Danny Hoffman: Hello everyone. My name is Danny Hoffman. I am the director of the Henry M Jackson School of International Studies here at the University of Washington. It is September 30 2026. As I’m sure many of you know, over the past year, the Jackson School has launched a few different podcast series in our various centers and programs, as well as posting standalone interview recordings on our website and podcast platforms. For us, this is a new medium, but it’s one that we see is very much in keeping with our mission as a public institution dedicated not only to excellent teaching and research, but also to furthering public dialogue on global affairs. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to check out some of our interviews on the websites of the Middle East Center, the Religious Studies Program, the Global Sport Lab, and Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, the Latin American Studies program, as well as those on the Jackson School home page. Now, just a quick reminder that we record these conversations in the attic of our home in Thomson Hall. So there’s every chance that you’ll hear the sounds of an old, busy building in the background. And this I should note too this is the first day of fall classes, so you may very well hear added students screaming from the quad below us. Um. Now it’s my great pleasure today to be in conversation with my friend, colleague, and predecessor in the role of Jackson School director, Doctor Reşat Kasaba. Our reasons for recording this conversation are bittersweet. Reşatd and his wife, Doctor Kathie Friedman, also a faculty member in the Jackson School, retired at the end of last academic year. I recently had the pleasure of a public conversation with Reşat at an alumni event, which gave us the opportunity to explore some of the changes that Reşat has seen in the school in international studies as a discipline and in the world over the arc of his career as well, of course, as some of what has remained constant. So given the challenges facing all of us in twenty twenty six, not least in higher education, there’s a lot to be learned from thinking across a career dedicated to research, teaching, and administrative leadership in one of the oldest and most important schools of international studies in the country. So in order to bring that perspective to a wider audience, we decided to record this conversation today. So first and foremost, before I introduce you properly, Reşat welcome and thank you so much for being here.
Reşat Kasaba: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
DH: Now, I think a lot of the people listening to this will will know you, and they’ll know your career already. But for those who don’t, Doctor Reşat Kasaba has been a faculty member in the Jackson School for more than thirty years. He’s an expert on the history and politics of the Middle East and has both taught and researched economic history, nationalism, urban history, US foreign policy. Much of his work brings particular focus to modern Turkey, and he is currently conducting research on the US and the history of U.S. foreign policy in Turkey, and on the political consequences of the rural urban divide in that country. Now, among his many notable achievements in twenty twenty four, Reşat was given the High Achievement Award in Social Sciences from the Qatar Has University in Istanbul. He has won the UW Distinguished Teaching Award, served as president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Studies, and was board member of the Middle East Studies Association. And of course, he held the Stanley D Golub professor, excuse me, Stanley Chair in International Studies for the ten years from twenty ten to twenty twenty, while serving as director of the Jackson School. Reşat holds both an Ma and a PhD in sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. So, Reşat first of all, is there anything I missed by way of introduction?
RK: No, that’s very good. Thank you. Well, a slight correction. When I talk about the Jackson School, I say that it is the best school of international studies in the world. So there you go.
DH: I need to broaden my horizons. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much again for for doing this. And actually that, you know, that’s a pretty good place for us to start, right? I mean, we, we spend a lot of time in the school thinking about what what the school’s role is in the world. And in particular, I think it’s important to start with students. So we think, we think. Can we talk a lot about what students need to take away from their time in the Jackson School? And that’s a conversation that I know goes back more than a century to the founding of the school, because the school was created based on the idea that our mission is to prepare future leaders for dealing with the complicated and a changing world. Now, your own career in the Jackson School, and certainly including your time as director, covered some really major changes in the world. Early post-Cold War 9/11, the War on Terror, Iraq, Covid 19, the explosion of social media, the birth of AI. And now I think it’s fair to say the rise of a new form of populist politics, certainly in Turkey, but around Europe, Latin America and here in the United States. So starting from that, I guess I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about when you think about what the skills and the knowledge base that a Jackson School graduate needs today versus when you started your career here, what would you say is the same and what would you say is different?
