Historians in the News Archive
This page includes, in addition to news about historians, news about political scientists, economists, law professors, and others who write about history. For a comprehensive list of historians' obituaries, go here.
SOURCE: Newsweek (1-13-07)
(Historian and civil rights activist John Hope Franklin explains how the movement toward Martin Luther King's dream has been significant—that we can expect a black president 'soon'—but 'not nearly as effective as it should be.')
The life of John Hope Franklin—as poignantly reflected in his autobiography “Mirror to America”(Farrar Straus Giraux)—is not just the story of a single life, but also serves as a chronicle of race relations in 20th century America. Born in 1915 in an all-black town in Oklahoma, Franklin was the youngest of four children raised by college-educated parents. They taught him the importance of education, hard work and most of all dignity. At a time when Jim Crow segregated the South and the Supreme Court’s separate-but-equal ruling justified inferior schools and back-of-the-bus seating for African Americans, Franklin’s parents had the courage to instill in their children the conviction that “no white person was any better than they.” As an activist, author, historian, and the head of President Clinton’s Initiative on Race, Franklin has spent a lifetime teaching that lesson to others.
He assisted Thurgood Marshall prepare the Supreme Court case for 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, which ended up desegregating schools in America. He marched for civil rights in Montgomery, Ala., in 1965. He authored 15 books on history and race relations. Yet on the very night he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995—the highest honor bestowed upon an American civilian—he found himself in the ironic position of directing a woman to the coat check attendant after she handed him her ticket stub and demanded her coat. Currently the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University, Franklin, 92, remains committed to educating the public. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, he shared his views on civil rights, education, and race relations with NEWSWEEK's Karen Fragala Smith. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Brown v. the Board of Education changed the law and made history, but what does it take for a society to eliminate discrimination from people’s hearts and minds?
John Hope Franklin: You don’t need to change their hearts; you need to change their practice. Here’s what the problem is. The Supreme Court decision was handed down on the 17th of May 1954, and what was the reaction of almost a third of the Senate? They challenged people not to obey the Supreme Court Decision. In other words, it was better to become outlaws than to obey a decision with which they disagreed. If you have people in responsible positions like the Senate not obeying the law, then what chance do you have of Joe [Citizen] obeying the law?...
The life of John Hope Franklin—as poignantly reflected in his autobiography “Mirror to America”(Farrar Straus Giraux)—is not just the story of a single life, but also serves as a chronicle of race relations in 20th century America. Born in 1915 in an all-black town in Oklahoma, Franklin was the youngest of four children raised by college-educated parents. They taught him the importance of education, hard work and most of all dignity. At a time when Jim Crow segregated the South and the Supreme Court’s separate-but-equal ruling justified inferior schools and back-of-the-bus seating for African Americans, Franklin’s parents had the courage to instill in their children the conviction that “no white person was any better than they.” As an activist, author, historian, and the head of President Clinton’s Initiative on Race, Franklin has spent a lifetime teaching that lesson to others.
He assisted Thurgood Marshall prepare the Supreme Court case for 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, which ended up desegregating schools in America. He marched for civil rights in Montgomery, Ala., in 1965. He authored 15 books on history and race relations. Yet on the very night he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995—the highest honor bestowed upon an American civilian—he found himself in the ironic position of directing a woman to the coat check attendant after she handed him her ticket stub and demanded her coat. Currently the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History at Duke University, Franklin, 92, remains committed to educating the public. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, he shared his views on civil rights, education, and race relations with NEWSWEEK's Karen Fragala Smith. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Brown v. the Board of Education changed the law and made history, but what does it take for a society to eliminate discrimination from people’s hearts and minds?
John Hope Franklin: You don’t need to change their hearts; you need to change their practice. Here’s what the problem is. The Supreme Court decision was handed down on the 17th of May 1954, and what was the reaction of almost a third of the Senate? They challenged people not to obey the Supreme Court Decision. In other words, it was better to become outlaws than to obey a decision with which they disagreed. If you have people in responsible positions like the Senate not obeying the law, then what chance do you have of Joe [Citizen] obeying the law?...
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - 01:45
Comments
SOURCE: London Free Press (1-12-07)
One of the world's best known historians shared his fascination for maps yesterday, using them to talk about the Holocaust at a University of Western Ontario lecture.
Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, said he began making maps to illustrate his research in 1959 and has been doing it ever since.
He said mapping helps him to focus, verify and visualize the information he gathers.
It's an important part of his process in writing histories, he said.
Gilbert, a British author of 77 books, is married to a Canadian and last year signed on as a professor of history at Western for five years.
Gilbert presented the first public slide show of his career yesterday, starting off by illustrating the long history of Jews in Europe up to 1933.
His next map presented information gleaned from a 1930s League of Nations census conducted to identify where minorities were in many countries so they could be protected....
Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, said he began making maps to illustrate his research in 1959 and has been doing it ever since.
He said mapping helps him to focus, verify and visualize the information he gathers.
It's an important part of his process in writing histories, he said.
Gilbert, a British author of 77 books, is married to a Canadian and last year signed on as a professor of history at Western for five years.
Gilbert presented the first public slide show of his career yesterday, starting off by illustrating the long history of Jews in Europe up to 1933.
His next map presented information gleaned from a 1930s League of Nations census conducted to identify where minorities were in many countries so they could be protected....
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - 01:43
SOURCE: Op Ed written by Prof. Fernandez-Armesto for The Independent (London) (1-13-07)
Arrested, beaten and jailed by police in Atlanta for crossing a road in an illegal manner, the British historian and writer reflects on his shocking ordeal - and what it reveals about the US
"No one truly knows a nation," said Nelson Mandela, "until one has been inside its gaols." Last week, after living in the USA for more than a year without understanding the country, I acquired - briefly - a gaolbird's authority. I can now share insights you can only get from being assaulted by the police and locked up for hours in the company of some of the most deprived and depraved dregs of the American underclass.
For someone like me - a mild-mannered, middle-aged professor of scholarly proclivities, blameless habits, and frail physique - it was shocking, traumatising and deeply educational. It all started on my first morning in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was attending the annual conference of the American Historical Association. Unwittingly, I crossed a street at what I later learnt was an unauthorised crossing. I had seen plenty of pedestrians precede me. There was no traffic in sight and no danger to me or anyone else.
Apparently, however, as I was later told, "jaywalking" is a criminal offence in the State of Georgia. But I had no idea I had done anything wrong.
A young man in a bomber jacket accosted me, claiming to be a policeman, but with no visible evidence of his status. We got locked in mutual misunderstanding, demanding each other's ID. I mistook the normal attitude of an Atlanta cop for arrogance, aggression and menace. He, I suppose, mistook the normal demeanour of an ageing and old-fashioned European intellectual for prevarication or provocation.
His behaviour baffled me even before he lost patience with me, kicked my legs from under me, knocked my glasses from my nose, wrestled me to the ground, and with the help of four or five other burly policemen who suddenly appeared on the scene, ripped my coat, scattered my books in the gutter, handcuffed me, and pinioned me painfully to the concrete....
Had I made it to my historical conference, I might have learnt about medieval pumpernickel-production or 17th-century star-gazing. Instead, I discovered a lot about contemporary America.
First, I learnt that the Atlanta police are barbaric, brutal, and out of control. The violence I experienced was the worst of my sheltered life. Muggers who attacked me once near my home in Oxford were considerably more gentle with me than the Atlanta cops. Many fellow historians at the conference, who met me after my release, had witnessed the incident and told me how horrific they found it. Even had I really been a criminal, it would not have been necessary to treat me with such ferocity, as I am very obviously a slight and feeble person. But Atlanta's streets are some of the meanest in the world, and policing them must be a brutalising way of life.
Once in gaol I discovered another, better side of Atlanta. The detention centre is weird - a kind of orderly pandemonium, a bedlam where madness is normal, so that nothing seems mad. It's windowless, filthy, and fetid, but strangely safe, insulated and unworldly: like Diogenes's barrel, a place of darkness conducive to thought - for there is nothing else to do in the longueurs between interrogations, examinations, and lectures from the sergeant in charge about the necessity of good behaviour.
Some raffish underworld characters befriended me, but so did the detention centre personnel....
The first lesson is obvious. The city authorities of Atlanta need to re-educate their police. I can understand why some officers behave irrationally and unpredictably. Much of the downtown environment in their city is hideous - inoffensive to the eye only when shrouded by the often-prevailing fog. The sidewalks are thronged with beggars who can turn nasty at night. The crime rate is fearful.
The result is that the police are nervy, jumpy, short-fused, and lacking in restraint, patience or forbearance. But witnesses tell me that up to 10 officers took part in the assault on me. This is evidence not only of excessive zeal, but of seriously warped priorities. In a city notorious for rape, murder and mayhem the police should have better things to do than persecute jaywalkers or harry an impeccable, feeble foreigner.
Moreover, Atlanta depends on its convention trade. The way the conventions centre is designed is extremely practical. There is plenty of good, reasonably priced accommodation. But if Atlanta continues to accumulate a reputation for police frenzy and hostility to visitors, the economy will crumble.
At least, the police need to be told to exercise forbearance with outsiders - especially foreigners - who may not understand the peculiarities of local custom and law.
But, at the risk of projecting my own limited experience on to a screen so vast that the effect seems blurred, I see bigger issues at stake: issues for America; issues for the world. I found that in Atlanta the civilisation of the gaol and the courts contrasted with the savagery of the police and the streets. This is a typical American contrast. The executive arm of government tends to be dumb, insensitive, violent and dangerous. The judiciary is the citizen's vital guarantee of peace and liberty.
I became a sort of exemplar in miniature of a classic American dilemma: the "balance of the constitution", as Americans call it, between executive power and judicial oversight.
I have long known, as any reasonable person must, that the courts are the citizen's only protection against a rogue executive and rationally uncontrolled security forces.
Though my own misadventure was trivial and - in perspective - laughable, it resembles what is happening to the world in the era of George W Bush. The planet is policed by a violent, arbitrary, stupid, and dangerous force.
Within the USA, the courts struggle to maintain individual rights under the bludgeons of the "war on terror", defending Guantanamo victims and striving to curb the excesses of the system. We need global institutions of justice, and judges of Judge Jackson's level of humanity and wisdom, to help protect the world.
I feel happy and privileged to be able to live and work in the United States. On the whole, in my work as an historian, I have argued consistently that America has had a benign influence on the world. The growth of anti-Americanism fills me with despair, as I see ordinary, decent, generous Americans getting the blame abroad for the follies of the American government and the crudities of the American image.
I hope that if some good ensues from my horrific misfortune, it will include more future security from police misconduct for visitors in Atlanta, and more awareness in the world of some of the virtues - as well as some of the vices - of US life.
"No one truly knows a nation," said Nelson Mandela, "until one has been inside its gaols." Last week, after living in the USA for more than a year without understanding the country, I acquired - briefly - a gaolbird's authority. I can now share insights you can only get from being assaulted by the police and locked up for hours in the company of some of the most deprived and depraved dregs of the American underclass.
For someone like me - a mild-mannered, middle-aged professor of scholarly proclivities, blameless habits, and frail physique - it was shocking, traumatising and deeply educational. It all started on my first morning in Atlanta, Georgia, where I was attending the annual conference of the American Historical Association. Unwittingly, I crossed a street at what I later learnt was an unauthorised crossing. I had seen plenty of pedestrians precede me. There was no traffic in sight and no danger to me or anyone else.
Apparently, however, as I was later told, "jaywalking" is a criminal offence in the State of Georgia. But I had no idea I had done anything wrong.
A young man in a bomber jacket accosted me, claiming to be a policeman, but with no visible evidence of his status. We got locked in mutual misunderstanding, demanding each other's ID. I mistook the normal attitude of an Atlanta cop for arrogance, aggression and menace. He, I suppose, mistook the normal demeanour of an ageing and old-fashioned European intellectual for prevarication or provocation.
His behaviour baffled me even before he lost patience with me, kicked my legs from under me, knocked my glasses from my nose, wrestled me to the ground, and with the help of four or five other burly policemen who suddenly appeared on the scene, ripped my coat, scattered my books in the gutter, handcuffed me, and pinioned me painfully to the concrete....
Had I made it to my historical conference, I might have learnt about medieval pumpernickel-production or 17th-century star-gazing. Instead, I discovered a lot about contemporary America.
