To Find the Principles

Seasonal Transitions in the Garden

2009-11-28T13:33:00.013-05:00

It has been, for the most part, a notably mild fall—so mild, in fact, that one of the antique rose varieties is still reblooming. The marvelously persistent Rose de Rescht (of Iranian origin) was managing to put out several new blooms a week all month. One small one opened even on Thanksgiving Day (here a shot of another blossom, only a bit earlier)

Rose de Rescht

Nonetheless, it is clear not only that autumn is here, but that winter is coming. Most of the leaves fell off the trees by Halloween. Many of us have taken advantage of the mild temperatures to stretch out the leaf clean-up task (between the occasional heavy rains, that is). While engaged in such activity last weekend, I came across another sure sign of fall: this large but austere cocoon

Cecropia utopia

The four-inch cocoon will be the winter resting place of my favorite moth, the Cecropia (Hyalophora cecropia; also known as the Robin Moth), one of the giant American wild silk moths (the others are the Luna and the Polyphemus, my other two favorites; all three thus have appealingly classical names). In fact, the Cecropia happens to be the largest moth found in the US.

By next spring, the humble gray cocoon will have yielded a colorful and truly spectacular creature:

(photo from Iowa State University Extension, Departments of Entomology, Horticulture and Plant Pathology)

Many, over the ages, have presumed to draw moral or spiritual lessons from the metamorphosis of the moths and butterflies from egg to adult (here, a particularly inane creationist variant). It would be nice to think that, after a cold, hard winter, we could, with no active effort of our own, emerge so miraculously transformed. On the other hand, all that growth takes place in a hidden space, and the results, once revealed, do not last long. The beautiful adult that emerges does not feed and lives for only about a week. Interesting that almost no one ever stops to reflect on that sober truth.

Conference on "Progress & Peril of Historic Sites"

2009-11-27T00:55:00.008-05:00

When the public thinks of imperiled historic sites, it probably has in mind the venerable urban structure facing the wrecking ball or the battlefield contending with sprawl and encroachment. Perhaps a stately mansion has fallen on hard times: notably, Edith Wharton's The Mount, caught in a scissors between colossally poor budgetary choices and general hard times last year. Most recently, we learned of the crisis at the far less well-known Montgomery Place in Annandale-on-Hudson, which Historic Hudson Valley was reputedly thinking of selling.

What the public perhaps does not understand is that virtually every historic site is facing hard times and harder choices. The small ones are most in jeopardy: under-resourced to begin with, many have to contend with unsustainable business models, soaring costs for upkeep, inadequate display and storage facilities for incoherent collections, and presentation models and missions more suited to the era of the Model T and Life magazine than Facebook and the mashup.

Preservation professionals have in recent years heatedly debated the very need for our profusion of small house museums. Has the genre outlived its purpose? And even if not, do we really need so many of them? Could not their limited resources be put to better use? Would the few genuinely significant articles in their collections not be better sold off or distributed to institutions that know how to conserve, study, and present them to larger audiences? It comes to resemble the debates about social history a generation or more ago: what is the real benefit, for either the researcher or the rare reader, of yet another study of a single English village?

The Worcester Historical Museum and Historic New England are sponsoring a conference to deal with precisely these issues next week:

Can You Change In Time? Progress & Peril of Historic Sites

A one-day conference
Click here for the agenda.
December 3, 2009

Thursday, December 3, 2009 9 to 5 P.M.
at Trinity Lutheran Church,
73 Lancaster Street, Worcester, MA 01609

The state of historic house museums and sites has been a topic of increasing concern to professionals, volunteers, and community leaders for nearly a decade. Small budgets impacted by difficult financial times, level or diminishing visitation, and confusing stories herald the need for change — of message or mission. Is it time to change? Is there an alternative for your historic house/site?

Our own local organizations are quite aware of the challenge and determined to act sooner rather than later. For example, the Amherst Historical Society & History Museum, whose board I recently joined, held its own public-input and visioning session already at the end of the spring. Representatives of the major sites in Amherst and Northampton will be making presentations in Worcester. I'll be there just in order to watch and learn. I hope to report back here in the near future.

Thanksgiving Day

2009-11-26T23:15:00.010-05:00

Thanksgiving again.

Because I put up a fairly lengthy post last year on the "first Thanksgiving" and its history and foodways, I'll take a somewhat different tack here.

It is a interesting holiday this year in particular because my co-teacher Laura Wenk and I, in our course on "learning how to think and teach like a historian," have included a unit on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, built around The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony, by James and Patricia Scott Deetz. Student background knowledge appears to be about what one would expect: a general conviction that history idealized and transfigured the Pilgrims, coupled with heightened sensibility to the wrongs done to Native Americans; belief in the overwhelming influence of religion in that day: beyond that, little if any specific knowledge in most cases.

Both the Deetzes' book and Nathaniel Philbrick's more recent and much more popular (indeed, bestselling) Mayflower (from which we assigned an excerpt) make the key point that the typical vision of Colonial New England begins with the Pilgrims and then commences again only on the eve of the Revolution, with nothing much in between. For Philbrick,

the story of the Pilgrims does not end with the First Thanksgiving. When we look to how the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags maintained more than fifty years of peace and how that peace suddenly erupted into one of the deadliest wars ever fought on American soil, the history of Plymouth Colony becomes something altogether new, rich, troubling, and complex. Instead of the study we already know, it becomes the story we need to know (p. xii)

For the Deetzes,

While we use the 'first Thanksgiving' as our point of departure, and consider the myths, familiar to millions of Americans. that have emerged concerning the 'Pilgrims,' we then look back to the events that led up to the settlement of Plymouth Colony and, more significantly, the years following that event through 1691, providing glimpses of life in the colony. These years are particularly important because to large numbers of people the early settlers sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower, had a big dinner the following fall, and disappeared. In truth, Plymouth Colony has an ongoing story that is worth recounting in all its colorful detail, enlivened and expanded by contemporary archaeology, cultural research, and living history. (p. xv)

Philbrick draws upon a panoply of primary and secondary textual sources to craft a highly engaging narrative with a strong political lesson, but we chose the Deetzes' book because its use of a wider variety of source material—including court records, probate inventories, architectural and archaeological evidence, folkways and material culture—as well as its analysis of the challenges and techniques of museological portrayal at Plimoth Plantation, seemed ideally suited to the methodological concerns of the course. As a case study of social and cultural history in an early modern rural setting, it moreover forms a perfect complement to our earlier explorations of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale and Natalie Zemon Davis's The Return of Martin Guerre.

We've already given the students a rundown on some features of the original feast: venison and probably waterfowl but no turkey; lots of beer and gunfire. The feast marked a traditional English harvest festival and was in no sense a special day of thanksgiving; indeed, the original one-paragraph account does not even mention prayer. We've asked the students to discuss the first reading assignment when they visit their families for the holiday this week.

It should be interesting, and I hope to report later on some of the results.

In the meantime, a few links to Thanksgiving-related topics:

• Art Buchwald's classic attempt to explain Thanksgiving (le Jour de Merci Donnant) to the French: "Le Grande Thanksgiving"

• Mark Knoller, "History of the Presidential Turkey Pardon" (from CBS)

• Frank James, "How FDR Tried to Make Thanksgiving Arrive Earlier" (NPR)

• "Songs for Stuffing: A Thanksgiving Mix" (NPR)

You've Got (Hate) Mail! (and why this drivel isn't as far from mainstream discourse as you might hope)

2009-11-25T15:56:00.038-05:00

I was trying to recall whether this is the first occasion on which I have received anonymous hate mail. Now that I stop to think about it, I guess I have, on a couple of occasions (obviously, I must not have paid it much attention), and it was standard neo-Nazi stuff.

