Politics was Never Neutral

An Ode to Uncomfortable Truths

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

I still remember the way he walked into class, as if every question had already been answered in his head, and we just hadn’t caught up yet. He called himself a social theorist. He pushed us hard, made us wrestle with ideas we didn’t even know we were allowed to question. There was brilliance in him, no doubt. But outside that classroom, the cracks showed. The same fire that lit up our minds sometimes burned everything else around us. He was a firecracker in the works.

In our political science class, Dr. Razi didn’t just teach. He agitated. He made the map bleed. He peeled back the layers of revolution, occupation, betrayal, and hope until names on paper became people, and statistics turned into memory. We didn’t just study events. We studied patterns. He exposed the scaffolding behind global power and taught us to see the machinery we were trained to ignore. He pushed us past binaries, past headlines, and into uncomfortable questions. What do you really know of authority? Whose voices are missing? He asked for engagement. And once you entered that space with him, there was no going back.

And still, in his intensity, there was contradiction. I often thought of that Shakespeare line, “But man, proud man, dress’d in a little brief authority.” He wielded his knowledge like fire. It was brilliant, consuming, and unforgettable. But you could sense he knew he, too, was made of flesh, caught in the very systems he was deconstructing before our eyes. His brilliance was real, but so was the harshness it sometimes carried. His certainty, though hard-won, could be overwhelming. And yet, he was never indifferent. In a time when conviction feels increasingly rare, he stood out more than ever as necessary, as brave, as painfully human.

He’s gone now, but his presence still lives in the questions he dared to ask. He didn’t leave us with answers. He left us with a lens. And for those of us who sat in that room, who heard him dissect, not just politics but power itself, that lens never comes off.

Lately, as the world feels heavier, as uprisings are met with violence and democracy feels thinner than ever, I find myself returning to his classroom in my mind. His lessons weren’t confined to any one region or time. They were about power, humanity, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay comfortable. He taught us that politics is never neutral, and that being informed is the beginning, not the end.