First, I learnt that the Atlanta police are barbaric, brutal, and out of control. The violence I experienced was the worst of my sheltered life. Muggers who attacked me once near my home in Oxford were considerably more gentle with me than the Atlanta cops. Many fellow historians at the conference, who met me after my release, had witnessed the incident and told me how horrific they found it. Even had I really been a criminal, it would not have been necessary to treat me with such ferocity, as I am very obviously a slight and feeble person. But Atlanta's streets are some of the meanest in the world, and policing them must be a brutalising way of life.
Once in gaol I discovered another, better side of Atlanta. The detention centre is weird - a kind of orderly pandemonium, a bedlam where madness is normal, so that nothing seems mad. It's windowless, filthy, and fetid, but strangely safe, insulated and unworldly: like Diogenes's barrel, a place of darkness conducive to thought - for there is nothing else to do in the longueurs between interrogations, examinations, and lectures from the sergeant in charge about the necessity of good behaviour.
Some raffish underworld characters befriended me, but so did the detention centre personnel....
The first lesson is obvious. The city authorities of Atlanta need to re-educate their police. I can understand why some officers behave irrationally and unpredictably. Much of the downtown environment in their city is hideous - inoffensive to the eye only when shrouded by the often-prevailing fog. The sidewalks are thronged with beggars who can turn nasty at night. The crime rate is fearful.
The result is that the police are nervy, jumpy, short-fused, and lacking in restraint, patience or forbearance. But witnesses tell me that up to 10 officers took part in the assault on me. This is evidence not only of excessive zeal, but of seriously warped priorities. In a city notorious for rape, murder and mayhem the police should have better things to do than persecute jaywalkers or harry an impeccable, feeble foreigner.
Moreover, Atlanta depends on its convention trade. The way the conventions centre is designed is extremely practical. There is plenty of good, reasonably priced accommodation. But if Atlanta continues to accumulate a reputation for police frenzy and hostility to visitors, the economy will crumble.
At least, the police need to be told to exercise forbearance with outsiders - especially foreigners - who may not understand the peculiarities of local custom and law.
But, at the risk of projecting my own limited experience on to a screen so vast that the effect seems blurred, I see bigger issues at stake: issues for America; issues for the world. I found that in Atlanta the civilisation of the gaol and the courts contrasted with the savagery of the police and the streets. This is a typical American contrast. The executive arm of government tends to be dumb, insensitive, violent and dangerous. The judiciary is the citizen's vital guarantee of peace and liberty.
I became a sort of exemplar in miniature of a classic American dilemma: the "balance of the constitution", as Americans call it, between executive power and judicial oversight.
I have long known, as any reasonable person must, that the courts are the citizen's only protection against a rogue executive and rationally uncontrolled security forces.
Though my own misadventure was trivial and - in perspective - laughable, it resembles what is happening to the world in the era of George W Bush. The planet is policed by a violent, arbitrary, stupid, and dangerous force.
Within the USA, the courts struggle to maintain individual rights under the bludgeons of the "war on terror", defending Guantanamo victims and striving to curb the excesses of the system. We need global institutions of justice, and judges of Judge Jackson's level of humanity and wisdom, to help protect the world.
I feel happy and privileged to be able to live and work in the United States. On the whole, in my work as an historian, I have argued consistently that America has had a benign influence on the world. The growth of anti-Americanism fills me with despair, as I see ordinary, decent, generous Americans getting the blame abroad for the follies of the American government and the crudities of the American image.
I hope that if some good ensues from my horrific misfortune, it will include more future security from police misconduct for visitors in Atlanta, and more awareness in the world of some of the virtues - as well as some of the vices - of US life.
Monday, January 15, 2007 - 21:29
SOURCE: Nina Burleigh in New York Magazine (1-22-07)
Donny George, man of history, had vowed never to leave Baghdad, where he was the keeper of the keys to the looted Iraqi National Museum. Then his teenage son opened a letter with a bullet inside and a threat to cut off his head because his father “worked for the Americans.” An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis have fled their country since the U.S. invasion, but George, an archaeologist, along with his wife, Najat, and 17-year-old son, Martin, are some of the very few—only 500 a year—who’ve been granted a visa to live in the U.S. Which is how the short, stout 56-year-old ended up in Long Island, driving a Mitsubishi Galant, listening to Shania Twain, and preparing to teach Mesopotamian archaeology at suny–Stony Brook this spring semester. His older children, Marian, 21, a medical student, and Steven, 23, a computer scientist, couldn’t get papers. They remain in Damascus.
In the month or so he’s been here, George has learned his way around the campus, but he hasn’t yet reckoned with the modern ziggurat of the multilevel parking garage. Apologizing, he drives against one-way traffic up the ramp. They’ve been searching the suburban groceries for familiar foods and spices, while explaining to curious clerks and furniture movers that they are Assyrian Christians, neither Sunni nor Shiite.
During the past two decades, George oversaw fieldwork at some of the most significant excavations in the world. In 1987, he was head of a field expedition in Babylon when Saddam Hussein paid a visit. “I met him and took him around. He was very calm. He was just listening. In one of the museums there, we had some inscriptions translated. In one, Nebuchadnezzar was saying that one of the gods had sent him to protect ‘the black-headed people.’ Saddam said, ‘You should change that.’ And I said, ‘No, sir, it’s scientific, we can’t change it, this is exactly as it was said. It doesn’t mean that people are black, it means “all the people.” Because if you have a crowd of Iraqis, all you see are their black heads.’ He wanted to change it to ‘all the people.’ And I said no.”
Later, “one of his bodyguards took me aside and said, ‘How can you say no to the leader?’ And I said, ‘It’s science.’ And he said, ‘Well, good. God bless you. Otherwise, you would have vanished.’”
In early 2003, as the invasion became imminent, George urged his bosses at the museum to protect the collection by sealing it up in the basement. “I begged them, ‘Please, for God’s sake, for the Prophet’s sake, we have to do this, it will be stolen.’ And all I heard was, ‘No, you are exaggerating. Saddam is here. Nobody will dare to come to Baghdad.’
George estimates that the museum lost 15,000 pieces and that Iraq’s archaeological digs lost much more. ...
In the month or so he’s been here, George has learned his way around the campus, but he hasn’t yet reckoned with the modern ziggurat of the multilevel parking garage. Apologizing, he drives against one-way traffic up the ramp. They’ve been searching the suburban groceries for familiar foods and spices, while explaining to curious clerks and furniture movers that they are Assyrian Christians, neither Sunni nor Shiite.
During the past two decades, George oversaw fieldwork at some of the most significant excavations in the world. In 1987, he was head of a field expedition in Babylon when Saddam Hussein paid a visit. “I met him and took him around. He was very calm. He was just listening. In one of the museums there, we had some inscriptions translated. In one, Nebuchadnezzar was saying that one of the gods had sent him to protect ‘the black-headed people.’ Saddam said, ‘You should change that.’ And I said, ‘No, sir, it’s scientific, we can’t change it, this is exactly as it was said. It doesn’t mean that people are black, it means “all the people.” Because if you have a crowd of Iraqis, all you see are their black heads.’ He wanted to change it to ‘all the people.’ And I said no.”
Later, “one of his bodyguards took me aside and said, ‘How can you say no to the leader?’ And I said, ‘It’s science.’ And he said, ‘Well, good. God bless you. Otherwise, you would have vanished.’”
In early 2003, as the invasion became imminent, George urged his bosses at the museum to protect the collection by sealing it up in the basement. “I begged them, ‘Please, for God’s sake, for the Prophet’s sake, we have to do this, it will be stolen.’ And all I heard was, ‘No, you are exaggerating. Saddam is here. Nobody will dare to come to Baghdad.’
George estimates that the museum lost 15,000 pieces and that Iraq’s archaeological digs lost much more. ...
Monday, January 15, 2007 - 17:56
SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed (1-15-07)
Post-9/11, many of the most intense debates about academic freedom have involved Middle Eastern studies. There have been numerous cases in which candidates for jobs or tenure have been opposed at least in part because of their views on the Middle East, with recent flare-ups at Barnard College and Wayne State University. At least 15 of the professors named by David Horowitz in his book last year on “the 101 most dangerous academics” study the Middle East — a proportion that is notable when considering that Middle Eastern studies programs are relatively small, and most students never take a course in the subject.
In this environment, the Task Force on Middle Eastern Anthropology has issued a new handbook, “Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility After 9/11.” Most of the handbook would apply well beyond anthropology and the project was endorsed by leading scholars of the Middle East from a range of disciplines — many of them professors whose work has been criticized by pro-Israel and conservative groups.
“In the post-September 11 context, untrammeled and free public debate about the relationship between the United States and the Middle East should be a key component of a concerted effort to prevent the reoccurrence of the horrific tragedies on U.S. soil, and to understand related cultural and political trends,” the report says. “Yet an open atmosphere in which scholars and students can analyze the events and repercussions of 2001 have come into the cross-hairs of ideologues who argue that everything has changed or ought to change since September 11, including traditional bedrock American values upholding freedom of speech and public debate.”...
In this environment, the Task Force on Middle Eastern Anthropology has issued a new handbook, “Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility After 9/11.” Most of the handbook would apply well beyond anthropology and the project was endorsed by leading scholars of the Middle East from a range of disciplines — many of them professors whose work has been criticized by pro-Israel and conservative groups.
“In the post-September 11 context, untrammeled and free public debate about the relationship between the United States and the Middle East should be a key component of a concerted effort to prevent the reoccurrence of the horrific tragedies on U.S. soil, and to understand related cultural and political trends,” the report says. “Yet an open atmosphere in which scholars and students can analyze the events and repercussions of 2001 have come into the cross-hairs of ideologues who argue that everything has changed or ought to change since September 11, including traditional bedrock American values upholding freedom of speech and public debate.”...
Monday, January 15, 2007 - 17:45
SOURCE: Press Release -- U. of Washington, Tacoma (12-18-07)
On a miserable, wet February day in Memphis, Tennessee, 1968, two sanitation workers lost their lives—crushed to death in the back of their truck—due to outdated equipment and the indifference of their white supervisors. Their deaths would touch off one of the most significant labor strikes in the history of the nation, one that before its end would rock the plantation mentality of Memphis's government to its core and, on April 4, 1968, see the tragic death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign [W.W. Norton & Company; in bookstores Jan. 15] is the first in-depth story of that strike, where civil and labor rights became intertwined, and the struggle to achieve both resulted in some of the most poignant moments of the twentieth century.
Michael K. Honey, professor of African-American and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington Tacoma, masterfully untangles the complex relations and events of 1968 with a scholar's eye and the passion of one who himself participated in the movement. In Going Down Jericho Road, Honey offers a rare combination—a historian's broad view, combined with grass-roots history told by the people who lived it. Through countless interviews and archival sources, Honey allows those who struggled through those troubled and uncertain times to speak for themselves. We hear from the labor organizers and the political leaders, but we also hear from the sanitation workers themselves, the men and women who were on the front lines in the fight for economic justice and racial equality. As Honey argues, this is a story about Martin Luther King, but it is also a story about the plight of the unemployed and poor people in America who worked "full-time jobs at part-time wages."
The night before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King made a speech in which he urged those supporting and participating in the Memphis strike to follow the Jericho road. By this, he meant that they should follow the example of the Good Samaritan, who helped the poor and the needy despite the potential personal cost to himself. "The question is not," said King, "'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?'" but "'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?'" King was in Memphis to carry out his Poor People's Campaign—a movement to change the government's priorities from war in Vietnam to a war on poverty—and he knew that the success of the campaign would live or die in Memphis.
With all the drama, detail, and pacing of a novel, Going Down Jericho Road draws us into the sweep of those events. Through Honey's gripping prose we see the forces marshaled against a peaceful solution to the crisis: the unbending Mayor Henry Loeb, who, the day after King's death, shook hands with clergy demanding a resolution to the strike—while a loaded shotgun rested at his feet; the FBI who hounded King and his supporters with wiretaps and moles planted within the organization; the hot-headed Charles Cabbage and the younger generation of black civil rights militants who found King and his ministers' advocacy of non-violent opposition to be outmoded and ineffective. Caught up in the events we also see the first black members of the Memphis city council, pressured by both sides; the strident and inspiring Maxine Smith; white labor leaders Bill Ross and Tommy Powell; activist Cornelia Crenshaw; the outspoken Reverend James Lawson and fiery labor organizer T.O. Jones. Along with nameless others, such as the white mother who brought her children to participate in the March 28 demonstration—we encounter the tragedy of 16-year-old Larry Payne, who was shot point-blank in the stomach that day as police responded to the protestors with violence. Later in the crisis, we see how Coretta Scott King's composure and resolve in the face of her husband's death prevented further bloodshed....