This item reached me in late September, but more pressing matters kept me from posting about it. At any rate, I walked into the main office one day and found only one item in my mailbox. The battered and opened envelope, bearing both San Francisco and Springfield postmarks, had been sent to two other addresses—one of which incorrectly identified me as working at the University of Massachusetts—before reaching me at Hampshire.

It contained the usual pseudo-scientific Holocaust denial material, charging that eyewitness and subsequent accounts of the extermination process and sundry atrocities were implausible fabrications:

Two things were noteworthy:

1) I evidently earned a place on this mailing list by virtue of teaching a course on antisemitism. NB: The official one-paragraph catalogue entry did not even mention the Holocaust by name. It did, however, include a reference to the contemporary Middle East. (The longer description of the course, which discussed both in a nuanced manner, was not even posted at the time.)

2) Unlike most such screeds, this one was written from a pseudo-left-wing perspective, for it connects US denazification efforts and purported disinformation with anti-communism and denounces the Holocaust as "a late-colonialist myth" whose only purpose in to justify Israeli expansionism and brutality:

It never occurred to me that, by teaching about the undeniable existence of an extermination facility at Treblinka more than half a century ago, I might harm someone on the other side of the globe today. Then again: obviously, these are crude ravings; in that sense, they are insignificant.

What is not as obvious but in fact highly significant is that the anti-Israel rationale embodied in this form of Holocaust denial merely lies at the extreme end of a broad continuum of discourse—but a continuum nonetheless—that stretches well into the realm of respectability. Mind you, not all manifestations of the discourse are necessarily antisemitic. However, the extent to which this particular discourse of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel recapitulates or echoes classic antisemitic themes should give us pause. Designing and teaching my new course has provided a welcome opportunity to think through some of these issues. I’ll try just to sketch the rough parameters of the continuum here.

What unites the deniers and others on the fringe with many mainstream critics of Israel is the disturbing and increasing tendency to introduce references to the Holocaust into debate primarily in order to denounce the existence or actions of the state. There are several basic arguments, each of which has “hard” and “soft” variants.

Certainly, no right-thinking person would accept the hate-mailer’s claim that Zionists fabricated the story of the Holocaust in order to obtain their state. However, many otherwise decent and rational people readily assent to one of several arguments to the effect that Israel and its supporters illegitimately or excessively invoke the Holocaust in order to enrich the state, justify its policies, or shield it from criticism. The harder variants see this practice as deliberate or even quasi-conspiratorial in nature, whereas some of the softer ones regard it as an understandable but unacceptable reaction to historical trauma. By often charging that there is an attempt to silence debate, however, both may end up echoing classic antisemitic tropes regarding Jewish “power” and influence over government and media.

Whereas likening Israelis to Nazis was a practice once largely confined to the cruder “anti-Zionist” propaganda of the USSR and its clients, that taboo has vanished in the past two decades (just try googling "Zionazi" for a start). Even many people close to the mainstream no longer scruple at the comparison, which European, British, and US government bodies now include under definitions of potentially antisemitic discourse. Because the analogy can still generate controversy, however, some groups avoid it out of principle or pragmatism. Rather than invoking the Nazis, they speak of “ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid," which deliver almost as much anti-racist moral firepower, but lower risk of provocation and unintended injury to the user. The softest version is the claim that Israelis have failed to learn the “true” lessons of the Holocaust and cannot see that they have increasingly, although perhaps inadvertently, come to resemble their former oppressors. They, “of all people," we are told—apparently with sympathetic regret, but in fact with condescension—"should know better.” This reproach in fact recapitulates the venerable Christian anti-Judaic trope of Jewish "blindness" to the truth of their own history and tradition. As a result, this version is equally popular in the churches and among postmodern types who relish "irony."

Perhaps the newest argument involves a sort of buyer’s remorse that I have referred to as "the new discourse of regret": the idea that the world made a fateful mistake in creating the State of Israel. It is actually the most insidious argument because, even as it uniquely delegitimizes a member state of the United Nations, it appears to be the most humane and non-judgmental: we’re all victims. It begins by acknowledging that the shameful tradition of European antisemitism and world passivity in the face of Nazism led to the tragedy of the Holocaust. When the world then nobly sought to make amends by creating a Jewish state, it in fact acted precipitously and overcompensated for its own guilt, failing to recognize that it was doing an injustice to the Arabs. There’s plenty of victimhood to go around in this model: tragically, the Jews were in fact victimized twice, first by suffering genocide at the hands of the Nazis and then by being given a state that was doubly cursed because it both turned them into oppressors and thereby failed to bring them the promised permanent freedom from violence and hatred. The Palestinians are then the chief—and NB: only entirely blameless—victims, being forced simply to pay the price for the sins of the Europeans. And as for the Europeans and other outsiders, even they are in some sense really just victims of their own excess of empathy and good intentions. Now they can congratulate themselves on having seen the error of their ways, so that they are free both to wallow in their guilt and to revel in their new-found rectitude. It all sounds perfectly plausible and uplifting. I almost shed a tear myself.

None of this is to deny the legitimacy of even harsh criticism directed against Israel. The aforementioned studies on contemporary antisemitism all make that clear.

The point, rather, is that this is all bad history as well as bad politics. It manages to make several terrible mistakes at once.

• It trivializes the Holocaust by focusing exclusively (and superficially, at that) on its presumed consequences in isolation from its course and causes.

• Instrumentalizing the Holocaust in this manner—above and beyond the fact that this is precisely the mistake of which critics accuse Israel—thereby risks losing any real grasp of both the particular and the universal significance of the catastrophe, which must be understood as a properly historical phenomenon in its own right.

• The fact that the Holocaust, of all things, is now used so frequently as a club with which to beat the Jewish state should set off alarm bells. It betokens a casting off of inhibitions and thus erodes the barrier against open antisemitism.

• The association between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel—or better: Palestine Partition, for we should remind ourselves that the actual UN vote foresaw creation of two states, Arab and Jewish—was genuine, but complex: antisemitism, Zionism, Arab nationalism. and the “question of Palestine” all existed well before 1947. To reduce the tragic Arab-Israeli conflict to a botched quick fix of a mess arising from the Holocaust is to distort the past in ways that make solving the problems of the present all the more difficult.

BDS on Campus: A Generation of Giants Unleashes its Frightful Onslaught

2009-11-25T02:14:00.014-05:00

Evidently I spoke too soon when I gently suggested that the recent BDS conference at Hampshire this past weekend had been a tale of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

When I unsuspectingly arrived on campus on Monday, I was taken aback to see that these signs had sprouted, like dragon's teeth, overnight:

It was of course with no little trepidation that I therefore made my way from the parking lot to my office in Franklin Patterson Hall, one of the sturdiest buildings on campus, built of brick and concrete. To my relief, the structure was standing, exactly as it had been on Friday afternoon.

That's a true story—and an allegory.

Comparative Quackery: The Joke is on BDS

2009-11-23T03:01:00.015-05:00

Sometimes the irony is so delicious that one just has to believe a witty higher power is directing our affairs here on earth. How else to explain the sight that greeted me on Friday afternoon, just as the vaunted national conference of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was getting underway?

Q: What’s the difference between BDS and homeopathy?

A: Not much, actually. Both are frauds that are led by scoundrels, attract the naïve, and have yet to produce any verifiable result, much less, the promised benefit for suffering humanity.

* * *

The bad news:

• It’s embarrassing that my college, which takes justifiable pride in its rigorous and innovative science pedagogy, could open its facilities to a pseudo-scientific movement that has absolutely no clinical validity.

