Hamid Rezai | Pitzer College (original) (raw)

Hamid Rezai

M.Phil., Ph.D. Columbia University, BA, MA (Diplom) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany.

I studied Politics & History at the LMU, Munich, Germany and Columbia University, New York City and spent two years as an exchange scholar at Princeton University. My research is about contemporary history and politics of the Middle East with a particular focus on popular mobilization in the region, especially in Iran. Additional research and teaching interests include, History & Theory, political violence, comparative politics, Intellectual History, Political Theory, Modern Iran and Germany. Currently I am revising my manuscript Electoral Authoritarianism and Contentious Politics: People, Power, and Protest in Contemporary Iran, which examines the impact of demographic alteration, elite-division, and dissident discourse on emerging popular protests, their trajectories, and their likely outcomes.

For the past several years, I have taught a variety of courses at Columbia University and American University in Cairo (AUC), including History and Politics of the Modern Middle East, Social Movements, Comparative Revolutions, Contentious Politics, Social Movements in the Global South, International Relations, Political Theory, Cinema and Society in the Middle East and North Africa, Political Systems across Muslim Societies, and Social and Political Justice. Recent awards include a Columbia University Contemporary Civilization Preceptorship (2008-10), Columbia University Multi-Year Faculty Fellowship (2003-2010), Margaret Abdel-Ahad Pennar Fellowship (2006-2007), and the Andrew W. Mellon and John W. Kluge Endowment for a New Generation of Faculty Excellence Fellowship (2006). I have lived in the Middle East and Europe, am fluent in Persian, German, Tabari, and English, and have intermediate reading proficiency in Arabic and Latin.

I teach at the Claremont Colleges.

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Teaching Documents by Hamid Rezai

Day/Time/Location: Wednesday 3-5:45PM. 201 Avery Hall COURSE DESCRIPTION Since their emergence in... more Day/Time/Location: Wednesday 3-5:45PM. 201 Avery Hall COURSE DESCRIPTION Since their emergence in the 18 th century, social movements have been the powerful driving force for socio-political and cultural transformation around the globe. Sustained and organized collective campaigns for rights are important components in the politics of every local, national, and global communities of our time. In this course we will examine different approaches to the study of collective mobilization for change to enhance our understanding of a variety of social movements in the Global South. We will review theoretical models that focus on crucial factors like ideology, culture, emotion, material capacity for mobilization, organization, structural racism, and state violence in the rise, trajectories, and outcomes of protest movements. We will then apply these approaches to investigate the historical context and multiple causes of the emergence of powerful movements for justice and freedom like students, labor, women, and minorities movements in Asia, the Arab World, Africa, and Latin America.

Course Description What is justice? And how can writing be deployed to promote it? The prolific, ... more Course Description What is justice? And how can writing be deployed to promote it? The prolific, 19 th century intellectual Karl Marx stated that the philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it. In this course we will read and write to challenge common assumptions about race, sexuality, gender, class, and memory, among others. We will write about relevant issues that are absent in a world dominated by profit-oriented capitalist ideologies. Our aim will be to construct powerful narratives about the overlooked individual and collective suffering and resilience of marginalized peoples. Writing will be used as an instrument of active engagement and remembering to come to terms with the wrongs of the past to envision a more just socio-political order. Additionally, we will integrate multimodal platforms, such as podcasting, into the course with the aim of actively connecting with local and global communities for change.

COURSE DESCRIPTION Why, how, and when do people protest? Why do some collective protests last jus... more COURSE DESCRIPTION Why, how, and when do people protest? Why do some collective protests last just one or a couple of days while others continue for months or even years? Why do some episodes of contention turn into social movements or even into tragic civil war (Syria), while others disappear? Why and how do some protest events transform into radical revolutionary movements with the aim to topple the existing political order in their respective countries? Why are there social movements, but no revolutions, in functioning democracies? These are among the questions we will be exploring, studying, and discussing comparatively this semester. We will examine different forms of coordinated collective actions of students, women, youth, ethnic minorities, and poor people in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa to see whether there are common causes for the emergence of these movements across time and locations. Furthermore, we will unearth the ideological, demographic, economic and cultural origins of these movements and the tactics and strategies employed by the actors involved to understand why some powerful movement succeed while other fail.

