Fred Halliday

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Simon Frederick Peter Halliday (born February 22, 1946 in Dublin , † April 26, 2010 in Barcelona ) was an Irish writer and political scientist in the field of international relations . Particular focus of his academic and journalistic activities were revolutionary movements , the connections between the north-south and east-west conflicts as well as the Near and Middle East .

Life

Fred Halliday grew up as the son of the English businessman Arthur Halliday and the Irish Rita Halliday (née Finigan) in Ireland near the border with British Northern Ireland and England .

academic career

After attending a private school in Dundalk ( County Louth ) and Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire he studied at Queen's College of Oxford University Philosophy, Politics and Economics and received his 1967 Bachelor (BA). He then obtained his master's (M.Sc.) from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London . He began his dissertation on the external relations of the People's Republic of Yemen in 1969 at the London School of Economics (LSE), but did not earn his final doctorate (Ph.D.) there until 1985. From 1973 to 1985 he was a member of the left-wing think tank Transnational Institute . From 1989 to 1992 he was Chairman of the Research Advisory Board of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He later worked on the research advisory board of the British Labor Party- affiliated Foreign Policy Center, he also advised state institutions and private companies on questions of international politics and gave lectures at universities and diplomatic academies in numerous countries. In 2002 he was elected a member of the British Academy .

In 1983 he began his work as a lecturer at the LSE before he was appointed professor for international relations there in 1985, which he held until 2008. From 1986 to 1989 he was chairman of the department, from 1994 to 1998 he was one of six “Academic Governors” on the university's supervisory board. From 2000 to 2002, parallel to his professorship, he was founding director of the Center for Human Rights Studies at the LSE. From 2002 to 2003 he had to severely reduce his work due to illness. From 2004 to 2008 he held the Montague Burton Professorship for International Relations at the LSE, founded in 1936. From 2004 he lived partly in Barcelona. In 2008 he left the LSE and accepted an offer from the Catalan Research Foundation (ICREA) to work as a research professor at the Institute for International Studies Barcelona (IBEI). He remained connected to the LSE - his best-known engagement in retrospect was his intervention against the LSE management when, citing his many years of expertise , he warned the Libyan government early on against close cooperation with the Gaddafi Foundation. After his warnings were unsuccessful, in the spring of 2011 (and thus after Halliday's death) the commitment to Libya developed into the biggest scandal in the history of the renowned university, which led to the resignation of its president. Several advancement awards are named after him at the LSE, including the annual Fred Halliday Prize for the best master's thesis in the subject of theories of international relations.

As an advocate of the idea that in a globalized world foreign language skills are essential for mutual understanding across cultural boundaries, he is fluent in around twelve languages, including Arabic, Persian, German, French, Russian and Spanish. Since 1965 he has toured the Near and Middle East extensively, exploring every country between Afghanistan and Morocco and lecturing in most of them. He met with many of the most important political, military and religious leaders in the Islamic world.

He described the French historian and Orientalist Maxime Rodinson as his greatest academic role model , and Isaac Deutscher , Bill Warren and Ernest Gellner also had great influence .

Journalistic activity

Parallel to his studies, he was initially politically involved in the student movement and developed into a prominent journalistic commentator within the left spectrum in Great Britain. He had his first book publication in 1969 (at the age of 23) as editor of the writings of the intellectual mentor of the New Left , Isaac Deutscher, who died in 1967 . From 1969 to 1983 he was a member of the editorial board of the Marxist -oriented magazine New Left Review , after having been a member of the editorial team of the radical left-wing magazine The Black Dwarf since 1968 . From 1979 until 1991 he published frequently in Marxism Today and until 1998 in New Statesman . Since 1977 he has been writing for the Middle East Report of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) in Washington.

Between 2004 and 2009 Halliday wrote columns on international politics for the internet platform openDemocracy.net and, at the same time, for La Vanguardia , the largest daily newspaper in Catalonia . He has also published numerous articles in The Guardian , The Independent , The Observer and other UK and international periodicals. During his time in London he appeared frequently on various TV and radio programs on the BBC and also gave interviews to foreign media in several foreign languages. He published more than two dozen books, many of which have been translated into multiple languages. His specialist articles have appeared in numerous edited volumes and scientific journals.

Political positions

In the 1960s and 70s Halliday openly sympathized with the armed struggle of anti-imperialist liberation movements in the still partially under European colonial rule standing developing countries . He got involved with the communists in Vietnam , translated revolutionary texts by Ernesto "Che" Guevara , visited revolutionary Marxist groups in Iran and southern Arabia as a young student, organized solidarity trips for students to Cuba for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and was active in the Trotskyist International Marxist Group. In the 1970s he was a member of the Labor Party's sub-committee for the Middle East.

