[POLS W4445] Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa

Professor El-Ghobashy is a brilliant woman. She knows the course material backwards and forwards, and she makes an effort so that you understand the course material through her clear lecture style and her visual aids. Her voice is also incredibly pleasing to listen to, and she always finds a way to empathize with her students, which often gets a laugh out of a class. That's not to say that the course is easy; the material is difficult, and it's definitely a comparative politics class that you WILL want to have taken the intro class for. Professor El-Ghobashy makes what would in other classes cause weeks of migraines something you can understand.

That said, do not be fooled by the lack of a final exam or a midterm; her essays are, as previous reviewers have said, difficult and force you to think. She is genuinely nice and wants her students to succeed, and she will work with you to develop your ideas into a great essay. Thus she expects that her students make the effort in return, and her mind can sift through bullshit a mile a minute, though she does appreciate an honest effort to make an argument.

The bottom line- do your work, and she will do what she can so you can succeed. She's an excellent professor and deserves your effort.

He normally teaches at St. John's, and he should stay there.

This was the worst course I've taken at Columbia - not just the worst Political Science course, and that's saying something.

This man is a terrible professor - if the person responsible for hiring him had spent five minutes listening to one of his lectures, Layachi would never have gotten hired to teach this course. The man knows less about the given topic than most of the class, and the readings did not really contribute to understanding of the topic - most of the assigned textbooks and articles were superficial - he made us buy 3 different (and expensive) textbooks, most of which were not helpful. He also did not post the article PDFs online until a few days before we were supposed to have read them.

Assignments appeared to be created with almost no thought. The topic of Weber and political legitimacy was not relevant to class/section discussions. The country case paper basically required class members to reinvent the wheel - we were basically writing encyclopedia articles on given countries - an assignment more appropriate for middle school than an Ivy League university.

Assignments were often full of typos and misspellings - not what one would expect from a 4000-level class.

My recommendation: Never let Layachi teach a course at Columbia again. The PolSci department should have spent a little time anonymously observing Layachi (and other prospective adjuncts) teach elsewhere before allowing him to teach a course at Columbia.

Layachi should be avoided at all costs. if you see Mona El-Ghobashy teaching this class in the future, definitely take it. I had her for Intro to Comparative Politics, and she was incredible.

Mona is, without a doubt, the most amazing professor I've encountered. She’s very young, in fact just finished her dissertation (that won best dissertation in the social sciences for that year), yet her knowledge seems almost limitless – it often appears like there is nothing she has not studied, no topic she will not be able to delve into and expand upon. And she is – everyone I've spoken to agrees on this – simply brilliant. She has analytical capacities that are at times even discouraging, when you realize that you will never be able to be as smart as her. She has a way of taking your remarks and rewording them to make what you meant to say sound much smarter than you intended it to be. And yet, she will always make you feel capable, never make you feel like you are not every bit as talented as she is.

She’s also a great lecturer, putting concepts into clear language, often making you wonder why your other professors don’t have that rich a vocabulary. She puts in astounding amounts of thought and effort into every student: her choice of readings is always intentionally diverse and brings out all sides of intellectual debates; and if you go see her during office hours she will make you feel like she was waiting just for you, and beside being friendly, you will always leave her office feeling less stressed and more focused, with a clearer grasp on what it is you need to do.

But mostly, she teaches things that are not necessarily part of her job description. In her lecture class – a 4000-level lecture – I learned more about social science writing than I did in any of my other classes, including writing classes, and probably more than about Middle Eastern politics. That she cares enough about students to digress from lecture and point you to the right direction in your writing is commendable, and should be done more often. In such a high-level class she has every right to expect that students should have enough training in writing, and yet she knows that is nearly never the case, and is flexible enough to make time to teach such important skills.

If you like to bullshit – stay away. There’s no place for that with Mona; she reads straight through you, and it can be a bit intimidating, especially for those of us who are used to getting good grades by choosing easy ways out. Then again, I've discovered that I've usually learned very little in classes that were easy. She’ll challenge you, put you to an incredibly high standard, but will guide you through the process. If you want to get something out of this degree, if you want to feel like your time wasn’t spent chasing A’s and getting an Ivy League name on your resume, do not skip her classes.

Yes, she's nice and incredibly smart... but her teaching style is not for everyone. She's totally inviting and welcomes class comments (too much if you ask me.. the grad students and life time learners especially would go on and on about whatever they wanted) but this class is not (as she claims on the first day) for people who know nothing about the Middle East. I really did know nothing about the area, and I think I left the class feeling the same way. The problem was that she assumes a certain level of competence (in terms of history, background, etc) and then applies lots of theories to the region (maybe I'm the idiot for taking a 4000 level poli sci class on a region I knew nothing about). The class was more organized in the beginning but then turns into a free for all class conversation without much substance toward the end.