Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

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

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously.

My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me.

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.