Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:32:48.054Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Teaching the Iraq War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2008

Russell A. Burgos
Russell A. Burgos
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The last time members of the graduating class of 2008 lived in a nation at peace, they were in the first month of their high school sophomore year. Because they are not subject to conscription; because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being fought by a professional army that has separated itself in many respects from civil society; and because the government has asked little of society in the way of sacrifice for the wars, today's undergraduates have little direct experience of conflict, the armed forces, or those people most affected by it. What do we teach students about the war? Political scientists are often reluctant to teach current events—aside from the fact emotions can run high and classroom discussion can be hijacked by unproductive ideological debates, in real-time we lack the kinds of patterned data that lend themselves to systematic analysis and prediction.

Type
THE TEACHER
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 173 - 178
Copyright
© 2008 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burgos, Russell A. Forthcoming. “Origins of Regime Change: Ideapolitik on the Long Road to Baghdad, 1993–2000.” Security Studies.Google Scholar
Davis, John, ed. 2006. Presidential Politics and the Road to the Second Iraq War from Forty-One to Forty-Three. New York: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.Google Scholar
Dougherty, Beth K. 2003. “Byzantine Politics: Using Simulations to Make Sense of the Middle East.” PS: Political Science & Politics 36 (2): 239–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Michael, and Bernard E. Trainor. 2006. Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Hashim, Ahmed S. 2006. Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Horowitz, David. 2007. Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom. New York: Encounter Books.Google Scholar
Kiasatpour, Soleiman M. 1999. “The Internet and Film: Teaching Middle East Politics Interactively.” PS: Political Science & Politics 32 (1): 83–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovett, Christopher C. 1997. “A Walk in the Sun: Reflections on Teaching the Vietnam War.” The History Teacher 31 (1): 77–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maliniak, Daniel, et al. 2007. “Inside the Ivory Tower.” Foreign Policy 159 (March/April).Google Scholar
Michener, James. 1947. Tales of the South Pacific. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Rohall, David E., Morten G. Ender, and Michael D. Matthews. 2006. “The Effects of Military Affiliation, Gender, and Political Ideology toward the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Armed Forces & Society 33 (1): 59–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockton, Ronald R. 1995. “Walking Between Rain Drops: Teaching the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (3): 507–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tripp, Charles. 2007. A History of Iraq, rev. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Marilyn B. Young. 1979. “Revisionists Revisited: The Case of Vietnam.” Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations X (June).Google Scholar