• It’s embarrassing that my college, which purports to "emphasize comparative, historical, and interdisciplinary approaches and encourage critical reflection from multiple perspectives," could host an event whose organizers display such an abysmally oversimplified view of history (compare with this far more nuanced version) and indeed disdain both critical reflection on their own enterprise and the multiple perspectives that others could offer in dialogue.

The good news:

1) The College as an institution does not support either fraud. It rents out its space to outside groups who will pay the fee, and it allows campus organizations to hold their own events.

2) No one takes this stuff seriously anyway.

* * *

Addendum: and just in case that humiliatingly ludicrous SJP statement is ever taken down, I include here a screen shot:

Whither BDS: A generation of giants—or delusions of grandeur?

2009-11-23T02:34:00.022-05:00

The great moment has finally arrived. The gestation period is over.

Break out the cigars.

Just over nine months have passed since the BDS movement triumphantly announced its penetration of the power structures of Hampshire College. As we indicated at the outset and others soon realized, this was in fact idle and impotent boasting rather than date rape (though each scenario is unappetizing in its way; that should tell you something).

Still, let’s take them at their word. Assuming we really can accept paternity (a big "if"), just what did these cocky folks produce?

The elder external boosters were once again premature in shooting off the news of the colossal achievement: in this case, the birth of a mighty movement led by “A new generation of giants."

Well, okay, if you say so. But is there some yardstick by which we measure "giant"? Let's take a look at the prodigious progeny.

Much of the conference consisted (aside from a few pep-rally-type events) of, well, reports of various local efforts, without, well, any particular effects. It further consisted in promoting a mixture of Quixotic master goals (make universities and monster academic pension fund CREF divest; this, although the effort failed at Hampshire, which has practically no endowment at stake) and (more sub rosa) small-scale guerilla actions that fall somewhere between the juvenile and the illegal: e.g. “de-shelve” Israeli products ([1] [2]) in stores. Not exactly the stuff of which Che Guevara was made.

On second thought, the miserable little creature—weak, helpless, and crying out incoherently—really does resemble its putative parent.

From premature climax to anticlimax: that pretty much sums it up.

22 November: St. Cecilia's Day

2009-11-22T23:50:00.013-05:00

For most of us in America, November 22 is the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and that's it, and that's understandable. It was an overwhelming event. It was one of those proverbial moments at which everyone of a certain age can remember exactly where he or she was when the news arrived. It's true even for those of us who, like me, were only small children at the time.

However, I also have another November 22 memory from my—I was going to say, "mature," but as I have yet to reach that state in either the literal or the figurative sense, let me correct that to—"college" years. My music teacher had put me in touch with some other adult students of his—young professionals, all more than half a generation older than I was—who were interested in forming a string quartet of like-minded but not excessively accomplished amateurs. One of them, a generous businessman, with a spectacular antique violin, an elegant house, and a refined aesthetic sense, decided to revive the Baroque tradition of the Saint Cecilia's Day festival.

Because she was known, thanks to a rather slim strand of legend (but wherein does tradition otherwise consist?) as the patron saint of music, it became the custom in England to celebrate her saint's day—November 22—with concerts and other festivities. The two pieces written for the occasion by Purcell

and that by Händel

are now well known. Our local festivities were restricted to a small circle, but we valued it all the more. Our host provided the food and drink. His only requirement was that all the guests perform a work of music in the manner of their choosing, as best they could—and "leave their diffidence at home." All were welcome, amateur and professional alike, but no one could judge, and no one could apologize. It was a fine model of open-minded and egalitarian interaction, and I often have occasion to remember it in other contexts.

22 November 1963: The Kennedy Assassination

2009-11-22T23:48:00.005-05:00

I actually have nothing, new or other, to say about the Kennedy assassination. However, I did want to take opportunity to say something good about History channel for a change. Although I have often been critical of it (in part a matter of disappointed expectations: it could be so much better, along the lines of its European counterparts), I have to say that it has some winners.

Earlier this fall, there was the story of the Kennedy assassination, "JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America," told simply in raw news footage from the time of the murder itself. (I missed Saturday night's program on the first 24 hours after the event and thus cannot offer a judgment on it.) This past week, History also aired the multipart "World War II in HD," the story of the experiences of twelve ordinary Americans in the War, told through diaries and letters, color film footage, and modern interviews. Both made such compelling—even transfixing—viewing because they seemed to offer direct access to human drama.

There's a lesson here: As I've noted before, the worst History channel programs are those in which the content is simply inane and the object is to pander, or there is too clearly a strained attempt to make more serious and legitimate material "interesting" through the use of reenactments and other gimmicks, which are rarely executed well or tastefully. (This latter trend, even in cases that don't lend themselves to costume drama, is both understandable and controversial: [1] [2] [3] [4]; and that's not even taking into account outright fakery and fauxtography). By contrast, the channel does best when it sticks closest to the traditional documentary format. That's not to say that alternatives are not possible, just that the ones they have tried don't work.

Relax, guys. When you're good, you're good. But remember: sometimes, less really is more.

Historic Structures: Another Success for Preserve UMass

2009-11-17T02:47:00.009-05:00

At the 29 September meeting of the Amherst Historical Commission, Joe Larson, Recording Secretary of Preserve UMass, gave us a preliminary briefing on the progress of the inventory of historic resources on the UMass campus undertaken as part of the agreement between the Commonwealth and the University after the latter violated environmental protection and historic preservation procedures in its demolition of old buildings.

The Opening of Massachusetts Agricultural College [predecessor of UMass]

painting in the lobby of the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Preserve UMass has in the meantime issued the following press release

Date: November 8, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Historic Assessment of UMass Amherst Campus Completed

Two years after the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts was placed on the 2007 List of the Ten Most Endangered Historic Resources of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, campus administrators have completed a major step in reversing this designation. An independent professional assessment has been completed of the 112 existing campus buildings built during the period 1728 – 1959, and the University has filed documentation with the Massachusetts Historical Commission on the historic and architectural significance of each building.

As a result of the assessment, 82 UMass buildings will be added to the state’s Inventory of Archaeological and Historic Assets of the Commonwealth, bringing the total University structures so listed to 105. Of these, 54 have been identified as eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, according to the consultants hired by the University: Einhorn Yaffee Prescott of Boston and other locations across the U.S., Vanasse Hangen Brustlin of Watertown, MA, and Pressley Associates of Cambridge, MA.

“We congratulate the University administration for selecting this outstanding team of professionals’ said Professor Emeritus Joseph S. Larson, Corresponding Secretary of the private organization, Preserve UMass, that had pressed for an independent assessment in 2007. “The significance of this assessment is that for the first time the question of the historic and archaeological significance of each of the older buildings has professional standing. This could not have been achieved without the cooperation of the University, the involvement of the over 125 supporters of Preserve UMass, the members of the Town of Amherst Historical Commission, and the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Commission. And we commend the University for retaining the professionals to conduct an assessment of the modern campus buildings, some of which were designed by nationally known architects. Preserve UMass views the combination of historic and modern buildings on the UMass campus as an important living exhibit of American architecture.”

In their report to the University, the consultants recommended establishment of a University of Massachusetts Amherst Historic District, saying that “A number of architects, landscape architects, and planners of local and/or national prominence were involved in the design of the individual buildings and the overall plan of the current University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The aggregate efforts of these design professionals produced a distinctive public university campus landscape, primarily of the mid-19th to mid-20th century, which is unique in Massachusetts.”

Professor Larson reports that Preserve UMass will continue to be involved in historic preservation on the campus. “Our role will be to work for establishment of the Historic District, nomination of the 54 qualified buildings to the National Register, and full consideration of historic, architectural, and archaeological values in future campus construction.”

Note: A list of the 112 buildings and a map of the historic buildings (pdf files) are available from Preserve UMass on request by email to larson@tei.umass.edu.