Michael K. Honey is professor of African-American and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington Tacoma, and the author of two prize-winning books on labor and civil rights history. He lives in Tacoma.
Says Honey, ?gI put my focus on telling the untold stories of workers and poor people, particularly African Americans, in clear language that is accessible to any reader. My main impulse is to tell history as if it really matters—and it does—to the average person. My perspective and practice reflect a somewhat unique profile of life-long community involvement.
"I learned the importance of history in my early years of civil rights and community organizing in the South (1969-76). I traveled the region to get civil rights and Black Panther activists out of jail, to challenge police brutality, and to stop repressive laws at the state and national level. My most educational experiences included three weeks in a small southern jail in Kentucky, meeting "criminals"—poor people, black and white, people who either made a wrong move or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I was also privileged to work or meet activists such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Fannie Lou Hamer, Carl and Anne Braden, C.T. Vivian, John Lewis, Angela Davis, Julian Bond and people in Memphis such as James Lawson that I write about in my latest book. My first and best education came from this experience in the South, which set me up for a lifetime of exploring history from the bottom up."
Michael K. Honey, professor of African-American and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington Tacoma, masterfully untangles the complex relations and events of 1968 with a scholar's eye and the passion of one who himself participated in the movement. In Going Down Jericho Road, Honey offers a rare combination—a historian's broad view, combined with grass-roots history told by the people who lived it. Through countless interviews and archival sources, Honey allows those who struggled through those troubled and uncertain times to speak for themselves. We hear from the labor organizers and the political leaders, but we also hear from the sanitation workers themselves, the men and women who were on the front lines in the fight for economic justice and racial equality. As Honey argues, this is a story about Martin Luther King, but it is also a story about the plight of the unemployed and poor people in America who worked "full-time jobs at part-time wages."
The night before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King made a speech in which he urged those supporting and participating in the Memphis strike to follow the Jericho road. By this, he meant that they should follow the example of the Good Samaritan, who helped the poor and the needy despite the potential personal cost to himself. "The question is not," said King, "'If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?'" but "'If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?'" King was in Memphis to carry out his Poor People's Campaign—a movement to change the government's priorities from war in Vietnam to a war on poverty—and he knew that the success of the campaign would live or die in Memphis.
With all the drama, detail, and pacing of a novel, Going Down Jericho Road draws us into the sweep of those events. Through Honey's gripping prose we see the forces marshaled against a peaceful solution to the crisis: the unbending Mayor Henry Loeb, who, the day after King's death, shook hands with clergy demanding a resolution to the strike—while a loaded shotgun rested at his feet; the FBI who hounded King and his supporters with wiretaps and moles planted within the organization; the hot-headed Charles Cabbage and the younger generation of black civil rights militants who found King and his ministers' advocacy of non-violent opposition to be outmoded and ineffective. Caught up in the events we also see the first black members of the Memphis city council, pressured by both sides; the strident and inspiring Maxine Smith; white labor leaders Bill Ross and Tommy Powell; activist Cornelia Crenshaw; the outspoken Reverend James Lawson and fiery labor organizer T.O. Jones. Along with nameless others, such as the white mother who brought her children to participate in the March 28 demonstration—we encounter the tragedy of 16-year-old Larry Payne, who was shot point-blank in the stomach that day as police responded to the protestors with violence. Later in the crisis, we see how Coretta Scott King's composure and resolve in the face of her husband's death prevented further bloodshed....
Michael K. Honey is professor of African-American and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington Tacoma, and the author of two prize-winning books on labor and civil rights history. He lives in Tacoma.
Says Honey, ?gI put my focus on telling the untold stories of workers and poor people, particularly African Americans, in clear language that is accessible to any reader. My main impulse is to tell history as if it really matters—and it does—to the average person. My perspective and practice reflect a somewhat unique profile of life-long community involvement.
"I learned the importance of history in my early years of civil rights and community organizing in the South (1969-76). I traveled the region to get civil rights and Black Panther activists out of jail, to challenge police brutality, and to stop repressive laws at the state and national level. My most educational experiences included three weeks in a small southern jail in Kentucky, meeting "criminals"—poor people, black and white, people who either made a wrong move or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I was also privileged to work or meet activists such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Fannie Lou Hamer, Carl and Anne Braden, C.T. Vivian, John Lewis, Angela Davis, Julian Bond and people in Memphis such as James Lawson that I write about in my latest book. My first and best education came from this experience in the South, which set me up for a lifetime of exploring history from the bottom up."
Monday, January 15, 2007 - 16:25
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN (1-12-07)
At the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta one panel was devoted to Katrina. Fifteen people showed up for the discussion, which was held at the unappealing time slot of 9am on Saturday morning. (4800 attended the convention.)
Pessimism pervaded the room. The chair, Tulane's Lawrence Powell, confessed that the only bright spot was the passion with which volunteers from across the country had descended on the city to extend a helping hand. The federal government's response has been anemic, he indicated, noting that fewer than 100 of the 90,000 homeowners in need of federal aid had received money to rebuild.
Pessimism pervaded the room. The chair, Tulane's Lawrence Powell, confessed that the only bright spot was the passion with which volunteers from across the country had descended on the city to extend a helping hand. The federal government's response has been anemic, he indicated, noting that fewer than 100 of the 90,000 homeowners in need of federal aid had received money to rebuild.
Sunday, January 14, 2007 - 15:42
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN (1-12-07)
A patently distraught Felipe Fernandez-Armesto told HNN today in a phone interview that the Atlanta policeman who arrested him at the annual convention of the American Historical Association for jaywalking has provided the media with a twisted version of events. He indicated he may sue to clear his good name.
Professor Fernandez-Armesto says the officer has defamed him. In a point-by-point rebuttal, he insisted firmly that he had not realized it was improper to cross the middle of the street and had watched his colleagues do so repeatedly without interference (in his native Great Britain, he noted, jaywalking is not an offense). He said it was not clear to him that the"young man" who called out to him to cross at the light was a policeman because the officer's badge and insignia were not visible. He said he is both morally and physically incapable of violence."I am a feeble physical speciman," he said. There was a major scuffle, but he"did not offer physical resistance."
While Leonpacher insists it was obvious he was a policeman it seems equally obvious that Professor Fernandez-Armersto did not realize that until the officer called for back-up and a group of policemen suddenly descended on him. Leonpacher's own police report quotes the professor as saying,"Well now I believe that you are the police."
Professor Fernandez-Armesto says he has been baffled that the police are trying to defend the arrest. The more they defend their conduct the more the media dwell on the story, which can't be good for Atlanta's image, he noted.
The story has received worldwide notice. As of Friday afternoon HNN's video interview with the professor was watched on YouTube more than 15,000 times.
In a letter to the mayor of Atlanta the AHA has warned that"In light of this experience, it would only be after the Association has received assurances from the appropriate municipal authorities that the problem has been addressed that we could again consider Atlanta as a future site for the AHA's annual meeting."
Fernandez-Armesto was arrested a week ago Thursday, the first day of the convention and charged with Failure to Obey a Police Officer and Physical Obstruction of Police. After sitting eight hours in jail he was released on bond. The next day charges were dismissed after the prosecutor heard the professor's side of the story.
He said he has received hundreds of emails, most supportive. He is now busy answering them instead, he said rather plaintively, of preparing his syllabus for the coming year.
Click here to listen to HNN's audio interview with Fernandez-Armesto.
Saturday, January 13, 2007 - 12:25
SOURCE: NYT (1-11-07)
Roberta Wohlstetter, a military and foreign policy analyst whose work on the intelligence failures before the attack on Pearl Harbor was cited by the 9/11 commission, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 94.
The cause was pneumonia, said her daughter, Joan Wohlstetter-Hall.
“What does Pearl Harbor tell us about the possibility of a surprise attack today, with possible consequences of an even greater and perhaps more fatal magnitude?” Mrs. Wohlstetter asked 45 years ago in her book “Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision” (Stanford University Press).
The question became relevant again as the Sept. 11 commission began investigating the missed opportunities that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks by Al Qaeda. The panel’s report found major intelligence failures and analyzed the difficulties in gathering data.
Referring to hindsight, the report quoted Mrs. Wohlstetter’s book: “After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. Before the event, it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings.”...
The cause was pneumonia, said her daughter, Joan Wohlstetter-Hall.
“What does Pearl Harbor tell us about the possibility of a surprise attack today, with possible consequences of an even greater and perhaps more fatal magnitude?” Mrs. Wohlstetter asked 45 years ago in her book “Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision” (Stanford University Press).
The question became relevant again as the Sept. 11 commission began investigating the missed opportunities that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks by Al Qaeda. The panel’s report found major intelligence failures and analyzed the difficulties in gathering data.
Referring to hindsight, the report quoted Mrs. Wohlstetter’s book: “After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. Before the event, it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings.”...
Friday, January 12, 2007 - 22:15
SOURCE: Robert Townsend at the AHA blog (1-12-07)
In addition to the resolutions adopted at the annual business meeting, the governing Council of the American Historical Association adopted a number of other policy and professional resolutions at its meeting this past weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. The Council adopted new policy guidelines on when the AHA should take a public position, endorsed the idea of including history in the No Child Left Behind Act, and rejected some of the underlying assumptions about history in Florida’s A++ Plan for Education .
The new ”Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance“ may seem the most timely, given the discussions at the annual business meeting, but the AHA Professional Divsion drafted them over the past twelve months. These new principles lay out five areas requiring “public interventions” to protect the “rights and careers” of historians, including occasions where, public or private authorities “threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources;” “censor the writing, exhibition, or teaching of history;” “limit or forbid freedom of movement to historians;” or “compromise the mission of historical assets.” According to Anthony Grafton (Princeton University), this “is an effort to state the central principles that guide, and should guide, the AHA in deciding when to take action in the public sphere.”
In keeping with these principles, the Council adopted two new statements on public policy related to history teaching in the schools. The first, on Adding History to No Child Left Behind Act, places the Association on record as supporting “the addition of history (both U.S. and world history) to the areas of assessment and accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act and calls for systematic efforts, including professional development of in-service teachers, to improve the quality of history teaching at elementary and secondary levels.” While many in the history community view No Child Left Behind with ambivalence, since high stakes testing undermines many of the best practices of history teaching, the AHA Teaching Division concluded that, “if history is to be a high-priority subject in the public-school curriculum, then it must be assessed and evaluated.”...
The new ”Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance“ may seem the most timely, given the discussions at the annual business meeting, but the AHA Professional Divsion drafted them over the past twelve months. These new principles lay out five areas requiring “public interventions” to protect the “rights and careers” of historians, including occasions where, public or private authorities “threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources;” “censor the writing, exhibition, or teaching of history;” “limit or forbid freedom of movement to historians;” or “compromise the mission of historical assets.” According to Anthony Grafton (Princeton University), this “is an effort to state the central principles that guide, and should guide, the AHA in deciding when to take action in the public sphere.”
In keeping with these principles, the Council adopted two new statements on public policy related to history teaching in the schools. The first, on Adding History to No Child Left Behind Act, places the Association on record as supporting “the addition of history (both U.S. and world history) to the areas of assessment and accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act and calls for systematic efforts, including professional development of in-service teachers, to improve the quality of history teaching at elementary and secondary levels.” While many in the history community view No Child Left Behind with ambivalence, since high stakes testing undermines many of the best practices of history teaching, the AHA Teaching Division concluded that, “if history is to be a high-priority subject in the public-school curriculum, then it must be assessed and evaluated.”...
Friday, January 12, 2007 - 16:35
SOURCE: Editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-12-07)
Other than librarians, it's hard to imagine a less rambunctious group than historians. Yet, one of the world's premier historians ended up in jail during last week's American Historical Association convention in downtown Atlanta.
It was not an academic debate gone amok that sparked the arrest of British historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. It was jaywalking.
The arrest prompted a letter of protest from the historical association; a photo posted on the Internet shows the slight, bespectacled professor on the ground surrounded by seven uniformed police officers. (Police held him for eight hours before he was released.)
Depending on which version you believe, the story is either about a pompous professor or a power-mad cop. But the episode was probably more complex than either of those views would suggest.
According to a police report, the 56-year-old Tufts University professor attempted to dart across Courtland Street around noon on Jan. 4. An off-duty Atlanta police officer — employed by the Hilton Hotel — instructed Fernandez-Armesto to use the crosswalk down the block. The Hilton had hired Officer Kevin Leonpacher to direct hotel guests to crosswalks because of concerns for pedestrian safety.
