It’s what Dr. Aslan claims about himself in the “cringe-inducing” Lauren Green interview that is at issue, at least for me. I haven’t read his new book and don’t plan to. But I did suffer through the entire Green interview and heard for myself Aslan’s claims. About these, Manuel Roig-Franzia of the
Washington Post wrote yesterday:
[Aslan]…still seems to be calibrating his identity in small but telling ways. Even as he has achieved phenomenal success as the author of well-crafted religious history books that appeal to a mass audience, he’s eager — perhaps overeager — to present himself as a formidable academic with special bona fides in religion and history.
The boy who posed as something that he was not has become the man who boasts of academic laurels he does not have. Aslan, 41, has variously claimed to hold a doctorate in “the history of religions” or a doctorate in “the sociology of religions,” though no such degrees exist at the university he attended. His doctorate is in sociology, according to the registrar’s office at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Reza Aslan: A Jesus scholar who’s hard to pin down - The Washington Post
As I’ve said, Aslan is an associate professor of creative writing. The WaPo article claims, “He has asserted a present-day toehold in the field of religion by saying he is “a cooperative faculty member” in Riverside’s Department of Religious Studies.” This is apparently untrue. Vivian-Lee Nyitray, the just-retired chair of the department, “says she discussed the possibility last year with Aslan but that he has not been invited to become a cooperative faculty member, a status that would allow him to chair dissertations in her former department.”
Aslan himself refers questions back to his grad advisor, Mark Juergensmeyer (UC Santa Barbara):
“We don’t have a degree in sociology of religions, as such,” Juergensmeyer acknowledges. But he says he doesn’t have a problem with Aslan’s characterization of his doctorate, noting that his former student did most of his course work in religion.
Juergensmeyer helped arrange the shift of Aslan’s doctoral dissertation on Jihadism from the religious studies department to sociology. Juergensmeyer says the shift was undertaken to get Aslan out of time-consuming required language courses; Aslan says he moved to another department because religious studies professors were jealous about the 2005 publication of his best-selling book
No God, but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Juergensmeyer did not recall resentment among professors being a factor.
Reza Aslan: A Jesus scholar who’s hard to pin down - The Washington Post
I agree with the Yale religious studies professor who reviewed
Zealot and who praises Aslan’s writing talent, Dale Martin, that Aslan just “overplayed his hand” but that “The record needs to be corrected. Both about his credential and his thesis.”
