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Cliopatria

  • Jan 12, 2006

    Samuel Alito Misunderstands Justice Jackson's Famous Opinion in the Steel Seizure Case

    by Cliopatria

    [John Q. Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York City, is the editor of Justice Jackson's That Man: An Insider’s Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Oxford University Press).]

    As expected, day one of Judge Alito’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee included mentions—invocations, if not discussions—of Justice Robert H. Jackson. These Jackson-naming moments of yesterday were focused, as Senator Specter had foreordained in his opening statement on Monday,

  • Jan 12, 2006

    Shadows and Fog

    by Cliopatria

    Over the next few days here, as time permits, I plan to lay out my view of the war in Iraq. I have come to view the war as probably unwinnable, and the situation of American soldiers on the ground as painfully untenable.

    A few important things to note before I begin.

    First, these observations come secondhand; I'm nominally an infantry sergeant, but am currently parked at a not-very-interesting desk job in Kuwait. What I write here comes from what I've read, what I've
  • Jan 11, 2006

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Our colleague, Rob McDougall, will host the History Carnival on Sunday 15 January at Old is the New New. It will be a humdinger, because – well – because he's Rob MacDougall and this Carnival will draw on everything since 15 December. Send your nominations and self-nominations of exemplary posts in history, with titles and links, to electromail*at*robmacdougall*dot*org.

    Robert Shibley,"

  • Jan 10, 2006

    The Cliopatria Awards

    by Cliopatria

    The 2005 Cliopatria Awards were announced by Ralph Luker at the AHA. You can read the Award Post. Below are the winners. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners for making the blogosphere rich, varied and historically-conscious. A heartfelt thanks to all the judges and, especially, to Jeremy Boggs.

    Best Individual Blog: Mark Grimsley's

  • Jan 10, 2006

    "... and i know what's happening"

    by Cliopatria

    This is really Tim Burke territory, but he's busy teaching Africa and the slave trade, so we here at POTUS pick up the slack:
    Even though you've been raised as a human being, you are not one of them. They can be a great people... they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all -- their capacity for good -- I have sent them you, my only son.

    Thus speaks a heavenly father

  • Jan 10, 2006

    FIRE on North Carolina

    by Cliopatria

    FIRE has issued its first comprehensive survey of a state's public higher education institutions, and the results are not comforting: the report faults 13 of the state's 16 public colleges and universities for having on the books at least one policy"that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech." The state legislature seems to be entirely asleep on this matter.

    The best speech code clearly belongs to North Car

  • Jan 10, 2006

    Two Houses

    by Cliopatria

    Hiram Hover reports on the sale of the house"once inhabited by Josiah Henson, the slave whose 1849 autobiography served as a model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin." There was also an opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun last weekend that spoke of another famous Ma
  • Jan 10, 2006

    Lithwick on Alito

    by Cliopatria

    Slate's Dahlia Lithwick does her normal sharp job in analyzing Samuel Alito's rather odd opening statement. From the tenor of events today, we can pretty much mail in the 10-8 Judiciary Committee vote.

    Unlike Roberts, Alito's path to the Supreme Court was very much smoothed by the 2004 Senate elections--if Tom Daschle, Tony Knowles, Betty Castor, and Erskine Bowles had won instead of John Thune, Lisa Murkowski, Mel Martinez, and R

  • Jan 9, 2006

    Extra, Extra: History Repeats Itself

    by Cliopatria

    Railing against I-Pods, blogs, sitcoms, DVDs, the Internet, and the general scourge of popular culture, Emory Professor of English Mark Bauerlein in the January 6 Chronicle of Higher Education provides a barrage of statistics to show that today’s youth are ignorant of history. But before Bauerlein dons sackcloth and ashes over Homer Simpson’s progeny, he would be well advised to do his own history homework first.

    “Ignorance of U.S. History Shown by College Freshmen” trumpeted the
  • Jan 9, 2006

    The World of Sandi Cooper

    by Cliopatria

    IHE has an article this morning on the unsuccessful amendment that David Beito, Ralph Luker, and I co-sponsored at the AHA. (The amendment called for the organization to express concern with not only ABOR but also with campus speech codes as threats to academic freedom.) As David wrote from Philadelphia,"This vote is a great disappointment and critics will have a field day. Th
  • Jan 9, 2006

    A dilemma, and a request for input

    by Cliopatria

    Well, here's an ethical dilemma with which I'd like some help.

    For the past couple of years, I've been quietly keeping track of the ethnic and gender breakdown of my students and the grades they receive.  I do this informally, mind you, and up until now I've kept the results entirely to myself.

    But I've noticed some trends, trends that may speak to my teaching style and unconscious prejudices as well as to the varied levels of preparedness of my students.

  • Jan 9, 2006

    Pleasure and Pain at the AHA

    by Cliopatria

    Used to be that I hated going to AHA conventions. They were too big, too hard to find people I really wanted to see, and the job market was an awful experience. Now that I no longer need to look for a job, I can concentrate on seeing old and meeting new friends. There were dozens and dozens of them in Philadelphia, especially the Cliopatricians, Manan Ahmed, Alan Allport, Tim Burke, Sharon Howard, Caleb McDaniel, and Nathanael Robinson. Rebecca Goetz and I somehow missed each other, but it was g
  • Jan 8, 2006

    Misc.: Thurs.

    by Cliopatria

    Maureen Dowd's (firewalled) column in yesterday's Times notes that Bush has, on 108 occasions, issued signing statements that the administration claims determines"legislative intent." That the President can in any way--much less unilaterally--define"legislative intent" is as violative of the principle of separation of powers as anything we've seen from this administration.

    IHE has more on the MLA's proposal to water down the s

  • Jan 8, 2006

    Misc.: Fri.

    by Cliopatria

    A fascinating site from Cal-Santa Barbara containing more than 5000 soundclips from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, available through streaming technology on-line.

    Marty Peretz has a couple of great recent posts at TNR's blog, though I think he's far too charitable in his

  • Jan 8, 2006

    Misc.: Sat.

    by Cliopatria

    Compellingly argued column by Jonathan Rauch in National Journal on the Bush administration's expansion of executive authority.

    The last of China's "gang of four" is dead.

    Marquette has upheld the punishment of a dental student for negative comments about a professor and unnamed students that he wrote on his

  • Jan 8, 2006

    Misc.: Sunday

    by Cliopatria

    Capital Eye with the most detailed summary to date of Abramaoff-related campaign contributions, broken down by member and by party. And ex-congressman Duke Cunningham might have been wired for some conversations with defense contractors: I wonder if other members were mentioned?

    "Truthiness"--the

  • Jan 8, 2006

    Juan Cole: Iraq ... The Mess that Bush Made

    by Cliopatria

    Juan Cole is Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His books include Roots of North Indian Shiism in Iran and Iraq (1989), Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East (1983), Modernity and the Millennium (1998) and Sacred Space and Holy War (2002). As a result of his weblog on the war on terror and the Iraq war, he has become a public intellectual and has been a frequent commentator on television and radio and in the press. He was recently elected p
  • Jan 7, 2006

    Abramoff and Historical Analogies

    by Cliopatria

    One thing that most struck me in working with the LBJ tapes was the degree to which Johnson thought in historical analogies. On matters political, the press does as well, and it will be interesting to see how the Abramoff scandal gets framed over the coming weeks. There seem to me three options:

    --the House bank scandal. Bruce Bartlett made the case six weeks ago that this analogy would work best for Democrats, bu