Ph.D. Octopus

by apini

This week’s Economist and Weekend FT both feature articles about the newest candidate to enter the Republican nomination contest, Michele Bachmann. As papers that regularly point to the celebrity reality show nature of Sarah Palin’s past (and potential future) candidacy, the papers treat Bachmann remarkably seriously.  They refer to her polling numbers in Iowa, where she is only behind Mitt Romney by 1 percentage point in the Republican nominating contest.  They refer to her religious convictions, and although it’s clear that they are not shared by the authors of the pieces, the tone is markedly different from those aimed at Palin, or even Newt Gingrich.  ’Authenticity’, ‘conviction’, ‘credentials’ seem to be the buzzwords surrounding Bachmann.   She is genuinely passionate about her religious convictions, the papers argue.  She’s the opposite of Romney’s transparent faux conservativeness, and therefore will appeal to real value voters, they say.  She is ideologically pure, as well, ridiculing the Republican establishment with as much vigor as she ridicules Democratic opponents.  But they also emphasize that she’s no lightweight.  Although she has a limited political track record, they are keen to highlight that unlike Palin, she’s smart.  Not just shrewd (though there’s that too: ‘And Mrs Bachmann certainly knows how to play Iowa;’ ‘She is a gifted public speaker, with a knack for rousing a crowd;’ ‘ her appetite for provocative stunts;’ etc), she is portrayed as genuinely smart, presidential material: The Economist says ‘ She replied, in a suitably dignified, presidential manner, that she deserved to be taken seriously.‘  The FT says that ’In Republican circles she is seen as having the potential to outshine Palin by being a smarter and more disciplined candidate.’  Clearly the comparisons to Palin are easy for journalists: they are both ‘values’ candidates, they appeal to similar voters, and they are both women.

What is more intriguing about this coverage, though, is its potential for international comparisons.  A regular feature of the Economist (and its only regular Read the rest of this entry »

by Weiner

A few more thoughts and links on my recent post on Birthright Israel, in response to Kiera Feldman’s critique of the program in The Nation. 

Blogger Phoebe alerted me to a 2007 article she wrote with a somewhat similar critique of Birthright. Unlike me, Phoebe thinks Birthright should be more Zionist and less about making Jewish babies. She provides an interesting exploration of early Zionist thought, including the well-known Theodor and the less well-known Jacob Klatzkin. She comes to what in my mind is a pessimistic conclusion: the Jewish future lies in either Israel or Judaism (that is, Jewish religion). Secular Jewishness in the Diaspora is on its way out. Here’s how she puts it:

The future of the Jewish people is in Israel and, to a certain extent, in religious observance. Guilt and vaguely familial pressure will not and, frankly, should not be what keeps people Jewish. Those who care about the continued existence of the Jews as a people must either become religiously observant and live in closed communities of other observant Jews, or they may move to Israel, the only country where, as Momo enthused, the hot girls on the beach are, more often than not, Jewish.

Critics will counter that cultural Judaism has existed throughout the modern era. True enough. Communities of Jews tied together not by religion, language or nationality are kept away from intermarriage and full assimilation when society around them is sufficiently antisemitic to keep them so. In a liberal, secular community, in which Jews blend in and are not systematically subject to discrimination, those who lack specific interest in things Jewish – or, to put it in less negative terms, whose interests lie elsewhere – will fall out of the Jewish people, and their descendents will not be Jews.

I fear Phoebe may be right, but I hope she is wrong, and will do my darndest to keep the secular Jewish faith alive (though not in my academic career, where I strive for objectivity). In any case, read Phoebe’s piece. It’s great.

More recently, Brian Schaefer, a Dorot fellow (that’s a 10 month fellowship for recent college graduates that I applied for in 2005 and was rejected from), offered his own critique of Birthright on the Jerusalem Post blog. Schafer thinks Birthright especially falls short in comparison to programs like Dorot. While he praises Dorot for the depth and nuance the fellowship offers, he calls Birthright a “free 10 day educational vacation” and concludes: “The main difference between the two programs is not their duration; rather it is how they conceive of and treat their participants: as consumers and cheerleaders, or as stakeholders and advocates.”

