Subjects Archives: Media

  Dear Rethinking Schools friends, We’re pleased to announce our latest “publication,” The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People’s History — www.zinnedproject.org — a new website with free downloadable teaching activities. The Zinn Education Project: Teaching a People’s History is a collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, supported by an anonymous donor (a […]

  Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review.  Its December 2009 issue features the following editorial. — Ed. The establishment media is for most the source of our daily information.  Even if we manage to be continually conscious of the embedded commercial and class bias, the […]

  A young boy sits on rusted tank tracks in the desert bordering Iran and Iraq.  His head is bowed, and he’s sobbing.  A few yards away, a dozen bearded men gather around a Shiite cleric.  The men weep as the cleric recounts the story of a fearless martyr killed during the Iran-Iraq war.  He […]

  Farzana Shaikh.  Making Sense of Pakistan.  New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.  ix + 274 pp.  $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14962-4. Farzana Shaikh offers a scholarly and erudite study of the competition to define and establish a “national” identity for Pakistan.  The author argues that contested visions of the religious nature of the postcolonial state […]

Allow me to make a few points about the current international negotiations which are likely to make a huge impact on the future of the planet.  At the heart of the issue is the trade off that has to be made between those who want to continue on a path of exploitation and the protesters […]

In the final paragraphs of a Reflection entitled “The Bells Are Tolling For the Dollar,” published two months ago, on October 9, I mentioned the climate change problem brought on humanity by imperialist capitalism. With regards to carbon emissions I said: “The United States is not making any real effort but accepting just a 4% reduction with respect to the year 1990.” At that moment, scientists were demanding a minimum of 25 to 40 percent by the year 2020.

“The more a ruling class is able to assimilate the foremost minds of the ruled class, the more stable and dangerous becomes its rule.” — Karl Marx A few days back, I received a ‘Dear friends’ email from Mr. Najam Sethi, ex editor-in-chief of Daily Times, Pakistan, announcing that he, together with several of his […]

Discrimination, not culture, keeps families in poverty. Israel’s finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country’s Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society’s opposition to women working. A recent report from Israel’s National Insurance Institute […]

At 4:30am on November 26, a couple thousand people started ferrying from San Francisco to Alcatraz Island, to witness and participate in the annual Indigenous Peoples Sunrise Gathering.  This year, it commemorated the 40th anniversary of the occupation of Alcatraz, an event which brought renewed energy and visibility to Indigenous Peoples movements. As the rising […]

  The Sixth Annual Helen Pond McIntyre ’48 Lecture, Barnard College, 5 November 2009 The right to religious freedom is widely regarded as a crowning achievement of secular liberal democracies, one that guarantees the peaceful coexistence of religiously diverse populations.  Enshrined in national constitutions and international laws and treaties, the right to religious liberty promises […]

  Judith Butler’s lecture is preceded by Eduardo Mendieta‘s introduction. A certain problem emerges between religion and public life when public criticism of Israeli state violence is taken to be anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish.  For the record, I would like to make clear that some of those criticisms do employ anti-Semitic rhetoric and do engage anti-Semitic […]

  pen: $1.59 backpack: $28 used textbook: $60 dinner at home: $0.50 uc tuition fee increase: $1929 being unable to afford a college education: priceless there are some things that money can’t buy don’t let higher education be one of them Royce Choi is a student at UC San Diego. | | Print  

  “[I]t may be surprising to learn that faculty salaries are not a major component of the total costs at most universities.  For instance, at my institution, Eastern Michigan University, faculty salaries make up only 24 percent of total expenses.  So where is the money going?” — Howard Bunsis Conclusion: Yes, these are bad economic […]

  During my teaching career I’ve worked under nine different superintendents.  I’ve taught for nearly 30 years, so the average reign of a Milwaukee superintendent has been a little over three years, about normal for big city school districts. While some people, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, decry these short tenures as a […]

  Dina A. Amin.  Alfred Farag and Egyptian Theater: The Poetics of Disguise, With Four Short Plays and a Monologue.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. xxx + 321 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3163-7. This urgently needed book is an investigation of Egyptian theatre through the works of the preeminent Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag (1929-2005), during […]

  If we examine the status of women strictly from the socioeconomic perspective, this portrayal of reunification [as the silencing in which traces of the East German social, cultural, and ideological framework were erased and replaced by the Western capitalist social, economic, and cultural framework] seems apt.  Indeed, scholars persistently describe the reunification as a […]

  Abstract: This dissertation is an in-depth study of the structures, actors, and policy communities associated with U.S. public diplomacy toward Iran.  Since 2006, the U.S. government has spent more than $200 million for its Iran-related public diplomacy via State Department “democracy promotion” programs, National Endowment for Democracy, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors.  These […]

  In Philadelphia, thousands of striking SEPTA transportation workers and members of the Transport Workers Union Local 234 are facing persistent attacks by politicians and the media.  NPR’s initial coverage of the strike seemed largely aimed at inciting tension between commuters and the striking workers.  It even gave credence to Mayor Michael Nutter’s absurd criticism: […]

  The Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 2009 I feel both honoured and gratified to be offering the 7th Anthony Hyman Memorial Lecture.  This gives me the opportunity to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Tony for his unwavering support and friendship over the years.  When I […]

  “I thought as soon as we hit the ground, we would immediately start changing things and making it better for the people, but, during the entire time I was there, we rarely did any kind of humanitarian aid missions.  They have a lot of social issues that they are dealing with, like poverty and […]