Farid Abdel-Nour

Farid Abdel-Nour received his PhD in Political Science in 1999 (and his B.S. in Pharmacy in 1987) from Rutgers University. He joined the Political Science Department at SDSU in 2000 after spending a year teaching at the University of Utah. Since 2002 he has been the Faculty Coordinator for SDSU's Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies.

His research and teaching interests are in Political Theory and Middle East Politics. His scholarly work focuses on two main questions: 1) how, in the absence of uncontroversial philosophical foundations, are political and moral judgments to be made across cultural divides? and 2) what responsibilities do individuals bear by virtue of participating in and benefiting from modern politics? The specific empirical examples animating his interests in these questions involve the cultural gulf separating Western from Arab-Muslim societies, and the political responsibilities that individual Palestinians and Israelis bear for their political situation, respectively. Abdel-Nour teaches "Modern Political Thought" (302), "Contemporary Political Thought" (410), "Governments and Politics in the Middle East," (363), and "History of Western Political Thought" (301b).


His publications include:

"From Arm's Length to Intrusion: Rawls's 'The Law of Peoples' and the Challenge of Stability." Journal of Politics 61:2, 1999. 

"Liberalism and Ethnocentrism." The Journal of Political Philosophy 8:2. 2000

"Review of Austin Harrington's Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science: a Critique of Gadamer and Habermas." German Politics and Society 20:3, 2002.

"National Responsibility." Political Theory 31:5, 2003

Farewell to Justification: Habermas, Human Rights, and Universalist Morality." Philosophy and Social Criticism 30:1, 2004

"Responsibility and National Memory." International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 17:3, 2004. 

"An International Ethics of Evil?" International Relations 18:4, 2004

Abdel-Nour participates in Arab-Jewish dialogue and gives frequent public lectures on the Israeli-Palestine conflict. He enjoys cooking, reading fiction (when it is short), hiking (when it is convenient), listening to different kinds of music (including German Opera when it is not too taxing). Above all he enjoys talking and listening to others.