I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.

I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians very much wanted to push in the United States without success but in Iraq they do it.

An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all around, without a strong security reason and so forth.

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.