While his negative attitude towards key aspects of US foreign policy remained unchanged, from the 1980s onwards he saw the consequences of successful emancipation struggles for the affected populations increasingly critically. In doing so, he placed greater emphasis on universally valid principles such as human rights (of ethnic and political minorities and, in particular, of women ), against the protection of which political actors who propagated progressive goals should also be measured without distinction. He insisted not to judge conflicts according to ideologies and agreed with the unconventional thesis of the Marxist Bill Warren that imperialism and capitalism could very well be progressive. The first differences with large parts of the British left arose as a result of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan 1979–1989, which Halliday argued, although he did not sympathize with the Soviet state. Because of his experience with the led Ruhollah Khomeini established the Islamic Republic in Iran, he held the foreign, imperialist motivated support for the revolutionary movement for the lesser evil compared to the Islamist Mujahideen . Because they not only wanted to drive the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, but also prepared the simultaneous establishment of a political system there which, in Halliday's opinion, would contradict universal values ​​even more.

Halliday argued that military interventions should be assessed primarily from the point of view of universal human rights, the gross violation of which justified interventions in the sense of global solidarity, regardless of who carried them out and with what interests. This point of view led longtime political friends to distance themselves from him - Tariq Ali became his most prominent intellectual opponent among his former companions . Halliday provoked a much-noticed break with his longstanding involvement with the Middle East, who took part in the US-led military repulsion of the violent annexation of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990/91 ( Second Gulf War ). He summed up his stance at the time with the words: "If I have to choose between imperialism and fascism , I choose imperialism." For large parts of the radical left, Halliday became a renegade who betrayed his earlier ideals - his change from a radical left intellectual The student movement around 1968 to defend values ​​that were previously decried as bourgeois showed parallels to the biography of Hans Magnus Enzensberger in Germany, who, for example, argued similarly to the intervention against Saddam Hussein . Halliday himself complained that many of his former comrades had forgotten their former values ​​oriented towards the Enlightenment, internationalism and the specific needs of the oppressed masses and had sided with authoritarian nationalists, religious extremists and other human rights violators out of misunderstood anti-imperialism. The Islamic fundamentalism and its violent manifestations have been criticized sharply by Halliday, but he also joined anti-Muslim tendencies and the generation of negative stereotypes in the Western policy towards decided. In 2008, he described the Irish politician, historian and journalist Conor Cruise O'Brien as his “greatest intellectual hero” .

Scientific work

Through his numerous and often controversial contributions to debates, as well as his 25 years of teaching at one of the world's most prestigious international relations faculties, Halliday had a significant influence on his academic discipline, particularly in Great Britain. He is considered to be an important pioneer of international historical sociology: In the scientific analysis of international relations, he advocated an approach that takes up fundamental analyzes by Karl Marx and Max Weber and brings the methods of historical sociology into the study of international relations. In this way, transnational economic and social phenomena and historical developments should be given greater focus than states or nationally defined interests.

South Arabia and Persia were the regions whose societies and foreign relations he explored most carefully from the earliest student days and until the very end. The Marxist revolution in South Yemen (1969) and the Islamic revolution in Iran (1979), which he experienced there, helped him to gain practical insights that he used for his broad theoretical considerations on his central topic: the conditions and effects of radical upheavals in the international political context.

Private

Halliday was temporarily married to the sociologist Maxine Molyneux, with whom he had a son. Fred Halliday's brother is the historian Jon Halliday.

Halliday died of cancer in April 2010.

Fred Halliday literature

  • Arabia without Sultans , Penguin 1974, reprints 1975, 1979; Translations into Italian, Japanese, Pers., Arab., Turk.
  • Mercenaries: “Counter-Insurgency” in the Persian Gulf , Spokesman Books, 1977. Translated into Persian.
  • Iran: Dictatorship and Development , Penguin 1978, reprints 1979; Translations into Japanese, Norw., Swedish, German, Spanish, Turkish, Arab., Pers., Chin.
  • Soviet Policy in the Arc of Crisis , Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, 1981: also published as Threat from the East? Penguin 1982; Translations in Japanese, French, Arab.
  • The Ethiopian Revolution , with Maxine Molyneux, Verso, London 1982.
  • The Making of the Second Cold War , Verso, London 1983, reprinted 1984, 1986, 1988. Translations in German, Pers., Span., Jap.
  • Aspects of South Yemen's Foreign Policy 1967–1982 (PDF, 72 kB, 347 pages), dissertation, LSE, 1985.
  • State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan , edited by Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi, Macmillan, 1988.
  • Cold War, Third World , Radius / Hutchinson, 1989. Published in the USA as From Kabul to Managua , Pantheon, 1989. Translations into Arabic. and Jap.
  • Revolution and Foreign Policy: the Case of South Yemen , 1967–1987, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  • Arabs in Exile, The Yemeni Community in Britain , IB Tauris, 1992, revised version: Britain's First Muslims , IBTauris, 2010.
  • Rethinking International Relations , Macmillan, 1994. Translations into Japanese, Span. and Port.
  • From Potsdam to Perestroika, Conversations with Cold Warriors , BBC News and Current Affairs Publications, 1995.
  • Islam and the Myth of Confrontation , IB Tauris, 1996. Translations into Arabic, Pers., Turk., Indones., Polish., Span.
  • Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power , Macmillan, 1999. Translation in Turkish.
  • Nation and Religion in the Middle East , London: Saqi Books, 2000. Translation into Arabic.
  • The World at 2000: Perils and Promises , Palgrave, 2001. Translations into Greek and Turkish.
  • Two Hours That Shook the World. 11 September 2001, Causes and Consequences , London: Saqi, 2001. Translations in Arabic, Swedish.
  • The Middle East in International Relations. Power, Politics and Ideology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Translations into Italian, Polish.
  • 100 Myths About the Middle East . London: Saqi Books, 2005. Translations in Arabic, Italian, Turkish, Port. and chip.
  • Political Journeys: The openDemocracy Essays London: Saqi Books. 2011. (Collection of columns at openDemocracy from the years 2004 to 2009)
  • Shocked and Awed: How the War on Terror and Jihad have Changed the English Language. , London: IBTauris, 2011. (with last corrections and additions after his death)
  • Caamano in London: The Exile of a Latin American Revolutionary . London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. 2011.
  • Political Journeys: The openDemocracy Essays . London: Saqi Books, 2011.
  • (as editor and author of the foreword) Russia, China and the West: A Contemporary Chronicle 1953–1966 , by Isaac Deutscher, OUP 1969, Penguin 1970. Translations into Serbo-Croatian, German.
  • (as translator and author of the introduction) Marxism and Philosophy by Karl Korsch , NLB 1970.