RK: All right. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about these things and also clarify, hopefully some things in my own mind. Um, so, um, I came to the University of Washington, the Jackson School, um, just about ten years after the international studies program was put together. And as part of that various area studies programs around the campus. Some of them had been here since the end of World War One, actually, uh, were gathered under this one umbrella of the Jackson School. It was called the it wasn’t called the Jackson School at first, but it became so I think in 1984. So when I came, it was about ten years after that first steps were taken. And going back to that time, it was still. When in my first years here, it was still fresh. Um, the debates and discussions that went to the establishment establishment of the school. And I thought about these in recent days just in preparation for our conversation the other week and for this. And I’m kind of surprised that there are several issues that were very much on people’s minds at the time. Now we’re talking about almost fifty years ago and now and, and it always this kind of tension, I would say, among three things, you know, there is one unlike, uh, let’s say, uh, mathematics or sociology or economics. Um, international studies as a field does not have clear kind of principles or boundaries or content. So it’s very hard to come up with a two or three basic foundational courses everybody has to take to become an expert in international studies. So there’s always this debate, what we should teach to our students, what is a good way of kind of giving students a sense of the world so that they can use this information in whatever field that they go into. And the other thing, of course, is the students themselves. And it’s important to think about why do students come to us, to international studies, rather than one of the other wonderful majors in College of Arts and Sciences and beyond. So their interests, of course, they come with all kinds of different interests and backgrounds. And so that is to that has to be taken seriously. You can’t really be in a place and say, this is what you should know. I guess if you if you teach mathematics, you can do that. But in our field, it’s kind of tricky. And the third thing, of course, is this pesky kind of world affairs that come and interfere. Just when you think that you have a way of understanding the world order. Things change. And you mentioned some of the things that we witnessed over the last decades, and they keep coming at us. So there’s always this constant interest in bringing together all these, you know, kind of bringing those things into our classrooms and incorporating them into what we’re teaching. So it’s a kind of a really a dynamic environment that I found myself in when I first came. And I’ve been really, I think about it. I feel I’ve been really privileged to be part of an environment like that, because it really allows you to grow, to think in new ways and hopefully improve what you do. So in terms of I mean, specifically, what I would say is that the first part, how to study the world, it was inevitably in the early years of the school, this was very closely linked to the post World War Two world order, which we are now witnessing that is coming apart all over us, all around us. So that was very much related to the US interest in understanding the world. And because it’s really it was linked with there with the US interests in various parts of the world. And sometimes people refer to as ruling the world. Mark Mazower has a very good book about this. So and there are a lot of other, um, other literature. So really, I mean, to understand the world so that you can kind of govern it in many ways. And part of it, of course, was linked with this struggle against communism and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. So there was that framework initially. Uh, so that’s in the literature that became sort of triumphalist kind of understanding of this, the West, the rise of the West. And there’s a lot of literature and early iterations of some of our courses very much reflected that understanding. So but soon after I arrived and actually, um, I am part of, of, of some of those discussions, uh, a new way of thinking about the world became more and more popular among scholars, universities, and graduate students like myself and this new world. Uh, there were kind of one part of it had to do with thinking about the world, not only in terms of what the West, what happened in the West and how it spread to the rest of the world. But think about the world as a as a unity with many different parts and regions and countries and cultures and how those interacted over a very long period of time, and to realize that those interactions had a very clear, important power element in it. So the relations were not relations among equals, but definitely relations among unequal partners, that that inequality actually became worse over time. So let’s think about the world in a very different way from this triumphalist West perspective. And related to that, I think is a very important, um, literature that grew out of what at the time we referred to as the Third World. And now it’s people talk about the global South, but basically from Asia and the Middle East and Latin America and Africa, scholars who looked at those places and not necessarily people from those places, but included that too. And of course, things like, uh, you know, very common things that we think about, like the cotton trade or Opium Wars or things like that look very differently if you look at them from different perspectives. So all these gradually became incorporated into our teaching. And it is a rare place actually not being tied to a discipline which the very word discipline actually tells you something about how some social science fields think about the world, and not being very strongly tied to a discipline, allowed us to be very kind of open over the years and really expand what we do and how we do. So I think that’s a very important thing to think about. And related to that, uh, school of International Studies and the Jackson School and all the other institutes that came before, it had a very kind of Tenuous and indirect and not and definitely not as close a relationship with the US government as some of our peer institutions have. So I think it was a very good decision that our predecessors made, that this was not designed as a policy school, which allowed us to be much more open and critical and much more diverse in our approach. But we’ve always been interested in also what connects the world, you know? So the trade and international communications, etc.. So there are these real, you know, links that bind the world together. And one of them, of course, is the movement of people, migration and refugees. And going back to the kind of the transportation of enslaved people from different parts of the world, these have always been part of our way. We we think about the world. And I think that is also put us, especially in this last, um, I would say maybe almost five years, if not more now, uh, in a, in a good position where we can actually not only teach about migration and refugees, but also be actively involved in what’s happening to people, um, within this new context that we’re living in. I always talk about our human rights center as a, as a really good example of that. But I think there’s faculty and students who are, since we are not in DC, we cannot work in the State Department. Our students don’t have those internships, but they are involved in a very important area, very important issue, problem, uh, of the world today, uh, through that kind of involvement in those courses. So I think, um, I think that’s something that really combining area studies and these connections and themes over the years. I think also made us uniquely prepared for some things.