We welcome this announcement and hope that the principle of respect for historic structures and cooperation with both the local and state historical commissions will now be firmly enshrined as a principle at all members of the Five College Consortium.

[image added]

Jews Behaving Badly (enough, already)

2009-11-17T02:40:00.010-05:00

Like many other people, I followed, with a mixture of serious engagement and detached amusement, the political food fight over the rising Jewish action group J Street, which bills itself as “the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.” Conservatives and many centrists would of course have no truck with the organization from the start. However, some centrists and left-liberals who may initially have been attracted also came to have their doubts, occasioned by a series of actions or statements that seemed to emphasize only criticism of Israel, without support for the idea of a Jewish state or understanding of its security needs. The picture at the time of the conference became, if anything, even more blurred. It was first reported and then denied that the college arm of the movement had decided to drop the designation, “pro-Israel.” In any case, the organization certainly found that many of the attendees did not share the commitment to the first half of that slogan.

The picture was blurred in part also because founder Jeremy Ben Ami likened J Street to Israel’s centrist, big-tent (others would say: characterless and rudderless) Kadima party, a move that angered and puzzled supporters without necessarily winning over skeptics. In an interview, the Atlantic noted, "He declared himself a Zionist; condemned the book "The Israel Lobby"; called America's military aid package to Israel untouchable; and told me he hopes his group angers the non-Zionist left by staking out mainstream Jewish positions on Israel and the peace process -- 'I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us.'" His views, he insisted, were resolutely pro-Israel, which in no way precluded criticism of Israel—in other words, pretty much what J Street always claimed to be. Time will tell which characteristic is the dominant one. New organizations, like adolescents, require time in order to develop distinct and consistent identities. In the meantime, who needs action movies and video games when you can just sit back and watch people slug it out in the blogs?

My point here, however, is not about J Street, and rather, about the way that people talked about it. Internecine Jewish fighting is of course nothing new. There is that old joke told in the days of the British Mandate in Palestine:

Sergeant, reporting to his superior: “We have arrested a dozen Jews! Five Revisionists, four Mizrachis, two Communists, and one General Zionist.”

Officer: “Good work. Where are they?”

Sergeant: “They’re standing outside.”

Officer: “What?! without a guard?!”

Sergeant: “Not necessary. They’re keeping a very sharp eye on one another."

Healthy debate is always a good thing. After all, that’s why J Street’s proponents claim it was founded. Some stupid debate is the normal price of healthy debate, and we all know how to tune out the static. Much of the casual and instinctive (emphasis on the preceding terms) critique of J Street was simply nasty and uninformed and did not attempt to address the issues in a serious way. However, there comes a point at which stupid and nasty cross a line and become unhealthy and vicious. I was therefore revolted (though, as an occasional reader of talkbacks on newspaper sites and blogs, not totally surprised) to see the following image of anti-J Street protesters:

The take of Jewcy (whence this photograph)—“worst swastikas ever”—is probably the best one: you lame-asses, not only are you alone, but you can’t even make a graphically effective poster (I paraphrase).

That response accords with my basic instinct and literary sensibility. Such behavior was the exception, and not the rule; better to slap it down and then move ahead. Still, we ignore or merely mock this sort of nastiness at our peril.

There comes a point at which the infighting and invective cross a line. This is it. The Talmud teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed not because of the Romans, but because of “causeless hatred” among the inhabitants of the land.

The J Street conference took place around the anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The murder in turn took place at a time when right-wing forces were attacking his peace policies with unprecedented venom. The obscene poster depicting him in Nazi SS uniform came to epitomize the atmosphere commonly said to have made his murder possible. (One may recall that his widow, Leah Rabin, long refused to speak to current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, regarding him as complicit in that sort of vile incitement.)

Have these protesters learned nothing? (for example: a real vocabulary? more sophisticated reasoning? or just plain common sense and decency?). Most of the abuse of the Nazi analogy (periodically documented on this site) comes from antisemites and enemies of Israel. It is repulsive, but it is no longer surprising. But should not at least the Jews show a modicum of common sense and restraint when deploying that most potent of analogies? Do they not worry that they desecrate the memory of their dead? How can you criticize people who use the term, “Zionazis,” when you yourself trivialize history and human suffering? It’s just plain stupid. It's a shame. Literally.

I've Joined the Board of the Amherst Historical Society & Museum

2009-11-16T02:53:00.005-05:00

I am pleased to announce that I recently joined the Board of the Amherst Historical Society & Museum.

Like many local historical societies and house museums, this organization faces numerous challenges: financial constraints, changing cultural preferences, and more.

Fortunately, the 250th anniversary, a committed group of supporters, and a Board with a recent record of dynamic and innovative leadership, as Betty Sharpe hands the reins of power (such as they are) to Henry Pope, all suggest that the challenges may be matched by achievements.

In any event, I look forward to the challenges, and to the opportunity to deepen and share my understanding of Amherst and New England history.

What You Should Know Before You Criticize Hampshire College and the BDS Conference

2009-11-16T01:35:00.017-05:00

As we have noted, Amherst tends to generate controversy, and few topics are more controversial than the Middle East, so the combination of the two is a potentially explosive one.

The last thing we need here is an explosion. The political temperature was already running high on campus last semester, as a result of the Gaza conflict and the attempts by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to force divestiture of holdings said to support the Israeli occupation.

The coming SJP-sponsored national conference on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions directed against Israel thus raises the specter of renewed internal strife and external hostility.

In hopes of preventing or minimizing the latter, allow me to state a few simple facts that commentators should consider before reaching for the keyboard and leaping to the attack:

1) SJP and its supporters are entirely within their rights, as a duly registered student organization, and as members of the community exercising their academic freedom, in holding this event.

2) Because this is a student-sponsored event, the fact that it takes place on our campus in no way signals an endorsement, on the part of the College and its administration, of the conference or the statements of any participants. The College intervenes only when safety or violations of the law are at issue.

3) Many claims from inside and outside the College notwithstanding, Hampshire never divested itself, in whole or in part, on political grounds, of investments in Israel or companies that do business with Israel. To begin with, SJP never sought or claimed divestment from "Israel," as such. It targeted several companies that it identified as involved in the occupation. Even that limited attempt was not successful.

It’s a complicated story—which is in part why it lends itself so easily to distortion—but in a nutshell: The College, after reviewing its portfolio, found a large number of companies to be in violation of its socially responsible investment policy. Some of the companies that SJP had targeted were dropped, and some were retained, but in neither case due to any association with the occupation. The story was complicated, but the answer was simple, and that should have been the end of it. After all, if I urge my friend to go green, and she later sells her GM stock out of dissatisfaction with the company’s labor policies, I can’t really claim that she was acting to withdraw her support for our unsustainable carbon-based industrial model. Unfortunately, the myth of divestment persists.

4) The College administration and staff have been working closely with the student organizers in order to ensure that they understand the ground rules and the gathering proceeds smoothly and peacefully. The administration's position is that no divestment took place earlier this year, that any statement to the contrary is a willful misrepresentation of the facts, and that only the trustees and administration are empowered to speak on behalf of the College.

If you object to the premise or actions of the conference, then by all means express your views. That is your right, just as it is the right of the students to express their views. But please, do not attack the College. And, oh, yes: please do check your facts carefully before you hit that "send" button.

