On Duties: The Professor

In response to my last blog post, I received this message on Twitter:

So I clicked on the link, and came up with this . . .

Comments below . . . 

In Stephen Law’s Believing Bullshit, he asks: “How reasonable a response is “I just know”?

It depends. Sometimes, by “I just know”, people mean you should just take their word for it, perhaps because time is short and the evidence supporting their beliefs too complex to present in a convenient sound bite.  So, what if there is enough time to provide evidence, and the evidence is not complex. Do we just believe an argument when someone says, “I just know”?

Over and over, I run into this conundrum with respect to a university professor, a well-recognized figure in UAE academia and public figure who, nonetheless, consistently fails to provide evidence for his “scholarly” opinions. This is unfortunate in an op-ed, and unjustifiable in a scholarly piece like Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdullah’s “Contemporary Socio-Political Issues of The Arab Gulf Moment.”

In his paper, Abdulkhaleq raises a number of points related to the GCC states in general, and the UAE in particular, but generally fails to support his arguments. For example, he constantly mentions the middle class and its demands for greater democratization, but not surprisingly, fails to present any evidence for an identifiable social entity like a middle-class, not to mention any polling data or significant anecdotal experience to tell us what they (as a class) are actually demanding. In another example, the professor presents a comparison between the UAE and Kuwait, and questions how the UAE, a “political dwarf”, could be far more economically dynamic than  “politically liberal” Kuwait; in fact, he describes it as “strange.” But as this example clearly goes against his (mis)understanding of social development theory, he just admits that it is surprising and moves on.

In an effort to counter the argument for the status quo in the UAE, based on the obvious reasons why the people prefer the current situation to that of Kuwait, one might expect Abdulkhaleq to make an argument for the advantages of democratization.  But he never actually does this.  One might also wonder why Abdulkhaleq endorses the view that turning from tribalism was essential to the modernization of the Arab Gulf States, somehow missing its importance as part of the bedrock of UAE society and culture, happily integrated into our modern state. 

In these and a number of other cases, the professor not only puts forward weak or outright false claims, but also consistently fails to provide the reader any evidence for them. This is very poor scholarship indeed.  It would not matter so much if the stakes weren’t so high, but what the professor is arguing for ultimately represents fundamental changes to the very nature of our political system and historical culture.  Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla should be reminded that while he is free to express his opinions, “I just know,” is not going to be good enough to guide the debate on political change in the UAE.

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(In case you’re interested, I went ahead and commented directly on the paper the doctor asked me to “read and comment” on.  The link is below; my comments in red.)

Click here to download: Comments on Dr. Abdulkhaleq's Article