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StocktonAfterClass — Science
StocktonAfterClass

Ron Stockton was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for 48 years. His specialty was non-western politics and political change. He taught classes on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Religion and Politics, the Politics of Revolution, Non-Western politics, and American politics. He also taught in the Honors Program, focusing upon foundational readings from the 18th and 19th centuries. He has an interest in religion and politics and in the role of religio-ethnic groups in the political system. The listener can anticipate talks on Arab-Americans, Jews, African-Americans, the Scots-Irish, and Evangelicals. He has lectured and written on American politics, public opinion, and voting behavior and on the role of religious organizations and ideologies in the political system. There will be occasional discussions of books and films that address serious issues. And he has lectured and published and even taught a class on gravestones, especially those of different ethnic and religious groups such as Muslims, African-Americans, Jews, and Native Americans. The goal of the podcast series is to provide analysis and commentary by a political scientist to explain and make accessible political, historical, and cultural developments in the United States and around the world, and to give the listener analytical tools to understand those developments. It is also to entertain the listener.

Copyright: © 2021 StocktonAfterClass

Latest Episodes:

Invitation to a Zoom Discussion, December 3, 2022 12:00-1:00 (Eastern Time). Details attached. Nov 25, 2022

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Podcast Zoom Chat
Would anyone out there like to have a Chat? My friend and my wife thought this might be a good idea. After all, I have 37,000 downloads in 124 different countries and I never get to interact with any of you.
Well, on Saturday, December 3 from 12:00 - 1:00 (Eastern Standard Time), I am going to be available if anyone wants to chat. Do you want to follow up on some podcast? Do you want to tell me how you found the series? Do you just want to talk? Whatever, I am available and interested.
If you will send me an email I will send you a link.
Stocktonafterclass@gmail.com
See you then.
ps. I just realized I am not allowed to make a text announcement on this site. I have to have a podcast. I am going to attach my Six Month Report. You can listen to that if you wish. Or not.

A Matter of Honor. An Incident in the Damascus Souk Nov 16, 2022

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Back in the 1990s I took high school seniors from around the country to the Middle East for a month of visitation and discussion. We would spend two weeks in Jordan and two weeks in Syria. In Damascus we would always go to the amazing covered marketplace, the Hamidiyah souk. One summer, we had an unpleasant incident in which a young merchant engaged in an act of sexual harassment against one of my female students. Decades later I still feel uneasy about what happened and how we handled it. You are welcome to form your own opinions.

The Return of Netanyahu and the Rise of the Israeli Hard Right. A Reposting on Kahanist Thinking Nov 02, 2022

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Netanyahu has apparently come back from the dead. As of today (November 2, 2022) he is expected to form an exceptionally hard right government with Kahanist parties that were previously considered poison. What does this mean? Here is my earlier podcast on the political model of Rabbi Kahane who was banned from politics because of his racist ideology.
(There is a debate within Israel about whether those from the extremist Religious Zionism party should have access to security briefings. That was the same debate that occurred in the US when Trump was elected).

Four Fun Stories, two about Halloween. Including the legendary story of Gato, King of the Cats. (A reposting, just for fun). Oct 30, 2022

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Why the President's Party Loses Seats in the Off-Year Election, and why the pattern doesn't always hold. Political Analysis plus some comments. (How could I not?) Oct 26, 2022

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This is a well-known pattern in electoral studies: That the President's party loses seats in the House in the off-year election. This podcast discusses recent patterns and the logic behind the patterns, as well as a few reasons why the rules may not hold.
This podcast is posted exactly two weeks before the 2022 mid-term elections. it is risky to post such a discussion at a time when the results will soon be in and you, the listener, will know what actually happened. But I delivered a talk on this subject at a faculty forum on campus on Monday night and the students were interested enough that I thought you might be interested as well.
I think I know what will happen, but let's save that for another season.
thanks for listening.
ps. A point I meant to make. At this point (14 days out) no one is changing their mind. The whole effort is on mobilization. I doubt that reading the polls will be as useful as in other races. They may be accurate, as they mostly are, but if unexpectedly large numbers of people vote that will shift the balance of the outcome.

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. The Palestinian Intifada of 1987-1993. Reposting. A parallel with Iran 2022? Oct 09, 2022

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With the protests in Iran escalating, I am beginning to see some structural and political parralels with the first Palestinian Intifada of 1987-1993. There may also be parallels with the anti-Shah protests of 1978 that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power but I have not had time to think those points through. However the common thread in all three sets of protests are that the security forces kill someone during a demonstration and then there are follow up demonstrations to protest that killing. It just keeps escalating. And the security forces go into stupid mode and keep thinking that they can suppress the protests with violence.
The current protests may be suppressed or may fizzle out. We can't tell. But as of October 9 over 150 people have been killed by the security forces, and many, many, many detained.
ps. Please don't tell the Ayatollahs that I think they are behaving like Israelis.

Is Christianity Polytheistic? Uh ... Interesting question. Sit down. Have some coffee. Let's Talk Oct 01, 2022

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I have been running this podcast over in my mind for twenty plus years, well before I even knew what a podcast was. It started when a Muslim student, with curiosity and respect, asked me to explain Christian thinking. It is certainly not an easy question to answer, but I have given it my best shot in this podcast.
When I told a friend who was a priest that I was planning this podcast, he looked very nervous and said, "Be careful." I have tried to be careful, and have also tried to be informative and true to the complexity of the issue. And maybe a little entertaining.
I hope you learned something.
And let me know if you have a thoughtful reflection.

Eight Things About the Holocaust. Reposting of a Podcast Sep 18, 2022

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Ken Burns has a documentary on the Holocaust starting tonight (September 18) on PBS.
His focus is on US policy rather than upon the Holocaust itself.
This is my attempt to help students understand what the Holocaust was, and was not.

Kahan Commission Report on the Sabra and Shatilla Massacre: Reposting of an earlier podcast Sep 16, 2022

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Starting on September 16, 1982 and extending over three days, right wing Christian militia forces went into the Sabra and Shatilla camps near Beirut and massacred 800 (or was it 3,000? Who knows for sure?) unarmed Palestinian refugees. The protests within Israel and world-wide were so strong that the right wing government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon was forced to set up a commission to determine what happened. This is a discussion of those incidents, and of the report.
Warning: Not easy listening.

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Lebanon War of 1982. The War That Never Stopped Sep 10, 2022

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This is a difficult topic. In my classes I had quite a few Lebanese students, mostly Shia but some Maronite Catholics, and a few Sunni. Many were from refugee families. Many were refugees themselves. Over the years they told me stories of their families and of those terrible days.
Even now I get angry at leaders who seem driven with delusions of changing the world and seem indifferent to the human costs of their adventures. And who seem not to consider the downside of what might happened if everything does not work the way they hope.
This is a complex war in which different leaders had different and often contradictory goals. As I would often say to my students, "You have now had a unit on this war. Would any of you have thought that these leaders could pull off their aspiration?" Of course, none of them would have had such delusions.
The thought that 20 year-olds spending two or three classes studying a war would know better than to do what powerful leaders obviously did NOT know is enough to make you spit.
Remember, violence combined with political stupidity is like sexually transmitted disease. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

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