Ellis Jay Goldberg

Ellis Jay Goldberg is "a professor of Political Science, University of Washington where I teach courses on the Persian Gulf countries, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and comparative politics. I received my BA in English at Harvard College and a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The general theme here appears to be moving from smaller to larger bodies of water: the banks of the Charles to the shores of the Golden Gate and thence to Puget Sound. However, I have been a visiting professor twice at an educational institution in rural New Jersey (Princeton) which has a small lake and a canal suitable for canoeing. I have been awarded fellowships by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. I have published book length studies of Egyptian labor (Trade, Reputation and Child Labor in 20th century Egypt and Tinker, Tailor, and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt). I also edited The Social History of Labor in the Middle East. Thanks to the Carnegie grant I have been working on a project about how several important political figures in the Middle East imagine citizenship, community, and sovereignty in the context of Islamic discourse. The book will focus on the published works of Tariq al-Bishri, Muhammad Abid al-Jabari, and Ridwan al-Sayyid. Oddly enough I’m best known for an article that has nothing to do with the Middle East, a critique of Robert Putnam’s book, Making Democracy Work. I’ve been told that that article, “Thinking About How Democracy Works” is one of the 50 most cited articles from Politics and Society. I have also contributed early but not frequently to the literature on Islamism with “Smashing Idols and the State: The Protestant Ethic and Egyptian Sunni Radicalism” in Comparative Studies in Society and History."