Professor Scott Lucas BA, PhD

Photograph of Scott Lucas

Department of Political Science and International Studies
Professor of American Studies

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 5763
Email
w.s.lucas@bham.ac.uk
View my research portal
Address
Department of Political Science and International Studies
Muirhead Tower
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Scott Lucas became Professor of International Politics in 2014, having been on the staff of the University of Birmingham since 1989 and a Professor of American Studies since 1997.

He began his career as a specialist in US and British foreign policy, but his research interests now also cover current international affairs --- especially North Africa, the Middle East, and Iran --- New Media, and Intelligence Services.

A professional journalist since 1979, Professor Lucas is the founder and editor of EA WorldView, a leading website in daily news and analysis of Iran, Turkey, Syria, and the wider Middle East, as well as US foreign policy.

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Biography

Scott Lucas has been on the staff of the University of Birmingham since 1989 and has been Professor of American Studies since 1997. He began his career as a specialist in US and British foreign policy, but his research interests now also cover current international affairs --- especially North Africa, the Middle East, and Iran --- New Media, and Intelligence Services.

Scott Lucas has written and edited 12 books including Divided We Stand: Britain, the US and the Suez Crisis; Freedom’s War: The US Crusade Against the Soviet Union, 1945-56; George Orwell: Life and Times; The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens, and the New American Century; Trials of Engagement: The Future of US Public Diplomacy; and Challenging US Foreign Policy: America and the World in the Long Twentieth Century and published more than 50 major academics articles.

Professor Lucas is the Editor of the Journal of American Studies. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for American Studies and Research at American University Beirut and has previously been Visiting Professor at the Clinton Institute for American Studies at University College Dublin and  Adjunct Professor of the Institute for North American and European Studies at the University of Tehran.

Professor Lucas is the founder and editor of EA WorldView, one of the leading news and analysis sites on US foreign policy and international affairs, especially in the Middle East and Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Before this, he was the creator of Libertas, an academic website connected with the Centre for US Foreign Policy at Birmingham.

Professor Lucas is a frequent contributor to American, British, and international media. A former essayist for the New Statesman, he has written and presented Suez: The Missing Dimension for BBC Radio 4 and co-directed the 2007 film Laban! on the “People’s Power” rising of 1986 in the Philippines.

EA WORLDVIEW (www.enduringamerica.com): "Move Over CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera --- There's a New Kid on the Media Block"

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching

1st-Year: Introduction to Problems of World History in the Twentieth Century - A one-semester introduction to global history from 1914 to 2014, organized around ideas of "power", "stability", and "ideology".

Sample Questions:

  • Was the outbreak of World War I inevitable?
  • Assess the strengths and weaknesses of the attempts to restore "order" in the settlements after World War I.
  • "World War I and World War II was one war with a 20-year pause." Assess with respect to political, economic, and military developments between 1918 and 1939
  • "Paradoxically, the 'Cold War' finally brought international order." Discuss.
  • "Between 1961 and 1981, the international system was on the verge of collapse." Discuss.
  • Did history end in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union?
  • "9-11 was no more than one dramatic day in the pattern of international conflict." Discuss.
  • "The story of the 21st century is the story of the loss of American power." Discuss.

2nd-Year: The US and the Middle East Through Politics and Film --- A new approach to the interaction between “America” and the Middle East, using US film from the 1920s to the present to examine how the relationship was formed and presented within and beyond the US. Films include: The Sheik, Casablanca, Exodus, Black Sunday, Three Kings, Team America, Syriana, and Argo

Sample Questions:

  • What is the relationship between film, culture, and politics in the construction and projection of US foreign policy in the Middle East?
  • How does film portray the ideas of American "neutrality" and "engagement" with the world, using the Middle East and North Africa as location?
  • How did American film construct the notion of "Israel"?
  • How has American film constructed "terrorism" and the "Other"? 
  • Can film resist the image of a dominant "America"?
  • "The projection of US and the Middle East is bound up with the projection of gender and masculinity." Discuss. 

Final Year: Approaches to US Foreign Policy Since 1945 --- A one-semester critique of US foreign policy by considering dimensions from geopolitics to economics to culture and ideology, shedding light on the “contemporary” by considering the “historical”.

Sample Questions:

  • “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Discuss the concept of a “continuity” or “break” in US foreign policy between 1945 and 1991. 
  • To what extent is US foreign policy shaped by ideology? 
  • Was US foreign policy in the Truman Administration a policy of “containment” or “liberation”?
  • “US foreign policy towards Vietnam was flawed in execution, rather than concept.” Discuss. 
  • Is the Obama Administration merely a new version of the Bush Administration's approach to “War on Terror”? 
  • Discuss the issues surround US "intervention" and "smart power" in the 21st century. 

Final Year: The CIA, US Foreign Policy and International Relations since 1945 --- A one-semester consideration of the influence of the US intelligence services in the formation and implementation of American foreign policy from the end of World War II to the present

EA WORLDVIEW (www.eaworldview.com): "Those Who Know, Know EA"

Postgraduate supervision

Scott Lucas is currently supervising 10 Master's and PhD dissertations in US Foreign Policy from 1945 to the Present; US-Iranian Relations; US and the Middle East; British Foreign Policy; Politics, Film, and Television.

Research

Professor Lucas has recently completed two edited books on US foreign policy and power --- The Trials of Public Diplomacy (with Ali Fisher) and The Limits on US Power (with Bevan Sewell) --- which will appear in 2011. Complementing his work as an electronic journalist and analyst as well as an academic, he is now beginning work on a book on how “New Media” is reshaping foreign policy and international affairs.