Controversial Amherst: Why Are They Saying All Those Terrible Things About Us? Thoughts in advance of the BDS conference at Hampshire College

2009-11-15T02:38:00.034-05:00

Amherst has a deserved reputation as a contentious town. It’s nothing new. Even the early colonists and citizens of the new republic were an ornery bunch. We debate everything to death, the important and the unimportant. We often seem to love our “process” more than getting to the result (after all, what’s the rush? we're enjoying ourselves). The local newspaper remarked on this over a century ago when it marveled that citizens had ever managed to agree on the design for a new Town Hall. People make fun of Town Meeting’s habit of taking a stand on national and global issues, but it actually has a long tradition: our predecessors passed a resolution against the War of 1812. We’ve been criticized for all sorts of things: in recent years, the high school allowed the performance of the “Vagina Monologues” but banned a production of “West Side Story" (here, one typical rant).

Not for nothing did the 250th Anniversary Committee come up with the wonderful slogan (wonderful, not least because it shows that we do sometimes have a sense of humor about ourselves): “Amherst, MA Where only the ‘h’ is silent.” It’s not surprising that we come in for a lot of criticism, ranging from good-natured ribbing (the prevalent left-wing sentiment here long ago earned us the nickname, “The People’s Republic of Amherst”) to rather nastier attacks. Some of the criticism is deserved, and some is not—but much of both is, frankly, distorted. That's regrettable, for distortions sometimes have dangerous consequences.

The most famous recent controversy involves the events of the evening of September 10, 2001, when the Select Board declined a request to endorse the official display of the American flags on the streets beyond the formally allotted dates. Talk about bad timing. To make matters worse, some citizens who spoke against the proposal said they considered the flag a sign of racism, imperialism, tyranny, and state terrorism. Naturally, the national press and conservative blogosphere had a field day. There was, to be sure, a debate to be had about the merits of the actual question, but many critics conflated the most extreme comments from the public with the rather technical decision of the Select Board. As a result, the town was castigated for its alleged lack of solidarity on a day of national tragedy. Local Town Meeting member, political gadfly, and blogger Larry Kelley relentlessly pursued the original issue. When, in 2007, he submitted a warrant article asking that Amherst fly the flag every September 11, Town Meeting handily voted it down.

Just this month, controversy erupted over two issues involving terrorism and civil liberties. The Select Board narrowly endorsed a warrant article that proposed, in order to redress the wrongs associated with the prison at Guantanamo, to bring two cleared detainees to Amherst for resettlement. "Cleared" meant those certified by the government as having committed no crime. Right-wing commentators, such as Boston's Michael Graham, were all over the story and the town, soon followed by others around the country. The Board required police protection at its next session, though Town Meeting went on to approve the article by a wide margin. Much of the negative outside coverage angrily portrayed Amherst as seeking to become some kind of summer camp for “terrorists.” (After all, the town was said to have scorned the flag but scant years earlier.) To be sure, there was some public controversy over the true political character of the two proposed invitees (though the actual warrant article did not concern individuals). However, debate at Town Meeting focused on the perennial issue of whether this local representative body should be in the business of addressing national policy, in this case, particularly because carrying out the proposed action was dependent on a change in federal law. It was noteworthy that Larry Kelley, who allows his patriotism to rank second to none, spoke in favor of the measure in Town Meeting (one proponent—who had faced off against him on the flag issue many years ago—was so taken aback that she leaped up to denounce him as a bigot, not realizing that he had said the opposite of what she claimed; whoops). Kelley also tried, in his blog, to correct media distortions of the issue.

Around the same time, the University found itself embroiled in controversy. The Fifth Annual Colloquium on Social Change invited as a speaker former United Freedom Front radical Raymond Levasseur, who had been convicted and imprisoned for his role in a series of bombings but acquitted in a lengthy Springfield trial on charges of sedition. After a public outcry, especially from conservative commentators and police groups, the University rescinded the invitation. The cancellation did not mollify the conservatives, but it did anger the ACLU. Then the talk was back on. And then it was off again when Levasseur’s parole commission refused to allow him to travel to Amherst. The event finally took place without him. Most humiliating was the sight of the University’s policy swaying back and forth in the wind. Sometimes life here is just plain embarrassing.

Why rehash all this now? Because I see it about to happen yet again. It is with some trepidation that one views the prospect of the coming anti-Israel conference on boycotts, divestment, and sanctions that Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) will convene here next week.

There’s a context for this, too. Controversy over the fighting in Gaza polarized the campus. In early January, President Ralph Hexter posted a long and complex essay on his blog, entitled, "A Call for Nonviolence and Interpretive Charity." It agonizingly tried to tread a very narrow and meandering path, avoided taking sides, and, with an eye to the particular duties of academic communities, affirmed the Enlightenment values of non-violence and reasoned discourse. It called upon members of the community to reply to opposing views only after making the difficult effort to listen empathetically rather than leaping to the riposte. At a time when passions ran high, and among people given by age and temperament (NB I'm thinking of both 18- and 60-year-olds) to thinking in moral absolutes, it was of course bound to please few and infuriate many. (It was also simply too intellectual for many readers demanding a short answer, clear stance, and strong action. Nathan der Weise? biblical hermeneutics? Pangloss? sublunary? what is this: a center of activism or an institution of higher education?) SJP members and their supporters savaged the President in the online talkbacks (which, of course, they were free to do). Following the Trustees' meeting in February, SJP triumphantly claimed, and then persisted in claiming, that it had at last succeeded in its goal of making Hampshire "the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine." That was not in fact what happened. The College, after reviewing its portfolio, found a large number of companies to be in violation of its socially responsible investment policy. Some of the firms targeted by SJP remained in the portfolio. No decisions on retaining or rejecting investments had anything to do with Israel or its policies in the occupied territories. In the end, it's that simple (or should have been).

Critics of the SJP and divestment campaign, for their part, were sometimes equally reckless. Many, knowing the town's reputation for radicalism as outlined above, leaped to conclusions, certain they knew what had happened and why. In particular, some charged that the group had pursued and won from the College divestiture of all holdings associated with Israel, as such—a goal that SJP neither sought nor claimed to have achieved. Some outsiders were rather too quick to hurl the charge of antisemitism without bothering to learn the details of the case. Even some of those whose accusations were more focused criticized the administration and Hampshire community in unappetizing ways.

The result last semester was a tense and dangerous atmosphere on campus, exacerbated by extreme or irresponsible statements from outsiders of all stripes.

We can only hope that both sides will have learned some lessons, and some humility. No one does his or her cause a favor by making unsubstantiated claims or reckless accusations. We all have a chance to learn from our mistakes and to show our better sides to one another and the outside world this time.

We can be sure that others will be watching—very closely.

For that matter: we'll be watching closely, too. Please get your facts straight.

Hampshire BDS Conference Beginning to Attract Wider Attention

2009-11-14T15:46:00.013-05:00

Next week's Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions conference organized by Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine is beginning to attract attention in the wider world.

• Already in September, a blog in The Nation (never a reliable source on these matters) ran a piece promoting the event. The title, "Activists Build on Historic Israel Divestment Victory," pretty much says it all, repeating the manifest falsehood that Hampshire College, which was the first to divest from South Africa, "made history (and controversy) again as the first college to divest from Israeli occupation."

This is not the "Wizard of Oz," so closing your eyes, clicking your heels three times and repeating the mantra still will not change the reality. Saying it is so does not make it so.

• On the other side, Jon Haber has started to post a running commentary (only satire, so far) on the widely read Solomonia. In the meantime, his own blog, Divest This!, features those "light" pieces as well as other, more serious ones, for example, calling attention to the failure of recent BDS efforts.

I expect there will be a good deal more coverage as the date of the event approaches, and I'll try to keep up with it here.

Trondheim University Unanimously Rejects Boycott of Israel

2009-11-12T16:48:00.008-05:00

It's ironic that, just as a major Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions organizing conference is about to take place at Hampshire College, the BDS movement suffered a major setback. The Board of Governors of the prestigious Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) of Trondheim today unanimously rejected an academic boycott of Israel.

