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Cliopatria

  • Feb 25, 2005

    More MEALAC

    by Cliopatria

    This morning's Sunreports on the latest regarding Columbia's MEALAC controversy. James Schreiber, a former federal prosecutor who serves on the Law School's board of visitors, recently wrote Columbia president Lee Bollinger to describe his attending a 2002 campus lecture by Joseph Massad,"On Zionism and Jewish Supremacy.""Purporting to be a scholarly lecture," Schreiber noted,
  • Feb 25, 2005

    Governor . . . Swann?

    by Cliopatria

    Based on former Steelers receiver Lynn Swann's performance as a football commentator, I rather doubt that PA governor Ed Rendell is worried about this news.
  • Feb 24, 2005

    Doug Wead

    by Cliopatria

    The Doug Wead telephone transcripts cut both for and against President Bush. Moderates will probably be impressed with his comments about gays. He said he doesn't want to discriminate against gay people and doesn't want to kick them. Gay people will be less impressed. At one point he compares gays to sinners. But at least he isn't taking the high and mighty approach saying gay people should burn in hell. And after all, he is implicitly comparing himself to gay people by saying he and they
  • Feb 24, 2005

    Kennedy Sale

    by Cliopatria

    The news of yet another sale this week of Kennedy clothing and artifacts reminded me of the change in fortunes of presidential families.

    Today Kennedy is regarded as one of the top five presidents by Americans (though not by historians, of course).

    The other president he usually battles for first place with was Lincoln.

    But after Lincoln was turned into a saint following HIS assassination, no one stampeded to buy Lincoln family clothes.

    In 1
  • Feb 24, 2005

    Not of Native Origin....

    by Cliopatria

    No, it isn't another Ward Churchill story -- I wasn't going to make the flight over to Oahu on my own nickel just for a rehash of stuff I've already read without a chance for engagement -- but I have to give Churchill credit because if it wasn't for that brouhaha I probably wouldn't have recognized the name of the person at the center of the story in my morning paper. There are some similar elements, too: abuse of Native tribes

  • Feb 24, 2005

    Promoting an Anti-war Curriculum

    by Cliopatria

    Acting, apparently, to lay the groundwork for its proposed illegal strike, CUNY’s faculty union, the PSC, is hosting an “Educators to Stop the War” conference. Even though New York state law prohibits public employees from striking, PSC leaders are envisioning"a political strike, in other words, something students and intellectuals have historically been good at,” to include a demand of"e
  • Feb 23, 2005

    Churchill Notes and Better Reads ...

    by Cliopatria

    The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports that Ward Churchill acknowledged that he is not a native American in a speech that proclaimed himself the"poster boy of academic freedom" at the University of Hawai'i yesterday. Meanwhile, University of Colorado President Elizabeth Hoffman gave a tough warning to state legislators that their interventions and public pressure at this point only complicate legitimate internal review processe
  • Feb 23, 2005

    Props to Tom

    by Cliopatria

    Tom's recent Claremont Review of Booksessay on recent works by Victor Davis Hanson and John A. Lynn just got referenced on Hanson's website. Huzzah!
  • Feb 23, 2005

    Interesting Times

    by Cliopatria

    South African liberation hero Raymond Mhlaba dies on the same night that the Godfather of Gonzo journalism commits suicide. Ariel Sharon sits at the head of an Israeli government that calls for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza strip in the same weekend that Patty Bouvier comes out of the closet.

    Four events, utterly unrelated, bring to mind the old Chinese Curse, “May you live in interesting times.” We do.

    Raymond Mhlaba, of whom most of you have never heard, was one of the Rivonia

  • Feb 23, 2005

    Middle of the Road ideologues?

    by Cliopatria

    Or, “A Rant of the Middle Way.”

    Come on baby,
    Get in the road.
    Come on now,
    In the middle of the road, yeah (The Pretenders).
    I was just looking at a proposal for a senior capstone paper on the Wisconsin Idea. The student notes that Progressives saw themselves as mediating between two ideological extremes. That’s certainly the view of Charles McCarthy, who wrote the book
  • Feb 23, 2005

    Pipes' Privateers?

    by Cliopatria

    Oh, the year was 1778
    (How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!)
    A letter of marque come from the king,
    To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen,
    CHORUS:
    God damn them all!
    I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold
    We'd fire no guns-shed no tears
    Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
    The last of Barrett's Privateers.
    --"Barrett's Privateers," Stan Rogers, 1977
    Sometimes you encounter
  • Feb 23, 2005

    Oh, This Is Good! ...

    by Cliopatria

    Some of us were re-assured by the logic of the decision to move the OAH convention from San Francisco to San Jose. There was a labor dispute with the major hotels. Early registrants and program participants had been polled. Three-quarters of them had voted to move the convention to San Jose. One way to get an overwhelming mandate is to mark the ballots accordingly before you send them out. It's called"pseudo-democracy" and we know some places where it's been practiced.
  • Feb 22, 2005

    Were There Two Flag Raisings on Iwo Jima?

    by Cliopatria

    Greg Williams, at MSNBC.com (2-20-05):

    After four days of staggering losses in their mission to capture the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima, U.S. troops were in desperate need of a morale boost.

    It came about 10:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 23, 1945, in the form of a small flag affixed to a heavy iron pipe.

    Sgt. Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, document

  • Feb 22, 2005

    Narrative

    by Cliopatria

    When you occupy a tiny niche in the scholarly world, at times it seems as though you're either a) talking to yourself or b) trying to establish a new vocabulary. Let's just say that 19th-century didactic historical fiction stands as the very model of a modern minor academic niche. (Which, incidentally, explains why the article I'm currently [not] working on has nothing to do with that subject.) These novels have interesting things to tell us about how the genre emerged and developed, about ho