Witnessing constant political and religious upheaval makes it difficult for a child to imagine an individual future in Baghdad, Iraq.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Philosophy professor, researcher and author, Aladdin Yaqub, said he faced these realities while growing up in Baghdad from the mid-1950s through the 1970s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said constant changes in political power, attacks on the public and military coups plagued his home throughout much of his childhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was 4 years old, I remember looking from our window and seeing members of the royal family being dragged in the street,\u201d Yaqub said. \u201cThey tied them to cars, and they ran their corpses throughout the city roads.\u201d<\/p>\n
While attending primary and intermediate school, Yaqub said he started reflecting on his surroundings and the place he called home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without realizing it, he said he was examining the validity of certain ideologies and the political actions of those in power. This curiosity laid the foundation for the philosophical mindset that later shaped his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said it wasn\u2019t until his undergraduate studies in mathematics at the University of Baghdad that he began to question not only his surroundings but also his academic path.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Through a love of literature and language instilled by his father, Yaqub developed an interest in sharpening the skills essential for literary and academic success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His questioning of mathematics as his primary focus eventually sparked an interest in philosophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yaqub continued his studies abroad because he said he wanted to pursue an educated in the U.S. He later graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a master\u2019s degree in mathematics and philosophy, and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1991.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said it was during a seminar on truth theory, which became the focus of his dissertation, that he began composing his first book, \u201cThe Liar Speaks the Truth,\u201d later published by Oxford University Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI stopped working in the fall of 1991 as a professor in philosophy and spent that time working on my dissertation and transforming it into a book,\u201d Yaqub said. \u201cThen I submitted it to Oxford, and bam, it was accepted. I was very surprised.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
While conducting his own research, Yaqub said he spent 1991 to 2006 teaching philosophy at several institutions, including the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, Florida State University, Luther College and the University of New Mexico. In 2006, he began teaching philosophy at Lehigh while continuing his research.<\/p>\n
Yaqub later authored three additional works: \u201cAn Introduction to Logical Theory,\u201d a translation of Al-Ghazali\u2019s \u201cModeration in Belief,\u201d and \u201cAn Introduction to Metalogic.\u201d<\/p>\n
For nearly 40 years, Yaqub said he\u2019s has balanced teaching, researching and writing books, papers, and poems, while also playing the African drum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult (to balance),\u201d Yaqub said. \u201cMost of what I actually do is read, and then I teach during the semester. Between reading and teaching and working with the student and mentoring and meeting help sessions, I just don\u2019t have time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite this, he said he prioritizes the quality of instruction in the classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For many philosophy students, like Dario Rivalini, \u201826, the impact of Yaqub\u2019s coursework reaches far beyond the books.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as a professor, he always put his students above himself and sometimes his peers, but never in a hostile way,\u201d Rivalini said. \u201cLooking at him as that type of person, he\u2019s always been a model for that type of attitude that I want to take into post-grad.\u201d<\/p>\n
With deep respect for his field and those who aspire to work within it, Yaqub said he makes a significant effort to support students pursuing philosophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kyle Ramsingh, \u201826, said Yaqub\u2019s teaching style helped ensure students understood the material.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really focuses on reading everything on his own and not resorting to the internet for help because he says it sways philosophy,\u201d Ramsingh said. \u201cI think his teaching style is something that helped me understand the content in the class a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 71 years old, Yaqub continues working to guide the next generation of philosophers while balancing his own research.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His newest project involves annotating the Qur\u2019anic exegeses of six early Mu\u2019tazilite masters, a project he considers the culmination of decades of work in Islamic philosophy and theology.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After these exegeses, which heavily involved rational theology, were deemed too heretical, they were destroyed in the ninth and 10th centuries. Yaqub works to locate surviving fragments of these works and translate and annotate them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said the process requires carefully reconstructing the historical context of the texts \u2014 determining when they were written, what was happening at the time and what ideas scholars were discussing \u2014 to properly annotate them and rebuild what \u201ca lost intellectual tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n
After finishing this work, Yaqub hopes to spend more time on the creative pursuits he\u2019s long balanced alongside his academic career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I\u2019m done with (my research), I\u2019m going to simply play drums, write poems and read,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Witnessing constant political and religious upheaval makes it difficult for a child to imagine an individual future in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,9728],"class_list":["post-140828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-4-min-read","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-profile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}