Instructors
David Laitin - James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science; CISAC Faculty Member

The specter of Islamized societies haunts Europe. Fears of a fifth column of terrorism and a challenge by a population of religious fanatics to a largely secularized continent are recurrent in political dialogue from Spain to Austria. Yet little is known as to whether these worries are a result of everyday xenophobia common to all situations of foreign immigration or whether certain immigrants from the Middle East, Turkey, South Asia and Africa face special challenges due to their Islamic heritage. The professor of this freshman seminar has been collecting survey and experimental data in France over the course of the 2008-09 academic year to help answer these questions. Students in the seminar will read a variety of claims made about this immigrant population, and then put some of those claims to statistical test from the newly acquired data. Students will be introduced to the European political context as well as to basic skills in data analysis. They will be evaluated based upon seminar participation and a final paper that combines readings in French political discourse and analysis of data to test the validity of the conjectures and claims in that literature. (Reading knowledge of French and statistical skills are not prerequisites).

Level
Undergraduate

Units
5

Department
Department of Political Science
School of Humanities and Sciences