Course Description The goal of this course is to introduce students to major theoretical approach... more Course Description The goal of this course is to introduce students to major theoretical approaches in the study of history. As such, we will read and discuss seminal texts and important themes that have shaped the writing of history in the 19 th and 20 th centuries. We will examine how historians investigate and interpret events in the past and craft history. We will pay particular attention to how scholars of history employ evidence and structure their narratives. Furthermore, we will explore how in their construction of historical narratives they borrow from other disciplines, such as philosophy, sociology, critical theory, and anthropology. Alongside our theoretical and methodological journey, we will also travel intellectually to a variety of regions like Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, investigating different historiographies to learn how scholars across regions inform each other's works. STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES  Students will be able to demonstrate critical thinking skills by synthesizing and evaluating historical information from multiple sources to craft their narratives of past events.  Students will be able to write a research paper that engages with both primary and secondary sources.  Students will develop an informed familiarity with and historical understanding of diverse cultures, currents, and countries in the region.  Students will be able to express verbally their historical knowledge about issues and events of the past.

COURSE DESCRIPTION In this course we will study comparative conceptual approaches to the causes, ... more COURSE DESCRIPTION In this course we will study comparative conceptual approaches to the causes, trajectories, and outcomes of the great revolutions of the modern world. Although infrequent, revolutions have profoundly transformed the political, cultural, and social structures of countries like France, Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Iran. Utilizing theoretical models, we will discuss questions like these: is there a universal definition of revolution? Are there common causes for revolutions across time and space? What are the ideological, cultural, and economic origins of revolutions? And finally, why do some revolutions succeed and some fail?

Course Description In public discourse in Europe and the US, centuries of social, political, and ... more Course Description In public discourse in Europe and the US, centuries of social, political, and cultural encounters between diverse Middle Eastern societies and the West are often reduced to interactions between the so-called homogeneous religious culture of Islam and heterogeneous secular cultures of the West. At the same time, in some countries of the Middle East the West is reduced to its colonial past and to its military and technological superiority. The aim of this course is to examine the multiple historical aspects of encounters and exchanges between these regions since the late 18 th century. Our journey will start with foundational works that mark the beginning of the era of enlightenment in Europe, which is characterized by rationalism, secularism, and individualism and which transformed Europe and the world. We will investigate how this progress, alongside the technological revolution, led to the gradual domination of the West across the globe, including in the Middle East. This course will explore a range of conceptual models to investigate how Middle Eastern intellectuals and societies have responded to concepts of colonialism, nationalism, socialism, democracy, freedom, and citizenship. Furthermore, we will examine the implications of these historical debates for countries like Sudan, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey in the present. Along the way, we'll ask questions like these: What is exactly the Enlightenment and is this intellectual movement a pure European/Western phenomenon as has always been claimed or can we locate some of the key ideas of the Enlightenment elsewhere before their emergence in the European public discourse? What are the ideas, values, and events that have been shaping the versatile relations of these two important regions in today's world? And finally, what are the grounds for the so-called Western orientalists' misrepresentation of Middle Eastern people in academic and public debates?

What is justice? This seemingly simple question has elicited complex responses. Based on their no... more What is justice? This seemingly simple question has elicited complex responses. Based on their notions of social and political justice, people have developed laws, formed institutions, created political communities, waged wars, and defined their relationships with other individuals and societies. In this seminar, we will read key works to learn a variety of conceptual approaches to justice and to investigate the impact and evolution of different theoretical models. Next, we'll explore the implications of these debates for contemporary political communities in local and global contexts. Along the way, we'll ask questions like these: What makes a political, moral, social, or religious order just? Are there certain principles of justice that people across cultural and political boundaries can agree upon? How can these debates help us become more informed, engaged, and responsible citizens in our respective communities?

COURSE DESCRIPTION This course will introduce you to a range of issues concerning the kinds of co... more COURSE DESCRIPTION This course will introduce you to a range of issues concerning the kinds of communities— political, social, moral, and religious—that human beings construct for themselves and the values that inform and define such communities. We will study ideas that have played a formative role in the political and cultural history of our time in order to reflect more globally on what it means to be an active and engaged citizen. Course readings include canonical texts

Course Description This course will introduce you to a range of issues concerning the kinds of co... more Course Description This course will introduce you to a range of issues concerning the kinds of communities— political, social, moral, and religious—that human beings construct for themselves and the values that inform and define such communities. We will study ideas and arguments that have played a formative role in the political and cultural history of our time. To do so, we will discuss works that exemplify critical thinking about cultures, institutions, and practices in order to reflect more globally on what it means to be an active and engaged citizen. Course readings include passages from the Bible, the Qur'an, and works

