Guest Column by Dr. David Romano, Thomas G. Strong Chair in Middle Eastern Studies in Political Science
The establishment of the Thomas G. Strong Chair in Middle Eastern Studies in Political Science brought me to Missouri State University and the Ozarks. In four years, I hadn’t even considered moving to another state or university, until I saw the announcement for this new position.
Since arriving here with my wife and son last summer, I certainly haven’t regretted the move. It’s a real privilege to have motivated students in my Middle East politics classes. They enthusiastically ask me questions that help me reevaluate my own research and thinking on the Middle East, and I return the favor by challenging their notions about politics and the region. It often doesn’t even feel like ‘work’ – leading class discussion about subjects such as struggles for political power, gender relations in the Muslim world, or Iranian foreign policy goals.
A few weeks ago, for instance, I sat outside the Plaster Student Union discussing Iraqi politics with one of my students who hunted IEDs (improvised explosive devices) for the U.S. Army. As I spoke with him, I remembered all the U.S. service personnel I met during my own year spent doing research in Iraq. He explained to me how different kinds of IEDs function, the strategies insurgents use to position them, and what he experienced in the 2008 fight to retake Sadr City. I helped him make sense of the larger political dynamics that were going on in Iraq while he served there, and what we might expect for the future.
I feel honored to have students like this, and helping them understand politics and the Middle East motivates my teaching and research. It makes me feel like my job matters. This endowed chair also gives me the yearly research funds to regularly go back to the Middle East for more fieldwork, to attend conferences and purchase the books and other items that a professor needs. As my scholarship improves, the students get the most up to date and informed analyses I can provide, which they then proceed to question, debate and improve…
[flickrSlideshow acct_name=”missouristatefoundation” id=”72157625881350617″]
(David Romano is the Thomas G. Strong Chair in Middle Eastern Studies in Political Science at Missouri State University. In addition to numerous articles on Middle East politics, the Kurdish issue, forced migration, political violence, and globalisation, he is the author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press – a revised edition of which came out in Turkish in December 2010, Vate Publishing, Istanbul). He has spent several years living and/or conducting field research in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Israel/Palestine.)
Leave a Reply