A.U.B. Professor Yahya Sadowski, PSPA

Yahya Sadowski, associate professor in the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration since October 2001, is delighted to be back on the AUB campus. Some 25 years ago, as a young student at the University of California, Sadowski journeyed to Lebanon to take his junior year abroad at AUB where he experienced, quite simply, "the best year of [his] life."

Having entered the Arab world, Sadowski never looked back.

After completing his PhD magna cum laude at UCLA in 1984 (his thesis: Political Power and Economic Organization in Syria: The Course of State Intervention, 1946-1958), Sadowski plunged himself into the study and analysis of Middle Eastern politics and political economy. His publications and occupation as teacher, researcher, petroleum analyst, editor, and writer attest to the intensity of this passion. His three books and many articles, reflect his commitment to the political patterns of the Middle East; he investigates the role of the US in the Middle East, perceptions of Islam, the economic structure of the Arab world, and political parties, with focus on Egypt, Syria, and Kuwait.

Professor Sadowski began his teaching career at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he emphasized the modern history of the Middle East and contemporary Arab politics. He next taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and subsequently pursued his interest in the political economy of the Middle East as researcher and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and as editor and writer. He lectured at SAIS from 1987-1998, and then served as Visiting Associate Professor of Middle East Studies and Comparative Politics at SAIS from 1998 until taking up his post in political studies at AUB. Since 2000 he has also served as political risk analyst, devising and maintaining a database of political risk indicators for the Petroleum Finance Company.

At AUB Sadowski has been teaching courses such as Comparative Politics of the Middle East, International Political Economy, International Relations of the Middle East, Globalization, US Foreign Policy toward the Middle East, and Theories of Political Economy.

Professor Sadowski is clearly an enthusiastic proponent of AUB and the Arab world. In his view, the students are the University's greatest asset. They are lively, bright, and inexplicably idealistic. The top one-third of the students are as bright, he says, if not brighter, than comparable students at other institutions in the world.

AUB students participate in class discussion far more than their US counterparts. "There's almost an idealism about the students here, again this wonderful self-confidence, this incredible belief that they've been chosen for great things, and that prevents them from being too cynical, . . . too blasé, and lets them engage at a kind of level with a sort of passion that's difficult to replicate even among quite cosmopolitan groups of students. They're not too cool for school."

In his course, Comparative Politics in the Middle East, Sadowski confronts religious division head on. "One of the things you have to deal with is the different Islamic movements . . . from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to the clerics in Iran, to the Wahabis in Saudi Arabia." The students sometimes feel "uncomfortable talking about" religion, so Sadowski sets ground rules from the beginning of the discussion: "We're not going to make judgments as to which religion is right or wrong," he tells his students. "We're not going to make attacks. We're going to talk about religion as a sociological phenomenon, as a set of beliefs that people have in common."

Sadowski revealed that he was "absolutely stunned at how little [his] students, Muslim and Christian alike, knew about Islam, period. . . . This is a society where confessional identities have become very important, but people know less about religion, actually, than they did 30 years ago."

Diversity and dialogue are also AUB's strong points, but Sadowski finds the student body less varied today than when he was studying at AUB almost a quarter century ago. Reflecting on the 70 to 80 American students studying with him then, Sadowski said the past should be a benchmark. The strong junior-year-abroad program should be reintroduced and more international students should be encouraged to study at AUB. Such students would benefit the University on two levels: top notch foreign students would join courses on history and political economy, and AUB students would be exposed to more stimulating levels of debate.

Professor Sadowski is a member of one of the accreditation initiative's strategic planning teams and was eager to talk about the development of AUB. In his view, although a PhD program would greatly benefit the University in the long run, it is necessary to build up the undergraduate program first. Library holdings and IT facilities in classrooms cry out for development.

He welcomes the Master Plan focus on student facilities and the new relationship with Bliss Street, where the Americanization of fast food outlets has changed, for the worse, an important part of University life. Gone is the café culture, the restaurants and cafés where students, professors, visiting guest lecturers, and the occasional politician used to engage in lively debate on Bliss Street. Professor Sadowski confessed that in an attempt to remedy this situation partially, he frequently meets his graduate seminars in a Hamra café in order to lubricate discussion and debate with coffee and cigarettes.

Can AUB successfully become a research institution? Presently, the situation is not encouraging for researchers. Convinced that research is essential for good teaching, Sadowski believes it is impossible to hold AUB faculty to standards of research found in other American universities. AUB desperately needs good graduate assistants in pursuit of its inevitable and necessary move toward better quality research.

As a political economist, Sadowski reflected on the present situation in Lebanon as well as on prospects for graduating students. He sees Lebanon's future in terms of development in different areas. Long renowned for its expertise in service industries, Lebanon could lead significantly in the development of global IT. The country has enormous potential intellectual talent for various global involvements.

He sees a broad future for students in teams of consultants working with other Middle Eastern countries, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the World Trade Organization.

Sadowski believes "the intermingling of cultures is a great opportunity for creativity," and that is "why AUB is so important."