First, was Benazir democratic? She was of course a child of privilege and she often behaved as though based on that — and her personal history of academic and other successes — she felt entitled to lead. Not very democratic.

Moreover the political party that Benazir led was organized partly on the basis of personal and family ties and this is hardly an ideal model for democracy. Passing the mantle to her husband and son continues this pattern.

Finally, when in office, Benazir did pursue some democratic reforms but unfortunately not very effectively. And she certainly made other decisions that have been at odds with democratic development since.

But should we try to analyze all of this simply in terms of a person “being” more or less democratic? Or does this require a deeper analysis of Pakistani society and politics? I am not the expert to produce this analysis, but I think that (a) reliance on leaders from elite backgrounds, (b) relying on personal connections and fame to mobilize followers, and (c) finding it hard to translate broad idealistic values into practical political action are all the results of a social situation. They reflect conditions in the country – economic, sociological, cultural, educational – even the media. Political change won’t come from individuals alone.

This said, individuals can sometimes use their personal fame and connections to good ends. One might wish that Jinnah had lived longer so that he could draw on his prestige to help shape the institutions of the new Pakistani state. And one might wish that as a public figure calling for more democracy Benazir might actually have been a more effective force for it had she lived than she was earlier. In any case, it was political violence itself that I suggested was a blow to democracy and informed public discourse — not simply the loss of the individual.

Secondly, was Benazir secular? I won’t try to judge her personal faith or devotion. That seems to me not the relevant question. Very religious people can favor secular institutions (indeed, even think these are better for the vitality of religious faith). Secular unbelievers can make common cause with religious zealots. The real questions are what sort of institutions are developed and what sorts of decisions do governments make. Benazir — like the United States government — chose dealings with the Taliban that I at least regret. I don’t know what she would have done had she lived and remained politically active. But I think the key questions are not about her professions of faith — nor even those of her party. They are about whether she or any other leader seeks to uphold the rule of law, seeks to provide the conditions for open access to information and participation in debate, seeks education for all, and in general provides citizens with the institutional conditions for participating in shaping their own futures and that of the country.

She displayed her religious belief openly and made prayers part of her every conversation – Inshah Allah (God Willing) was her strategy. Her party claims that “Islam is our faith”. Now, is that very secular, Mr. Calhoun?

I am very surprised that a great scholar like yourself does not have the moral courage to call a spade a spade.

I hope I am wrong and there is still hope.

I share your concern about unilingual experts and more generally about the attempt to formulate policy for specific situations on decontextualized allegedly universal knowledge. I’m prepared to count political scientists as social scientists, but I do bemoan the fact that the discipline has lately been less-interested in serious knowledge of specific contexts, connections, and histories and more engaged in the formulation of abstract models. The latter can be useful, but are not a good substitute for the former.

The main distinction I was trying to draw was not between political scientists and other social scientists, but between taking specific contexts (and languages, texts, and conversations) seriously and ignoring such contexts in the pursuit of generalization. I was not clear enough in saying that I meant specialists on Iraq, the Middle East, and Islamic societies – not only specialists on ethnic conflict in the abstract.

You may be right about how it is easier to grasp the negatives of nationalism from a distance while seeing the positives is especially aided by being able to read and speak a national language. I do think that even monolingual thinkers could do a better job seeing the positives, though, partly by critically examining their own presumptions and thinking harder about issues like social solidarity. There are also good sources in English and other European languages as well as problematic ones. Some of these are texts written by those with skills in other languages – like Arabic or Urdu – who have spent years trying to better understand the settings where they are spoken.

Not least, it is worth stressing that intellectual exchanges with nonWesterners e.g. Iraqis or Pakistanis may in fact be exchanges with social scientists. There are first rate scholars whose first languages are Arabic or Urdu (or Sindhi or other langauges). Some of these also write in English or are translated. Many are not, and the capacity for exchange and collaboration with them is crucial to the development of better knowledge in the US and around the world.

The SSRC does, by the way, support opportunities for researchers to learn languages not commonly taught in the US and supports regional scholarship in both South Asia and the Middle East – as well as elsewhere. We try to encourage international collaboration and communication among researchers — including, but not limited to US researchers. And we encourage work that takes seriously a variety of sources including both those that can be quantified and those that can’t — texts and conversations and observations as well as survey responses and market transactions.

Finally, I think we are in agreement that the knowledge of experts is usually imperfect and should be approached accordingly. This is one reason why it is good to listen to the debates among experts, not imagine that any one professor speaks with absolute authority – no matter how famous the university at which he or she teaches. But knowledge is nonetheless real. Even while some analyses are debated there is much we know with greater confidence — and good reasons for that confidence. The authority of knowledge should stem from those good reasons, as critically assessed by researchers with different intellectual perspectives. And knowledge is necessary as a corrective to mere opinion or expressions of preference.