Other activities

A native of Alabama in the southeastern United States, Professor Lucas is still a keen fan of baseball, stock car racing, and The Onion.

Publications

  • Twitter’s Revolutionaries: How New Media is Reshaping Foreign Policy and  International Affairs   (currently being developed for 2011 publication)
  • The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens, and the New American Century (London: Pluto, 2004)
  • George Orwell: Life and Works (London: Haus, 2003)
  • Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union, 1945-1956 (New York: New York University Press and Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999)
  • The Lion’s Last War: Britain and the Suez Crisis (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996)
  • Divided We Stand: Britain, the US, and the Suez Crisis (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991,reissued  in paperback by Sphere, 1996)

Forthcoming books and articles

  • The Limits of US Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) (edited with Bevan Sewell)
  • Trials of Engagement: US Public Diplomacy in the 21st Century (Brill, 2011) (edited with Ali Fisher)
  • “US Intelligence, Politicisation, and the Iraq War”, part of a special edition for Intelligence and National Security (2010)

Books (edited)

  • Contemporary Britain: Continuity and Change, 1931-1961 (London: Pinter, 1991) (with  Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman)
  • Postwar Britain: Themes and Perspectives, 1945-1964 (London: Pinter, 1989) (with Anthony Gorst and Lewis Johnman)

Selected Published Articles

  • “De-centring America in the Middle East”, in E. Lundy (ed.), American Studies in the Middle East (University of Texas Press, 2010)
  • “All the Secrets That are Fit to Print? The Media and US Intelligence Services Before and After 9/11”, in R. Dover and M. Goodman (eds.), Spinning Intelligence (Columbia University Press, 2009) (with Steve Hewitt)
  • “Mr. Obama's Wars: Afghanistan and Pakistan”, The New Americanist.(Summer 2009)
  •  “The Illusions of Coherence: US Strategy and Political Warfare in the Early Cold War”, Diplomatic History (January 2009)
  • “The Failure of the Unipolar: Iraq and the Grand Strategy of the Bush Admininstration” in D. Ryan and  P. Kiely (eds.), America and Iraq (Routledge, 2008) (with Maria Ryan)
  •  “The Mobilisation of Fear? U.S. Politics Before and After 9-11”, Review of International American Studies (Winter 2008/Spring 2009)
  • “The Manufacture of Fear? US Politics Before and After 9-11”, Passport: The Newsletter of the Society  for Historians of American Foreign Relations (2008)
  • “Suez”, Passport: The Newsletter of the Society  for Historians of American Foreign Relations (August  2007)
  • “Enduring Freedom: US Foreign Policy and Public Diplomacy,” American Quarterly (June 2005)
  • “Negotiating ‘Freedom’,” in Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford (eds.), The State-Private Network: The United States Government, American Citizen Groups,  and the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 2005)
  • “‘A Bright Shining Mecca’”: British Culture and Political Warfare in the Cold War and Beyond,” in William Roger Louis (ed.), More Studies in Britannia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005)
  • “Approaching Race and ‘Americanism’: The NAACP and the State in the Early Cold War,” in Sabine Broeck and Paula Boi (eds.), Cross Routes: The Meaning of Race in the 21st Century (Lit 
     Verlag, 2003)
  • “Beyond Freedom, Beyond Control: Approaches to Culture and the State-Private Network in the Cold War,” in Hans Krabbendam and Giles Scott-Smith (eds.), The Cultural Cold War in Western
     Europe, 1945-1960 (London: Frank Cass, 2003)
  • “Master and Servant? The US Government and the Founding of the British Association for American Studies,” European Journal of American Culture (2002)
  • “Commentary: ‘Total Culture’ and the State-Private Network” and “Analysis of Henry Kissinger and the Harvard Summer School Seminar,” in Jessica Gienow-Hecht and Frank Schumacher (eds.), Culture and International Relations (Cambridge, MA: Berghahn, 2002)
  • “Mobilising Culture: The CIA and State-Private Networks in the Early Cold War" in D. Carter and R. Clifton (eds.), Global Horizons (London: Macmillan, 2002)
  • “Culture, Ideology, and History,” Global Dialogue (October 2001)
  • “Beyond Diplomatic History: Propaganda, Ideology, and US Foreign Policy,” in G. Rawnsley (ed.), Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (London: Macmillan, 1998)
    “The Myth of Leadership: Dwight Eisenhower and the Quest for Liberation,” in C. Pagedas and T. Otte (eds.), Personalities, War, and Diplomacy (London: Macmillan, 1997)
  • “The American Way: Edith Sampson, the NAACP, and African-American Identity in the Cold War,” Diplomatic History (Autumn 1996) (with Helen Laville)
  • Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951-1953,” International History Review (May 1996)
  • "Alliance and Balance: The Anglo-American Relationship and Egyptian Nationalism, 1950-1957", Diplomacy and Statecraft (1996) (with Ray Takeyh)
  • “A Very British Crusade: The Information Research Department and the Cold War,’ in R. Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy, and the Cold War (London: Routledge, 1992)

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

US foreign policy since 1945; contemporary US foreign policy; US intelligence services; US politics; US culture and media; British foreign policy; international affairs, especially Iran, Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Languages and other information

Professor Lucas is the founder and editor of EA WorldView, one of the leading news and analysis sites on US foreign policy and international affairs, especially in the Middle East and Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Before this, he was the creator of Libertas, an academic website connected with the Centre for US Foreign Policy at Birmingham

Media experience

Professor Lucas is a frequent contributor to American, British, and international media. A former essayist for the New Statesman, he has written and presented Suez: The Missing Dimension for BBC Radio 4 and co-directed the 2007 film Laban! on the “People’s Power” rising of 1986 in the Philippines

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