly as Mustapha was not formally accused of wrongdoing.
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The creation of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) at the close of World War I and its successor, the United Nations Trusteeship Council (TC), following World War II, were watersheds in the history of modern... more
The creation of the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) at the close of World War I and its successor, the United Nations Trusteeship Council (TC), following World War II, were watersheds in the history of modern imperialism. For the first time, the international community had asserted that the well-being of colonial peoples was not merely the private concern of metropolitan states, but a shared responsibility of humankind that transcended national boundaries. Editors R.M. Douglas, Michael D. Callahan, and Elizabeth Bishop have assembled a wide array of scholars to assess the relative weight to be placed on international influence in the process of decolonization. Across a broad cross-section of geographical and political settings, Imperialism on Trial reveals the operation of the complicated and often conflicted dynamic between the national and international dimensions of colonialism in its final and most historically consequential phase.
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Arab-Soviet Internationalism – Socialist Internationalism, International Organizations and the Politics of Revolution in the 20th and 21st Centuries A three-day workshop held on July 13-15, 2022 at the Forum Transregionale... more
Arab-Soviet Internationalism – Socialist Internationalism, International Organizations and the Politics of Revolution in the 20th and 21st Centuries
A three-day workshop held on July 13-15, 2022 at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, Germany
A three-day workshop held on July 13-15, 2022 at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin, Germany
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... Prof. ... The First World War had a profound impact on colonial Africa and had far-reaching implications for European international relations. For Europeans, the conflict shook common assumptions about international order and sparked... more
... Prof. ... The First World War had a profound impact on colonial Africa and had far-reaching implications for European international relations. For Europeans, the conflict shook common assumptions about international order and sparked a serious debate about colonialism. ...
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This chapter investigates the experiences of a Muslim, and a person who occupies an equivalent political space, self-identifying as “Muslim.” A mutual relationship with the upstate-downstate dynamics of Illinois politics connects the two.... more
This chapter investigates the experiences of a Muslim, and a person who occupies an equivalent political space, self-identifying as “Muslim.” A mutual relationship with the upstate-downstate dynamics of Illinois politics connects the two. Positivistic methods are widely accepted among researchers of the historical present, who analyze documents in public archives, as well as materials published via print and social media. Using this particular approach, I consulted documents from the recent past, generated at multiple sites around the world and within different institutions. This chapter traces the overlap of institutional and intellectual histories in the twenty-first century United States, asking: “In what ways are the experiences of Muslims (as well as those who identify with the values of the Islamic community) distinct from those of the general population?” Acknowledging a debt to semiotic studies of culture, the first sections of this chapter explore signifiers such as Bridgev...
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This chapter considers the contested politics of public space Baghdad during the Cold War. In Iraq, King Faisal II’s 1953 coronation marked the longevity of a state his grandfather founded. The author argues that leftist political... more
This chapter considers the contested politics of public space Baghdad during the Cold War. In Iraq, King Faisal II’s 1953 coronation marked the longevity of a state his grandfather founded. The author argues that leftist political activists used graffiti, writing, and street art to “tag” public space. In Baghdad, graffiti appeared at the same time as the nation’s leaders were entering into new forms of political affiliation, the forms that citizens—rich and poor, men and women, laborers and their employers—resisted.
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Historians have begun to abandon the nation-state frame of reference and to recognize the significance of borderlands and border crossing for electoral politics; master narratives such as self and other, domestic and foreign, nationalist... more
Historians have begun to abandon the nation-state frame of reference and to recognize the significance of borderlands and border crossing for electoral politics; master narratives such as self and other, domestic and foreign, nationalist and internationalist, have been redirected to new forms of transnational identity. The present article follows this lead by asserting that border crossings between Iran and Iraq were never simply the sum total of transits by heads of state; indeed, such journeys framed political possibilities within Iraq. During the summer of 1953, the Zahedi coup in Tehran initiated a series of strikes over the border that challenged the newly crowned Hashemite King Faisal II in Iraq, as well as his administration's vision of a petroleum-based modernity for the country's working classes. To advance this position, the author identifies and explicates three different forms of border-crossing: the cross-border transits of heads of state are contrasted with tho...
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Research Interests: History and Ab Imperio
Historian Bernard Lewis observes: "Americans tend to see democracy and monarchy in antithetical terms; in Europe, however, democracy has fared better in constitutional monarchies than in republics"1. Let us take this opportunity... more
Historian Bernard Lewis observes: "Americans tend to see democracy and monarchy in antithetical terms; in Europe, however, democracy has fared better in constitutional monarchies than in republics"1. Let us take this opportunity to consider elections held in the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq during the Cold War, in order to assess how"democracy" fared during the years that country was a constitutional monarchy. As we do so, let's keep Saad Eskander's words in mind:"You cannot have democracy in Iraq by just holding elections... You need to enable Iraq's core of citizens to have free access to information, absolutely all, all of legislation. You have to have all the cultural and educational institutions so that they could sort the truth of Iraq"2.The Hashemite kingdom witnessed elections to the Chamber of Deputies twice during 1954: in the early summer, and again in the autumn. While most historians of the monarchy have chosen to analyze the June ...
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Citizens of the Arab Middle East have taken part in a wave of democracy movements; in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia at least, their protests have resulted in regime change. Drawing on Michel Foucault's personal experiences in one of these... more
Citizens of the Arab Middle East have taken part in a wave of democracy movements; in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia at least, their protests have resulted in regime change. Drawing on Michel Foucault's personal experiences in one of these countries, and informed by his concept of 'biopolitics,' this essay connects Egyptians' current liberation struggle with their earlier revolution in 1952, in order to compare these experiences with Iraqis' 1958 Tammuz revolution. Were new social media as important, as the level of funding dedicated to the military And what is the role of diplomacy in a revolutionary moment