In response,  Gil Troy, an American historian at McGill and Hebrew University and a Zionist activist who heads Birthright Israel’s International Education Committee, wrote a defense of Birthright in the same Jerusalem Post blog. Troy writes:

Yes, it is true, Birthright is fun. This exuberance is part of the Birthright magic and its success — 90 percent of participants reach Birthright thanks to word of mouth.  When is the last time we read in the Jewish press a complaint about Jewish kids having too much fun at an organized Jewish community event?  If Diaspora communities offered more exciting, exhilarating, engaging, enriching, enlightening programs for Jews growing up, we would not need the last-minute intervention of programs like Birthright to encourage young, frequently alienated, Jews to restart and reorient their Jewish journeys.

A gateway program, Birthright welcomes many Jews who are on the way out.  The gift comes with “no strings attached,” meaning no ideological, theological, political, or institutional demands beyond participating constructively. And it is a populist program – although most participants attend or graduated from America’s top 50 universities.  But to assume therefore it is all “Goldstar and humous,” misses its multi-layered educational process, both formal and informal. Birthright succeeds in being pro-fun and profound.

by Weiner

Birthright Israel is a program that provides Diaspora Jews ages 18 to 26 with free 10-day trips to Israel. Founded in 1999, and funded largely by American Jewish philanthropists, especially Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, along with some help from the Israeli government, Birthright has spent nearly 600 million dollars to send over 260,000 Jews on all-expense paid tours of Israel.

The program is not without its critics, especially from the left. “The Romance of Birthright Israel,” appeared in the pages of The Nation last week. Its author, Kiera Feldman, “a baptized child of intermarriage,” recently participated on a Birthright trip, and has lots of complaints about the large doses of Zionist propaganda she received.

A new era is dawning for Birthright. What began as an identity booster has become an ideology machine, pumping out not only Jewish baby-makers but defenders of Israel.

Feldman is right about Birthright’s origins, but wrong about its current incarnation. In fact, Birthright, like William James called Pragmatism, is “a new name for an old way of thinking.” Like the very pragmatic American Zionism of yore, it exists primarily to bolster the American Jewish community, not the Israeli one.

Read the rest of this entry »

by apini

I just re-watched Empire Records for the first time since…1998?  It used to be my favorite movie.  It didn’t really hold up as well as I had hoped, but something did stick with me after watching it again.  Remember when we used to pay for stuff in order to stick it to the man?  Like at the end of the movie, where everyone comes along and buys loads of CDs and records and beer in order to keep the store alive in the face of a corporate take-over?

That movie came out in 1995, before anyone really knew what the internet was for and before everything became free.  To my generation, music, movies, news, software all came free from the not-yet-illegal-but-will-be-as-soon-as-the-corporations-figure-it-out services.   For us, getting stuff for free was a right that corporations were trying to deny us.  Couldn’t they see that their models were out of date?  Couldn’t they see that content should be freely available to everyone?  Take that, Corporate America – we’re getting our stuff for free!

It didn’t help that the corporate bad guys were about as square and whiny as David Spade in PCU.  They whined about how being able to get things for free was

cutting into their profits.  As though teenagers care about corporate profitability.  They called what we were doing piracy of all things.  Like piracy’s a bad thing.  And the ‘You wouldn’t steal a car’ ad campaign presumed too much.  They made it so easy to hate them and all the things they stood for, just like Music Town in Empire Records (banning visible tattoos, revealing clothing, loud music, etc).  Newspapers seemed trickier, but Rupert Murdoch was buying them all anyway, right?

So what changed for me?  Why am I sitting here, about to click ‘confirm’ on my New York Times app subscription?  I think it’s for the same reason I just donated to NPR/APM.  And the same reason that I Read the rest of this entry »

by apini

To begin, an admission: I am a liberal historian/academic who likes Niall Ferguson.  His most recent article, though, really disappointed me.  He deals with the reasons why Americans should be less than enthusiastic about spreading revolutions in the Islamic world.  He also criticizes Obama’s administration for a lack of strategy in dealing with these revolutions.  I agree with the general premise that revolutions are not always good, even if they are sometimes necessary, because frequently they become dominated by orthodox radicals.  I agree that violent, destructive, and protracted wars are not good for anyone (though I would count amongst those wars the ‘wars of liberation’ in Iraq and Afghanistan…). I like that he points out, fairly eloquently, a lot of the strange contradictions about America’s own bourgeois revolutionary spirit.

But for someone who has looked at both the British and American Empires, Ferguson seems to miss one of the key features of how empires work (and their limited ability to promote a consistent ideological message).  This is not too surprising given the lack of focus on collaboration and the practicalities of empire in these books, in favour of a focus on the ‘civilising mission’, democracy, the rule of law, and the gift of ‘modernity’ and capitalism bestowed on empire’s grateful populations.