The two sides agree that the mess began when Leonpacher told the professor to stop jaywalking and use the crosswalk. The scholar portrays himself as a puzzled foreigner, unaware that jaywalking was illegal or that the man ordering him to stop was a police officer. Leonpacher points out that his jacket, part of the official Atlanta police uniform, bore the name Atlanta Police Department. Two witnesses cited in the police report — a Hilton doorman and another historian — say that Fernandez-Armesto ignored the officer's repeated requests to stop and that the officer was polite in asking the professor for ID.
Still, it's troubling that a respected historian ended up spending hours in an Atlanta jail for an offense that is common in downtown Atlanta. The incident has bruised Atlanta's reputation as a convention-friendly city known for Southern hospitality.
No one disputes that the officer had the authority to handcuff and subdue the historian, but did he have sufficient reason to do so? That ought to be a chief focus of the APD review. Moreover, Police Chief Richard Pennington might tell his subordinates that they could better protect against jaywalking pedestrians by erecting security barricades along sidewalks. Their solid-steel presence commands obedience to street-crossing directives.
It was not an academic debate gone amok that sparked the arrest of British historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. It was jaywalking.
The arrest prompted a letter of protest from the historical association; a photo posted on the Internet shows the slight, bespectacled professor on the ground surrounded by seven uniformed police officers. (Police held him for eight hours before he was released.)
Depending on which version you believe, the story is either about a pompous professor or a power-mad cop. But the episode was probably more complex than either of those views would suggest.
According to a police report, the 56-year-old Tufts University professor attempted to dart across Courtland Street around noon on Jan. 4. An off-duty Atlanta police officer — employed by the Hilton Hotel — instructed Fernandez-Armesto to use the crosswalk down the block. The Hilton had hired Officer Kevin Leonpacher to direct hotel guests to crosswalks because of concerns for pedestrian safety.
The two sides agree that the mess began when Leonpacher told the professor to stop jaywalking and use the crosswalk. The scholar portrays himself as a puzzled foreigner, unaware that jaywalking was illegal or that the man ordering him to stop was a police officer. Leonpacher points out that his jacket, part of the official Atlanta police uniform, bore the name Atlanta Police Department. Two witnesses cited in the police report — a Hilton doorman and another historian — say that Fernandez-Armesto ignored the officer's repeated requests to stop and that the officer was polite in asking the professor for ID.
Still, it's troubling that a respected historian ended up spending hours in an Atlanta jail for an offense that is common in downtown Atlanta. The incident has bruised Atlanta's reputation as a convention-friendly city known for Southern hospitality.
No one disputes that the officer had the authority to handcuff and subdue the historian, but did he have sufficient reason to do so? That ought to be a chief focus of the APD review. Moreover, Police Chief Richard Pennington might tell his subordinates that they could better protect against jaywalking pedestrians by erecting security barricades along sidewalks. Their solid-steel presence commands obedience to street-crossing directives.
Friday, January 12, 2007 - 14:03
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN (1-11-07)
Two of the country's leading biographers of TR, Edward Renehan and Edmund Morris, have advised The Theodore Roosevelt Association to disband.
The Association has been largely leaderless since the death of its longtime head, John Gable. (Renehan stepped in as a temporary replacement for 16 months.)
Both now argue in letters to the Association that the organization should declare victory and close up shop. There is no longer any danger, they contend, that TR will ever be forgotten. Wrote Renehan: "The war is over. TR has won. His face is on the mountain. And the decades-long work of the TRA in preserving sites, establishing collections, and fostering scholarship has been no small part of the mix. However, the organization has outlived its mission. Today, books and films and conferences regarding Roosevelt emerge with frequency -- hardly ever with the facilitation of TRA. And this is a good thing."
The Association has been largely leaderless since the death of its longtime head, John Gable. (Renehan stepped in as a temporary replacement for 16 months.)
Both now argue in letters to the Association that the organization should declare victory and close up shop. There is no longer any danger, they contend, that TR will ever be forgotten. Wrote Renehan: "The war is over. TR has won. His face is on the mountain. And the decades-long work of the TRA in preserving sites, establishing collections, and fostering scholarship has been no small part of the mix. However, the organization has outlived its mission. Today, books and films and conferences regarding Roosevelt emerge with frequency -- hardly ever with the facilitation of TRA. And this is a good thing."
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 22:43
SOURCE: Jason Leopold at the website of Truthout.org (1-11-07)
[ Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. ]
One of the key architects of President Bush's disastrous Iraq war policy was responsible for writing the president's new plan calling for an increase in US troops in the region.
By relying on the recommendations of neoconservative scholar Frederick Kagan, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, on what steps the White House should take to address the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, President Bush has once again ignored the advice of career military officials and even some Republican lawmakers - many of whom in recent weeks have urged Bush to resist implementing a policy that would result in escalating the war - and instead has chosen to rely on the proposals drafted by hawkish, think-tank intellectuals that could very well backfire and end up embroiling the United States in an even bloodier conflict.
Perhaps the most alarming element of Bush's "new" plan for stabilizing Iraq is how much it relies upon the recommendations of individuals who have never set foot on a battlefield. Much of what the president outlined in a prime-time speech Wednesday evening - specifically, sending more than 20,000 additional soldiers into Iraq - was culled from the white paper, "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq," written by Kagan last month.
Some of the key points of Kagan's proposal include:
We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the US military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.
We must send more American combat forces into Iraq, and especially into Baghdad, to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.
These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.
After the neighborhoods have been cleared, US soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain security.
As security is established, reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.
But these recommendations itself aren't new. In fact, this "new" plan has actually been collecting dust for two years.
In January 2005, Kagan, who at the time was associated with the controversial Project for the New American Century, signed a letter sent to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate urging lawmakers to deploy an additional 25,000 US troops to Iraq, not so much to quell the violence between Sunni and Shiite factions as to intimidate Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East by maintaining bases. Kagan, his brother Robert, and PNAC founder and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol wrote that the Bush administration had ignored its suggestions, and chose to stick with a plan drafted by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said the Iraq war could be won with fewer ground forces and superior air power.
"We write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps," states the January 28, 2005, letter sent to Senators Bill Frist and Harry Reid, Congressman Dennis Hastert, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. "While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years. The administration has been reluctant to adapt to this new reality."
As US casualties piled up, Kagan publicly criticized Rumsfeld's plan for post-war Iraq and began to peddle his ideas for a substantial increase in US troops.
"The secretary of defense simply chose to prioritize preparing America's military for future conventional conflict rather than for the current mission," Kagan wrote in the January 17, 2005, issue of the Weekly Standard. "That position, based on the hope that the current mission would be of short duration and the recognition that the future may arrive at any moment, is understandable. It just turns out to have been wrong."
The lack of soldiers on the ground has been a hot-button issue since the start of the March 2003 invasion. Career military officials believe that is the reason the war hasn't been a "cakewalk." They blame former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld for designing a flawed war plan that has resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 US soldiers and led to deep divisions between senior military officials and the defense secretary.
In Wednesday's speech, but without identifying him by name, Bush put the responsibility for the quagmire squarely on Rumsfeld's shoulders. But the president also lauded Rumsfeld's war plan. In a televised news conference last year, Bush said there was no need to send additional troops into Iraq.....
Kagan resurfaced in early December with another column in the Weekly Standard, "We Can Put More Forces in Iraq," which suggested sending more troops to the region and continuing to fight the war for up to two years.
"A study of post-conflict operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and elsewhere conducted by Ambassador James Dobbins showed that success in those operations - characterized by severe ethnic and sectarian violence - required force ratios of 1 soldier per 100 inhabitants," Kagan wrote. "Iraq poses challenges that are in some respects more severe, at the moment, but it also offers its own rules of thumb. Successful clear-and-hold operations in Tal Afar required a force ratio of around 1 soldier (counting both US and Iraqi troops) for every 40 inhabitants. On the other hand, in 2004, Major General Peter Chiarelli suppressed a widespread uprising in Sadr City (an area inhabited by about 2.5 million Shiites) with fewer than 20,000 US soldiers - a ratio of about 1 to 125."
Following the publication of Kagan's column, Vice President Dick Cheney and senior members of Bush's cabinet began to enter into a dialogue with Kagan to draft an alternative plan for dealing with the violence in Iraq. The move was orchestrated so the White House could avoid adopting the proposals set forth that week by the Iraq Study Group, led by longtime Bush family confidante James A. Baker III, that called for entering into a dialogue with Iran and Syria and redeploying troops in 2008.
Two weeks later, Kagan published "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq," the AEI white paper that recycled his public statements and columns from 2005 that were highly critical of Rumsfeld's post-war planning. Like the January 28, 2005, letter he sent to Congress and the Senate, the 47-page report called for sending more troops into the region to combat the violence between Sunnis and Shiites - which ultimately would ensure the war would continue to rage for at least two years.
Ultimately, President Bush agreed with Kagan, and used the key recommendations of his study as the foundation for his new Iraq policy - a policy that even some staunch pro-war Republicans have distanced themselves from.
One of the key architects of President Bush's disastrous Iraq war policy was responsible for writing the president's new plan calling for an increase in US troops in the region.
By relying on the recommendations of neoconservative scholar Frederick Kagan, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, on what steps the White House should take to address the civil war between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, President Bush has once again ignored the advice of career military officials and even some Republican lawmakers - many of whom in recent weeks have urged Bush to resist implementing a policy that would result in escalating the war - and instead has chosen to rely on the proposals drafted by hawkish, think-tank intellectuals that could very well backfire and end up embroiling the United States in an even bloodier conflict.
Perhaps the most alarming element of Bush's "new" plan for stabilizing Iraq is how much it relies upon the recommendations of individuals who have never set foot on a battlefield. Much of what the president outlined in a prime-time speech Wednesday evening - specifically, sending more than 20,000 additional soldiers into Iraq - was culled from the white paper, "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq," written by Kagan last month.
Some of the key points of Kagan's proposal include:
We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing the rising violence. Securing the population has never been the primary mission of the US military effort in Iraq, and now it must become the first priority.
We must send more American combat forces into Iraq, and especially into Baghdad, to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.
These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.
After the neighborhoods have been cleared, US soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain security.
As security is established, reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.
But these recommendations itself aren't new. In fact, this "new" plan has actually been collecting dust for two years.
In January 2005, Kagan, who at the time was associated with the controversial Project for the New American Century, signed a letter sent to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate urging lawmakers to deploy an additional 25,000 US troops to Iraq, not so much to quell the violence between Sunni and Shiite factions as to intimidate Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East by maintaining bases. Kagan, his brother Robert, and PNAC founder and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol wrote that the Bush administration had ignored its suggestions, and chose to stick with a plan drafted by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said the Iraq war could be won with fewer ground forces and superior air power.
"We write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps," states the January 28, 2005, letter sent to Senators Bill Frist and Harry Reid, Congressman Dennis Hastert, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. "While estimates vary about just how large an increase is required, and Congress will make its own determination as to size and structure, it is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years. The administration has been reluctant to adapt to this new reality."
As US casualties piled up, Kagan publicly criticized Rumsfeld's plan for post-war Iraq and began to peddle his ideas for a substantial increase in US troops.
"The secretary of defense simply chose to prioritize preparing America's military for future conventional conflict rather than for the current mission," Kagan wrote in the January 17, 2005, issue of the Weekly Standard. "That position, based on the hope that the current mission would be of short duration and the recognition that the future may arrive at any moment, is understandable. It just turns out to have been wrong."
The lack of soldiers on the ground has been a hot-button issue since the start of the March 2003 invasion. Career military officials believe that is the reason the war hasn't been a "cakewalk." They blame former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld for designing a flawed war plan that has resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 US soldiers and led to deep divisions between senior military officials and the defense secretary.
In Wednesday's speech, but without identifying him by name, Bush put the responsibility for the quagmire squarely on Rumsfeld's shoulders. But the president also lauded Rumsfeld's war plan. In a televised news conference last year, Bush said there was no need to send additional troops into Iraq.....
Kagan resurfaced in early December with another column in the Weekly Standard, "We Can Put More Forces in Iraq," which suggested sending more troops to the region and continuing to fight the war for up to two years.
"A study of post-conflict operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and elsewhere conducted by Ambassador James Dobbins showed that success in those operations - characterized by severe ethnic and sectarian violence - required force ratios of 1 soldier per 100 inhabitants," Kagan wrote. "Iraq poses challenges that are in some respects more severe, at the moment, but it also offers its own rules of thumb. Successful clear-and-hold operations in Tal Afar required a force ratio of around 1 soldier (counting both US and Iraqi troops) for every 40 inhabitants. On the other hand, in 2004, Major General Peter Chiarelli suppressed a widespread uprising in Sadr City (an area inhabited by about 2.5 million Shiites) with fewer than 20,000 US soldiers - a ratio of about 1 to 125."
