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

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

To the extent that the (ISIS's) advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US would end up bombing ordinary city folk. For the US to be bombing Sunni towns all these years later on behalf of Mr. al-Maliki would be to invite terrorism against the US.

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

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.

I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research.

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.