Noted Here and There ...

by Cliopatria

At Chapati Mystery, Sepoy points out some noted things in south Asian history and appropriate to Father's Day. See, especially, Pankaj Mishra,"The People's War," London Review of Books, 23 June. Key graph:

Histories of South Asia rarely describe Nepal, except as a recipient of religions and ideologies – Buddhism, Hinduism, Communism – from India; even today, the country's 60 ethnic and caste communities are regarded as little more than a picturesque backdrop to some of the world's highest mountains. This is partly because Western imperialists overlooked Nepal when they radically remade Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Albert J. Raboteau,"American Salvation: The Place of Christianity in Public Life," Boston Review, April/May, is well read in conjunction with Eugene McCarraher's"The Revolution Begins in the Pew: ‘Trotsky and St. Benedict'," Books and Culture, May/June, that I recommended earlier. Born an African American and Roman Catholic in Louisiana, Raboteau became an Orthodox Christian a decade ago, long after the publication of his major work, Slave Religion. Thanks to Richard Jensen for the tip.

Eric Pianin,"A Senator's Shame," Washington Post, 19 June, reviews Senator Robert Byrd's new autobiography. Pianin shows that Byrd was more deeply involved in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and for a greater length of time than he has ever fully acknowledged. You might ask what could he have anticipated? Had Robert Byrd anticipated that he might one day become the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, would that have constrained him from his youthful Klannish enthusiasms? Caleb McDaniel discusses"A Pet Peeve."

Apparently, Harvard's John Womack is the author of this petition in support of academic freedom in Palestine for Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Among those who have signed it are: Christopher Brooke, Paul Buhle, Judith Butler, John Coatsworth, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Tony Judt, Michael Kazin, Franklin Knight, Ann Lane, David Montgomery, Roy Rosenzweig, Joan Scott, Daniel Walkowitz, Jeff Weintraub, and Howard Zinn.

Finally, I met our colleague, Chris Bray, at the Atlanta airport yesterday, when he flew in from Los Angeles and was changing flights to go to Columbus, GA, where Fort Benning is located. Chris is the fourth of the Cliopatriarchs I've met in person (the other three can be seen here). He colorfully described the Atlanta airport is being"only slightly smaller than Norway," so we had to negotiate means of finding each other. Thinking that it would help me to stand out in a crowd, I told him that I'd be wearing my Emma Goldman t-shirt that says"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution." And, sure enough, we found each other fairly easily at baggage pickup. Delta had given him only some crackers and cheese during his cross-country flight, so we did as Cliopatriarchs will do when they get together: we ate and talked history. I liked Chris immediately and enormously. It was as if we had known each other for years. We'll hear more from him later.

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Manan Ahmed - 6/21/2005

NP, Ralph. Looking forward to it.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/21/2005

Ooops, I forgot to mention that Manan Ahmed will also be on the panel at the AHA convention. Sorry, Manan!

Robert KC Johnson - 6/20/2005

I agree on the characterization of Womack's scholarship--it's amazing.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/20/2005

Van, As I was going through the list of people who signed the petition, I was simply trying to list the ones who would be best known to us. By the time I was finished, your thought did occur to me.

Van L. Hayhow - 6/20/2005

This petition does seem to "round up the usual suspects" for its supporters. That said, John Womack's biogrpahy of Zapata, cleverly titled "Zapata", is one of the ten best history books I have ever read.

Robert KC Johnson - 6/20/2005

It's hard to take seriously an "academic freedom" resolution that begins with an attack on the building of the security fence. The sponsors of this petition obviously don't like Israeli policies. Linking an "academic freedom" critique to an attack on Israeli foreign policy trivializes the issue.

Also, the resolution features the usual selective interest in enforcement of "international" rights. "The internationally recognized entitlement to education means that benefits of education should be open and accessible to all Palestinians." Would the sponsors of this resolution argue that this right should also apply to Cubans? In Saudi Arabia? Iran? Nations in sub-Saharan Africa? North Korea? The Central Asian successor states to the Soviet Union? Egpyt? Though I don't have specific figures, I'd guess that in all of these nations except Cuba, "the benefits of education" are open to far fewer people than in the PA. How, then, to explain the single focus?