Following the publication of Kagan's column, Vice President Dick Cheney and senior members of Bush's cabinet began to enter into a dialogue with Kagan to draft an alternative plan for dealing with the violence in Iraq. The move was orchestrated so the White House could avoid adopting the proposals set forth that week by the Iraq Study Group, led by longtime Bush family confidante James A. Baker III, that called for entering into a dialogue with Iran and Syria and redeploying troops in 2008.
Two weeks later, Kagan published "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq," the AEI white paper that recycled his public statements and columns from 2005 that were highly critical of Rumsfeld's post-war planning. Like the January 28, 2005, letter he sent to Congress and the Senate, the 47-page report called for sending more troops into the region to combat the violence between Sunnis and Shiites - which ultimately would ensure the war would continue to rage for at least two years.
Ultimately, President Bush agreed with Kagan, and used the key recommendations of his study as the foundation for his new Iraq policy - a policy that even some staunch pro-war Republicans have distanced themselves from.
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 20:55
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN (1-9-07)
Historians critical of limits on free speech on college campuses had been somewhat hopeful that this year they could persuade their peers at the AHA Annual Convention in Atlanta to approve a resolution at Saturday's Business Meeting opposing "the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom."
But in the end the body approved a weak sister resolution critical only of free speech zones.
This was the second year the subject of speech codes came before the Business Meeting. Last year the measure was rejected because it was linked to another critical of David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR). Members felt that the two issues should be treated separately and indicated in various comments that they would welcome a chance to vote on a resolution against speech codes at this year's meeting. But when they were given the chance this past weekend the members declined to go along.
David Beito, a sponsor, produced numerous examples of speech codes that he described as patently offensive. But the members were uncomfortable with a wholesale condemnation of codes that are used by administrators to protect minorities from slights and uncivil attacks.
But in the end the body approved a weak sister resolution critical only of free speech zones.
This was the second year the subject of speech codes came before the Business Meeting. Last year the measure was rejected because it was linked to another critical of David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" (ABOR). Members felt that the two issues should be treated separately and indicated in various comments that they would welcome a chance to vote on a resolution against speech codes at this year's meeting. But when they were given the chance this past weekend the members declined to go along.
David Beito, a sponsor, produced numerous examples of speech codes that he described as patently offensive. But the members were uncomfortable with a wholesale condemnation of codes that are used by administrators to protect minorities from slights and uncivil attacks.
The resolution was amended to condemn only free speech zones and passed unanimously. David Beito afterward told HNN the vote was a defeat for his cause. Voting to condemn free speech zones, he said, was like voting to uphold motherhood. It was meaningless.
Related Links
Ralph Luker: The American Historical Association and Free Speech
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 20:17
SOURCE: AHA Blog (1-10-07)
In a letter to Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, Georgia, AHA President Barbara Weinstein, Past President Linda K. Kerber, and Executive Director Arnita A. Jones, expressed the AHA Council’s concern over an incident between historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto and an Atlanta police officer, that began with jaywalking and escalated to an 8 hour ordeal in jail. Below is an excerpt from the letter, and a link to the full text.
Dear Mayor Franklin:
We write to you on behalf of the Council of the American Historical Association to express our profound concern about an incident that occurred on the first day of the AHA meetings in Atlanta [January 4-7]. The members of the AHA who attended the annual meetings this past week are very grateful to Dr. Jamil Zainaldin and the other members of the Local Arrangements Committee for doing so much to make us feel very welcome in their home town. Unfortunately, some of our members were made to feel considerably less welcome by Atlanta police officers working as security guards for the hotels where the meetings were headquartered. In their zeal to prevent jay-walking between the Marriott and Hilton Hotels, some of these guards went well beyond what we would regard as helpful intervention…
Dear Mayor Franklin:
We write to you on behalf of the Council of the American Historical Association to express our profound concern about an incident that occurred on the first day of the AHA meetings in Atlanta [January 4-7]. The members of the AHA who attended the annual meetings this past week are very grateful to Dr. Jamil Zainaldin and the other members of the Local Arrangements Committee for doing so much to make us feel very welcome in their home town. Unfortunately, some of our members were made to feel considerably less welcome by Atlanta police officers working as security guards for the hotels where the meetings were headquartered. In their zeal to prevent jay-walking between the Marriott and Hilton Hotels, some of these guards went well beyond what we would regard as helpful intervention…
[The letter recounts the details of the incident and concludes:"In light of this experience, it would only be after the Association has received assurances from the appropriate municipal authorities that the problem has been addressed that we could again consider Atlanta as a future site for the AHA's annual meeting."]
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 19:45
SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-11-07)
As accusations mount about overzealous jaywalking enforcement by the Atlanta Police Department, city officials are standing behind the officer who arrested distinguished academic Felipe Fernandez-Armesto last Thursday for disorderly conduct.
When asked about the ongoing controversy during a Wednesday news conference, Mayor Shirley Franklin refused comment until the investigation of Officer Kevin Leonpacher's treatment of the history professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts is complete.
That inquiry is expected to last a couple of weeks, said Officer Joe Cobb of the Atlanta Police Department.
Meanwhile, more historians who attended last week's conference of the American Historians Association have come forward with tales of hostile treatment by officers trying to curb jaywalking across Courtland Street.
Monica Ricketts, a student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, said she was accosted by an officer while crossing from the Hilton Hotel to the Marriott Marquis Sunday morning.
"He started yelling at us, blowing a whistle as we were crossing the street," said Ricketts, a native Peruvian. "He got in my face and was pointing his finger at me. It was so bizarre.
"I asked him: Why are you yelling at us? He was furious."
One of her colleagues recognized the man as a police officer and apologized for jaywalking.
"He was very rude, very violent," Ricketts said of the officer. "It was a disgusting, horrible situation. I'm just glad I didn't end up in jail."
When asked about the ongoing controversy during a Wednesday news conference, Mayor Shirley Franklin refused comment until the investigation of Officer Kevin Leonpacher's treatment of the history professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts is complete.
That inquiry is expected to last a couple of weeks, said Officer Joe Cobb of the Atlanta Police Department.
Meanwhile, more historians who attended last week's conference of the American Historians Association have come forward with tales of hostile treatment by officers trying to curb jaywalking across Courtland Street.
Monica Ricketts, a student at Harvard University in Massachusetts, said she was accosted by an officer while crossing from the Hilton Hotel to the Marriott Marquis Sunday morning.
"He started yelling at us, blowing a whistle as we were crossing the street," said Ricketts, a native Peruvian. "He got in my face and was pointing his finger at me. It was so bizarre.
"I asked him: Why are you yelling at us? He was furious."
One of her colleagues recognized the man as a police officer and apologized for jaywalking.
"He was very rude, very violent," Ricketts said of the officer. "It was a disgusting, horrible situation. I'm just glad I didn't end up in jail."
Thursday, January 11, 2007 - 19:33
These pictures of the arrest of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto were taken by HNN Assistant Editor Jonathan Dresner on January 4, 2007, shortly after noon.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - 18:14
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman, reporting for HNN (1-10-07)
It took a few days, but the story of the arrest of historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for jaywalking in Atlanta at the AHA has now been picked up by the media around the world.
HNN broke the story on Sunday morning. On Tuesday the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran its first story.
On Wednesday morning (EST) the London Evening Standard put the story on its frontpage, emphasizing Professor Fernandez-Armesto's British credentials:
The prominent academic, professor of global environmental history at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a member of Oxford University's modern history faculty, said he had been subjected to"very humiliating procedures" and even had his box of peppermints confiscated.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a second story Wednesday morning based on an interview with the arresting officer:
The Atlanta police officer being investigated for his treatment of a prominent British historian said Tuesday that Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is not the innocent abroad he claims to be.The Tufts University professor, who was arrested last Thursday and charged with disorderly conduct, contends he was assaulted without provocation for merely jaywalking across Courtland Street. But Officer Kevin Leonpacher insists he is no rogue cop and suggests perhaps the professor is a bit of a scofflaw.
Leonpacher said the professor repeatedly refused to cooperate when asked why he did not heed the officer's instructions.
"I told him, it's gonna be awful silly if I have to take you to jail for jaywalking," said Leonpacher, a native of Niceville, Fla."I used an excessive amount of discretion."...
"Five times I asked him to stop," the officer said. He then asked him if he was hearing impaired. Once Fernandez-Armesto confirmed he wasn't, Leonpacher said he grabbed the professor's arm."I let him go when he turned around to face me," he said. Leonpacher then says he repeatedly asked Fernandez-Armesto for his identification, but the professor responded by asking for the officer's I.D.
When the historian allegedly repeatedly refused to produce ID (Fernandez-Armesto said he left his passport in his hotel room and was flummoxed when he realized he did not have it), Leonpacher said he told him he was under arrest. As he put his hands behind his back,"he pulled away and grabbed me. He said 'leave me alone, let me go.' I told him 'you're under arrest, stop resisting.'"
Leonpacher, half Fernandez-Armesto's 56 years, contends he could not handcuff the professor by himself."He was swinging, kicking wildly," Leonpacher said. Backup was called to assist in his detainment. They arrived almost immediately, Leonpacher said. According to the incident report, the cop quoted the professor as saying,"Well now I believe that you are the police."
The AHA council said Sunday that it would ask local officials who helped stage the convention to lodge a protest with city officials. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the mayor has ordered an internal investigation.
On Wednesday morning the Associated Press sent the story out on the wires with the photo published by HNN, which was taken by HNN Assistant Editor Jonathan Dresner with his Panasonic Lumix. Dresner is Assistant Professor of East Asian History at the University of Hawai`i at Hilo.
Related Links
Atlanta police report
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - 18:01
SOURCE: Antoon De Baets at the website of Network of Concerned Historians (1-10-07)
Dear colleagues,
Scholars at Risk (SAR), New York, is disbributing the summary profile of an Uighur historian and anthropologist at risk of persecution when returning to China and currently seeking assistance (see below). I invite you to read it carefully and, in the event that you could assist, to ask SAR for his CV and other supporting materials. Thank you.
With best wishes.
Antoon De Baets
(Network of Concerned Historians)
PS: For other Uighur cases, see NCH #22 (Tohti Tunyaz) and the NCH Annual Reports of 2004, 2003, 2001, and 2000, all soon available on:
http://www.concernedhistorians.org
=====
Dear SAR friends,
Following is a summary description of a scholar currently seeking assistance through the Scholars at Risk Network. We ask for your help in reviewing the scholar listed, as well as sharing the list with other colleagues that may be able to assist. Additional information for the scholar, including a CV and supporting materials, is available from the SAR office at 212-998-2179 or carla.stuart@nyu.edu.
Network members may login to the SAR website at
http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu to review the full list of scholars seeking assistance.
Sincerely,
Carla Stuart
Scholars at Risk
carla.stuart@nyu.edu
tel: 1-212-998-2179
***
CHIN-550
FIELD: Uyghur Studies
LANG: Uyghur Chinese, English, Turkish
RISK: Risk of arrest and prolonged detention
EDUC: PhD, Social Anthropology; [MA, History]
This junior scholar is an expert on Uyghur history and culture with a PhD in social anthropology. He is interested in completing researchand teaching courses in Central Asian and Uyghur studies as well as Chinese studies. He has received an IIE Scholar Rescue Fund award up to $20,000 subject to identifying a host institution and at least matching support. He seeks a teaching or research position for 6-12 months to begin during 2007.
Scholars at Risk (SAR), New York, is disbributing the summary profile of an Uighur historian and anthropologist at risk of persecution when returning to China and currently seeking assistance (see below). I invite you to read it carefully and, in the event that you could assist, to ask SAR for his CV and other supporting materials. Thank you.
With best wishes.
Antoon De Baets
(Network of Concerned Historians)
PS: For other Uighur cases, see NCH #22 (Tohti Tunyaz) and the NCH Annual Reports of 2004, 2003, 2001, and 2000, all soon available on:
http://www.concernedhistorians.org
=====
Dear SAR friends,
Following is a summary description of a scholar currently seeking assistance through the Scholars at Risk Network. We ask for your help in reviewing the scholar listed, as well as sharing the list with other colleagues that may be able to assist. Additional information for the scholar, including a CV and supporting materials, is available from the SAR office at 212-998-2179 or carla.stuart@nyu.edu.
