The presentation is dedicated to Robert Jervis’ seminal work on the Perception and Misperception in International Politics which I adapted for analysis of the United States’ decision-making and narratives on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since the Iranian Revolution, the United States and Iran have been both in strained relations on the edge of military clash and moment of relief and failed attempts of accommodation. Current developments both sides are pushing to the direct confrontation and would deeply prefer to avoid it. Ups and downs can be attributed to the United States policy in Iran. In my research, I would like to understand this inability to redirect on another path to difficult relations.
Thanks to consultations with Professor Robert Jervis and numerous interview and research – have raised several issues and concern in my research I would like to focus on and discuss:
1. Why misperceptions have been prevailing in building the narratives and decision-making on Iran? 2. How should it be perceived Iran and why is it so difficult to overcome the existing views and policies on that issue? 3. Plural voices and different views – how to trace the right direction in handling difficulties, threats and challenges regarding Iran? 4. Why is it so difficult in doing the next steps – a case study of the JCPOA downfall? 5. What is the bottom line in perceptions of Iran to overcome the existing crisis?
Radoslaw Fiedler is Associate Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan in Poland, a deputy dean for international cooperation and head of the Department for Non-European Political Studies at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism. Chairman of the Fiedler’s Foundation. He is also the initiator and chairman of the international conference: Beyond Europehttp://beyondeurope.amu.edu.pl/. Each year the conference gathering significant researchers from all over the world focuses on different aspects of international relations. Author of numerous articles and monographs on Middle East and related issues, especially in the policies of the European Union and the United States of America. Visiting professor in Tehran University, Jordan University, Tianjin Technology University in China, Qaboos Sultan University in Oman, Cairo University in Egypt, Al Farabi National Kazakh University in Kazakhstan, Grigol Robakidze University in Georgia, Jakarta University in Indonesia, National Chengchi University in Taiwan. In 2017 he conducted a project Tracing Footsteps of the Polish Refugees in Iran http://ispu.org.pl/en/home/and visited numerous places in Iran related to the Poles being there during wartime in 1942-1945. In 2019-2020 prof. Fiedler is a visiting scholar (the Bekker Program – the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange) at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.
Robert Jervis is Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University. He is the author of Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Cornell University Press, 2010). His System Effects: Complexity in Political Life (Princeton University Press, 1997) was a co-winner of the APSA’s Psychology Section Best Book Award, and The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Cornell University Press, 1989) won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He is also the author of The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1970; 2d ed., Columbia University Press, 1989,) Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1976, 2nd ed., 2017), The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Cornell University Press, 1984), American Foreign Policy in a New Era (Routledge, 2005), and over 150 other publications. Jervis was President of the American Political Science Association in 2000-01 and has received career achievement awards from the International Society of Political Psychology and ISA’s Security Studies Section. In 2006 he received the National Academy of Science’s tri-annual award for behavioral sciences contributions to avoiding nuclear war and has received honorary degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Venice. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1978-79 and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Political and Social Science and the American Philosophical Society. Jervis chairs the Historical Review Panel for CIA and is an Intelligence Community associate. His current research includes the nature of beliefs, IR theory and the Cold War, and the links between signaling and perception.
This event is restricted to CUID holders only. You must register in advance via the Columbia/SIPA calendars. All registrants will be sent a Zoom link and password the day before the event.
