Rate My Professor Farid Abdel-Nour

Farid Abdel-Nour is Professor and Department Chair of Political Science at San Diego State University in the College of Arts and Letters. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in 1999, and joined the SDSU Political Science Department in 2000. Abdel-Nour has served multiple terms as Director of the Center for Islamic and Arabic Studies, where he is a core faculty member, including from 2002 to 2006, 2010 to 2012, and Fall 2019. From Fall 2016 to Spring 2018, he held the position of Bruce E. Porteous Endowed Professor in Political Science and directed the Charles Hostler Institute on World Affairs in an honorary capacity. He has also served as Department Chair on multiple occasions.

Abdel-Nour's research and teaching interests are in Political Theory and Middle East Politics. His scholarly work centers on the responsibility that ordinary citizens bear for outcomes brought about by their states, with a special interest in Israeli-Palestinian relations. He teaches courses such as History of Western Political Thought (POL S 301B), Modern Political Thought (POL S 302), Government and Politics of the Middle East (POL S 363), Contemporary Political Thought (POL S 510), Internship in Local Politics (POL S 495), Senior Thesis (POL S 497A and 497B), Graduate Seminar in Political Theory (POL S 605), and Graduate Seminar in Politics with an emphasis on Arab politics (POL S 630). Key publications include "National Responsibility" in Political Theory (2003), "Liberalism and Ethnocentrism" in The Journal of Political Philosophy (2000), "Responsible for the State: the Case of Obedient Subjects" in The European Journal of Political Theory (2016), "Irreconcilable Narratives and Overlapping Consensus: The Jewish State and the Palestinian Right of Return" in Political Research Quarterly (2015), "Responsibility for Structural Injustice" in Ethics & Global Politics (2018), and the chapter "Owning the Misdeeds of Japan’s Wartime Regime" in Inherited Responsibility and Historical Reconciliation in East Asia (Routledge, 2013). His contributions address political accountability, national memory, and ethical issues in international relations.