Bio of Charles Butterworth - Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)

Bio of Charles Butterworth

Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, Charles Butterworth (butterworth@islam-democracy.org) specializes in medieval Arabic and Islamic political philosophy. Pursuit of this academic interest has permitted him to live and study in most of the Arabic speaking countries of the Middle East and North Africa as well as in Europe. From time to time, he has lectured and taught at universities in Egypt, the West Bank, Gaza, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Turkey, Zaire, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Belorussia, France, Germany, Hungary, and Ukraine.

Professor Butterworth's publications include critical editions of most of the Middle Commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle's logic; translations of books and treatises by Averroes, Alfarabi, and Alrazi, as well as Maimonides; and studies of different aspects of the political teaching of these and other thinkers in the ancient, medieval, and modern tradition of philosophy. Butterworth has also written monograph analyses of the political thought of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He is a member of several learned organizations and past-president of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS) as well as of the Société Internationale pour l'Étude de l'Histoire de la Philosophie et la Science Arabe et Islamique (SIHSPAI).

Trained in political philosophy and Arabic as well as Islamic civilization at the University of Chicago, where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science, Charles Butterworth has also studied at the University of Ayn Shams in Egypt, the University of Bordeaux, and the University of Nancy in France (receiving a doctorate in philosophy from the latter). He received his B.A. from Michigan State University.

Before joining the faculty of the University of Maryland, Professor Butterworth taught at the University of Chicago and Federal City College (now the University of the District of Columbia). He has also taught at St. John's College, Georgetown University, and Harvard University, in addition to Marmara University, the University of Bordeaux, the University of Grenoble, the University of Paris I (Sorbonne), the University of Paris X (Nanterre), and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.

For several years he was the Principal Investigator for the Smithsonian sponsored Project in Medieval Islamic Logic in Cairo, Egypt. He has also been the Principal Investigator for a project on medieval Islamic logic sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and has organized a two-week Salzburg seminar on "The Commonality of Cultural Traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

A long-standing interest in the Palestinian-Israeli debate led to his involvement with CEEPAT (Continuing Education and Extension Project for Palestinians and Teachers on the West Bank and in Gaza). CEEPAT, a program for higher education addressed primarily to teachers in service, seeks to sharpen thinking skills and increase general learning so that teachers might come to think of themselves as having something worthwhile to pass on to their students and gain the confidence to do so without resorting to methods that stifle the interest of their students.

In 1992-1993, he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. during which time he pursued a project on the relationship between revelation and political philosophy. From October 1999 until March 2000, Butterworth held a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research and Lecturing Award at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany and from May through August 2000 a German Academic Exchange Professorship at the same university. Also, during May and June 2000, he gave a series of lectures at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris entitled "Des origines de la philosophie politique en Islam."

At the University of Maryland, he has been recognized as a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher (1990-91) and, in 2001-02, for an award in Excellence in Teaching and Mentorship granted by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

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