Dr. Tseggai Isaac

Professor Tseggai Isaac

Chancellors Professor of Political Science

Biography

Professor Tseggai Isaac earned his doctoral degree is in public policy from the University of Missouri -Columbia. His undergraduate degree in history is from Olivet Nazarene University. He earned his master’s degree in business administration from Governors State University.

Dr. Isaac’s research focuses on political, economic, and religious affairs of the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. The prospects of political and economic development are rooted in how societies blend their aspirations for progress with their heritage and civilizational identity. Societies cannot become the best of themselves if they reject the conciliatory and uniting qualities of their civilization and heritages.

In his article, “In China’s Vanguard Civilization: Is there a Shelter for the Third World” Professor Isaac agrees with the current research and intellectual trend that argues Chinese capitalist accumulation and exploitation of the Global South is far more injurious to the Global South than past capitalist exploitation; which Chinese leaders, such as Chairman Mao Zedong, and Chinese intellectuals used to repudiate as manifestation of European colonial and imperial exploitation. China’s vanguard civilization envisioned ancient Chinese Civilization as enduring inspiration. China imitating what was once affronting in the eyes of its founding leaders is unlikely to be sustainable to China itself. This thesis is illustrated by how modern societies achieved success in political, economic, and technological developments. They did so without rejecting the constructive and uniting qualities of their civilizations. They welcomed their organizing heritages, built upon them scientific, and rational transformation, and successfully modernized their political, economic, and social capacities. As a direct result, they became affluent, stable, and democratic societies.

Dr. Isaac’s research tries to answer the question: why have countries in the Third World/ Global South and in the Horn of Africa failed to use their ancient heritages of qualitative civilizations as inspiration for elevating their societies from poverty to prosperity? Colonial exploitation, unfair global market transactions, monetary and trade manipulation by rich countries are not enough to excuse the rejection of the constructive and edifying qualities of indigenous civilizations and heritages. Those that were rejected as criminal forms of governance by the founding civilizations such domestic corruption, unjust, unfair, inequitable, and intolerance so common today can be remedied by applying the constructive attributes of heritages and civilizations.

Dr. Isaac argues all civilizations share one common vision: universal natural rights stated as what is right for the individual person’s security, equality, and happiness is human aspiration everywhere.

The above summary is articulated in Dr. Isaac’s research.