DH: Absolutely. And actually, and Kathie was a major part of that. Uh, I mean, among her many talents is teaching a lot of our most important classes on migration and refugees. So yeah, it’s interesting. I just a quick follow up on that on the point you ended on, on the idea that a lot of our because I find myself saying this to people when I kind of explain the Jackson school, um, if their frame of reference is, as you said, schools of international affairs, um, that often are, are talked about and thought about as policy schools and also kind of pre-professional training programs. Right. Um, and one of the things that’s been distinctive about this school is that in, we really are giving a liberal arts education to people who may then go on to be diplomats, may go on to work in security establishments, maybe go on to business, but they’re getting a grounding that is very much a kind of college of arts and sciences grounding. And, um, you know, I’ve wondered where that comes from. Right. And it sounds like it’s, it’s, it’s partly organic, right? And probably partly a question of just where we’re located. Right. We’re outside of the corridors of U.S. power in a sense.
RK: I think that’s that’s true. I mean, part of it is, I think just, uh, as a result of, of people who were here at the time and what their interests were. There’s definitely, uh, people who would have preferred to have a much, uh, you know, kind of a policy oriented professional school. Um, and, but it didn’t work out that way. And I think part of it is like, you kind of, I think implied is our geographical location. We don’t really, even if we really had very good connections with certain people in Washington, D.C., it would be impossible for us to have the kind of internships and organic relationships that those schools of international affairs have with the white House, with the Congress, with the parts of the government. So we can’t really. I mean, the distance is is is that but I also want to emphasize what you said. Our students actually coming through our courses, both undergraduate and graduate. And if they choose to become foreign policy professionals or. Work in non-governmental organizations or any field related to international studies, I think they they have a much better grounding because of the sense of the world and the history that they come out of, that, they get out of our classes. I firmly believe that, um, we can also talk about maybe later about the organization of the school in the college or what have you, but, uh, but that’s part of the conversation.
DH: Yeah. That’s great. Well, no, that’s yeah, I do want to come back to that. And, but keeping with students for a moment, I wonder if you could say a little about, um, what you think may have, um, changed in the students who are drawn to the Jackson school over the course of your, your time in the school. So, um, I mean, you’ve taught foundations courses, um, both at the, you know, throughout your career. Um, and so you see a lot of the students when they first enter the school and kind of what their expectations are of what they’re doing, and then you follow them as they, as they continue on. So when you think about the students who took your, your courses when you first started, are they different than the ones who took those courses over the last several years? And I mean that kind of Expansively, right? Are they different demographically? Are they different in what they want out of their education, what they imagine that they will be doing afterwards? Do they do they come in with and with a different set of skills already, or a different knowledge base than a student might have? You know, when you started your career here?
RK: Yeah. So being a public institution, public university, and drawing most of our undergraduates from within the Washington state, um, inevitably kind of gives us a basis for a typical student that we have. Um, and that hasn’t really changed much over the years. That part of it, that is people who come from the state, uh, they may not have that much of an experience in actual travel or, you know, kind of being exposed to other parts of the world and other cultures. Um, but they come to us inevitably, uh, as an undergraduate in an institution like this, with some ideas about what they want to do in the world. And and then for whatever reason, they they think that having a kind of an international studies education will help them in law or finance or business or whatever they want to do, which I firmly believe. Actually, it really helps in those fields. So there is that kind of Washington state based students who are genuinely interested. And, and it is it is a treat, especially in the very early, um, you know, the, the foundational courses, uh, oftentimes I would get students right out of high school in the fall and just to see them over the ten weeks, how not all of them, of course, but to see in some of them this kind of almost a light being turned on and kind of starting to ask questions. And I’ve, having been here this long. I also had the privilege of kind of keeping in contact with some of them and, and comparing what they were like when I first met them. And then the wonderful things that they’re doing now is just really, it’s not all because of what we do, but to see that growth is really, really opening them a opening up a window to them. And whatever they do, they think about it in different words. I think that is different times, different terms. So this is this is one thing I would say, um, that is very much related to, uh, our university itself and the student body that we draw most of our students from. But then also over the years, um, the, the diversity of our student body has changed significantly. I can’t really emphasize this enough. The difference between a student body that has, um, uh, you know, primarily, as I said, a basis from within Washington state, which here of course, mostly um, means, you know, from um Scandinavian countries or Europe or that’s the history of this place as opposed to now, um, having students from all over the world and having a group of students like that who either personally or through their families who have real connections to different parts of the world and having them together in a classroom and talk about global issues that affected all of them in about different ways, and to see how they relate to what they hear in the classroom from their own perspective. And you see this in the papers they write and the discussions they participate in. And they, you know, in the office hours, the points. So that has made, I think, our classrooms very, uh, very interesting. Uh, and diversity, I think is the main main issue. Um, and then there is periodic and this is really periodic and we’re living through a period and we had periods like this when students, regardless of what they’re coming from, have real anxiety about their job prospects and what else they can do, what comes after college. And that goes back to what I said earlier in terms of, um, really, um, you know, never forgetting to kind of, uh, never forgetting to ask the students or to find out from the students. Why is it that they’re coming to our classes? What are they trying to, to, to get out of it? So I think that conversation is very important.
