Worth Noting

by Cliopatria

At Revise and Dissent, Rob MacDougall confesses that some of those sentences in David Kennedy, et al.,'s American Pageant were written by – er – Rob MacDougall.

David White,"Juan Cole and Yale: The Inside Story," Campus Watch, 3 August, is a rightwinger's answer to Liel Liebovitz,"Middle East Wars Flare Up at Yale," Jewish Week, 2 June. John Gaddis and Donald Kagan apparently did play crucial roles in denying Cole an appointment, but White's account makes no reference at all to the massive public campaign against it or the threats to withhold funds if the appointment were made.

Karen Armstrong,"Bush's Fondness for Fundamentalism is Courting Disaster at Home and Abroad," Guardian Unlimited, 31 July.

Martin van Creveld,"Quo Vadis Israel?" NPQ, 2 August. Thanks to Alfredo Perez at Political Theory Daily Review for the tip.

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Oscar Chamberlain - 8/6/2006

What I found strange about White's article was that White did not consider it important to communicate what about Cole's scholarhisp was lacking. If that was the reason for Cole's dismissal one would think he (White) would trumpet that. Instead, White gives far more space to Cole's blogging, even though the evidence that it hurt Cole's candidacy was decidedly mixed.

S J - 8/5/2006

I've been following the Juan Cole saga for quite some time. I'm interested to see how this progresses since I am starting out as a graduate student and maintain a blog (albeit a pretty uncontroversial one). After reading through these articles, and the series in the Chronicle, I have a hard time believing that Yale wasn't, "aware of Juan Cole's blogging life". I would maybe buy that the real reason Juan Cole wasn't Yale's final selection was the fact that they found a candidate who was more active in his or her scholarship, but to say you weren't even aware of Informed Comment seems a bit of a stretch. It always seems like one or two people on the job committees I've sat on do a fair amount of internet research on the candidates applying for a job - and typing in Juan Cole into Google brings up 19,400,000 hits. On top of that, every Middle Eastern expert I've talked to in the past year has at least been aware of Juan Cole and his blog.

You can say that they knowingly decided not to take Informed Comment into account when assessing Cole, but playing the ignorance card - give me a break, really?!?

Jonathan Dresner - 8/5/2006

Crevald's piece appears to have been attacked by a rogue search-and-replace function which stripped out several country names. Not enough to make it an interesting guessing game, but still rather odd for a seemingly professional publication....