As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Had the proposal passed, NTNU would have been the first Western university to sever ties with Israeli universities.

"As an academic institution, NTNU's mission is to stimulate the study of the causes of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and how it can be resolved. This means that the university is also dependent on being able to cooperate with Israeli academics and hear their views on the conflict," the 12 board members said in a statement released by the university.

In fact, although board members took time to express their views on the Middle East—and in doing so, many chose to criticize the occupation—not a single one even spoke in favor of the proposal.

Professor Bjørn Alsberg of NTSU, who led the local opposition, explained in Haaretz:

"The main arguments raised were that Norwegian universities should not [make] their own foreign policies, and that a boycott would be harmful to NTNU."

According to Alsberg, who collected signatures from over 100 NTNU scholars against the boycott, the move was prevented due to "a combination of factors." He said these included media attention; opposition to the boycott by the Norwegian Ministry for Higher Education; and petitions, including his own.

But Erez Uriely, director of the Oslo-based Center against Anti-Semitism, said the boycott was prevented largely thanks to Alsberg's petition.

"Norwegian politicians often take anti-Israeli positions and then renege when this creates an outcry," he said. "The petition against a boycott of Israel at NTNU is an unusual event which tipped the scale."

Press reports generally attribute the defeat at least in part to unexpectedly strong opposition from academics around the world. Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, for example, collected some 3500 signatures in protest in the span of a week. And the American Association of University Professors, a leading organization defending the rights of faculty and academic freedom, weighed in with its powerful voice. It reiterated its principled opposition to all academic boycotts (the detailed exposition, prompted by the first major attempt to boycott Israeli universities in 2005, should be mandatory reading). Notably, it in addition forcefully rejected the oft-advanced analogy to the anti-apartheid movement and praised the academic freedom found in Israel's universities:

Years ago the AAUP supported a comprehensive economic boycott of South Africa’s apartheid regime, but we have always opposed focused boycotts of academic institutions. As a number of Norwegian faculty members have pointed out, despite its problems, Israel has the best record of supporting academic freedom of any country in the area. Israeli academics exercise their academic freedom by both supporting and criticizing government policies. A boycott applying to Israeli faculty members thus paradoxically punishes some of the country’s most vocal critics.

But the AAUP’s policy against academic boycotts—detailed in our 2006 statement on the subject--is based on the still more fundamental principle that free discussion among all faculty members worldwide should be encouraged, not inhibited. Certainly those Norwegian faculty members already working on joint projects with Israeli colleagues should not have their academic freedom taken away from them. In the long run, more, not less, dialogue with Israeli faculty members is an important way to promote peace in the region.

Simple but strong words. And dialogue is the key word.

Anti-Israel Activism: Coming Soon to a Campus Near You!

2009-11-11T02:21:00.035-05:00

Well, here, actually. Next week.

It has been known for quite some time that the Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine were planning to hold a national event. The publicity contains the predictable slogans, descriptions, and claims.

What & Where: This fall from November 20th through the 22nd, students, faculty, and staff from around the country who are engaged in Palestine solidarity activism will converge for a conference on campus Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). This conference has three key goals:

1) To co-educate and share resources amongst campus organizers on the process of initiating BDS campaigns on campuses
2) To strategize tactics to address the needs of different campuses in carrying out BDS campaigns
3) To bring together Palestine-solidarity campus groups that have or have not met under a larger network in order to strive towards a coordinated national BDS campaign.

There have been many BDS conferences around the country, but rarely have they focused exclusively on the campus movement. This conference therefore presents an exceptional and important opportunity for this movement.

Why: In July of 2005, “a clear majority of Palestinian civil society called upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.” In addition, BDS is a non-violent means of protest and action that campuses in the United States can directly engage in to effectively stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. A similar strategy was adopted in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and campus groups played a large role in helping spark and maintain that successful movement.

As campus members in the United States, we are directly complicit in perpetuating the injustices committed against the Palestinian people – our schools’ money is invested in companies that directly profit from Israel’s militarism, annexation of Palestinian land, and apartheid practices. After sixty-years of displacement, over forty-years of occupation, a two-year old siege, and in light of the recent invasion of Gaza and the continuing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, we must act now to cultivate the BDS movement in the United States. As members of academic communities, we can engage BDS as a means of applying economic and public pressure on Israel to abide by international law and we can change the discourse around Palestine/Israel in this country.

What struck me most, then, was another e-mail promoting the event, and not only because of its undisciplined typography (though it's pretty bad):

From: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (uscampaign@mail.democracyinaction.org)
Subject: Campus BDS: Hampshire Was First, Who's Next?

Boycotts Go Back to School!
This fall, as college students return to campus, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, in partnership with Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine, is organizing a five-city boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) tour across the country.
Ever since the dynamic student organizers at Hampshire got their university to divest from corporations supporting Israeli occupation and apartheid, we have been planning with them how to spread successful campus boycott and divestment campaigns to other campuses around the country.

Now, for the BDS movement to claim that SJP "got their university [sic] to divest from corporations supporting Israeli occupation and apartheid" and can therefore teach others "how to spread successful boycott and divestment campaigns to other campuses" is rather like General William Westmoreland, fresh from Vietnam, boasting about his ability to teach a successful counterinsurgency campaign.

Both the US military and the SJPers can create whatever "narratives" they wish to in order to claim victory in this battle or that, but the fact remains, they failed to achieve their ultimate aims. In short: they lost.

I judge every political action by the dual standard of principle and pragmatism, and this one fails both tests. As readers of these pages know, I am opposed to the BDS movement, which I consider both unjust and wrongheaded for several reasons (blanket academic boycotts, which violate the very ethos of academe; and the misuse of the apartheid analogy, for a start). However, I don't want to fight that fight here. I'm not going to convince the SJP people, and they're not going to convince me, and that's fine. Another of my fundamental principles is not wasting time and energy.

I know that many members and supporters of SJP sincerely believe that they are fighting injustice and working for peace in a way that will benefit both sides. Some of us may even agree to some extent on the problems and the ultimate end, if not the means. In any case, I work well with colleagues and students on both sides of the issue. That is as it should be: We are duty-bound to engage one another respectfully in our formal and professional capacities, regardless of our personal views. However, one of the hallmarks of an intellectual community should be our willingness to engage one another’s personal and political views, when the occasion arises, with equal rigor and respect. In that respect, we have failed. Earlier this year, at the time of the fighting in Gaza and controversy over divestment, the atmosphere on campus became so tense and intolerant that it was commonly described as “toxic.” Many members of the community who dissented from the SJP view, which predominated in the public square, reported feeling silenced or intimidated.

The issue is not who was in the majority or minority, or “right” or “wrong.” Rather, it is that self-appointed guardians of political and ethical purity conveyed, by accident or design, the message that certain views were simply beyond the pale. The most dismaying thing was thus the lack of civil and serious conversation at an institution whose motto is, “to know is not enough.”

This is not merely a local problem, for our college is but a microcosm of the situation in American academe as a whole. The former PLO journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who now works for the Jerusalem Post, was shocked when he visited the US around the same time and found himself threatened and denounced as a Nazi for questioning the simplistic anti-Israel orthodoxy:

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s 'apartheid system' is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my ‘even-handed analysis’ of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.

A group of faculty and staff on our campus is working to promote a more civil climate befitting an institution of higher learning and will soon make itself heard. In the meantime, I am making my own plea here.