DH: Yeah. No, absolutely. And I wonder if I could I don’t want to preempt something that you might be thinking of, um, mentioning later, but you told a story when in the alumni gathering that we did recently about your experience of teaching a class on the war in Iraq. Right. Which you’ve done for the last several years, and how that class brought in people whose experiences were so very different, but and created a really fascinating, um, and I would imagine at times really challenging environment. And I wonder, could I ask you to say a little bit more about kind of how that.
RK: Absolutely. Yes, yes. So, um, I became personally became interested in the war and war in Iraq. Uh, obviously, I, you know, watched it as it unfolded. And, but the question seemed really something that everybody raised, but nobody really answered directly as to how something like this could have happened. Um, and unlike perhaps more recent times. At the time, we had a very experienced group of people running all these state departments and the intelligence, etc. so, so how this could have happened. And I designed this course basically to have a forum not to teach students how it happened, but to have a forum where people can discuss, you know, how the decisions were made, who did what and why and why wasn’t listened. It was kind of an interesting kind of puzzle, you know, and, uh, but, uh, just like everything else in the school and I mentioned diversity, I found that over the years, there were more and more students in that classroom who were actually coming, having had first hand experience in the war itself. Uh, some of these are veterans, um, who are now in the college on the G.I. Bill. And then we have this, program. Fellowship program. With. Carlisle. Army. Army. War. College. And visitors from there took some of my classes and most significantly, of course, refugee families. The families who, um, for whatever reason and some of these actually families who work with the U.S. government and some had to flee for, for, um, you know, for their lives to have a group like that in a classroom and to talk about this issue. And genuinely, I mean, people always say this, oh, I learned from my students, which is true, but that environment is definitely one in which you learn things that, that you would otherwise just maybe read about, but it’s not the same way of relating to them. So that is a very good example. Uh, and, uh, I, you know, I taught that course fairly regularly. Maybe I’ll come back and teach it again. Yes, please. And it’s really, uh, I mean, the, the, the knowledge, of course, the basis of, of where we draw our information from is growing constantly. People. Now we’re talking about twenty five years almost people writing about it. Memoirs, papers are becoming more and more available. So the puzzle, you know, different parts of the puzzle are being filled, but still the human experience of something like this. And to be able to kind of when you talk about over one hundred thousand Iraqis, mostly civilians, who were killed just to talk about think about that number. Uh, and to have, you know, a group of students who have had some direct exposure to that has been really gratifying. That’s one example, I think, of our ability to deal with contemporary issues as we think about international studies.
DH: Yeah, no. That’s great. And to me, again, it illustrates the point that you made at the beginning, which is you could imagine an earlier time period or even now in a different school, that that narrative of how you would teach that war could be a narrative of policy failures, or it could be a, you know, but, but teaching it to students in a way that really talks about both their personal experience, but also sets it in historical context, cultural context, etc., I think is really exemplary of what we do. So I want to switch gears a little back to something that you kind of alluded to this. And so my I’ll ask the question, but I want you to take it in whatever direction you will, which is this question about kind of the institutional framing of the school. So we our reputation as an institution is really built on on area studies. Right. We were and you said this, right. One of the main locations for for crafting the intellectual framework through which a lot of American policy makers, diplomats understood the rest of the world in the post-World war II period. So in a very practical sense, our our history over many decades has been tied to federal funding that supports higher education institutions to do that work of training people in language, culture, history, etc.. Now the current administration has ended that support. Um, and, uh, in many cases actually actually threatened universities ability to teach diverse understandings of the world and how it works. So I, I guess I’d like to hear you say a little bit about, um, what you think sustains area studies in the future. And are we in a, in a cycle that will swing back to a world where area studies in higher education matters and is recognized? Um, if so, will that, you know, will that look different? Will it be the same or are we in a totally new uncharted territory? And I guess here, Here is where sort of some of the institutional understanding of what the school is and where it sits might be really might be relevant.
