Even though I was Economics student, I was very interested to learn about globalization in the Middle East. It was something I knew very little about, and I wanted to expand my horizons by taking this class, a decision I thoroughly regret.

The first day seems very promising as he asks many rhetorical questions as if he will answer them throughout the course, providing a good introduction to the class. The problem is, the class remains a series of questions without providing any solid answers. These questions are unbelievably vague. For example, he starts out each class with a question that should encompass the first few minutes of class to get a discussion moving. These questions sometimes look as though they were written seconds before class, including "What is culture and is it even important?" and "What is a democracy?" These questions end up taking a significant portion of the class sometimes with students being forced to answer the question for him. When he does teach, he puts up PowerPoint slides that are simply white slides with a couple pieces of text and an occasional picture, as if he made them the night before (although clearly not because one reviewer said the same thing as me).

In addition, maybe it's the fact that I am an economics student, not a political science one, but I found the reading workload to be relatively high. Each class (which there are two a week) requires dense readings of about 50 pages or more. Some of the readings get very confusing, and he hardly explains them in class. If you stay on top of the readings week by week, it can be fine, but I got behind almost three weeks and was forced to catch up in finals week, reading almost 300 pages in a few days. Now, technically the readings are not super necessary, but they are the only way you will get anything out of this course because you won't get anything out of his lectures. Instead, the readings are only useful for the final which consists of 20 something definitions that you'll have to find in the readings and copy down, a couple short answers and an essay, which require relatively in-depth reading of one or more of the readings.

The essays during the course require you to read some interesting books, and they are relatively easy to get good grades in as long as you read the book thoroughly and spend time thinking through the essays. Unfortunately, the essays and books just feeling an extraneous part of the course as he never mentions them or the lessons learned from the essays in class.

Attendance is technically mandatory and it's two hours per class, but he only requires you to sign in at the beginning and I saw many students leaving in the first couple minutes or during the breaks (I may have been one of them a few times).

In summary, if you're looking for a class where you learn only from readings but remains relatively easy as long as you do the work, then feel free to take this class. But do not expect an insightful teacher or a class that really causes you to think or learn about the class. I do not recommend this class so take it at your own expense, and please do not let the first class fool you.

I didn't think Bordenkircher was the lowest of low as a lot of these reviews seems to suggest, but I agree with most of the points and definitely wouldn't recommend him. He asks way too many questions and gives not enough answers, and acts fairly condescending towards some students when they try to answer these vague questions. He usually comes to class about five minutes late and regularly let us out about ten minutes early with a ten minute break between hours, which was annoying. Once, the class was actually having an insightful discussion, which he shut down after a while because "at this rate we'll never get through the material," and still ran out of things to say ten minutes before class was supposed to end. The one good thing about him is that he seemed to want to help us and was passionate about us engaging in discussion-- once after he was being particularly rude to a student behind me, he came up and apologized to her during our 10 minute break between hours, which I thought was nice. But you don't really know where your grade stands, as there are only three assignments (2 papers and a final), and I have a bad feeling about how long it's going to take him to finish grading. He's really passionate about Lebanon and seems to have a lot of knowledge to offer, which is cool, but overall I felt like most of this class was a waste of time and I wish I had chosen another course to take. There's a reason this was the last polisci course with seats left.

I've never written a bruinwalk review but I have never loathed a professor so much. This class is FORSURE biased. He says super ambiguous and leading things about Islam and then completely switches the subject without elaborating. I have no idea how this man is qualified for this job. The whole class is basically him having strange condescending "discussions" with students who challenge him. Also, the readings are both written by white men despite it being a class about the Middle East. His slides are pointless. Literally a bunch of questions with no sure answer. Its supposed to be about the Middle East but he really only knows about Lebanon....kinda. He desperately tries to strike casual conversation with students about completely random mundane things and no one ever interacts so thats always nice and awkward. Its a disappointing class because the topic has the potentially to be so interesting but NAH.

Would NEVER recommend. He is extremely unclear and condescending if you go to him for help. He responds to questions with more questions and never gives you a concise response. Not at all what I expected from a UCLA professor.

This professor is honestly one of the most unorganized, and unhelpful Political Science professors that I've come across in my time at UCLA. Not only does he lead the class in a socratic style of teaching, the "notes" he has on his slides are merely just questions to consider about the topic he's supposed to be teaching us about. His discussions with the class rarely reach any salient points due to the tangents that many students' answers can lead him toward. If students don't get the answer to his question or the topic he's trying to teach us about correctly, instead of rectifying our mistakes and explaining the correct way to approach the subject matter he wants to ask more questions. Honestly just looks like he's trying to spend most of the time in the class running a massive "discussion". Grading scale is also sketchy. He would not release the final grades until days after the due date for UCLA and when he did, he did not list individual grades on the 2 different final assignments so that people can understand why they got the grade that they did. In addition, he told the class that not doing the evaluation would HURT our grade.

Do NOT take this professor!

This class was really interesting! The professor loves this course material (especially Lebanon) which is awesome. Some downsides, I think he struggles with keeping his Western perspective in check (as a white man from Canada?) when discussing some topics (such as the Kurds and refugees). I think he also over plans lectures so we never really finish the full story in class. That being said, lectures are always interesting and relevant! I appreciated how we went over political science theories weeks 1-4 then all case studies. I think for others in the class (who have taken many, many poli sci classes) the first third of the class might have lagged a bit. I also think it would help if he posted the powerpoint slides online. I understand he does not want technology use in class (distractions), but struggling to write every word on a long slide takes away from the in class learning experience. We should hand write notes and be able to fill in later. Overall, good class.

If you take this class, I highly recommend that you take History 111C with professor Gelvin beforehand. I found that Prof Bordenkircher was quite fun to talk to if you have prior knowledge on the 2011 Arab Uprisings. This is not a class for people without prior knowledge of the political climate of the Middle East, however, if you have taken the poli sci class with spiegel or the aforementioned history class with Gelvin, you will be well prepared and really get a lot out of the discussions with Bordenkircher.
P.S. He is actually a really easy grader and if you pay attention in lecture and actually study the material to understand it and not regurgitate it, you will do very well.

Worst professor I've ever had. One of the rudest people I've ever met, literally. Not even that knowledgable, boring class presentations, extremely disorganized, not clear what he wanted us to take away. No clue how he got a job at UCLA -- I would imagine there are literally hundreds if not thousands of aspiring professors/lecturers.

The first day of class is very promising, as Eric comes across as knowledgable and personable... DO NOT LET THIS FOOL YOU! His structure is incomprehensible and his attempt to use the Socratic method in teaching falls flat. He teaches using powerpoint slides that appear to have been created 10 min before class. He leads every lecture with questions, eg. "What is culture? Does culture matter? " (very elementary to me) without EVER providing any nuanced answers. He tries to use big words to sound like he knows the subject, but ultimately allows outdated YouTube videos and propaganda (which a student called him out on and he flustered through the entire class) to teach. The book assignment was actually a good read, but no one knew their grade going in to the final and the final itself was a wild card because even he said he didn't know what the final would look like until 3 days before. Eric has unique style, but ultimately should be the cool high school or middle school teacher. How he ended up with a teaching job at UCLA is beyond me. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS

BORDENKIRCHER IS THE WORST! Not only does he like to teach his class through youtube videos (making it an utter waste of time coming to class) he also unclear in in his organizations of the material and what he expects on exams and assignments. Not only that, he refused to answer any email after giving everyone the final. Maybe 3 or 4 students out of 60 received higher than a B. He is highly unprofessional, condescending to students who were unfamiliar with the subject matter, and just overall not what a UCLA professor should be. Avoid at all costs.