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Cliopatria

  • Jan 4, 2005

    Universities in Pakistan

    by Cliopatria

    When the subject of education in Pakistan comes up in western media, the attention is focused entirely on the madrasa-system. However, there is a more acute problem in Pakistan - the higher education system - which has to produce scientists, researchers and teachers of the present and future.

    Pervez Hoodbhoy, who currently teaches Physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad - the flagship university of Pakistan has just written the cl
  • Jan 4, 2005

    While We're Out...

    by Cliopatria

    Blogging will be sporadic this week, for obvious reasons. I shouldn't even be doing this.....

    But Danny Loss has finally delivered his catalog of errors in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons [as noted in comments, I had the wrong book here], possibly the first to be produced out of non-sectarian piq

  • Jan 4, 2005

    If ...

    by Cliopatria

    If at 5:30-ish p.m. on Friday, 7 January 2005, you are at the AHA convention, standing near the registration desk in the lobby of the Sheraton Seattle Hotel, in Seattle, Washington, and you
    a) have extravagant academic hair;
    b) are wearing a mouse pad instead of a name tag;
    c) appear to be chanting"Sharon Howard is a goddess";
    d) have a cup of coffee in one hand and a little stack of cookies in the other; or
    e) are wearing pajamas instead of your usual conven
  • Jan 3, 2005

    Blogs and the Tsunami

    by Cliopatria

    For those who missed it, a good article in today's Wall Street Journal on the role of video blogging and the tsunami. I've been following this for several days on what's pretty clearly the best such site, waveofdestruction.org. As the Journal piece points out, the tsunami is only the latest of a series examples in which video blogs h
  • Jan 3, 2005

    The Flag of Eternal Mourning

    by Cliopatria

    The flag at the Post Office was at half mast this morning. When I got to my office, I looked up the reason why. It turned out that President Bush ordered this in response to the dead from the Tsunami last week.

    I have no problem with that. Horror on this scale deserves some ceremonial mourning. But it led me to look for an answer to a question that has nagged at me this past year. How often have we had the
  • Jan 3, 2005

    Academic Freedom Update: Columbia and Southern Utah

    by Cliopatria

    At Columbia, the lead editorial in today's New York Post focuses on the issue, suggesting that the matter isn't going away anytime soon. In the words of the Post,"Academic freedom and honesty are on the line — as is the reputation of a great university."

    The issue has even attracted attention in the Israeli media: the Jerusalem Post had an exclusive inter

  • Jan 3, 2005

    Groups of Interest

    by Cliopatria

    From the WP came news that the Bush administration is trying to figure out what to do with enemy-combatants who cannot be tried due to lack of evidence but cannot be set free because we have no clue who or what they are and what they might do to us in the future. A possibility on the discussion table is lifetime imprisonment in an US built jail in a host country like Afghanistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
  • Jan 3, 2005

    History Carnivals!

    by Cliopatria

    As Ralph has noted, Claire has posted the latest issue of Carnivalesque, the Early Modern Blog Carnival here and here. But something this tasty won't spoil for a second mention.

    Now, wearing my other occasional hat as the Carnival's Mistress of Misrule, would anyo
  • Jan 2, 2005

    George "Jimmy Carter" Bush

    by Cliopatria

    I have found myself thinking a lot about Jimmy Carter's failures lately. Why? Because more and more the Bush administration seems to have failed in the same way Carter failed.

    To be sure they were very different leaders. Where Carter often seemed weak, Bush has often seemed strong--at least in the way he carries himself, and also in the way the public perceives him.

    But in the way both men grappled with the chief issues of their time they were very similar.
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  • Jan 2, 2005

    Numan Bartley, Rest in Peace

    by Cliopatria

    I hate that my first post of the New Year brings sad news just as I hate that one of my final pieces of the year just past brought the news of Warren Gardner's passing. Nonetheless, Numan Bartley, the distinguished professor of Southern history at the University of Georgia, has passed away.

    Here is a small obituary (I will assume that many more will come) from James Cobb, one of Bartley's colleagues in Athens and himself one of the finest practicing historians of the South (courtesy of H-S

  • Jan 2, 2005

    Violent Archives

    by Cliopatria

    Via HNN's Breaking News comes a story of municipal governments taking archives much more seriously than usual: Spanish authorities have ruled that documents seized by Franco's forces should be returned to their original municipalities; Salamancan leaders, pro-Franco still, have barricaded the streets and vowed to fight for their right to maintain those archives [emphasis added]:

    "We are on the alert and we will mobil
  • Jan 2, 2005

    All or Nothing? Wine and Justice

    by Cliopatria

    I am struck by the way in which reasonably functional but non-static systems are cast in discourse as"death struggles" between components of the system which could, in fact, coexist perfectly well if they stopped to think just a bit. Politics is like that. So is wine, as a new documentary has brought to the fore contrasts between 'artisanal' and 'global' winemaking. One thing which is distinctly lacking in the movie, at least as

  • Jan 2, 2005

    Tsunami Facts of Interest

    by Cliopatria

    O.K., facts and commentary. Readers might find the facts interesting, and this is my first try on the technology. It will be a few weeks before I can dedicate the small amount of time to improving links and formatting, and to posting more frequently.

    The Tamil rebels in northern Sri Lanka are making relief efforts there more difficult by insisting that everything pass on roads controlled by them. Then they have the gall to turn around and blame the Sri Lankan (ethnic Singhalese)
  • Jan 1, 2005

    Fear the Turtle!

    by Cliopatria

    Critics sometimes suggest that the office of lieutenant governor should be abolished, especially in a state like Illinois, which has a very powerful governorship. Adlai Stevenson, III certainly thought so--the office almost certainly cost him the governorship in 1986, when a Larouchite upset the slated candidated for lieutenant governor in the Democratic primary. Illinois voters were certainly not going to elect a tic
  • Jan 1, 2005

    Academic Hair Association ...

    by Cliopatria

    The American Historical Association will meet from 6-9 January in Seattle and some of the Cliopatriarchs will be there. In fact, some of us expect to meet for the 2nd Annual Cliopatria Banquet at the convention. The 1st Annual Banquet at last year's AHA convention was canceled at the last minute, when I was struck with a humiliating illness and had to cancel out on the convention. But this year, we're doing it. The major problem is that we've never actually met each other, so how will we recogni
  • Jan 1, 2005

    Latest from Columbia

    by Cliopatria

    The continuing crisis regarding Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department recently reached a new level: in a two-part series, Nat Hentoff, the First Amendment specialist at the Village Voice and an occasional professor himself (at NYU), offers some of the most thoughtful commentary I have seen on the tensions between protecting professors’ academic freedom and the more limited academic freedom rights enjoyed by students.

    Columbia University president Lee Bolli