RK: Yeah. Um. Let me just, uh, I think I will, I think, talk about area studies a little bit. Then we can kind of talk about the institutional dimension of, of what we do and how we, um, uh, how that came into being. So area studies, I think it’s easy. Well, it’s tempting to talk about what’s happening right now as a cycle. Uh, and I, I remember the very first kind of sustained kind of criticism of area studies and the danger that title VI programs could, could be, um, cut off. Um, I understand was, was during Reagan administration actually. And, uh, uh, so, uh, and there was a lot of fear and concern whatever at the time, and there were some cutbacks, but then they were restored. And ironically, another big cut came under Obama. Uh, my early years of, um, you know, directorship for budgetary reasons. Um, but then again, they were restored. So we have a long term perspective like this. You can kind of say, say, well, this is cyclical and it will come back and it may very well be. Uh, but one thing that I think we are going through right now, which we never have before, is that there is a sustained attack. Uh, not only we’re kind of talking about cutting budgets so that we can do other things with that money, but there’s a sustained attack on, um, areas studies, social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. So that is really a very different orientation for a U.S. government than I have experienced in the time that I’ve been in this country. So how the long term effect of this, of course, depends on many factors, and we don’t know. I kind of tend to agree with people who say that something is ending, and what will come is very unclear, and it can end up making this period both kind of dangerous, very dangerous. But also it can be an opportunity for people to kind of think about the future in new and creative ways rather than, you know, hoping and assuming that things will go back to the way they were. So I think that really puts a lot of burden on the new generation of scholars and people who are trying to figure this out. It’s a very kind of a period of deep, deep disruption. And this doesn’t we didn’t even talk about the whole new technologies and AI. And that, of course, is a whole different field of unknowns. Um, so, um, I think we have the very, uh, I personally think, um, in, regardless of what happens in the world in one form or another, knowing about the world in the way that we have been trying to learn about the world and teach about the world will continue to be very, very important. I, um, in a way, uh, the sense that this was becoming less and less important that went back to Reagan, but especially became more common after the end of the Cold War. Uh, there was a sense of complacency and there was really, um, uh, came to a big crash, of course, with nine eleven and, uh, and there was this huge interest all of a sudden Arabic and Middle East studies, and everybody wanted to know the difference between the Shia and the Sunni and the Arabic and the Persian and the Turks and the Kurds and things that we spent our our lives teaching and learning about was everybody was trying to figure it out. I want to say this is kind of a pet peeve in a way. Um, at that time, you could see that, uh, international studies experts who were coming to this from a more, um, you know, policy orientation, uh, the way they were talking about the world was just so kind of superficial and general and, uh, really trying to explain everything without explaining anything as opposed to real experts. When I say experts, people who have really spent their lives learning the languages and the areas and the, you know, cultures, etc., the way they talked about these things, um, you could see, you know, the, the, the big difference and why knowing about this, um, you know, area areas is very, very important. So that’s, you know, when something like that happens, it always comes back and then people start looking for, um, the kinds of students and colleagues that we have in the Jackson school because they tend to have the kind of answers that the generalists sometimes don’t. So, um, so I am, you know, I think the whole configuration will be very different. And what kind of role us play, uh, will play in the world in the next ten years or so, twenty years, whatever. We don’t know really. So that’s a period of uncertainty. But I think this doesn’t mean that knowing about places in Africa or Asia or the Middle East or Latin America or any other, any place outside of Western Europe and the United States will not be important. I think that is, uh, that is our advantage, that we have this foundation. And I’m assuming that we will continue to build on it. I just want to say very briefly about the institutional setup. Um, I think, uh, we are a thoroughly, truly interdisciplinary, uh, institution and the school is, uh, among our faculty. We have economists and sociologists really, and humanities people, I mean, people who work on translations. So this is really, um, you learn so much about the world being in a community like this, and there is no other department really in the College of Arts and Sciences that have that degree of, um, you know, diversity in perspectives. So that provides a very important home. And I think that has become important for us. But the other part of this is that when apparently the school was established many, many years ago, before my time, there was a real conversation about whether to set it up as an independent school with a dean, as opposed to a department within a within the college. And the decision of setting it up within the college apparently was not really, um, I mean, it was just a de facto something that happened. It wasn’t like people preferred that over the others. People didn’t think that that would make that much difference. I think, uh, that really in many ways served us well because we had very good relations with, especially humanities folks and other other disciplines. But in one area I think that really constrained us over the years is that it has become it is more difficult as a unit within the college to establish the kind of connections with other schools that are very important, especially for our students. And I have in mind not only business and law, but also engineering and computer sciences and, and especially global health. Um, so, um, so having more of an autonomy, um, which would come with all the complications and the problems, of course. Uh, but that would, I think that would have allowed us to have, um, smoother relationships with other other colleges and units. So that is, that is one, Um, you know, um, give and take. Uh, you can look at it in different ways. Uh, but that’s something that, that I wanted to mention.
