With the recent criticism of media war coverage, many students are turning to their professors for a candid analysis.
Yesterday afternoon, a crowd of more than 200 Penn students, faculty and alumni gathered in Houston Hall's Hall of Flags to hear the takes of five professors on the unfolding events of the war in Iraq.
The symposium -- which featured Bruce Kuklick, Nubar Hovsepian, Ian Lustick, Arthur Waldron and Brendan O'Leary as panelists -- was organized by the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict.
"These people are representatives of different perspectives," Asch Center Director of Refugee Initiatives Arancha Garcia del Soto said. "They are all professionally interested in the Iraq issue."
The first professor to speak was Kuklick, a Nichols Professor of American History. He explained his "basic skepticism"of the Iraqi war by listing the constants present in America's foreign policy for the last century -- among which were the identification of the current enemy as the "real evildoer," and the "hyperbolic activities in the field of civil liberties" that have emerged with each conflict.
"There must be caution and prudence on the part of the government in taking us to war," Kuklick said. "And there must be caution and prudence on the part of the people to understand what is happening."
The second panelist was Hovsepian, associate director of Penn's Middle East Center. He cited Iraq's modern history as an example that colonial structures lack the base for the formation of democracy. He added that foreign intervention had to limit itself to a "peripheral influence," or the consequences for the global community would be severe.
Hovsepian concluded that "1991 produced one bin Laden, and 2003 will produce many more."
Lustick, a Merriam Term Professor of Political Science and associate director of the Asch Center, opposed U.S. strategy in foreign policy, which he said favors quick solutions to more lasting results.
"We need to take a wider perspective," Lustick said, adding that the current U.S. tactic would only drive thousands of Muslims toward terrorist organizations.
Lustick added that media coverage of the war was treating the conflict like "a sports event."
"The American people will not have the information they need to avoid seeing on their televisions for the next two decades what we're seeing now."
Waldron -- a Lauder Professor of International Relations and a member of Penn's History Department -- said that the cause of the United States' political failures was due to a lack of knowledge about Iraqi culture.
"What we do to build freedom is going to be the main task," Waldron said. "It is most important that the Iraqis get involved in the process of reconstruction."
The last panelist was O'Leary, a Sheer Endowed Term Chair in the Social Sciences, a member of the Political Science Department and director of the Asch Center. To him, oil was a secondary question in the Iraqi conflict. The main preoccupation, he said, would be the post-war situation.
He presented two possible outcome scenarios -- one benign and one malign -- and concluded his presentation by saying that the creation of an Iraqi state would be more difficult than many believe, mostly because of the ethnic differences that persist in the region.
The symposium proceeded with questions from the audience, and professors took every opportunity to express their opinions on the war -- and cordially disagree with one another.
The audience was very impressed by the presentations.
"The panelists are exceptional," College sophomore Skee Yagi said. "I think that what the Asch Center is doing is a great idea -- to bring these people together on this very timely subject."
