Gradstudent1985

I would advise as well looking at: Fawaz Gerges (London School of Economics) Avi Shlaim (University of Oxford) John Sidel (London School of Economics)

Rashid Khalidi and Timothy Mitchell are both quite good at Columbia. If Lisa Anderson comes back from her stint at AUC, she would be an excellent supervisor. Princeton's Near Eastern Studies programme is not very strong for the modern political history of the Middle East. It used to be and in the past, Princeton has produced a number of excellent scholars who work on the modern period. NYU has some good people. University of Michigan has a strong program. Yale's history department has added a new ME scholar recently to their faculty.

You may want to consider a PhD in Public International Law or Gender Studies or Legal Anthropology instead of an IR or Poli Sci PhD program, where there may be some people interested in that area.

"The majority opinion seems to be that coming back to the US to teach with a European PhD is very difficult (nearly impossible?)." It really depends on what type of research you are doing and the school that you are coming from. The statement that it is nearly impossible to to teach with a European PhD does not reflect reality . It does not explain why there are people with Oxford and LSE PhDs teaching at schools such as Stanford and Harvard to name just a few. Stanley Hoffman received his PhD from Sciences Po and Roderick Macfarquhar has a PhD from LSE. Maybe some people on this board do not consider them true political scientists. It also really depends on your research interests. If you are interested in theory and history when analyzing international relations, you probably would not want to teach in Michigan's political science department. If you are interested in quantitative methodology for international relations research, you probably would not want to teach at Oxford. Also, depending on what you consider a true political science department or what you consider international relations, there are a number of European PhDs teaching at Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, etc. The Dean of the School of Foreign Service has a PhD from LSE. "The first question I would ask if I was looking at such an application is "why would you go elsewhere when the best political science programs are in the states?" Unfortunately, this statement is not really reflective of reality either. Oxford, LSE, and Cambridge have quite strong programs, and depending on your research interests, they may be more suitable. If there is a faculty member at Oxford that is more fitting for your research interests than one at Berkley, it would make sense to go to the school where your research interests are best met. "Third, if you are serious about this (and from what you have written I think you are), you really need to get into the mindset of applying to schools that !) are going to get you the best training possible 2) provide you with the opportunities that you are after, i.e. research interests, funding, placement records and a very distant 3) are in a location that you could see yourself living for 5-7 years (although some European degrees are much shorter than this)." The best training possible really depends on what methodology you are interested in. If you are interested in qualitative research, LSE outshines Michigan. I agree completely that if you do qualitative IR research, you may have more difficulty finding a job in US political science departments that are looking for a faculty member do research that is not qualitative. It really comes down to what your research interests are. If you are not interested in quantitative methodology, why devote 6 years of your life and the rest of your life doing that type of research if it does not interest you? I agree as well that there are less Americans with PhDs from outside the US teaching in top political science programs. That is representative of a) the type of methodology predominant in a department wanting to stay in the US to do a PHD c) funding: its quite difficult to get any funding abroad. Its more appealing to go to a program in the US because you have a higher chance of getting funding than spending 100,000 dollars of your own money on a PhD in Britain or France, etc. d) research interests and whether the department in the US fits your research interests. Stating that LSE and Oxford are not as good as a top US school is not that representative of the truth. If you want to use quantitative IR methodology, schools in Europe do not have the concentration of leading faculty comparable to in the US.