In that spirit of engagement and dialogue, then, let me address the question from the pragmatic angle and just make two points:

(1) Setting aside differences of interpretation about the political actions of either Israelis or Palestinians: Both sides agreed in 1993 to recognize one another, cease conflict and incitement, and work for peace. Helping to achieve peace, as has often been said, means being pro-peace rather than merely pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. The BDS movement, however, demonizes and ascribes all blame to one side. Its members think that an increasingly isolated Israel will be either moved or forced to make concessions. The opposite is true. Nations do not show “flexibility” when they believe their vital interests or very existence to be at stake. One need but consider the evolution of the Israeli left, which enthusiastically supported the Oslo process but, in the wake of the Second Intifada and the conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza, has become increasingly skeptical and pessimistic.

It has often been said that Israel's popular songs are among the best barometers of national sentiment. It was a telling sign when the controversial war in Lebanon in 1982, widely viewed as a war of choice rather than necessity, failed to generate any memorable hits comparable to those of 1967 and 1973.

I cannot help but think of two Israeli hit songs from 1973 (Hed-Arzi Records, BAN 14133): It was the era in which things began to change. The (over)confidence of the aftermath of the Six Day War gave way to anguished self-examination in the era of the Yom Kippur War and declining sympathy abroad.

One song was called, "The Whole World is Against Us" (Ha'olam Kulo Negadenu). It was ironic and at once resigned and defiant. The key line was:

"The whole world is against us; never mind, we'll get by; we don't give a damn about them anyway."

The second song was called, "Next Year" (Be'shana Haba'ah), and unlike the first, it became quite famous, even abroad. It never mentioned war or peace or politics, but it was all about a world of peace and normality. It was a dream about the absence of war:

Next year we will sit on the porch and count migrating birds.
Children on vacation will play catch between the house and the fields.

You will yet see, you will yet see, how good it will be next year.

Red grapes will ripen till the evening, and will be served chilled to the table.
And languid winds will carry to the crossroads old newspapers and a cloud.

You will yet see, you will yet see, how good it will be next year.

Next year we will spread out our hands towards the radiant light.
A white heron like a light will spread her wings and within them the sun will rise.

You will yet see, you will yet see, how good it will be next year.

Each side has been unable to overcome the fear that it is faced by an implacable and untrustworthy enemy. Each bristles at being told that it is the more threatening and less forthcoming. That’s part of the problem. Let us agree that "ending the occupation" is a desirable goal (though that deceptively simple shorthand contains a world of complexity). However, each side will need to make painful compromises. In more positive and pointed terms, let us say: each side needs to feel that it must and can afford to take risks for peace.

In the case of Israel, then, the world should want to encourage the spirit reflected in “Next Year." A nation that believes peace to be within reach will strive for that goal. A nation that believes “The Whole World is Against Us” has no reason—indeed, would be foolish—to take great, much less, existential risks. That, unfortunately, is precisely the attitude that the BDS movement reinforces.

As much as I may incline toward the skeptical or even cynical (this is what comes of studying modern European history for a living), I am by nature a pragmatic and positive person who would rather accomplish something useful than score points or win abstract victories.

(2) Hence, my call here to focus on actions and organizations that can actually make a positive difference.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a tragic and seemingly intractable one, which therefore divides the campus. However, it can also help to bring us together if we direct our efforts to support those in the region who want and seek peace: in Khaled Abu Toameh's words,

“Jews and Arabs” who “are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world . . . . ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning [and] just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.”

This year, Hampshire College has gained notoriety as a place of controversy and intolerance. Several of us who have agonized over the conflict there and atmosphere here have said that we would like to focus on investment in peace rather than divestment from Israel.

Students, acting on their own, have chosen to organize a conference on boycotts, sanctions, and divestment. That is their choice. How much more fitting it would be if the College, as such, could convene a conference on teaching respectful dialogue on the topic of the Middle East, the aim of which is understanding rather than defeating or even just persuading one’s interlocutor. Would it not be a greater intellectual and moral act to be able to train teams that can teach "how to spread successful dialogue campaigns to other campuses"?

And what better way to teach understanding and peace-making than by listening to those who are doing this hard work on the ground: Arabs and Israelis themselves? Many small and brave organizations have been creating the sort of dialogue that we need to emulate here. I hope to highlight some of their work in future postings. Here's one example, for a start: We have already hosted visitors from and sent students to the Arava Institute, where Israelis, Arabs, and others come together to learn cooperation in the context of environmental studies.

For that matter, why can we not establish a vigorous program of regular academic exchange involving Hampshire and Israeli and Palestinian students? We have arrangements with Berlin and Olomouc—why not Jerusalem?

Many of us here, I believe and hope, would prefer that Hampshire be known as a leader in bridge-building rather than boycotts, dialogue rather than divestment, and scholarly exchange rather than sanctions. What better role for an institution that likes to claim the title of leading innovative and experimenting college in the country?

Cartouche from "Palestine," in Conrad Malte-Brun, Atlas Complet (Paris, 1812)

Grapevine and tent with the words, "Palestine" and (in Hebrew) "Israel,"

presumably an echo of Micah 4:4 and Numbers 4:5:

"But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid";

"How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!"

Count Me Out

2009-11-06T02:43:00.004-05:00

We have to develop a counternarrative to explain what we do; we don't need more [if there were an html code for scornful tone of voice, I would insert it before this noun] "data"!

— colleague, in debate about the means of improving student retention and measuring educational outcomes

One of the big buzzwords in education and management, and—well, come to think of it—almost every field of endeavor is "assessment." I once went to a whole conference dedicated to it, though I didn't realize it till I got there. Boy, was that a mistake (and this, even before the airport was snowed in and the foundation didn't want to spring for the hotel room; but I digress). I thought we were going there to share project results, and we did that, but a large portion of the weekend was devoted to rather inane lectures and exhortations on the topic of assessment. And in case we forgot any of the material, one hectoring consultant gave us each a free mousepad on which were imprinted the seven principles of "planning an evaluation." An object to be treasured.

It's easy to make fun of this drivel, but I know that there was an underlying purpose. Individuals and organizations are increasingly held accountable: to demonstrate effective use of funds, or simply to document their claims. And, in order to do that, one has to have evidence. Most claims about performance are expressed in terms that are comparative and thus at least implicitly measurable. Indeed, how can you possibly tell—much less, demonstrate to someone else— that whatever you are doing has increased or improved without recourse to some quantitative measure?

I can understand and sympathize with some of the faculty resistance to the creeping culture of consultants, what is seen as administrative micromanagement or surveillance, and so forth. At least these are things that one can debate. It's similar to the problem of "No Child Left Behind" and an emphasis on standardized testing that leads to "teaching to the test" rather than teaching in order to convey anything of greater substance. Fine.

Far deeper and more dismaying, though, is the inveterate resistance to measurement, as such, indeed, the notion that any sort of quantifiable evidence is weaker than descriptive or anecdotal evidence, by definition a "fiction," and generally just not something to be taken seriously.

One thing that always amazes me: No one ever (well, until the previously cited speaker and others of a like mind—or mindlessness) boasts about being illiterate, yet it is all too common to hear supposedly educated academics say, "oh, I don't understand graphs," or "statistics confuse me."

Already two decade ago, John Allen Paulos observed, with alarm:

Innumeracy, an inability to deal comfortably with the fundamental notions of numbers and chance, plagues far too many otherwise knowledgeable citizens. The same people who cringe when words such as 'imply' and 'infer' are confused react without a trace of embarrassment to even the most egregious of numerical solecisms. I remember once listening to someone at a party drone on about the difference between 'continually' and 'continuously.' Later that evening we were watching the news, and the TV weathercaster announced that there was a 50 percent chance of rain for Saturday and a 50 percent chance for Sunday, and concluded that there was therefore a 100 percent chance of rain that weekend. The remark went right by the self-styled grammarian, and even after I explained the mistake to him, he wasn't nearly as indignant as he would have been had the weathercaster left a dangling participle. In fact, unlike other failings which are hidden, mathematical innumeracy is often flaunted: 'I can't even balance my checkbook.' 'I'm a people person, not a numbers person.' Or 'I always hated math.'

