Friday's Last Lecture Series Presents Professor Robert Lee

The Last Lecture series is a way of bringing the campus together to hear from some of CC’s most noteworthy senior faculty.

Dean Wong will introduce Dr. Lee as part of the Last Lecture series sponsored by the Library Partners. The speakers were asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical "final lecture," conveying what insights they want to impart to us and to the world.

Join in celebrating the career of Political Science professor Robert Lee this Friday, February 22 at 3:30pm in the Tutt Library Event Space as he responds to the prompt:

"If this was the last lecture you ever gave, what would you say?"

Bob is at work on a book-length project called "Culture and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa." It will examine the multiple definitions of culture and the complicated ways in which national, subnational, and supranational cultures affect and are affected by national cohesion, the prospects for economic and political development, the understanding of human rights, and the delineation of foreign policy. General argument: if culture matters, it matters in ways that are much more complicated than usually thought.

Tutt Library has several books by Lee and videos he appears in. You can read a few of his articles (available through Ebsco), search for him as author in JStor and view his top tier academic work in Web of Science.

Departmental Profile

Bob Lee has taught in the Political Science Department since 1971 . He completed his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 1972 with a dissertation on colonial Algeria. He earned an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia in 1965 and a B.A. from Carleton College in 1963.

His specialty is comparative politics of the Middle East and North Africa. He teaches a set of courses on the region and a course on the politics of Europe. On three occasions he has taught in the ACM programs in Florence, Italy, and he once taught in the CC semester in France.

Lee is working on a manuscript about politics and culture in the Middle East and North Africa. The second edition of his most recent book, Religion and Politics in the Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, 2009), appeared in 2014. He edited and translated a book by the Algerian author, Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers (Westview,1994), and is the author of Overcoming Tradition and Modernity: The Search for Islamic Authenticity (Westview, 1997).

Lee is married to Susan Ashley of the History Department. They have two sons, William and Matthew. He is an avid golfer.

Report an issue - Last updated: 12/16/2020