Professor Ilan Peleg Will Teach Graduate Course at Spain’s Leading Catalan University

His book Democratizing the Hegemonic State will serve as the main text

Ilan Peleg, Charles A. Dana Professor of Social Science, will share his expertise in ethno-national relations while teaching an intensive, two-week graduate course Jan. 9-21 at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. His book, Democratizing the Hegemonic State: Political Transformation in the Age of Identity, will serve as the course’s main text.

The Spanish Ministry of Education authorized the university to hire one European scholar and one American scholar to expose its students to cutting-edge research. The Times Higher Education ranked the university, housed by the Catalan Parliament in Barcelona, as the number one Spanish institution in the social sciences this fall.

The university’s political science department invited Peleg last summer to prepare the course based on his scholarship. His acclaimed book was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. Luis Moreno of the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid stated that the book was “compulsory reading” and found Peleg’s analysis “incisive, powerful and empirically grounded in a thorough examination of 14 cases around the world.”

Peleg’s course, entitled “Majority-Minority Relations in the Contemporary World: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives,” will explore alternative constitutional designs for managing complex relationships among ethno-national groups worldwide. Students also will examine factors causing large-scale, violent interactions among different ethnic groups in multinational societies and will analyze solutions to those conflicts.

The 17 graduate students represent a variety of countries, including Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Turkey. Students also will be exposed to the writings of scores of other scholars.

“My continuing involvement with the subject matter and my close personal relations with the best scholars in the world make me as informed as I can possibly be,” Peleg says. “Moreover, Spain in the post-Franco era — that is in the last 35 years — but even throughout its long history, has been a phenomenal laboratory for inter-ethnic relations. It is a highly diverse, heterogeneous country that has made huge strides toward resolving its ethno-national tensions which led it in the past to the worst civil war in Europe during the 20th century, an internal bloodbath in which about 500,000 people died, 130,000 of them executed often for ethnic reasons. Although my course will not focus on Spain, teaching it in this country to graduate students from all over the world is an experience I am looking forward to.”

A frequent speaker on issues related to American foreign policy, international and ethnic conflict, and the Middle East, Peleg is editor-in-chief of the journal Israel Studies Forum. His latest book is The Legacy of George W. Bush’s Foreign Policy: Moving Beyond Neoconservatism (2009).He also is author of Begin’s Foreign Policy, 1977-1983: Israel’s Turns to the Right (1987) and Human Rights in the West Bank and Gaza (1995). His 1995 book received the Choice Award for Excellence in Scholarship.

Peleg is a recipient of the College’s Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for excellence in teaching and contributions to campus life, Marquis Distinguished Teaching Award, Mary Louise Van Artsdalen Prize for scholarly achievement, and Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Award for teaching and scholarship.