Some Notes Toward Sunday ...
How can it be that 300 African boys between the ages of four and seven simply disappeared in London between July and September 2001? And Scotland Yard and the British media are only now taking notice. The BBC's story suggests that thousands may disappear annually and that these children may be caught up in the slave trade. It is simply inconceivable that this story would have gone unnoticed had the children been of European descent.
I am told that the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has issued a statement condemning the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) boycott of the universities of Haifa and Bar Ilam and blacklisting of their faculty members. Among the 3800 persons who have signed Jeff Weintraub's on-line petition in support of the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) condemnation of the boycott are: Robert Abzug, Joyce Appleby, Stanley Aronowitz, Omer Bartov, Gail Bederman, David Beito, Robert Bellah, Peter Berkowitz, David Bernstein, Michael Berube, Harold Bloom, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein, Ian Buruma, Oscar Chamberlain, Juan Cole, David Brion Davis, Morris Dickstein, Sherman Dorn, Jonathan Dresner, Ellen Carol DuBois, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Henry Farrell, John Lewis Gaddis, Herbert Gans, Norm Geras, Todd Gitlin, Nathan Glazer, Steven Horwitz, KC Johnson, Tony Judt, Ira Katznelson, Michael Kazin, Margaret L. King, Harvey Klehr, Mark A. R. Kleiman, Jacob T. Levy, Deborah Lipstadt, Ralph E. Luker, Charles Maier, Elaine Tyler May, Joanne Meyerowitz, Richard Rorty, Roy Rosenzweig, Vicki Ruiz, Hugo Schwyzer, Christine Stansell, Michael Walzer, Jon Wiener, Leon Wieseltier, and Alan Wolfe. Jon Wiener and I have asked the executive committees of the AHA and the OAH to support the AAUP's position. In Sunday's Washington Post, you can expect to find the first major coverage of this issue in the American press.