Network members may login to the SAR website at
http://scholarsatrisk.nyu.edu to review the full list of scholars seeking assistance.
Sincerely,
Carla Stuart
Scholars at Risk
carla.stuart@nyu.edu
tel: 1-212-998-2179
***
CHIN-550
FIELD: Uyghur Studies
LANG: Uyghur Chinese, English, Turkish
RISK: Risk of arrest and prolonged detention
EDUC: PhD, Social Anthropology; [MA, History]
This junior scholar is an expert on Uyghur history and culture with a PhD in social anthropology. He is interested in completing researchand teaching courses in Central Asian and Uyghur studies as well as Chinese studies. He has received an IIE Scholar Rescue Fund award up to $20,000 subject to identifying a host institution and at least matching support. He seeks a teaching or research position for 6-12 months to begin during 2007.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - 17:48
SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-10-07)
The Atlanta police officer being investigated for his treatment of a prominent British historian said Tuesday that Felipe Fernandez-Armesto is not the innocent abroad he claims to be.
The Tufts University professor, who was arrested last Thursday and charged with disorderly conduct, contends he was assaulted without provocation for merely jaywalking across Courtland Street. But Officer Kevin Leonpacher insists he is no rogue cop and suggests perhaps the professor is a bit of a scofflaw.
Leonpacher said the professor repeatedly refused to cooperate when asked why he did not heed the officer's instructions.
"I told him, it's gonna be awful silly if I have to take you to jail for jaywalking," said Leonpacher, a native of Niceville, Fla. "I used an excessive amount of discretion."
Or, to hear Fernandez-Armesto's account, an excessive amount of force. They agree on one thing: the author of 19 books, including the (now) ironically titled "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration," did cross in the middle of the street.
"It did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with what I was doing," said the former Oxford professor.
The five-year Atlanta Police Department veteran said he initiated verbal contact with Fernandez-Armesto before he stepped into the street, directing him to the nearby crosswalk, but said the professor ignored him. Fernandez-Armesto said he didn't know Leonpacher was a police officer....
The Tufts University professor, who was arrested last Thursday and charged with disorderly conduct, contends he was assaulted without provocation for merely jaywalking across Courtland Street. But Officer Kevin Leonpacher insists he is no rogue cop and suggests perhaps the professor is a bit of a scofflaw.
Leonpacher said the professor repeatedly refused to cooperate when asked why he did not heed the officer's instructions.
"I told him, it's gonna be awful silly if I have to take you to jail for jaywalking," said Leonpacher, a native of Niceville, Fla. "I used an excessive amount of discretion."
Or, to hear Fernandez-Armesto's account, an excessive amount of force. They agree on one thing: the author of 19 books, including the (now) ironically titled "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration," did cross in the middle of the street.
"It did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with what I was doing," said the former Oxford professor.
The five-year Atlanta Police Department veteran said he initiated verbal contact with Fernandez-Armesto before he stepped into the street, directing him to the nearby crosswalk, but said the professor ignored him. Fernandez-Armesto said he didn't know Leonpacher was a police officer....
Related Links
Atlanta police report
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - 16:34
SOURCE: Rick Shenkman reporting for HNN. (1-7-07)
UPDATED 1/10/07 Activists who celebrated the passage of an antiwar resolution at the Business Meeting of the American Historical Association on Saturday may now wonder how significant the vote actually was. On Sunday morning the council of the AHA voted to accept the resolution only if it is ratified by the full membership in an email vote. AHA President Barbara Weinstein told HNN in an email Jan. 10, 2007:
Our reasons for this were two-fold: the resolution had been submitted too late to be published in the December Perspectives, as was the case with the two other resolutions, and a majority of the Council felt that, given the importance of the issue, that a full vote of the membership was called for.
Critics have long complained that the actions taken at the Business Meeting on controversial and political subjects are meaningless since so few members attend. Of the 4800 members in attendance at the annual meeting, fewer than 200 were present for the Business Meeting.
The resolution, which was backed by the radical Historians Against the War, urges a speedy end to the conflict and chides the Bush administration for repeated violations of human rights. Opponents of the resolution argued at the Business Meeting that the organization should not spend its moral capital on issues extraneous to the functions of a professional society. Advocates of the resolution retorted that the war has raised important issues vital to the practice of history.
The council gave a positive response to the other two resolutions passed at the Business Meeting. The council accepted the compromise resolution critical of free speech zones. And the council agreed to study the proposal to subscribe to the Informed Meetings Exchange (INMEX), which is closely associated with the pro-labor group behind the recent wave of hotel strikes.
In response to the news that Atlanta police had arrested historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto for jaywalking, the council decided to send a letter of protest to local officials who had helped stage the convention with the understanding the AHA's concerns would be passed along to the appropriate city authorities.
On Thursday the council weighed in on the controversy involving the No Child Left Behind Act. Officials directed Arnita Jones, the executive director of the organization, to urge Congress to include history among the subjects students should be expected to master. While many historians object to NCLB, which requires constant testing, the council believes that so long as the tests are required history should be included. In many school districts money for history has dried up as schools shifted resources to the subjects tested under the act.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007 - 12:23
SOURCE: Press Release -- U. of Richmond (1-1-07)
The Board of Trustees of the University of Richmond has elected Edward L. Ayers, currently Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, to be the institution’s ninth president. Ayers will take office effective July 1, 2007.
“This is a great day for the University of Richmond. Ed Ayers is an outstanding teacher, a distinguished scholar and a proven leader with a vision and passion for making the University of Richmond the best it can be,” said George W. Wellde Jr., Rector of the University.
Ayers earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship. In 2003, he was named the U.S. Professor for Doctoral and Research Universities by the Carnegie Foundation. One of the nation’s leading scholars on the American Civil War, Ayers has authored or edited nine books, one of which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia since 2001....
“This is a great day for the University of Richmond. Ed Ayers is an outstanding teacher, a distinguished scholar and a proven leader with a vision and passion for making the University of Richmond the best it can be,” said George W. Wellde Jr., Rector of the University.
Ayers earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee and his master’s degree and Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship. In 2003, he was named the U.S. Professor for Doctoral and Research Universities by the Carnegie Foundation. One of the nation’s leading scholars on the American Civil War, Ayers has authored or edited nine books, one of which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He has served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia since 2001....
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 18:14
SOURCE: Znet (1-7-06)
1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book with, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, is about? What is it trying to communicate?
The book assembles my most recent writings on a variety of subjects, from the war in Iraq to essays on Eugene Debs, Henry David Thoreau, and Sacco and Vanzetti. The central theme is probably best expressed in the final essay, "The Optimism of Uncertainty," in which I draw upon historical experience to suggest that the apparent power of governments and corporations is in fact fragile, that it rests on the obedience of the citizenry, and when that obedience is withdrawn, extraordinary change can take place.
2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?
The book is really the idea of my editor at City Lights, Greg Ruggiero, who thought (and who was I to contradict him?) that my fugitive essays for the Progressive magazine and other publications deserved to be brought together, updated, and published as a book. Matt Rothschild, editor of "The Progressive," where I am a regular columnist, graciously gave permission, and because he allows me to write on whatever subject I choose, there is a wide range of topics in the book. The editors at Princeton University Press allowed us to reprint my Introduction to a collection of Thoreau's political writings. Deepa Fernandes agreed to let us use my introduction to her fine book "Targeted" on the immigration debate. We reprinted, with his permission, my introduction to David Cortright's timely book on GI resistance to the Vietnam War. The magazine "Cineaste," which has the most thoughtful and probing writing on the movies, offered to let me reprint the essay I wrote for them on the relatinship of film to the telling of history. The book also contains several essays that have never been published before.
3) What are your hopes for A Power Governments Cannot Suppress? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?
It is rare that any one book will have a cataclysmic effect on society — yes there was Tom Paine's "Common Sense" and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and "The Communist Manifesto." All any writer can hope for is that his or her book plays a small part in raising the consciousness of its readers, in pointing to new ways of seeing the world, in making them conscious of their own power when joined to others. So to talk about "success" is only reasonable if "success" is defined modestly. And if that is so, then a writer can never wonder if his or her book was "worth all the time and effort."
4) A Power Governments Cannot Suppress has a beautiful cover photo taken during the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Were you on that march? Can you relay a story?
I was on the last leg of that march, the last twenty miles to Montgomery. We had spent the night before that — the thousands of people on the march — on a field of mud, because there had been a torrential rain, and so our sleeping bags rested on pure mud. As we came into the city of Montgomery, the streets were lined with people, mostly black, cheering and applauding. I decided that I didn't want to stay for the speeches and ceremony that would take place in front of the state capitol. And so, tired, my clothes caked with mud, I decided to go home and made my way to the Montgomery Airport. At the airport I ran into my friend and former colleague, Whitney Young. He was arriving to be at the ceremony concluding the march. Whitney was a tall, distinguished looking black man. I was pretty disheveled. We decided to have a coffee together. The airport cafeteria in Birmingham was still segregated. Indeed, all over the South, the motto was "The Deep South Says Never." But we decided to try anyway. We sat down. The waitress, a young woman, came over to us. I could see in her eyes her indecision. Then she turned to Whitney: "What will you have, sir?" I look at her uniform. On it was a huge button: "The Deep South Says Never."
That is the point of much of what I say in the book. All those cries by the Establishment — "We will never give in...we will never cut and run...we will never end apartheid, etc. etc." have turned out to be hollow claims, because when movements of people grow and become overwhelming, things change.
The book assembles my most recent writings on a variety of subjects, from the war in Iraq to essays on Eugene Debs, Henry David Thoreau, and Sacco and Vanzetti. The central theme is probably best expressed in the final essay, "The Optimism of Uncertainty," in which I draw upon historical experience to suggest that the apparent power of governments and corporations is in fact fragile, that it rests on the obedience of the citizenry, and when that obedience is withdrawn, extraordinary change can take place.
2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?
The book is really the idea of my editor at City Lights, Greg Ruggiero, who thought (and who was I to contradict him?) that my fugitive essays for the Progressive magazine and other publications deserved to be brought together, updated, and published as a book. Matt Rothschild, editor of "The Progressive," where I am a regular columnist, graciously gave permission, and because he allows me to write on whatever subject I choose, there is a wide range of topics in the book. The editors at Princeton University Press allowed us to reprint my Introduction to a collection of Thoreau's political writings. Deepa Fernandes agreed to let us use my introduction to her fine book "Targeted" on the immigration debate. We reprinted, with his permission, my introduction to David Cortright's timely book on GI resistance to the Vietnam War. The magazine "Cineaste," which has the most thoughtful and probing writing on the movies, offered to let me reprint the essay I wrote for them on the relatinship of film to the telling of history. The book also contains several essays that have never been published before.
3) What are your hopes for A Power Governments Cannot Suppress? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve, politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?
It is rare that any one book will have a cataclysmic effect on society — yes there was Tom Paine's "Common Sense" and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and "The Communist Manifesto." All any writer can hope for is that his or her book plays a small part in raising the consciousness of its readers, in pointing to new ways of seeing the world, in making them conscious of their own power when joined to others. So to talk about "success" is only reasonable if "success" is defined modestly. And if that is so, then a writer can never wonder if his or her book was "worth all the time and effort."
4) A Power Governments Cannot Suppress has a beautiful cover photo taken during the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Were you on that march? Can you relay a story?
I was on the last leg of that march, the last twenty miles to Montgomery. We had spent the night before that — the thousands of people on the march — on a field of mud, because there had been a torrential rain, and so our sleeping bags rested on pure mud. As we came into the city of Montgomery, the streets were lined with people, mostly black, cheering and applauding. I decided that I didn't want to stay for the speeches and ceremony that would take place in front of the state capitol. And so, tired, my clothes caked with mud, I decided to go home and made my way to the Montgomery Airport. At the airport I ran into my friend and former colleague, Whitney Young. He was arriving to be at the ceremony concluding the march. Whitney was a tall, distinguished looking black man. I was pretty disheveled. We decided to have a coffee together. The airport cafeteria in Birmingham was still segregated. Indeed, all over the South, the motto was "The Deep South Says Never." But we decided to try anyway. We sat down. The waitress, a young woman, came over to us. I could see in her eyes her indecision. Then she turned to Whitney: "What will you have, sir?" I look at her uniform. On it was a huge button: "The Deep South Says Never."
That is the point of much of what I say in the book. All those cries by the Establishment — "We will never give in...we will never cut and run...we will never end apartheid, etc. etc." have turned out to be hollow claims, because when movements of people grow and become overwhelming, things change.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 17:52
SOURCE: Sadanand Dhume in Philadelphia Magazine (1-1-07)
[Sadanand Dhume is a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society in Washington, D.C. He has finished a book about the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia.]
