Mehmet Tabak

Mehmet Tabak is a very passionate man. He truly cares about the subject, and even though it is a large lecture class, he encourages participation. Correction: he begs his students to participate, talks up his office hours, and genuinely seems to enjoy it when students raise their hands to disagree. That said, most of the students who do participate are the typical, know-it-all Poli Sci majors who phrase complex questions that do little more than promote their knowledge of obscure political issues to a rather unimpressed class. The class itself is fairly interesting. The readings on theory at the beginning of the semester are a total bore, not to mention completely unnecessary. The end of the semester features writings by Tabb and Stiglitz which are much more interesting. The lectures are interesting, although at the end of the semester he has a series of lectures that are meant to summarize the histories of four countries in 8 lectures, which ends up being disappointing and boring to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the history of any of the countries studied. That said, the lectures are far from painful.

Extremely nice guy who really wants his students to learn the material. He really strives to go beyond the text and relate the texts to current issues. He is always more than happy to meet with you one-on-one to clarify anything you may not understand or go over your paper in depth. He holds office hours at the Hungarian Pastry Shop and even buys you coffee and cookies. His grade breakdown reflects a large chunk to participation but I think if he realizes that active class participation is not your forte, he takes that into account as long as you demonstrate that you do the readings. I hardly participated but still got an A for the semester.

I've heard bad things about intro level poly sci classes - i.e. that they are boring and involve lots of reading - but I didn't think Mehmet's version of Comparative Politics was that bad. He is an engaging lecturer who I found pretty easy to follow, especially because he writes an outline on the board at the beginning of each class. I was often frustrated, however, when he didn't get through everything on the outline, and I felt like he probably ended up cutting stuff from his lectures because he spent too much time on certain things. He's definitely a bit of a Marxist - probably one of the last at Columbia - but I thought this made him a more interesting lecturer, as long as you keep in mind that most political science profs don't hold this view. He asks for questions frequently (so he can take a break from talking, he says) which allows about as much discussion as I've ever seen in such a large lecture class, which is great. I thought the reading selections were a little bit odd at some points, and didn't seem to correllate with the lectures at all sometimes, although most of the important theory authors were there. The textbook you use for the country studies is very straight-forward, but you don't really get more than a textbook perspective on the countries through the reading, which is unfortunate. Also remember that Fall 05 was his first semester teaching the course, so…

Mehmet is a great guy who really knows his stuff. He works hard to encourage participation, but because he is really just a student himself, working to finish up his degree, he understands where you're coming from as someone with a million things to do. Because his studies are in political philosophy, he is very passionate about this and will push off some of the works initially on the syllabus to make way for extra discussion on his favorites. Mehmet doesn't do the best job of keeping the awkward silences from creeping in, but he's incredible, taking us for the best CC dinner ever at Symposium and giving me an A-.

He may be not that interesting or insightful, but this class is EASY EASY EASY. Midterm and Final require two or three of the articles from the course, and the four one-pagers take about 10 minutes to write (total). Top that off with a 5-7 term paper and this has to be the most ridiculously easy class at Columbia. I would complain that most of Tabak's analysis is pretty superficial, and he likes to make broad statements about political systems and processes with absolutely no evidence. But who cares? You don't even have to go to lecture and listen to it.

Professor Tabak is actually a very entertaining lecturer, not in the least because of his distinctly Marxist leanings. Everything has a little slant that you have to remind yourself not to take on faith. He deals very well with discussion and questions for having over 100 people in the class, which is usually pretty lively. I think he provides a very good and thorough overview of the topic, and we looked at 4 countries as case studies to apply the various theories. My only frustration was that, although the readings were interesting, I got the feeling that they were only providing one side of the issue--no voices defending viewpoints that Tabak personally disagrees with.

Not amazing. Not horrible. The lectures are pretty boring, and pretty useless, but I can't say I don't like the class. The readings are good, and if you get a good TA, the discussion section is good. If you can find another professor, great. If not, it's really not that bad and the lectures are not necessary.

Easy A. The readings are fairly light, and mostly optional. The TAs are very easy graders. Easy midterm and final...the final paper is a bit more challenging, but definitely doable. If you need to fulfill the poli sci major requirements, taking this class wouldn't be a bad way to do it.

4 1-page reading response papers for discussion sections, midterm and semi-cumulative final, 5-7 page research paper on anything you want. He hands out a list of possible vocab terms and essay questions for the midterm and final about a week before the test, and the test will be maybe 6 terms and a choice of 2-3 questions taken from this review sheet, which makes it very easy to study.

midterm, final, four 1-page assignments, term paper (5-7 pages)