Thomas Doherty,"Response to Human Apparatchiks," The Brandeis Hoot, 16 November, protests Brandeis administration's appointment of student monitors of"linguistic conformity and political orthodoxy" in its classrooms. I urge you to read it. Similar apparatchiks, known as"diversity monitors" at Antioch College, not only lied in what they claimed I said in the classroom, but later returned to disrupt student presentations in a seminar. Hat tip.

Mary Beard,"Have we found the Cave of Romulus?" A Don's Life, 21 November, puts the Roman archaeological discovery in perspective.

Michael Pye,"Paint, Passion, and Paradox," Scotsman, 17 November, reviews John Richardson's and Marilyn McCully's A Life of Picasso, Volume III, The Triumphant Years 1917-1932.

Greg Grandin,"Sucking Up to P," LRB, 29 November, reviews Robert Dallek's Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power and Jeremi Suri's Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Hat tip.
Update: See Professor Grandin's correction in comments here at Cliopatria.

Daniel Larison's"Term Limits," The American Conservative, 19 November, explains how Christopher Hitchens' and David Horowitz's use of the term"Islamofascism" bankrupts language and makes reasonable discussion impossible.

For Thanksgiving at Tenured Radical, Claire Potter recognized the year's"Top Ten Turkeys." Fortunately, she remembered to honor one of the Cliopatricians. Gobble, gobble, Claire!

Finally, congratulations to new officers elected by the AHA and to Dan Cohen, who has been named to succeed the late Roy Rosenzweig as director of George Mason University's Center for History and New Media. Hat tip.

Greg Grandin - 11/23/2007

Just wanted to point out an error in my LRB review of the two Kissinger books. I wrote that Nelson Rockefeller sent a representative to the 1980 Republican Convention to make peace with Reagan conservatives. As Nelson had recently died, I meant to write David Rockefeller. The representative in question is Richard Rosenbaum, who had been a fixture in NY liberal Republican politics, and close ally of the whole Rockefeller clan. Both in the 76 and 80 Republican Convention, he served as liaison between the Reagan conservatives and Rockefeller moderates (as well as, in New York state, a liaison between arrivist D'Amato Long Island Republicans and the Rockefellers). At the 1980 convention, according to the New York Times, Rosenbaum was "instrumental in quelling dissent in the New York delegation over the platform planks on equal rights for men and women, abortion and the federal judiciary." And he described his reconcilliation with Reagan as a "conversion." In fact, if I had caught this, it would have made for an even more interesting point: Rosenbaum asked the 1980 convention if they would have a moment of silence for Nelson: "We have to make room for decency in politics," he said. The convention organizers refused, but they did of course let Kissinger bow before Reagan. Apologies for my mistake, Greg

Claire B. Potter - 11/23/2007

Happy Thanksgiving to you too Ralph! See you at the AHA.

best,

Tenured Radical