DH: Yeah. No, I think that’s, that’s an important point. And it’s, uh, uh, again, I mean, I’m sure this was true for you and for all directors of the Jackson School, sometimes representing to people how the school functions is one of the more challenging acts of translation. But, but actually that sets up a I’m going to take a question that I had put to you in our alumni event. I’m going to change it a little bit, probably so that it ends up functionally being a different question, but it’s um, but it does connect to that question of, of interdisciplinarity in a sense. Um, because we, we know that that Jackson school graduates, whether they’re undergraduates or graduate students, um, when they leave us, they go on to a lot of different kinds of careers and they do so all over the world, right? Diplomacy, law, business, health, military development, advocacy, nonprofits, think tanks, just to name a few. Journalism. Right. And and they bring with them then all of this kind of multiply disciplined toolkit that you’ve talked about. Um, it’s also interesting to me that our graduates tend to find each other across these spaces. Um, and, uh, you know, often in really unexpected places, I think I’ve, maybe I’ve told you my stories of running into two Jackson school graduates in the, in central Mauritania in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Um, uh, which was, which was a fascinating experience. Um, but I, the reason I’m kind of going here is, is partly I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on the lifetime commitment that, that one we make to a student, but also that students make to each other and to the, to the school. Right. Um, given that they are coming out of here with very different kinds of trajectories and, and, you know, having done different things in the, in the school. Um, but, but then they find themselves in this vast array of fields. Right. I mean, they do they do end up going into later in their careers into global health or into engineering or business. Um, and they do so. So as you said, somewhat independently of anything that we’ve done, what we’ve given them is this liberal arts foundation. But so I think the question here is kind of what do you think when you think about the lifetime trajectory of a student? Um, what kind of relationship do you hope that they might have with us as an institution and with each other when they find themselves out there in the world?
RK: Right. Yeah. So, um. When I first came here, as I said, it wasn’t really that much, um, uh, later than, you know, the school first started its international studies program. Uh, there was an emphasis on creating a community among the students. And from the very beginning, uh, in our, uh, once the students got into the major, which until recently was selective. Uh, but regardless, once they got into the major, there were a number of courses, not only our task force, which is very well known. There were a number of courses that were deliberately designed to be, uh, like seminars and seminars where people were expected to do collective work. So the students who are in the school as majors, they’re taking our classes, uh, thought of themselves as part of this community for at least two years. Um, and, and that I think gave them certain habits in terms of, you know, not just competing with each other, but working together. And it really is this remarkable that drew also not only courses, but through their organizations and other other things that we really emphasized in and outside of the class, they really got to know each other. And, and that experience to them, uh, was, was very important. And I’m sure this happens to you. Uh, ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Now, after graduation, when I see some of our students, they always mention those collective experiences and especially task force. But not only that. So being this, this, this thing being here together. So I think there’s already that thing that we, we, um, always emphasized and we will hopefully continue to emphasize not only just getting them through part of hundreds of people going through in majors, but also creating the sense of community. And and interestingly, that stays with them. And that becomes not only a source of support and friendship and community beyond the school, but also it has some practical kind of, uh, of course, uh, uses, uh, it’s, it’s useful to be a part of a network like that in terms of whatever you do to draw on other people’s help and advice. So I think that is, that is the key thing. And I think regardless, I mean, there is we find ourselves in this reality, uh, budgetary and financial, etc., where there’s a lot of emphasis on having as many students as we can, which of course is important. I never believed I mean, I understand there were some real reasons why, uh, the school was designed as a, you know, selective major because, um, there was this interest in keeping some of these classes small and being able to teach them, which is a very expensive thing. I understand that, but I always also thought very strange about telling people, no, they cannot be majors, even though they come to us expressing an interest in learning about the world, you know? So I didn’t. So there’s a there’s a trade off there. Um, so, uh, you have to find some way of both teaching as many students as we can, but also finding new and creative ways of, of, of maintaining. And of course, with new technologies, that’s becoming somewhat easier than, than earlier times. There are other ways of keeping in touch and maintaining these communities. But that is the one thing that I would really emphasize in this school. It’s a very good habit. And this also I our students found themselves in an advantageous position even when they applied to companies like, let’s say, Amazon, where there was so much emphasis on teamwork. You know, I mean, they come to those jobs. Uh, they’re not computer experts, but they can write well. They can think well, they can express themselves. And they also have this, um, uh, you know, kind of tradition, experience of, of working, working with each other.