The first thing that strikes you about Daniel Pipes is his size. He's six feet, four inches tall, with a slight stoop and a wingspan that would send a piano teacher into rapture. The second remarkable thing about Pipes is something you notice only after he has led you into his book-lined corner office at the Middle East Forum, the Center City think tank he's run for the past 16 years, a place where the stray workplace embellishments include a journalism award from the Zionist Organization of America and a small picture of himself towering over Margaret Thatcher: It's his voice, a carefully modulated hush that forces you to glance anxiously at your tape recorder with a silent prayer.
The gentle demeanor is not what you'd expect of Pipes. Over the years, from his perch at the MEF and in countless books, newspaper op-eds, and appearances on talking-head TV shows, he has become an archetype of the hard-hearted ideologue, anchoring the most conservative pole in the debate over the Middle East, Islam, and terrorism. He has called for religious profiling of Muslims in America, and described the global battle with Islamists—those Muslims who strive for a society governed by their interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law—as "a cosmic battle over the future course of human experience." His views on the Israel-Palestine peace process are, in the words of the writer Christopher Hitchens, "somewhat to the right of Ariel Sharon." Once, on the television show Politically Incorrect, actor Alec Baldwin turned to Pipes and declared, "You seem to be in support of every crypto-fascist idea."
On this afternoon in early October, Pipes has just finished hammering out a piece for the New York Sun, where he has a regular column, concerning a group of Muslim taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who have demanded the right to refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol. Instead of simply canceling the drivers' licenses or asking them to forfeit booze-laden fares, airport authorities are considering a compromise: Drivers will be allowed to place an extra light on their roofs signaling their willingness to ferry the offending cargo. "From the airport point of view, this is completely satisfactory," explains Pipes. "Passengers are not stranded. Taxi drivers are content. But from the larger point of view, this has incredible implications: The sharia is now in effect in Minneapolis airport with two different lights. … Think of all the people the drivers might not want to take: Hindus, homosexuals, unmarried couples. … I mean, where does one stop?"
The extended riff is delivered in a tone that blends muted outrage with boyish infectiousness, and for a moment it dusts Pipes, 57, with the manner of an adolescent. It also captures the Pipesian method: the placement of the seemingly trivial in a broader political context, the effortless accretion of detail building up toward a crescendo, the conclusion that teeters on the edge of hyperbole and yet appears perfectly logical. By the time he's finished, you may be forgiven for fretting that the Twin Cities are on their way to resembling Tehran.
Such rhetorical skill is one of the reasons why Pipes—the director of a little-known think tank and author of 14 books that few in the general public will ever read—has managed to occupy an almost mythic space on the ideological plane where people are paid to argue over post-9/11 foreign policy and national security, someone whose bare-knuckled approach to radical Islam delights fans and enrages foes from Peoria to Pakistan. When the Mohammed cartoons roiled much of the world last year, the leftist newsletter CounterPunch went so far as to lay some of the responsibility for a Danish paper commissioning the cartoons at Pipes's door. When a British Muslim organization gave out its "Islamophobe of the Year" award, he was among the contenders. (Other Americans short-listed have included George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice.) His personal website, danielpipes.org, attracts three million visitors a year, according to Pipes.
Yet, five years after 9/11, five years after he became a fixture on Fox News and a familiar face on CNN, Pipes is confronting a new challenge. While his views on radical Islam have changed little since he became a member of the prime-time pundit class, the debate over Islam in this country has changed dramatically. And though Pipes continues to joust with his old adversaries on the left—from academics to the media to mainline churches—he now also worries about a view of Islam born of the right, one that sees the religion itself, rather the radical ideology it spawned, as inherently hostile to Western ideals. For the first time, the man who has long been among the world's most polarizing thinkers finds himself in an unfamiliar role—urging restraint.
Pipes employs a catchphrase that captures, if it doesn't adequately explain, his worldview: "Radical Islam is the problem; moderate Islam is the solution." According to Pipes, there's a distinct difference between Islam the religion and Islamism the ideology. The former, says Pipes, is a centuries-old faith for which he has always professed respect. But the latter, he says, is a modern set of beliefs whose adherents seek to create societies based on a political, social and legal system—the sharia—that he sees as misanthropic, misogynist, anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and terroristic, among a long list of other unpleasant things.
In 2007, this doesn't sound particularly radical. Even President Bush has drawn lines between Islam and what he called "Islamofacism." But Pipes's standing—among those who both love and loathe him—stems from the fact that he talked about (or, some would say, was obsessed by) radical Muslims long before they were a topic most people ever considered.
Pipes came to the subject in college. Growing up in Boston, the oldest child of Polish Jews who had fled Europe on the outbreak of WWII, he had wanted to be a mathematician, but after his sophomore year at Harvard—where his father Richard taught Russian history- Pipes realized he was in over his head. Instead he decided to study Islamic history, an interest sparked by summer trips to the Sahara and the Sinai. His undergraduate experience seared itself on Pipes in another way as well. He began his freshman year more or less apolitical, but graduated convinced he was a conservative; he felt no sympathy for his fellow students who commandeered University Hall in 1969 to protest the presence of ROTC on campus, and remembers wondering aloud why his classmates would skip meals and classes they had paid for.
Upon graduating, he spent two years studying Arabic in Cairo, haunting the salons of the city's elite as well as the backstreets and cafés where modern Islamism was born, then returned to Cambridge to get his Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history. Around the time Pipes finished his thesis, though, Ayatollah Khomeini set the Iranian Revolution in motion, and there were few people in this country who were able to explain what was happening. Pipes was one of them, and he soon decided to shift his focus from medieval to modern Islam....
The first thing that strikes you about Daniel Pipes is his size. He's six feet, four inches tall, with a slight stoop and a wingspan that would send a piano teacher into rapture. The second remarkable thing about Pipes is something you notice only after he has led you into his book-lined corner office at the Middle East Forum, the Center City think tank he's run for the past 16 years, a place where the stray workplace embellishments include a journalism award from the Zionist Organization of America and a small picture of himself towering over Margaret Thatcher: It's his voice, a carefully modulated hush that forces you to glance anxiously at your tape recorder with a silent prayer.
The gentle demeanor is not what you'd expect of Pipes. Over the years, from his perch at the MEF and in countless books, newspaper op-eds, and appearances on talking-head TV shows, he has become an archetype of the hard-hearted ideologue, anchoring the most conservative pole in the debate over the Middle East, Islam, and terrorism. He has called for religious profiling of Muslims in America, and described the global battle with Islamists—those Muslims who strive for a society governed by their interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law—as "a cosmic battle over the future course of human experience." His views on the Israel-Palestine peace process are, in the words of the writer Christopher Hitchens, "somewhat to the right of Ariel Sharon." Once, on the television show Politically Incorrect, actor Alec Baldwin turned to Pipes and declared, "You seem to be in support of every crypto-fascist idea."
On this afternoon in early October, Pipes has just finished hammering out a piece for the New York Sun, where he has a regular column, concerning a group of Muslim taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport who have demanded the right to refuse to pick up passengers carrying alcohol. Instead of simply canceling the drivers' licenses or asking them to forfeit booze-laden fares, airport authorities are considering a compromise: Drivers will be allowed to place an extra light on their roofs signaling their willingness to ferry the offending cargo. "From the airport point of view, this is completely satisfactory," explains Pipes. "Passengers are not stranded. Taxi drivers are content. But from the larger point of view, this has incredible implications: The sharia is now in effect in Minneapolis airport with two different lights. … Think of all the people the drivers might not want to take: Hindus, homosexuals, unmarried couples. … I mean, where does one stop?"
The extended riff is delivered in a tone that blends muted outrage with boyish infectiousness, and for a moment it dusts Pipes, 57, with the manner of an adolescent. It also captures the Pipesian method: the placement of the seemingly trivial in a broader political context, the effortless accretion of detail building up toward a crescendo, the conclusion that teeters on the edge of hyperbole and yet appears perfectly logical. By the time he's finished, you may be forgiven for fretting that the Twin Cities are on their way to resembling Tehran.
Such rhetorical skill is one of the reasons why Pipes—the director of a little-known think tank and author of 14 books that few in the general public will ever read—has managed to occupy an almost mythic space on the ideological plane where people are paid to argue over post-9/11 foreign policy and national security, someone whose bare-knuckled approach to radical Islam delights fans and enrages foes from Peoria to Pakistan. When the Mohammed cartoons roiled much of the world last year, the leftist newsletter CounterPunch went so far as to lay some of the responsibility for a Danish paper commissioning the cartoons at Pipes's door. When a British Muslim organization gave out its "Islamophobe of the Year" award, he was among the contenders. (Other Americans short-listed have included George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice.) His personal website, danielpipes.org, attracts three million visitors a year, according to Pipes.
Yet, five years after 9/11, five years after he became a fixture on Fox News and a familiar face on CNN, Pipes is confronting a new challenge. While his views on radical Islam have changed little since he became a member of the prime-time pundit class, the debate over Islam in this country has changed dramatically. And though Pipes continues to joust with his old adversaries on the left—from academics to the media to mainline churches—he now also worries about a view of Islam born of the right, one that sees the religion itself, rather the radical ideology it spawned, as inherently hostile to Western ideals. For the first time, the man who has long been among the world's most polarizing thinkers finds himself in an unfamiliar role—urging restraint.
Pipes employs a catchphrase that captures, if it doesn't adequately explain, his worldview: "Radical Islam is the problem; moderate Islam is the solution." According to Pipes, there's a distinct difference between Islam the religion and Islamism the ideology. The former, says Pipes, is a centuries-old faith for which he has always professed respect. But the latter, he says, is a modern set of beliefs whose adherents seek to create societies based on a political, social and legal system—the sharia—that he sees as misanthropic, misogynist, anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and terroristic, among a long list of other unpleasant things.
In 2007, this doesn't sound particularly radical. Even President Bush has drawn lines between Islam and what he called "Islamofacism." But Pipes's standing—among those who both love and loathe him—stems from the fact that he talked about (or, some would say, was obsessed by) radical Muslims long before they were a topic most people ever considered.
Pipes came to the subject in college. Growing up in Boston, the oldest child of Polish Jews who had fled Europe on the outbreak of WWII, he had wanted to be a mathematician, but after his sophomore year at Harvard—where his father Richard taught Russian history- Pipes realized he was in over his head. Instead he decided to study Islamic history, an interest sparked by summer trips to the Sahara and the Sinai. His undergraduate experience seared itself on Pipes in another way as well. He began his freshman year more or less apolitical, but graduated convinced he was a conservative; he felt no sympathy for his fellow students who commandeered University Hall in 1969 to protest the presence of ROTC on campus, and remembers wondering aloud why his classmates would skip meals and classes they had paid for.
Upon graduating, he spent two years studying Arabic in Cairo, haunting the salons of the city's elite as well as the backstreets and cafés where modern Islamism was born, then returned to Cambridge to get his Ph.D. in medieval Islamic history. Around the time Pipes finished his thesis, though, Ayatollah Khomeini set the Iranian Revolution in motion, and there were few people in this country who were able to explain what was happening. Pipes was one of them, and he soon decided to shift his focus from medieval to modern Islam....
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 15:26
SOURCE: WSJ editorial (1-9-07)
When Roberta Wohlstetter set out, in the early 1960s, to explain why the U.S. had been surprised by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she confronted a puzzle that to some seemed like a conspiracy.
Unlike classic military surprises, the U.S. had received ample intelligence that the Japanese were prepared to attack the Hawaiian base. That nothing was done to remove American ships to safety was proof, for Clare Booth Luce among others, that Franklin Roosevelt had "lied us into war because he didn't have the courage to lead us into it." But Wohlstetter, who died Saturday at age 94, knew better, and she spelled it all out in "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision," perhaps the most important book ever written on military intelligence.
Yes, the U.S. had intelligence that Pearl Harbor was a potential Japanese target. But other intelligence suggested Siberia could be a target, or the Panama Canal, or the Philippines. Previous indications of an impending attack had served, like so many false alarms, to lower America's guard. And American planners had trouble believing the Japanese would launch a war against the United States that they couldn't possibly hope to win.
From this, Wohlstetter drew the essential conclusion that the U.S. failed to anticipate the attack on Pearl Harbor because, amid mountains of incomplete and often conflicting data -- what she called "noise" -- intelligence analysts couldn't distinguish the information that really mattered. This tended to lead, as the future Nobelist Thomas Schelling wrote in his preface to Wohlstetter's book, to "a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely."
