Juan Cole

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

— Juan Cole

Take the decision in early March to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. It was made apparently without knowledge or understanding of the nature of…

— Juan Cole

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested…

— Juan Cole

I speak Urdu quite a lot, too, and I read a lot of Persian.

— Juan Cole

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

— Juan Cole

Did you know that they introduced the 15 percent flat tax on individual and corporate income in Iraq? Something that some politicians…

— Juan Cole

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to…

— Juan Cole

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy…

— Juan Cole

To the extent that the (ISIS's) advance is a series of urban revolts against the government of PM Nouri al-Maliki, the US…

— Juan Cole

I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy…

— Juan Cole

I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.

— Juan Cole

But September 11 marked a big change in the sense that the public was suddenly interested, and as a professor at a…

— Juan Cole

I lived in the Muslim world for 10 years.

— Juan Cole

My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news…

— Juan Cole

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

— Juan Cole

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

— Juan Cole

For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn't rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of…

— Juan Cole

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank…

— Juan Cole

I believe that the American administration of Iraq has been arrogant, has pursued policies that are illegal in international law and has…

— Juan Cole

An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all…

— Juan Cole

Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship…

— Juan Cole