Ferguson states that

Read the rest of this entry »

by apini

I went to the Young Vic theatre on Saturday to see Vernon God Little, an adaptation of the eponymous book.  I had a reaction to it that’s becoming a familiar one after going to the theatre in Britain.  That is, after going to see plays about America at the theatre in Britain.  This reaction comes in a four stages: first, I laugh knowingly at the play’s/actor’s depiction of American culture; second, I feel uncomfortable about everyone else’s knowing laugh; third, I feel angry at the audience for assuming they know anything about America; and fourth, I feel angry at the director/writer/actors/audience for their depictions of/reactions to what are perceived to be typical American anti-intellectual cultural traits.  (The exception to this was last year’s version of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which I enjoyed immensely. I think the reason for this was because the director used an all black cast, which helped to uproot and universalize the story from its white southern context.) Read the rest of this entry »

by Nemo

What does Judith Butler have in common with Ronald Reagan? How about Jerry Falwell and John Rawls? Cornel West and Milton Friedman? In his sweeping history of American social thought during the last quarter of the twentieth century, Age of Fracture, Daniel Rodgers argues that these figures share more in common than one might think.

According to Rodgers fracture or what he (less poetically) calls “disaggregation” characterizes the main currents of intellectual life from the early 1970s to our own day. He argues that a mid-century focus on the social power of tradition and institutions, whether economic, political and religious, gave way to competing models of social life that stressed individual agency, historical contingency, and the amorphous power of culture. Early on in Age of Fracture, Rodgers sharply contrasts the social thought of the Cold War and the period that followed in terms of human nature. Rodgers writes,

Across the multiple fronts of ideational battle, from the speeches of presidents to books of social and cultural theory, conceptions of human nature that in the post-World War II era had been thick with context, social circumstance, institutions, and history gave way to conceptions of human nature that stressed choice, agency, performance, and desire. Strong metaphors of society were supplanted by weaker ones. Imagined collectivities shrank; notions of structure and power thinned out. (Rodgers, 3)

In economics, Rodgers argues, this transformation was especially acute and would have serious consequences for social policy and social thought more generally. As the repeated financial crises of the 1970s seemed to discredit the effectiveness of Keynesianism, a number of schools of economic thought stepped into the fill the vacuum (often with major funding from recently established conservative think tanks)—all with strong libertarian tendencies.

harbinger of fracture?

Proponents of monetarism, rational choice theory, and supply-side economics might have disagreed on certain principles, but all believed that the best economic outcomes were produced when individuals made their way into the open market without interference from labor unions and government regulators. Individualism ruled; deep notions of power waned. At the same time, social theorists started to blame the rise of an urban “underclass” on the very government agencies created to serve them (while downplaying years of de-industrialization, institutional racism, and declining tax revenues due to white flight).

One of the most striking contributions of Rodgers’ book, however, is to show that shrinking ideas of the “social” were not limited to free-market economists, but also characterized nearly every sphere of the period’s intellectual life.  Across the era’s social sciences, Rodgers notes an interest in thought experiments involving game theory, prisoners’ dilemmas, and “veils of ignorance” (in John Rawls’ famous Theory of Justice) that showed little concern for context, history, and power. Attention shifted toward abstraction and individual choice.  Legal originalists discounted centuries of jurisprudence and social context to uncover the “true” meaning of the constitution at its foundational moment. Meanwhile, leading economists believed they could ignore the legacy of the past and shepherd Eastern Europe into a capitalist future through “shock therapy.”

As the social movements of the 1960s moved forward into the 1970s and 1980s, Rodgers sees fragmentation across the board. Inspired by the New Left idea of participatory democracy, influential liberal thinkers embraced pluralism and communal participation, which served to downplay earlier visions of a national social contract and economic redistribution (on the right, many showed a similar concern for the well-being of “mediating institutions” supposedly threatened by an intrusive federal government).

Feminists who had once believed “sisterhood is powerful,” now debated the usefulness of the concept of “woman.” Did it risk further marginalizing the distinctive voices of black women, working-class women, and queer women? At the same time, influential black intellectuals in the United States and England such as Paul Gilroy, Cornell West, and Henry Louis Gates rejected one-dimensional understandings of a unified black experience—and instead called for an understanding of blackness that conformed to the complex legacies of life within the African Diaspora.