Publications in German

  • Iran. Analysis of a society in the development war. , Berlin: Rotbuch 1979, 316 pages, ISBN 3-88022-203-7 .
  • Frosty times. Politics in the Cold War of the 1980s. , Frankfurt: New Critique 1984, ISBN 3-8015-0193-0 .
  • (as editor and author of the preface) Between the blocks. The West and the USSR after Stalin. by Isaac Deutscher, Hamburg: Junius 1982, ISBN 3-88506-119-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Fred Halliday: Memorandum on Iran ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Iran Opinion for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons, September 2000, accessed on October 10, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk
  2. ↑ Fred Halliday ( Memento of the original from February 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Entry on the British Academy website, accessed October 12, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.britac.ac.uk
  3. ↑ Anthony Barnett: Fred Halliday was right: The LSE, Gaddafi money and what is missing from the Woolf Report , in: openDemocracy from December 1, 2011, accessed October 10, 2012
  4. ↑ Libya affair forces Unichef on care , in: Spiegel Online March 4, 2011 Retrieved on October 10, 2012
  5. ↑ The Fred Halliday Language Award , on the LSE website, accessed on October 10, 2012 (English)
  6. ^ A b c Adel Darwish: Professor Fred Halliday: Celebrated scholar of Middle Eastern politics , obituary in: The Independent of May 14, 2010, accessed on October 10, 2012 (English)
  7. ↑ Susie Linfield: The Journeys of Fred Halliday , in: The Nation from November 19, 2012 (English)
  8. ↑ a b Alejandro Colas and George Lawson: Fred Halliday: achievements, ambivalences and openings (PDF, 44 kB, 27 pages), in: Millennium 39 (2) / 2010, accessed on September 29, 2012 (English)
  9. ↑ Halliday Bibliography 1965–2011 (PDF, 655 kB, 81 pages), list of over 1000 academic texts written by Halliday from 1965 onwards (only in English), LSE 2012, accessed on September 29, 2012 (English)
  10. ↑ Bill Warren: Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism , London: Verso 1980 (English)
  11. ↑ a b c d e f Danny Postel: Who is responsible? An interview with Fred Halliday on November 23, 2005, originally in Salmagundi , accessed via openDemocracy on October 1, 2012
  12. ↑ Fred Halliday: War and Revolution in Afghanistan (PDF; 122 kB), in: New Left Review from January 1980, accessed on October 10, 2012 (English)
  13. ↑ a b c Stephen Howe: Son of the Bani Tanwir: the work of Fred Halliday (1946–2010) , in: openDemocracy of July 13, 2010, accessed on October 1, 2012 (English)
  14. ↑ Pratyush Bharti and Padma Balasubramaniam: The Apologists for Imperialism: “Intellectuals” And Their Post-September 11 Positions , in: Liberation from April 2002, accessed on October 10, 2012 (English)
  15. ↑ Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Hitler's Revenant , in: Der Spiegel of February 4, 1991, accessed on October 12, 2012
  16. ↑ Michael Gilsenan: The Gulf Debate: The Grand Illusion (PDF; 201 kB), in: Marxism Today from March 1991, accessed on October 12, 2012 (English)
  17. ↑ Benno Teschke: Advances and impasses in Fred Halliday's international historical sociology: a critical appraisal (PDF; 139 kB), in: International Affairs 87: 5 (2011), accessed on September 29, 2012 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Halliday, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halliday, Simon Frederick Peter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin , Republic of Ireland
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 2010
Place of death Barcelona , Spain