You selected Deepa Prakash Professor of the Week based on votes from an online poll at thedepauw.com. The DePauw Features sat down with her to bring you her story. Here's what she had to say:
The DePauw Features (TDP Features): "Where are you from?"
Deepa Prakash (DP): "I'm from India, so I'm an Indian citizen. I've lived in the U.S. for nearly a decade now. So I feel kind of at home in these different contexts, but I'm from New Delhi, India originally."
TDP Features: What made you decide to pursue political science?
DP: First of all, I didn't do political science as an undergraduate. I did history, but it was kind of an interesting journey in the sense that I learned quickly that history was not the thing that I was really interested in, except for contemporary history. That made me think, 'Oh, okay why am I drawn towards particular kinds of areas?' I realized maybe the thing I'm drawn to isn't history but contemporary politics, and that's how I came to it. But I think the reason that I really got into political science, particularly international relations, maybe comes a little bit from my background. Both of my parents are in government in India, or were before they retired. Because me and my sister grew up in different parts of the world, in a sense, we were always interested in the world of diplomacy and international relations. It was sort of part of the conversation in some sense, and the schools we were in had a lot of people from different parts of the world. When I was 12 or 13, for instance, there was a Palestinian student in my class, and there was an Israeli student in my class. There would be weird tensions between them. In one way or another, it was sort of, I think, some of the background growing up in some very different places that may have inculcated that interest always.
Then my own particular interest in political violence. My area of academic specialty is terrorism and counterterrorism. Part of it comes from being in India. India has always kind of historically grappled with these problems, but my final year of schooling was in Sri Lanka, which had this very longstanding issue with political violence and terrorism, and I think that had to have a formative influence in my interests. You know like when you go to school and you hear an explosion somewhere in the city, and you know that somebody that you actually know may have died in it, which totally happened, you kind of get drawn to certain issues and areas.
TDP Features: What brought you to DePauw?
DP: I did my graduate work at Syracuse University, and like with most professors, as you start to see the end of the light of your PhD work and your graduate work, you start thinking about jobs. So I went on what is called the job market, and I applied to different places. And then, I came to DePauw for an interview, and I just sort of fell in love with it. My interview was in December, and I remember it was just a really magically pretty campus. The people were really great, and I really really enjoyed meeting the students. Up until that point, it had been kind of an adventure to say, 'Well this is fun to be on the market and to do job interviews,' but when I came to DePauw, I was like, 'Oh, this would be nice to have this job.' I just kind was of drawn to it, so I was very happy when I finally got to work here.
TDP Features: "What is your approach to teaching?"
DP: "Part of it comes from the discipline. I firmly believe that there should be this balance, and I try to do this whether its in my intro class or my upper level classes. I think there's an important balance between learning theory and learning kind of concepts and being able to apply them to policy and the real world. For me, as a political scientist, that's important to always keep some emphasis in thinking, 'What are the implications of whatever we're studying for contemporary policy?' That's something that influences heavily what we read and talk about in my classes. The other thing that I think that I'm very wedded to, which is perhaps emblematic of the liberal arts experience, is that I really like conversations, so I like the classroom as generally a democratic kind of space. Obviously there is some amount of structure that has to come from the professor, but some of the best classes, I think, are where the conversation goes in a place where you didn't intend it to go or couldn't have planned it to go. But it comes out of something organic in the room. I do like the idea of being open to hearing what people have to say about the readings and stuff."