DH: Yeah. That’s great. I’m sure this is as true for you as it has been for me, but the when you talk to our graduates, even many years down the line, it is task force is often the thing that they say like this was the crucible. Yeah. That forged me. It’s the thing I remember most. Uh, you know, and, uh, um, you know, again, something that we’re always sort of making sure we can continue to do and that, you know, give, give a student that kind of opportunity to work collectively and being, you know, really think deeply about world issues. So, um, well, on that note, actually I do want to ask you, there are I mean, there’s a few global issues and I think in world regions that have really occupied many of us recently. Right. As faculty, as students and as alumni. Um, you know, I would say over the past decade, climate change, technological changes, uh, more recently, the fragility of democratic institutions, um, and then specific places, the war in Ukraine, Gaza wars in Iraq, now in Iran. Um, so, and we take a lot of pride as a school in being able to speak to those issues, right? As they, as they come up. Um, but I think we, you know, I would say we also put a lot of energy into, into trying to inform both our students and also our surrounding community about things that aren’t in the headlines every day. Um, and so when you think about the global issues or the world areas that we’re not paying enough attention to right now, What would those be?
RK: Um, I think part of this comes from, uh, what I mentioned earlier, our institutional setup and difficulty of, um, maintaining connections with some, you know, sources of information and knowledge and other resources that exist on campus that are real, you know, constraints of, of, of being where we are. So specifically, um, uh, on the one hand, over the years that I’ve been here, um, I have been really, uh, you know, pleasantly surprised how agile the school has been, uh, in, uh, responding, I guess is a good way of thinking about this, uh, to these unexpected changes in the world. So the ones that you mentioned, of course, from the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the way to the Iran war, we have, um, having, you know, kind of people here who know these places, uh, you know, it’s kind of it’s, it’s, it’s very gratifying to be able to draw on that information and to respond to this. But this is a response. This is what we have. Something happens and we respond to it by providing some context and explanation. And the other part of it, of course, is how we think about the world. And I said earlier that, um, uh, it is, uh, uh, it is not very useful, uh, to come to a classroom in the Jackson school in the courses that we’re teaching to come to a classroom, uh, with uh, set ideas about, you know, how the world came to be and what’s going on and what will happen and be the kind of the prophet of, you know, everything. Uh, know it all, professor. You know, in our field. I think that’s very dangerous. It’s dangerous because you may be proven wrong. Uh, because that’s what makes world kind of, in a way, interesting. Constantly changes and in ways that you don’t expect. You may be wrong. And it’s also that kind of approach doesn’t prepare the students well enough to the future. So I think to be able to somehow to be prepared and, and to respond not only to things that are happening, but also things that may happen or to be able to kind of predict, but also be prepared for any eventuality. One thing I’ve always done is rather than, uh, not only teaching students what happened in the world. So that’s that basic knowledge is important, but also encourage them to think why it happened. And that was really something I always hear from my students over the years when I meet them later on, is this dreaded why question. So it’s not enough to say, uh, you know, kind of Berlin Wall fell and, you know, explain everything that happened, but why, why it happened? Or to think about, I always give this example of, um, two halves of the same island, Haiti and Dominican Republic. Why is it that these, you know, the same geography, same climate, same city? Why, why is this history so different? And you can do that kind of comparison. It’s kind of fun to for students to really not take things, not take things for granted. More specifically, what I would have liked to do when I was director. Of course, the Gates Foundation made a big investment in global health. And here we are. We’re still in this building that dates back to nineteen twenties. One thing that my students tell me that it’s the same building. It’s the same elevator. It’s the same stairs. It’s definitely the same elevator, the same elevator, same smell the same. So, but anyways, um, so, uh, but that investment was so really, um, change making. I mean, within a couple of years, they set up a huge building and huge programs all over the world. And that was really, uh, in, in many ways, much more so than even some technical fields. It was really a cutting edge kind of thing that put the University of Washington ahead of a lot of other institutions. I would much like to be part of that conversation as as a school of international studies, we had some colleagues at some connections, some joint programs here and there, but in a different world, I think, um, we would have not only benefited from that, but really contribute that quite a bit. So that is one example. I think that’s something that we could be doing a lot more and that we’re not doing enough maybe. Um, and in terms of also, um, new technologies, I think we’re doing some of this already. I think it’s very important to really moving beyond whether AI is good or bad or should we or shouldn’t we to find ways of really dealing with it, which inevitably will be a part of our world one way or another. Um, I think that that, that’s an area that I think we should really, um, think um, creatively how we can incorporate it.