For all the commonalities Rodgers sees running through the period’s social thought, this is not a consensus history of the 1980s. Even with though he sees the pull of “disaggregation” leaving a mark across the period’s ideological spectrum, he remains sensitive to political conflict, for example, noting contentious battles over Central America, nuclear weapons, and social issues such as abortion.

Nor is Age of Fracture yet another declension narrative about irresponsible radicals and “identity politics” somehow bearing responsibility for the revival of the country’s political right. In fact, Rodgers sees a major difference between the social thought of the 1960s, which tended to focus more closely on the power of institutions and social forces such as the government, the military, and capital in shaping inequality, and the period that followed with its emphasis on fracture, agency, and culture. Rodgers also sees much to praise in social thought since the 1970s, particularly the way it has helped legitimize racial and sexual difference.

A rite-of-passage for many graduate students.

He does believe, however, that the era’s strong emphasis on culture, rupture, and agency has lead to a neglect of key questions about power and history. At the end of his chapter on race, Rodgers argues that the,

growth of more complex understandings of identity was also the retreat of history. A culture reshaped in the choices and present moment preoccupations of a market-saturated society had transposed the frame of argument. In a liberation that was also the age’s deficit, a certain loss of memory had occurred. (Rodgers, 143)

Is this really the case though? Is it true that thinkers such as Cornel West and Judith Butler really had less of a concern with institutions, history, and power than their predecessors? Or was it that they aimed to capture a more nuanced and sophisticated version of the way history unfolded, power functioned, and identities were created?  No one who has read Foucault for a graduate seminar would be unfamiliar with questions of power and institutions—even though the answers he encourages might not be as straightforward as a Marxian or even an “interest group pluralism” reading of the concept might provide. Does a focus on everyday performances of power really have to come into conflict with one attuned to the power of history and institutions?

In addition, is Rodgers correct to lump most of the period’s social thought under the concept of disaggregation? Can we really see any commonalities between the interpretive strategies of an influential anti-foundationalist literary critic like Stanley Fish and a biblical fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell? Rodgers acknowledges that the period’s conservative thinkers (and many self-proclaimed liberals) tended to obsess over combating the moral relativism and multicultural fragmentation that they saw characterizing intellectual life. Conservative Christians, in particular, proclaimed a universalistic understanding of human nature and longed for fixed gender binaries totally at odds with celebrations of gender trouble or the indeterminacy of texts.

Rodgers argues, however, that even among the religious right and cultural conservatives, one finds dissension on questions of gender, free speech, and foreign policy. While this is surely the case (when was any social movement wholly unified?), Rodgers might have done even more to explain how evangelicals fit into his broader theme of fracture.

While some readers may take issue with the book’s conceptual preference for lumping rather than splitting (though Rodgers always does an excellent job describing particular ideas), others might feel that the question of causality is left too open-ended. If fracture characterized the age, what exactly caused it to break out? Rodgers notes the value of works by David Harvey and Frederick Jameson, which examine the economic roots of the “post-modern condition,” but rejects what he sees as the determinism implicit in such models. Rodgers believes that ideas about fracture often preceded economic change and helped condition responses to it.  It’s hard to disagree with this point, but it’s not surprising that discussion has already begun over the question of causality and the book’s principal argument.

Whatever minor issues readers find with the book however, they are likely to be impressed by its scope, its analytical ambitions, and its sensitivity to nuance, not to mention its readability. For many years it will serve as a key reference point for scholars investigating particular questions about social thought since the 1970s. In addition, Rodgers implicit normative stance, which calls on scholars to engage deeply with history, institutions, and power—particularly when dealing with questions of inequality—rings very true today, as we continue to live through the legacy of the age of fracture that he describes so effectively.

by Weiner

I thought Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech was ok. But in reading Ross Douthat’s response to it, I was reminded of something that annoys me to no end. Douthat has been skewered here before, but he’s certainly not the only one guilty of this. The supposedly smart (though not according to Paul Krugman) Paul Ryan also attacked American “entitlement” programs, like Obama’s new Affordable Care Act.

This drives me nuts.

The term “entitlement” in American political discourse is Orwellian bullshit. It has unnecessarily negative connotations. We often talk of people being spoiled, of having a “sense of entitlement” that they don’t deserve. People feel “entitled” to things that they didn’t work for, or pay for, or earn.

But there is nothing undeserving about healthcare. Or social security. Or roads, police forces, fire departments, public schools, and the postal service. These are things the American people pay for through taxes (like people of most other countries). They are not being spoiled. They are getting what they deserve (actually, they’re probably not getting enough of what they justly deserve, but that’s another story).