Since education is an "internationally recognized entitlement," I eagerly await the petitions dealing with these other areas.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/20/2005

Alan, Good to know that you are on the local arrangements committee. Actually, there are probably two things that Cliopatria has on tap for January's AHA convention in Philadelphia: 1) there will be a discussion session on history blogging. HNN's Rick Shenkman will chair it. The panel will include Informed Comment's Juan Cole, Liberty & Power's David Beito, Cliopatria's Sharon Howard, and me. I'd like for as many of the Cliopatriarchs to be in the session as possible, because I expect to introduce everyone to the audience. 2) we will have the third annual banquet of the Cliopatriarchs -- probably before or after the session, if for no other reason than that it's is a good place for everyone to meet. "the third annual banquet" is my grandiloquent way of saying that we'll have lunch or dinner together. I had also taken the liberty of suggesting to Sharon Howard that you'd be a good local person to be in touch with, since she will be flying into Philadelphia from Wales and has never been to the States before.

Alan Allport - 6/20/2005

On the same subject, anyone attending January's AHA conference in Philadelphia is welcome to drop me a line later in the year. I will be gadding about quite a lot during that weekend because I am a member of the Local Arrangements Committee, but I'd be more than happy to say hi and point you in the direction of a good cheesesteak.

Diana Applebaum - 6/20/2005

I really don't think it is. What I mean to do is to point out the complexity of the situation. Post 1967, Israeli policy was undoubtedly a muddle. There was a religious/nationlist impulse to "reclaim" or "settle" the entire land with Jews, ignoring the rather obvious fact that Palestinian Arabs exist and have rights. There was a good faith attempt on the part of the Israeli government at the time to return territories that Israel conquered in what was, after all, a defensive war to Egyptiand and Jordanian sovereignty as part of a peace settlement. But there was also a real impulse on the part of many Israelis to govern decently.

We must recognize that the Israeli government was not wiser than other democratic governments - democracy is messy. Governments in the years post 1967 have sometimes attempted to trade land for peace, and sometimes apeared to intend to keep the territories entire. As I said, messy.

But we would be failing in our callings as scholars if we buy into simplistic formulae like Israeli occupation/Palestinian suffering.

Facts are stubborn things. The fact is that all six Palestinian universities were built under the occupation that this petition simplistically condemns. I do think that we have to deal with that fact.

I also think your comparison to the Confederacy misplaced. The Confederacy was built on the institution of slavery, of which there cn be no moral defense.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is far more morally complex. The area was "conquered" in a defensive war against opponents intending to eliminate the nation of Israel. The obvious solution, a peace sttlemen with the attacking nations of the 1967 war - Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Jordan - that would have recognized Israel's right to exist was rejected by the attackers. The solution brought forward at Oslo and at Taba, of creating side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian nation states has been made difficult of execution by the ongoing efforts of hard-line Palestinian groups to renounce their avowed intention of eliminating the Jewish State entirely.

I do think it is simplistic to compare Israel to the Confederacy, just as the blanket condemnation of Israel by this petition is simplistic.

and I do think that historians should regognize the complexity and moral ambiguity of the past. One small fact is that the Palestinian universities that now complain of Israeli occupation were created under that occupation, and not under the previous Jordanian and Egyptian occupations.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/20/2005

Ms. Applebaum, Is this anything like claiming that the Confederacy created the conditions for the abolition of slavery in the South?

Caleb McDaniel - 6/20/2005

Pianin says ... That's what I meant to say.

Caleb McDaniel - 6/20/2005

Pianin Robert Byrd's title for his local Klan chapter was the "Exalted Cyclops." You know what they say about the land of the blind ...

Diana Applebaum - 6/20/2005

Does anyone else notice the irony here? The petition complains that Israeli occupation makes life difficult at Palestinian universities.

The thing is, there were no Palestinian universities before 1967. No universities existed in the West Bank when it was occupied by Jordan, or in Egyptian-occupied Gaza. Bir Zeit likes to cite a founding date of 1924, just as many American colleges cite the date when predecessor institutions, usually high schools, were founded. The fact remains that Bir Zeit first began to offer college degrees in 1972, and graduate degrees in 1973. The other universities are even younger.

This is not to deny that life has become very difficult for academics and others since the outbreak of the Oslo War, or second intifada, in September, 2000. Only to remind us that it was the Israeli administration of these territories that created the conditions under which universities were established in the West Bank and Gaza.