Political science has struggled with a series of existential crises that accompanied its birth and continue to plague it. Recent developments, including the failure to predict the Arab revolutions and the populist tide in the West, have again highlighted these problems, and provoked serious debates that revisited old contests about the “scientific” pretences of the discipline, its claims to objectivity and its Eurocentrism. In this talk, it is argued that these failures to spot emerging trends are not incidental, and are inherent in the nature of the discipline itself. It dismisses defensive “explanations” of these failures, including claims that predictions are impossible anyway, and are not part of the job description, or ascribing the problem to methodological shortcomings. It seeks to show that the discipline has a built-in “barbaric” streak linked to its continuing role as the handmaiden of policy and its colonial history. Linking recent critiques about the inherent racism and evolving nationalism that plagued the American branch of the discipline since its origins, to critiques of Middle Eastern Studies and their “Orientalist” tendencies, it highlights the way experts colluded with policy makers to condone the genocidal policies of the Syrian and Iraqi regimes, and the marginally different brutality of other regional despots. When genocide turns from a taboo to a valid policy option, with many not even noticing, we seem to have a problem.
Abdelwahab El-Affendi is Professor of Politics, Provost and Acting President of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. El-Affendi has served as the Head of the Politics and IR Program at the Institute (2015-2017), and was founder and Coordinator of the Democracy and Islam Program at the University of Westminster (since 1998). He is also head of Promotion Committee and the Institute. El-Affendi also served as a diplomat in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry (1990-1997), London-based journalist, including editor or managing editor of several publications (1982-1990). He worked as a visiting fellow/professor at the Christian Michelsen Institute (Bergen, Norway), and the Universities of Northwestern (Chicago), Oxford, Cambridge, and the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (Malaysia). Dr El-Affendi also delivered keynote speeches and lectures at most major universities in the US, UK and a number of universities in Asia, Africa and South America.
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