Instructor: Paul S. Rowe, Ph.D.
I've been privileged to teach this course now for over fifteen years, during which time there has been a great deal of change in international politics!
This course is about the way that we interpret current events in the world around us. What explains how nations decide to relate to one another? What drives the decision to impose trade restrictions on another country? Why is it so difficult to impose standards of international human rights across the world? What explains the persistence of armed conflict throughout the world? These are the sorts of questions we ask in the study of international Politics.
Allow me to introduce myself...
I grew up in London, Ontario - a medium-sized city in the middle of the countryside of southwestern Ontario. As a child I was drawn to both politics and faith, both topics that were banned from speech competitions! I was pretty politically active as a teenager but by the time I graduated from high school, I was getting a little disillusioned with Canadian politics. So when I went to university I took a degree in International Relations (similar to TWU's International Studies degree). I also maintained a keen interest in dusty places where I could discover magical relics... so I did a second major in Near Eastern Studies.
When I graduated, the plan was to apply to Canada's Foreign Service to serve as a diplomat. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this field, that means I wanted to serve as an ambassador for Canada in foreign countries. But the year that I graduated, the government announced it was not hiring anyone in the foreign service, so I had to come up with plan B.
So I went off to Egypt! I lived in Egypt for a year, doing English language editorial work for the publisher of the best-selling youth magazine in the Arab world. I studied some Arabic and applied for graduate school, thinking this would be a good way to get into the foreign service. And besides, I loved studying international politics: it was something I was passionate about and I wanted to remain connected to it.
I ended up completing an MA in Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, then on to Montreal to complete my PhD at McGill University. Over time, I began to realize that teaching was a great way to accomplish much of what I thought I would do in the foreign service: I could travel to study and do research, I got to meet new people every semester, but I wouldn't have to move all over to places where my spouse would not be able to work!
So I taught for a while at the University of Western Ontario and Queen's University for a few years before I was offered a permanent position here at Trinity Western. And now I've been here for 15 years.
I teach international politics and developing world politics. My specialties are the Middle East and South Asia. I travel fairly frequently for conferences and research - to the Middle East, to India, and to Europe.
Whether we like it or not, we are all citizens of the world. Studying international politics helps us to understand better how that works and what it means. As I hope you can see from this short bio, I love to discover the world and its peoples and to learn how much we are interconnected. I hope you'll enjoy seeing the world from this vantage point!
On this site, I will feature my own blog posts and short pieces written by students of POLS 211. Each student is assigned to an "op-ed challenge" - and the best op-eds are going to be published here. Stay tuned for the best in undergraduate international political analysis!
Wow Dr. Rowe! Thank you for sharing, it is so interesting to hear a bit of your story.