Menchik in The Atlantic on Electing Minority Political Leaders

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Jeremy Menchik, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Fredrick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed on the run-off of Jakarta’s gubernatorial election and the difficultly for minority political leaders to gain political power across the globe.

Menchik was interviewed for an April 18, 2017 article in The Atlantic entitled “Does the Quran Forbid Electing Christians?

From the text of the article:

“This is not a ‘Muslim problem,’” Jeremy Menchick, assistant professor of political science and religious studies at Boston University, wrote in an email. “How many Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists have been President of the U.S. or even in Congress? How did the Jewish and evangelical community react to [Muslim congressman Keith] Ellison being a candidate for [Democratic National Committee] chair? How do Arab parties fare in Israel? Or Muslim politicians in the Philippines?” The simplest explanation for the relative paucity of non-Muslim leaders in the Muslim world may just be that societies everywhere tend to have leaders who demographically represent them.

Jeremy Menchik’s research interests include comparative politics, religion and politics, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. He is also the author of Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance Without Liberalism. At Boston University he is a member of the graduate faculty of political science and coordinates the MAIA program with specialization in Religion and International Affairs.