I was interested by your remark about a general tendency to belittle nationalist discourse–and I’ll read your book on that–but after following the Iraq news in two languages for a year or so, I feel confident in saying that one reason the nationalists get short shrift—apart from the fact they are “the enemy” of the occupier—is just this: You don’t need to know the language in order to appreciate the negative and hate-inspiring side of expressions of civic loyalty and so on, (which we code as negative by calling them “sectarian”) but you do need to show some care and respect for the texts and the language if you are going to appreciate the positive side of such expressions of civic loyalty, which often takes the form of nationalism. In other words, lack of respect for the language—and particularly the lack of prestige attached to the learning of foreign languages in America—isn’t just a cosmetic or a marginal issue. It is central in constructing that slippery slope that can take you back so easily and unconsciously to the attitude that says “take up the White Man’s burden…”

(One reason I picked on you for my sermon is that you head an organization that I figure could try and do something about that, in the form of some program to acknowledge how important this issue of languages is).

On the cautionary story of “science” being recruited to justify continued US troop presence in Iraq, I see I have confused your group with a completely different sect, namely the *political* scientists, and I apologize for that. I was thinking particularly of James Fearon and others, whose Sept 15 2007 testimony to the House National Security subcommittee I think kicked off the whole campaign that now links in people’s minds the idea of “Iraqi civil war” with the idea of continued troop presence (“gradual redeployment”) in the interests of supposed humanitarian purposes (originally support for “ethnic demixing”, but I guess that is mercifully somewhat out of favor now) including “how to manage [redeployment] so as to maximize the leverage it will give us with various groups in Iraq”. I think that idea of a generally benign umpire-like continued troop-presence has become the reigning ideology for a Democratic continuation of US troops in Iraq; and I think the political-science community (not you!) had a lot to do with that; and I think it is a classic implementation of Kipling. On how that PR process worked, see also Edward Wong’s piece in the New York Times of Nov 26 2007 called “A matter of Definition: What makes a civil war, and who declares it so?”

That was what was behind some of my alarm over this idea of unilingual “experts” concocting scientific policy and then offering it as Divine Revelation to the masses.

1. Should social scientists enter into discussion with people in the places or groups they are trying to study? Certainly. This is a good way to learn in the first place and it’s a good way to check what one thinks one knows. It’s also a reasonable human reciprocity and a recognition that human beings know something (if not everything) about their own lives. Social scientists seeking to understand people and situations need to try to learn how others see things – not just gather external, objective data.

2. Is this likely by itself to head off disasters like the US invasion of Iraq? I’m not so sure. Much depends on who one converses with and what intentions and perspectives each side brings to the conversation. Many American officials conversed a lot with Ahmed Chalabi before invading Iraq. He may not have been the right Iraqi, but that’s precisely the issue. If the officials had paid more attention to other sources — and not just conversations with more people who already happened to be in their networks — they might have better understood his biases. More generally, it is in the nature of conversation that it involves a few people, not always representative. One can try to have more conversations with a wider range of people and conduct them more systematically. This could involve formal sampling. It could involve living among people and trying to immerse oneself enough in their culture and context to judge the conversations well. A good starting point is not to believe that a few conversations give one privileged insight because they were with important people, or simply authentic members of the local society. Such conversations can be no more than a start.

3. Are conversations by means of translators ever a fully adequate substitute for learning local or national languages? No. Neither are conversations with only those people who speak English. Both can be useful but both are limited. Should there be much more teaching of nonWestern languages in the US? Absolutely.

4. Have social scientists in general been proponents either of the Iraq War or of the notion that it is a civil war and the US a benign presence? I don’t think so. Indeed, far from it. Some social scientists supported the war, it is true. Many were critics of it, and many more are critics now – noting that in addition to being ill-conceived it has been poorly pursued. I doubt that many hold the view that the American (and allied) armies are not now an occupying force but merely “beneficient moderators”. Certainly this is not the view of most well-regarded specialists. For what it is worth, my own view is that the decision to invade Iraq was one of the worst foreign policy blunders in modern history.

5. Do many social scientists underestimate or belittle nationalist discourse? Yes, unfortunately you are right about this. Social scientists have often failed to take nationalism very seriously, imagining it (like religion) to be something inherited from an earlier era and destined to vanish. This is a mistake. And many social scientists who do recognize the importance of nationalism nonetheless see only its bad sides and excesses, and fail to recognize its role in unifying populations across ethnic, regional, and religious differences (albeit too often with violence or inequity). Many fail to recognize the importance of nationalist discourse to constructing the kind of collective consciousness that enables ordinary people to recognize themselves in documents with phrases like “We the people…”. [See my most recent book, Nations Matter.]

6. Is there bias against Arabs or Arabic? Yes, certainly. And I’m sure this exists among social scientists though it must be acknowledged that social scientists studying the middle east are much more commonly criticized for the opposite bias. And here it is important that the middle east specialists have pursued real knowledge with serious scholarly and social science methods – because otherwise their accusers (generally better funded) could get away much more easily with lies and distortions.

7. Do social scientists need blogs or other media for interaction? Of course. We need to be challenged by questions, informed about things we forget or never knew, and pushed to be clearer. Would I ever suggest that it makes sense for “the rest of us” just to wait, listen and in due course be enlightened? No! Keep speaking up. Also reading.