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 […]
Subjects Archives: Media
Media, Communications, and Literature
University of California: Priceless
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
Negotiating in a Difficult Economic Environment
“[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 […]
Big City Superintendents: Dictatorship or Democracy? Lessons from Paulo Freire
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 […]
Pan-Arabism and After: The Evolution of a Playwright
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 […]
Questioning Assumptions about Gender and the Legacy of the GDR
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 […]
U.S. Public Diplomacy toward Iran: Structures, Actors, and Policy Communities
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 […]
Philadelphia Strikers and the Media
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: […]
Veterans Brock McIntosh and Rick Reyes on Afghanistan
“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 […]
The Lures and Perils of Gender Activism in Afghanistan
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 […]
Trance (Langston Hughes: In Translation)
(for Hafiz) The stillest fall of all is the fall from grace. No louder than a feather falling in a forest, and yet we fall. There are many ways to kill a man. Gun and knife will work well but to make a man irrelevant will also do, and what better way to ignore an […]
Gathering Rage Revisited
In 1992, I was a thwarted, guilt-ridden and depressed revolutionary, living underground with my lesbian partner and two-year old daughter in St. Louis. I was part of a tiny group that had gone underground at the beginning of the 1980s, responding to the collapse of the mass movements after the end of the Vietnam […]
Sexuality and the National Struggle: Being Palestinian and Gay in Israel
Rauda Morcos has every right to hate the press. On July 2003, the Israeli newspaper Yedeot Ahronot interviewed Morcos about her poetry but also announced to the world that she was a lesbian. Following the public outing, Rauda Morcos’ car windows were smashed, the tires punctured, and she received countless threatening phone calls and […]
Bassidji and Me
Click on the image to watch excerpts from Bassidji. In 2000, 16 years after my arrival in France, I decided to go back to live in Iran for a while to gain a better understanding of my country. In 2002, a combination of circumstances gave me an opportunity to attend a ceremony of national […]
Terminal Stage
“Would it not be better to administer euthanasia?” Enrique Lacoste Prince is a Cuban cartoonist based in Havana. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print
Rethinking Afghanistan and Iran
Dear Friends, The Defenders will be co-sponsoring an event this evening with the Richmond Peace Education Center. It’s a Teach-In, Richmond’s contribution to the Oct. 17 national day of actions against wars and sanctions. This event consists of a film screening and presentations by local activists and individuals concerned about the militarized path the U.S. […]
The Impossible Union of Arab and Jew: Reflections on Dissent, Remembrance and Redemption
Listen to the 2008 Edward Said Memorial Lecture delivered by Sara Roy at the University of Adelaide on 11 October 2008: Download the text of the lecture in PDF: <adelaide.edu.au/esml/transcripts/2008/ESML-BY-Sara-ROY-2008.pdf>. Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Trained as a political economist, Roy has […]
This Is Asia
“This is really a simple picture, and yet it explains so much of what Asia is today. It looks at developing Asia as a whole region, from China and India to places in-between, and breaks the overall GDP down into two main shares: the black line is the export share and the red line […]
Unstable Equilibrium
I don’t want to serve. . . . I think that in fighting in the cinema, through our movies, for a freer, more authentic expression, with weapons that can include joie de vivre and comedy, we are waging the same war as those who fight on the barricades. — Dušan Makavejev (1971) Infamous Yugoslavian […]
October 24 Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education
We have the power to stop the catastrophic budget cuts, fee hikes, and layoffs — but to save public education in California requires coordinating our actions on a statewide level. We invite all UC, CSU, CC, and K-12 students, workers, teachers, and their organizations across the state to participate in and collectively build the […]