DH: Yeah. No, I think that’s right. And to your earlier point, I mean, I think there it doesn’t seem hard to imagine that very soon. There’s a, there’s a moment when the government private enterprise trying to understand how to wrestle with these technologies, look around and go, wait a minute. We need the people who speak Somali so that we can understand the implications of this. Like it’s a very US centric conversation right now. You know, US and China, maybe to some degree, but, um, I guess the, you know, we’ll be here when that happens. And, and, you know, I think like you said, we’ll have a lot to offer. So, um, well, I promised you we would keep it under an hour. So I’m going to, I’m going to throw in one more question. Um and um, when I, when I met with you and Kathie recently, uh, and you both said that retirement hadn’t really set in yet, it still felt like a summer. Summer break was still a. You were still. Still in the summer mode. Fall classes are beginning today. So I imagine that that feeling may change soon. Um, I’m grateful that you all are both coming back to do some teaching for us. So we’re not. This is not goodbye. Um, but I do wonder when you switch out of summer vacation mode completely and start the next chapter, what? What will you be doing?
RK: Yeah. So, um. It’s, uh, you know, there is a sense of, uh, when people look at what we do from outside, you know, I mean, uh, I’m sure you’ve had these interactions with people who are not in academia. You mean you teach four hours a week? And what do you do in the rest of your life? You know, so, uh, as you can, as you know, um, teaching, um, takes a lot of time and it’s a very important part of what we do, but it’s one of the things that we do. Part of the thing that I liked about academia, of course, is that it allowed me, especially the Jackson School, allowed me to do the things that I really wanted to do, which is always to think about the world and write about the world, and to understand what’s happening, and especially in the region and the country, that I’ve done most of my research and writing on Middle East and Turkey. There’s a lot to figure out. So I’m really grateful that I have more time now to to really have sustained focus on my research and writing. So that’s really has been a good thing in that I find it’s a privilege to be able to do that. So I’m very pleased that I’m doing that and that will continue to keep me, you know, in touch with with the world. But also, as I will be teaching the next four years or so on a part time basis. I will continue to have this interaction with students. So I think, uh, so it’s a, it’s still relatively new in terms of how different it is, the transition. Um, but it is, um, uh, I think it is, uh, so far, it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s good to have that, that extra time now to, uh, to, to, to research and writing so that, that’s, that’s the main thing. And everybody says when you retire, you travel. Uh, I mean, we already travel quite a bit, so I think that will continue. That won’t change. And that’s not going to be a big change.
DH: Doctor Kasaba, thank you very much. Thank you for for taking the time to do this. And I also just on a on a personal note, I want to thank you for your mentorship and friendship and for having created this, you know, amazing institution to the. That we can be a major part of where it is today. So thank you for all of that.
RK: Thank you very much. Thank you for giving me really the opportunity to think about these things. That’s one thing about our environment, a retirement, uh, that does to you. Um, you start going through folders and files and files of things over the past decades, and especially the time I’ve been here, um, the years until about twenty ten, um, most of everything was still printed and written and typed and everything. So you actually have physical documents about some of these things and going and going through them is also, I mean, it’s a bit nostalgic sometimes. Um, but also, um, it’s allowing me to have a sort of a historical perspective about the school and what I’ve been doing in the last forty years.
DH: Well, thank you for being willing to share it.
RK: Thanks, Danny.
