Cliopatria

• Dec 9, 2007
  

  Week of Dec. 3, 2007

  by Cliopatria

  #1 Peter Watson: Our priorities in the West are wrong. Secularism is what we should be spreading across the globe
  http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/45268.html
  
  #2 Ralph Harrington: China's future is not Europe's past
  http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/45381.html
  
  #3 Eric Foner: Reading Lincoln in Pakistan
  

• Dec 9, 2007
  

  Maranto on University Reform

  by Cliopatria

  An interesting piece in today's Washington Post from Villanova political science professor Robert Maranto.
  
  While he notes the troubling effects of ideological one-sidedness in the contemporary academy, Maranto also dismisses the Horowitz ABOR concept, which he terms unworkable.
  
  His conclusion:"Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement
  

• Dec 9, 2007
  

  Happy Birthday, Cliopatria

  by Cliopatria

  If Mark Grimsley forgot to note the day that lives in infamy, I forgot to note the day that lives in history: this humble blog's birthday. Cliopatria was born on 6 December 2003. My first post that day coined a new word,"transblogrification," explored the derivation and meaning of our name, and introduced the founding members of the new group blog."Transblogrification" referred to the
  

• Dec 8, 2007
  

  The Solitary "No"

  by Cliopatria

  Cross-posted from Blog Them Out of the Stone Age

  According to Technorati, yesterday over 2,500 blog posts made mention of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I thought that probably the world could do without one more, but at least one of my readers disagreed, albeit without sufficient guts to offer his name or a valid email address. Of my post on political jui jitsu, he wrote,"This is the best post you could come up wit

  

• Dec 8, 2007
  

  WeakEndNotes

  by Cliopatria

  Daniel Larison points out that Roger Cohen,"Democracy in the Americas," NYT, 6 December, would have been improved if Cohen hadn't tried a historical analogy."The United States needs a new beginning," says Cohen."It cannot lie in the Tudor-Stuart-like alternation of the Bush-Clinton dynasties, nor in the macho militarism of Republica
  

• Dec 7, 2007
  

  Of Cell Phones and Area Studies

  by Cliopatria

  OK, I'm something of a tech junkie. As such, I've been particularly pleased to see the communications revolution taking hold in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. Back in the early '90's when I was doing my fieldwork, calling home to the US was a big deal. I had to schedule a call a day or two in advance with NITEL (Nigerian Telephone and Telegraph, the State Monopoly), and then I would pay $6 a minute for the call.
  
  Now, however, cell phones have smashed NITEL's monopoly, and in man
  

• Dec 7, 2007
  

  Week of Dec. 3, 2007

  by Cliopatria
• Frank Gaffney, Jr.

  Seventy years ago, Winston Churchill repeatedly took to the floor of the House of Commons to warn his nation against the growing menace posed by the steady accretion of military might by Nazi Germany. He contested the determination of his party (which at the time ruled Britain) to appease the Nazis, in the face of enormous public resistance to his