Papers by Hamid Rezai

It protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state maki... more It protection rackets represent organised crime at its smoothest, then war risking and state making-quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy-qualify as our largest examples of organised crime. Without branding all generals and statesmen as murderers or thieves, I want to urge the value of that analogy. At least for the European experience of the past few centuries, a portrait of war makers and state makers .r. coercive and self-seeking entrepreneurs bears a far greater resemblance to the facts than do its chief alternatives: the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government. The reflections that follow merely illustrate the analogy of war making and state making with organized crime from a few hundred years of European experience and offer tentative arguments concerning principles of change and variation underlying the experience. My reflections grow from contemporary concerns: worries about the increasing destructiveness of war, the expanding role of great powers as suppliers of arms and military o r ganization to poor countries, and the growing importance of military r tile in those same countries. They spring from the hope that the European experience, properly understood, will help us to grasp what is happening toda y , perhaps even to do something about it. The Third World of the twentieth century does not greatly resemble Europe of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. In no simple sense can we read the future of Third World countries from the pasts of European countries. Yet a thoughtful exploration of European experience will serve us well. It will show us that coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of the European states. It will show us that popular resistance to 170 Charles Tilly coercive exploitation forced would-be power holders to concede protection and constraints on their own action. It will therefore help us to eliminate faulty implicit comparisons between today's Third World and yesterday's Europe. That clarification will make it easier to understand exactly how today's world is different and what we therefore have to explain. It may even help us to explain the current looming presence of military organization and action throughout the world. Although that result would delight me, I do not promise anything so grand. This essay, then, concerns the place of organised means of violence in the growth and change of those peculiar forms of government we call national states: relatively centralized, differentiated organizations the officials of which more or less successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population inhabiting a large, contiguous territory. The argument grows from historical work on the formation of national states in Western Europe, especially on the growth of the French state from 1600 onward. But it takes several deliberate steps away from that work, wheels, and stares hard at it from theoretical ground. The argument brings with it few illustrations and no evidence worthy of the name. Just as one repacks a hastily filled rucksack after a few days on the trail-throwing out the waste, putting things in order of importance, and balancing the load-I have repacked my theoretical baggage for the climb to come; the real test of the new packing arrives only with the next stretch of the trail. The trimmed-down argument stresses the interdependence of war making and state making and the analogy between both of those processes and what, when less successful and smaller in scale, we call organised crime. War makes states, I shall claim. Banditry, piracy, gangland rivalry, policing, and war making all belong on the same continuum-that I shall claim as well. For the historically limited period in which national states were becoming the dominant organisations in Western countries, I shall also claim that mercantile capitalism and state making reinforced each other. Double-Edged Protection In contemporary American parlance, the word "protection" sounds two contrasting tones. One is comforting, the other ominous. With one tone, "protection" calls up images of the shelter against danger provided by a powerful friend, a large insurance policy, or a sturdy roof. With the other, it evokes the racket in which a local strong man forces merchants to pay tribute in order to avoid damage-damage the strong man himself threatens to deliver. The difference, to be sure, is a matter of degree: A hell-and-damnation priest is likely to collect contributions from his parishioners only to the extent that they believe his predictions of brimstone for infidels; our neighborhood mobster may actually be, as he claims to be, a brothel's best guarantee of operation free of police interference. Which image the word "protection" brings to mind depends mainly on our assessment of the reality and eternality of the threat. Someone who

Maryam and Ma'sud Rajavi with its political headquarters in Paris, can be traced back in the 1950... more Maryam and Ma'sud Rajavi with its political headquarters in Paris, can be traced back in the 1950s. The overthrow of the democratically elected government of Dr. Mosaddeq in August 1953 by a US and British-led military coup and the repressive policies of the Shah regime against the non-violent opposition, especially the bloody crackdown of the June 1963 uprising in the religious city of Qom, prompted some members of the religious liberal group the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI) to reconsider their strategies in the struggle against the Pahlavi state. Motivated by the success of revolutionaries in Cuba and the rise of armed guerilla organizations in Latin America and Asia, these younger LMI activists, all university students, came to believe that guerilla warfare is the only effective strategy of resistance against a regime with a large-scale bureaucracy, powerful army and police force. In the search for a new strategy this generation of Muslim activists formed initially an underground reading group in which alongside the Qur'an they read works of leftist revolutionaries across the globe to formulate a new ideology of revolution and establish a leadership that could successfully launch a revolution and pave the path for the creation of a classless society that would eliminate all forms of human exploitation. After six years of kar-e feshordeh-e ideolozhik (intense ideological activity) in September 1965 the members of the reading group led by Mohammad Hanifnejad announced the formation of the MEK armed with the ideology of what they called eslam-e rastin-e enqelabi (the true revolutionary Islam).