Alex Barder
Assoc. Prof. Politics and International Relations, FIU
Alex Barder is a political scientist specializing in international relations theory and international historical sociology. His main research focuses on historical and contemporary forms of international hierarchy, imperialism, and race. He is particularly interested in how histories of race and racism have affected modern international politics and violence.
His first two books examined the historical connections between race and violence from the early 19th to the early 21st centuries. First, imperial spaces proved to be significant laboratories of political, social and economic innovations that affected the development of the modern Western state and society. Second, the global racial order did not end with the Second World War and with the discrediting of scientific racism or the decolonization of the global South.
He is currently working on two book projects. First, developing a global history of fascism from the late 19th century to the present. His interest is to understand the relationship between global crises and the development of fascist ideologies culminating in Nazi totalitarianism. His second book project is an historical revisionism of Wilsonian liberalism as an American foreign policy. At the heart of Wilsonianism was a political project to make the Western – White World Order – safe from an assortment of global racial threats and guarantee the nascent global role of American power.
He currently teach courses in International Relations Theory, Development of International Thought and American Foreign Policy. He also teaches graduate seminars in International Relations Theory and Contemporary Political Theory. Prior to joining the faculty at Florida International University, he was an Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut.