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Shadi Hamid Profile picture
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11 Jun, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Not a joke, my first published academic article was on feminist theory...

And it exists on the internet: org.uib.no/smi/seminars/n…
Kinda funny to read this 15 years later Image
Doing Foucault and critical theory in college was helpful. You realized power relations were vital to understanding policy outcomes; no institutional arrangements were "neutral"; everything was basically a social construction; and objectivity was an illusion
Foucauldian deconstruction seemed illuminating at the time, and it partly was. It gave you a set of conceptual tools. But it was a phase most of us grew out of. Its limits were obvious. It was fun to "deconstruct" but did we want to just deconstruct for the rest of our lives?

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More from @shadihamid

Shadi Hamid Profile picture
13 Jun
I have a new @WCrowdsLive essay on the idea of the "arc of history." Martin Luther King was discussing racism and civil rights at home. Obama repurposed it more broadly to include America's global role. But did the arc exist beyond our own borders? 1/x

wisdomofcrowds.live/morality-is-im…
As an aside, there is an interesting question of how the notion of progress is eschatologically problematic for Islam and to some extent Christianity. For many Muslims, progress exists, it just runs counter to historical time. 2/x
MLK spoke of the "arc of the moral universe." Obama adapted this and came up with the "arc of history." Meanwhile, "the right side of history" wasn't new. Clinton used it 20 times. What was new was Obama's emphasis on the *wrong side* of history. 3/x Image
Read 4 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
9 Jun
If you missed it, our two-part conversation with @DouthatNYT on @WCrowdsLive is out. A deep dive into decadence, wokeness, interplanetary colonialism, anti-supernaturalism, and the perils of meritocracy

wisdomofcrowds.live/ross-douthat-p…
In Part 2, I ask @douthatnyt whether Christianity, in contrast to Islam, struggles with "rationalist" elites because it doesn't present itself as an explicitly rationalistic faith.

Full conversation here: wisdomofcrowds.live/ross-douthat-p…

Here's a teaser 👇🏽

The question of why educated elites don't seem to find Christianity compelling despite an obvious and often intense desire for meaning and structure is something of a puzzle. @douthatnyt has been excellent on this: nytimes.com/2021/04/10/opi…
Read 4 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
7 Jun
This is brilliant essay from @dmarusic on how the arc of history doesn't necessarily bend toward justice, and to assume that it does creates major blindspots in foreign policy. It's a tour de force of argument. But I disagree on some key points. wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr… 1/x
This is exactly right. There was a naiveté in Obama and Kerry's notion that historic's arc was bending. *Someone* needs to do the bending, and Obama wasn't willing to back his own premise with hard power. And without power, the moralism was both empty and presumptuous. 2/x
In pointing to this false premise of the "liberal world order," @dmarusic argues that questions of order must be separated from questions of morality, but it's not clear to me that this is the right conclusion to draw. And I think this is where we diverge. 3/x
Read 14 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
4 Jun
This week's Friday Essay just dropped. @dmarusic pulls out the stops. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Like all our Friday Essays at @WCrowdsLive, it's for subscribers only, so do consider joining us if what we're doing catches your interest.
wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr…
Here's a teaser. It's not so much the arc of history bending toward justice, but rather an "arc of despair" resigning us to sad fates.

wisdomofcrowds.live/how-liberal-tr… Image
Last week, my Friday Essay provided a counterpoint to @dmarusic's pessimism. In betraying our own ideals, we remind ourselves that we have them in the first place.

wisdomofcrowds.live/why-america-ne… Image
Read 4 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
4 Jun
Fascinating reporting from @SuneEngel in @WSJ on how the Taliban govern, whether they've changed, and what that means for #Afghanistan's future.

Includes some of my thoughts.

wsj.com/articles/the-t…
The tragic reality is that the minority of Islamist groups that use violence can often claim more success than nonviolent ones, whether the Taliban, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, Libyan militants, or even Hamas

wsj.com/articles/the-t…
In areas where chaos and conflict are the norm, militants like the Taliban can come in and dispense rough often brutal justice, particularly when it comes to legal disputes and corruption. This gains them support, however grudging, as @SuneEngel reports.
Read 5 tweets
Shadi Hamid Profile picture
31 May
In this week's @WCrowdsLive essay, I make the case for hypocrisy in foreign policy, not because hypocrisy is good but because it is better than the alternative. I wish it were otherwise but apparently it's not. 1/x

wisdomofcrowds.live/why-america-ne…
As I finish a book about rethinking democracy promotion for the post-Trump era, I've been struggling with the question of hypocrisy. It's unavoidable now that the gap between words and deeds has returned with Biden, which is both bad and good. 2/x
The hypocrite has always been a subject of fascination, not merely because he is bad. Mere badness is pedestrian. The hypocrite is different (and worse) because of his ostentatious morality. But should a hatred of hypocrisy be applied to countries and not just individuals? 3/x
Read 7 tweets

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