The lessons are timeless, and foretold the findings of the 9/11 Commission. Contrary to the views of many so-called realists, nations do not always act from rational calculations of their self-interests: They can be reckless gamblers, something that should give pause to those who see nothing to worry about in the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon. And contrary to the instincts of many CIA "professionals," the best intelligence analysis requires judgment and imagination, not simply the widest possible data set.
Wohlstetter was also remarkable not simply as a woman working in what was then a "man's field," but also as the wife and intellectual partner of the late Albert Wohlstetter, the legendary nuclear-strategy theorist. Both Albert and Roberta were great friends of this page, as well as great patriots.
Unlike classic military surprises, the U.S. had received ample intelligence that the Japanese were prepared to attack the Hawaiian base. That nothing was done to remove American ships to safety was proof, for Clare Booth Luce among others, that Franklin Roosevelt had "lied us into war because he didn't have the courage to lead us into it." But Wohlstetter, who died Saturday at age 94, knew better, and she spelled it all out in "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision," perhaps the most important book ever written on military intelligence.
Yes, the U.S. had intelligence that Pearl Harbor was a potential Japanese target. But other intelligence suggested Siberia could be a target, or the Panama Canal, or the Philippines. Previous indications of an impending attack had served, like so many false alarms, to lower America's guard. And American planners had trouble believing the Japanese would launch a war against the United States that they couldn't possibly hope to win.
From this, Wohlstetter drew the essential conclusion that the U.S. failed to anticipate the attack on Pearl Harbor because, amid mountains of incomplete and often conflicting data -- what she called "noise" -- intelligence analysts couldn't distinguish the information that really mattered. This tended to lead, as the future Nobelist Thomas Schelling wrote in his preface to Wohlstetter's book, to "a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely."
The lessons are timeless, and foretold the findings of the 9/11 Commission. Contrary to the views of many so-called realists, nations do not always act from rational calculations of their self-interests: They can be reckless gamblers, something that should give pause to those who see nothing to worry about in the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon. And contrary to the instincts of many CIA "professionals," the best intelligence analysis requires judgment and imagination, not simply the widest possible data set.
Wohlstetter was also remarkable not simply as a woman working in what was then a "man's field," but also as the wife and intellectual partner of the late Albert Wohlstetter, the legendary nuclear-strategy theorist. Both Albert and Roberta were great friends of this page, as well as great patriots.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 14:09
SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1-9-07)
[HNN Edior: HNN broke the following story over the weekend. Click here to watch a video interview with Professor Fernandez-Armesto.]
British historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of the 2006 book "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration," found the streets of downtown Atlanta much more difficult to navigate during last week's annual convention of the American Historians Association.
Fernandez-Armesto said he was handcuffed and jailed for jaywalking across Peachtree Center Avenue.
Police confirmed the Tufts University professor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, said Officer Steve Coleman of the Atlanta Police Department.
Coleman said more details of the arrest were not readily available after hours when he was asked about the incident Monday night and police would not be able to comment.
Fernandez-Armesto said he was accosted by a man he did not know was a police officer — "I did not see a badge or any identification" — as he crossed the street.
"Where I come from, jaywalking is not a crime," he said. "It did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with what I was doing."
When the author of 19 books reached the other side of the street, he was met by the officer requesting identification.
"When I questioned who he was he said something to the effect of 'When I give you an order, you obey it,' " Fernandez-Armesto said. "I asked him what his authority was because I didn't see a badge. Where I'm from you don't associate young gentlemen in bomber jackets with the police. But he was extremely upset I had questioned his bona fides."
Fernandez-Armesto, 56, a former professor at Oxford, was unable to produce proper identification. "I had left my green card in my hotel room. I was puzzled. I was baffled, at a loss, really," he said. "While I was hesitating, he lost patience."
At that point, the slightly built historian said the officer kicked his legs under him and pinned him to the ground, causing his glasses to fall off. Two other officers assisted in holding him down, said Fernandez-Armesto, who said he suffered a gash on his forehead and a bruise on his wrist as he attempted to break his fall.
"It was the most violence I've ever experienced in my life," said Fernandez-Armesto. "And I was mugged once while at Oxford."...
[READER COMMENTS POSTED BELOW THE STORY ON THE AJC WEBSITE.]
Comments
By Mallorie
January 9, 2007 11:48 AM | Link to this
Welcome to Atlanta. How rude.
By Katie
January 9, 2007 11:50 AM | Link to this
Sounds like an overzealous police officer. Instead of arresting people for jaywalking, perhaps they should rather focus on the true crime in Atlanta…..you know the drug use, child abuse, rapes, murders, burglary, assaults…..you know the things that really impact us….not some foreigner who does not know how to cross the road. It is not like he is a true threat or anything. Geesh.
By Frankie
January 9, 2007 11:53 AM | Link to this
Welcome to Atlanta, the next Policed State. I am surprised that we have not heard about this on the televised news. Iguess with all the issues the APD is currently underfire for, they would have probably arrested the news reporter had they been on the scene. Thank your lucky stars that you were not murdered like the 92 year old woman last year for simply defending her property. That story has been swept under the shag carpet…(PROGRAM will not allow me write past this sentence, APD control)
By Frankie
January 9, 2007 11:57 AM | Link to this
However, i know that te APD has to do a good job but you would think that people skills are what they do best. As many people that J-walk in this city, it is ashame that that officer and his croneeys had no other crime to Thwart than a Ja walker, thank GOD it was not a little old lady, they may have shot her for asking to see ID. It is a wonder that Atlanta has any money in its budget from all the law suites they should be getting from the ignorant way their police force act…
By Tom
January 9, 2007 12:00 PM | Link to this
When I lived in Atlanta doing study at Georgia Tech the police acted the same way. It is an inbred trait of Atlanta police they think they are top dogs and can bully anyone. The Atlanta Police are a legal street gang that use blue as their color. My runnin was for telling an undercover dude that he should not block traffic. he came after me with a vengance. bad cops in Atlanta. When in Atlanta put your hands up so they do not have an excuse to shoot you.
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:00 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:01 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:01 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tuan
January 9, 2007 12:05 PM | Link to this
This is only made me more ashamed of City of Atlanta, Fulton County, and the sub-par police department. The police officer at the scene should be fire. The city needs to stop hiring these low-class/low-IQ police officers. They are wasting tax-payer money trying to arrest a highly regards author for jay-walking instead of other crimes that affect this dump they call the City of Atlanta. The government in this city needs to pull their head out of their rear end and start fixing problems like this.
By harry bridges
January 9, 2007 12:09 PM | Link to this
Sounds like a well educated guy like this would check the local laws before entering a new city. I can’t beleive he was so stupid as to leave his green card in the hotel. Maybe he flunked common sense 101.
By Farmer
January 9, 2007 12:11 PM | Link to this
This is exactly why it is important not to judge people by their looks. Clearly the police have mistaken Fernandez-Armesto for one of the derelict homeless people Atlanta is spending so much time and energy trying to get rid of. LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE and fight REAL crime - lock up some of the corporate dope dealers in the Brooks Brother Suits - you are using the wrong profile APD!
By Chuck
January 9, 2007 12:14 PM | Link to this
IF the only story is the one told by the ‘victim’ here, then I would agree; Atlanta has a police-attitude problem. However, it seems to me that there may be another side to the story, but the AJC is known to color news to support its ultra liberal bias.
British historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of the 2006 book "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration," found the streets of downtown Atlanta much more difficult to navigate during last week's annual convention of the American Historians Association.
Fernandez-Armesto said he was handcuffed and jailed for jaywalking across Peachtree Center Avenue.
Police confirmed the Tufts University professor was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, said Officer Steve Coleman of the Atlanta Police Department.
Coleman said more details of the arrest were not readily available after hours when he was asked about the incident Monday night and police would not be able to comment.
Fernandez-Armesto said he was accosted by a man he did not know was a police officer — "I did not see a badge or any identification" — as he crossed the street.
"Where I come from, jaywalking is not a crime," he said. "It did not occur to me that there was anything wrong with what I was doing."
When the author of 19 books reached the other side of the street, he was met by the officer requesting identification.
"When I questioned who he was he said something to the effect of 'When I give you an order, you obey it,' " Fernandez-Armesto said. "I asked him what his authority was because I didn't see a badge. Where I'm from you don't associate young gentlemen in bomber jackets with the police. But he was extremely upset I had questioned his bona fides."
Fernandez-Armesto, 56, a former professor at Oxford, was unable to produce proper identification. "I had left my green card in my hotel room. I was puzzled. I was baffled, at a loss, really," he said. "While I was hesitating, he lost patience."
At that point, the slightly built historian said the officer kicked his legs under him and pinned him to the ground, causing his glasses to fall off. Two other officers assisted in holding him down, said Fernandez-Armesto, who said he suffered a gash on his forehead and a bruise on his wrist as he attempted to break his fall.
"It was the most violence I've ever experienced in my life," said Fernandez-Armesto. "And I was mugged once while at Oxford."...
[READER COMMENTS POSTED BELOW THE STORY ON THE AJC WEBSITE.]
Comments
By Mallorie
January 9, 2007 11:48 AM | Link to this
Welcome to Atlanta. How rude.
By Katie
January 9, 2007 11:50 AM | Link to this
Sounds like an overzealous police officer. Instead of arresting people for jaywalking, perhaps they should rather focus on the true crime in Atlanta…..you know the drug use, child abuse, rapes, murders, burglary, assaults…..you know the things that really impact us….not some foreigner who does not know how to cross the road. It is not like he is a true threat or anything. Geesh.
By Frankie
January 9, 2007 11:53 AM | Link to this
Welcome to Atlanta, the next Policed State. I am surprised that we have not heard about this on the televised news. Iguess with all the issues the APD is currently underfire for, they would have probably arrested the news reporter had they been on the scene. Thank your lucky stars that you were not murdered like the 92 year old woman last year for simply defending her property. That story has been swept under the shag carpet…(PROGRAM will not allow me write past this sentence, APD control)
By Frankie
January 9, 2007 11:57 AM | Link to this
However, i know that te APD has to do a good job but you would think that people skills are what they do best. As many people that J-walk in this city, it is ashame that that officer and his croneeys had no other crime to Thwart than a Ja walker, thank GOD it was not a little old lady, they may have shot her for asking to see ID. It is a wonder that Atlanta has any money in its budget from all the law suites they should be getting from the ignorant way their police force act…
By Tom
January 9, 2007 12:00 PM | Link to this
When I lived in Atlanta doing study at Georgia Tech the police acted the same way. It is an inbred trait of Atlanta police they think they are top dogs and can bully anyone. The Atlanta Police are a legal street gang that use blue as their color. My runnin was for telling an undercover dude that he should not block traffic. he came after me with a vengance. bad cops in Atlanta. When in Atlanta put your hands up so they do not have an excuse to shoot you.
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:00 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:01 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tony
January 9, 2007 12:01 PM | Link to this
What a southern comfort !!! Dont the police have anything better to do.This incident is one good example how a police officer can misuse his power. Looks like police officers does not liek to be questioned. What a third world mind set !!!
By Tuan
January 9, 2007 12:05 PM | Link to this
This is only made me more ashamed of City of Atlanta, Fulton County, and the sub-par police department. The police officer at the scene should be fire. The city needs to stop hiring these low-class/low-IQ police officers. They are wasting tax-payer money trying to arrest a highly regards author for jay-walking instead of other crimes that affect this dump they call the City of Atlanta. The government in this city needs to pull their head out of their rear end and start fixing problems like this.
By harry bridges
January 9, 2007 12:09 PM | Link to this
Sounds like a well educated guy like this would check the local laws before entering a new city. I can’t beleive he was so stupid as to leave his green card in the hotel. Maybe he flunked common sense 101.
By Farmer
January 9, 2007 12:11 PM | Link to this
This is exactly why it is important not to judge people by their looks. Clearly the police have mistaken Fernandez-Armesto for one of the derelict homeless people Atlanta is spending so much time and energy trying to get rid of. LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE and fight REAL crime - lock up some of the corporate dope dealers in the Brooks Brother Suits - you are using the wrong profile APD!
By Chuck
January 9, 2007 12:14 PM | Link to this
IF the only story is the one told by the ‘victim’ here, then I would agree; Atlanta has a police-attitude problem. However, it seems to me that there may be another side to the story, but the AJC is known to color news to support its ultra liberal bias.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007 - 13:31
