Tahir Shad
Tahir Shad leads a three-week summer seminar in Tanzania, focused on the politics, culture, economy and sustainable development of the African nation.
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies
Director of International Studies
Curator, Louis L. Goldstein '35 Program in Public Affairs
Faculty Liaison to the Office of International Programs
E-mail: tshad2@washcoll.edu
Phone: (800) 422-1782, ext. 7779
Office: Goldstein 229
Education
- B.A., University of Sussex, U.K., 1979
- P.G.C.E., London University, 1980
- M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1982
- Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1987
Office Hours
- W 2-4 p.m.
- T, Th, 10:30-11:30 a.m.; 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Biography
Professor Tahir I. Shad teaches the politics of the Middle East and Africa. A specialist in international relations, he joined the Washington College faculty in 1990. Within his first year he recruited students to participate in the Harvard Model United Nations and the Organization of African Unity model diplomacy program held at Howard University (now the African Union Model). Subsequently he introduced his students to the McGill Model UN in Montreal. He also forged a partnership with the Hansard Scholars Program in British Parliament, in which WC students take courses at the London School of Economics and intern with a British MP.
Student participation in model diplomacy programs, student conferences and study abroad also grew exponentially under his direction. In addition to the Model UN program held annually at McGill University, Washington College students now participate in the World Model UN in Geneva. In his role as director of international studies, he helped globalize the College’s curriculum and set out to expand opportunities for students to intern with the U.S. State Department, USAID and other agencies both domestically and abroad. Students have interned with the U.S. State Department or USAID in Barbados, Bolivia, Cypress, Ecuador, England, Fiji, Gambia, Ireland, Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Thailand.
As Associate Dean of the College between 1995 and 1999, Shad developed and implemented 40 international programs in 25 countries, including exchange programs, study abroad programs and summer programs. He established four faculty exchanges (China, South Africa, France and England) as well as special academic sessions abroad (in Ecuador for environmental studies, in England for English literature, and in Tanzania for interdisciplinary studies). He also helped to negotiate dual-degree programs in nursing and engineering with the University of Delaware.
Over the last decade, Shad established four new academic concentrations within the international studies programs (Asian, Near Eastern, European and African Affairs) and restructured the existing Latin American concentration. He also implemented new International Studies major requirements for study abroad and internship experiences.
Educated in the U.K., Shad received a bachelor’s degree with honors in political science from the School of African and Asian Studies at University of Sussex, and earned his post-graduate certificate in education from the London Institute of Education, London University. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in political science at University of Pittsburgh, where a number of his top students go on to pursue graduate studies in international affairs.
An expert in Middle Eastern and African affairs, Professor Shad is a frequent political commentator on National Public Radio and, in Jamaica, on the radio show “Breakfast Club.” He has had articles published in Arab Studies Quarterly and in Regime Change and Regime Maintenance in Asia and the Pacific, published by the Australian National University. For upcoming publications, he is currently researching the failure of public diplomacy in the Middle East, looking at failed states and democratization in Africa, and examining low-intensity conflict and U.S. policy towards Pakistan.