You go to a store, you pay for a chocolate bar, and you get the chocolate bar. It’s not that you’re “entitled” to it in some spoiled child way. You are not undeserving of that chocolate bar. You paid for it. It belongs to you. Free market capitalists should understand this.

Let’s get rid of “entitlement” and change it to “benefit.” Or something more positive. Because the American people are in fact entitled to more than they are getting.

by Nemo

Over at the U.S. Intellectual History Blog, Andrew Hartman has a thoughtful post on the Arizona anti-ethnic studies law. What I especially like about the piece is the way that Hartman wrestles with the concept of “ethnic solidarity.” On the one hand, he fears that the concept can promote as much harm as it does good. He points out that conservative campaigns (such as the one successfully launched by the Texas Board of Education) to present a sanitized version of the nation’s past essentially amount to “an egregious form of ethnic, religious, and political solidarity that has no place in the schools.” On the other hand, however, he argues that whatever “ethnic solidarity” Chicano Studies may promote, it would be unfair to equate the programs’ view of history to those on the right. To make his case, he provides a brief historical account of the intellectual origins of Chicano Studies, in which he emphasizes the movement’s anti-racism and internationalist orientation (concerns that the School Board in Texas and Arizona State Legislature seem to lack).

I would also emphasize that the Chicano Studies movement aimed to promote ethnic pride by providing a more accurate portrayal of United States history: one in which Mexicans and Mexican-Americans played an important part of the story. Some of this history, of course, would be characterized by conquest and exploitation.

Much of today’s right, by contrast, seems intent on sweeping such unpleasantness under the rug. Consider the Tennessee Tea Party’s recent statement (which Hartman also quotes) that “no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.” The group’s spokesperson, a Fayette County Attorney, later elaborated that the point was designed to combat: “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”

Textbooks wars, as Joseph Moreau shows in his book Schoolbook Nation, have long played a role in American life. They predate the 1960s by at least a century. Still, it would be hard to beat the Tennessee Tea Party in its recent exercise in historical “revisionism.”

by Weiner

In the aftermath of the horrific murders in Tucson, critics and pundits are rushing to place blame and to find the killer’s motives. Some on the Left are blaming Sarah Palin for her use target-laden imagery and violent rhetoric. Conservatives are calling Jared Loughner, the suspected shooter, a “liberal lunatic.” Some believe Loughner to be antisemitic.

Frankly, I have no idea what motivated Loughner. But in reaction to this crime, my fellow Canadians who I’ve spoken to all seem to have the same reaction: “Americans are crazy.” Of course they (we) don’t mean all Americans, or even most Americans. But America’s culture of violence, love affair with guns, and the facility with which one can purchase firearms is downright frightening. I was never a big fan of Michael Moore or his Bowling For Columbine, which painted a stupid and false image of Canada as a nation where people don’t lock their doors. And I know violent crime in Toronto especially has been on the rise. But I think Moore was 100% right that America’s culture of violence combined with loose gun laws that lead to terrible results. It’s not really Americans we Canadians think are crazy, it’s America. It’s times like these America scares me: the every man for himself, protect yourself at all times and by any means necessary attitude along with easy access to deadly weaponry. The statistics bear this point out: gun violence in America is a national tragedy and shame.

What bothers me most in terms of commentary on the incident is those who miss the point entirely. David Frum blames Loughner’s crime on his marijuana use, despite all evidence that suggests the drug war is more harmful than drugs themselves, that most marijuana users tend to be peaceful, that alcohol causes much more damage to our society even though it is (rightly) legal.

Even worse, however, is libertarian Radley Balko, who uses the Tucson shooting to launch another tirade against the very same American war on drugs. Balko is right in everything he says about the drug war, but in the context of Tucson, he’s utterly missing the point. Since we don’t know Loughner’s motives, the only thing we really can comment on is the extent of the tragedy and the horrific nature of gun violence in America.

Balko, of course, is a libertarian, and loves loves loves the American right to bear arms. Balko is right that “we should mourn the people senselessly murdered yesterday, government employees and otherwise: U.S. District Judge John Roll, Dorothy Murray, Dorwin Stoddard, nine-year-old Christina Green, Phyllis Scheck, and Gabe Zimmerman.” By focusing his attention on the drug war, however, he diverts attention away from the only cause we know of these people’s deaths: America’s dangerous level of gun violence. And I’m sure he’ll go back to tooting his libertarian horn in favour of looser gun regulations soon enough.