He has some explanations:

Part of the reason for this perverse pride in mathematical ignorance is that its consequences are not usually as obvious as are those of other weaknesses.

He further attributes this arrogant ignorance in part to flawed education, but mainly to psychological factors:

Some people personalize events excessively, resisting an external perspective, and since numbers and an impersonal view of the world are intimately related, this resistance contributes to an almost willful innumeracy.

Quasi-mathematical questions arise naturally when one transcends one's self, family, and friends. How many? How long ago? How far away? How fast? What links this to that? Which is more likely? How do you integrate your projects with local, national, and international events? with historical, biological, geological, and astronomical time scales?

People too firmly rooted to the center of their lives find such questions uncongenial at best, quite distasteful at worst. Numbers and 'science' have appeal for these people only if they're tied to them personally

—Innumeracy (NY, 1988), 3-4, 80-81

Solipsism over statistics: perfectly explains what I see around me every day.

Whatever the explanation, it's really a disgrace. Or is it an embarrassment? Oh, well, seven of one, a half dozen of another.

Eye-Sore

2009-11-06T01:25:00.009-05:00

"We're still tied up in the word and the number and that old hierarchy. The image was there before the word, and we are really going very fuddy-duddy."

—faculty member, in discussion of curriculum and standards, criticizing the emphasis on improving student writing, analytical reasoning, and quantitative skills

Huh?

Can't remember when I last heard the term, "fuddy-duddy." Come to think of it, anyone old enough to use it without irony must have become one himself.

Dude! It's the twenty-first century. Time to put those bell bottoms out for the tag sale.

Not quite sure why, if the image was there before the word, it is regressive to emphasize the latter. Then again, if you don't value logical reasoning . . . And as for that "number" stuff: try making sense of the financial crisis or healthcare reform without it.

The Write Stuff

2009-11-06T00:52:00.008-05:00

"I'm curious as to why we think all students need to write well."
—faculty member in discussion about requirements and standards

Oh, I don't know:

Because this is an institution of higher learning?

So that they won't be illiterate idiots?

Geez.

In fairness, I believe the point had something to do with the need to value visual arts and expressive culture, as well. No argument there, in principle.

The fact remains, however: Many skills are important, but in a given context, there are hierarchies. There is, after all, a reason that, when I go to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver's license, I am given a vision rather than hearing test.

And colleagues wonder why people hold us and our institutions of higher learning in such low esteem.

Amherst Then and Now: "a rat-tailed, razzle-dazzle ball of energy," or "paranoia—punch-drunk with intellectualism"?

2009-11-05T01:58:00.006-05:00

Amherst Town Meeting concluded in what seemed to be record time: a mere two sessions. All proposed measures, from zoning changes to the controversial proposal to bring Guantanamo detainees here, passed.

As we stand poised between politics and history, I am reminded of the epigraph of Frank Prentice Rand's The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light a pretentiously titled but in fact very useful volume from our centennial era (Amherst Historical Society, 1958):

Parable

Three men were, as the saying goes, looking at Amherst, and loving her.
One of them said, "She's a madonna lily,"
"Do you mean that she's like a madonna lily?"
"No, she is a madonna lily."
Another said, "She's a rat-tailed, razzle-dazzle ball of energy."
The third man said, "She's paranoia—punch-drunk with intellectualism."
A small boy, who had been hiding, blew a strident toot on his toy trumpet, and ran away to join his playmates at Hartling Stake.

Okay. I have no idea what it means, either.

Guantanamo in Amherst

2009-11-04T22:35:00.005-05:00

Amherst Town Meeting approves measure to invite cleared Guantanamo
detainees--overwhelmingly, by voice vote.
Sent from my iPhone

Breaking news: Anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss dead at age 100

2009-11-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort
L'anthropologue et ethnologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche à l'âge de 100 ans, indique, mardi 3 novembre, l'Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales.

2 November 1917: The Balfour Declaration Paves the Way for a Jewish National Home

2009-11-02T23:54:00.017-05:00

The declaration by the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, honorary president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, paves the way for the creation of a modern Jewish state.

Medal issued to commemorate the 50th

anniversary of the Declaration

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

In this age of growing global "buyer's remorse" concerning the creation of the State of Israel, the Declaration has been subject to increasing criticism. Most of it, of course, is not as vulgar as the statement by the official Palestine News Agency (WAFA), which today called the occasion "black day in the history of the Palestinian people, also in the history of humanity, and a blow to justice and international legitimacy," and in addition criticized the UN Partition vote:

Jews have been able to exploit that clip from Arthur Balfour known proximity
of the Zionist movement, and then the Mandate, and the decision of the
General Assembly in 1947

though failing to note that the latter would have created the longed-for Palestinian state more than 60 years ago. (An interesting lens on the prospects for dialogue, peace, and reconciliation, incidentally.)

Still, the document and the motives behind it are rather more complex than even less crude interpretations might suggest. Far from giving the Zionists carte blanche, the Declaration in its final form was a carefully worded, deliberately ambiguous text, intended to serve, first and foremost, British imperial interests—which themselves were more subtle and multifaceted than many commentators imagine. More on all that later, perhaps. In the meantime, one example.

Nowadays, with the presumed benefit of hindsight, we probably tend to focus on the phrase, "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," while passing over, unthinkingly, the subsequent phrase: "or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." The difference is instructive—and elusive. The first reference is deliberately and explicitly to civil and religious rather than national rights. In other words, the document sees a national home for one people and the human rights of peoples of another nationality living within it as entirely reconcilable. This was an article of faith, indeed, a matter of necessity in the attempt to remake the post-Great War world, whether on the basis of Wilsonian principles or Realpolitik. Because national-political and ethnic boundaries could not be identical and at the same time yield functional states with contiguous territories, attempting to apply the vaunted principle of self-determination for any given people in the lands of the former multi-ethnic empires of the Central Powers necessarily led to the presence of national minorities. Hence, minority rights, sometimes codified by treaty, became a prominent issue. In that sense, the future Palestine Mandate was really no different from Czechoslovakia or Poland.

The second phrase, however, presents a somewhat different challenge. Why should support for Zionist goals and creation of a Jewish "national home" prompt a statement about Jews living elsewhere? The original draft language proposed by the Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow referred to "the national home of the Jewish people," in keeping with established doctrine. The British government insisted on the indefinite article. One of the implicit issues here was one that the Zionists had always had to contend with: the prospect that, if a Jewish state were established, either the Jews living elsewhere would be suspected of dual loyalty, or the existing states might seize the opportunity to expel them against their will. Some Jews feared that the clause might in fact embolden antisemitic expulsionists. Balfour himself evidently thought that the action and the clause would improve and clarify matters: Jews who wanted to emigrate to a national home could do so, while those who chose to remain where they were would in so doing incontrovertibly demonstrate their loyalty and, accordingly, assimilate all the more rapidly and fully.

Rededication of Amherst's South Church After Preservation Work and Energy-Efficiency Improvements

2009-11-01T23:59:00.005-05:00

Nick Grabbe, "South Church celebrates 'new life'," Amherst Bulletin, 30 October:

South Congregational Church has just completed more than $500,000 in structural and energy efficiency improvements to its 1824 building on the South Amherst common.

At this Sunday's 10 a.m. service, the building will be rededicated. During her sermon, the Rev. Caroline Meyers will display items that were found in the walls, including old church bulletins, newspapers and nails, a beveled mirror, and a jelly jar with jelly still in it.

"The church really wants to make a pledge to the future of the church that says this building is not just for us," Meyers said. "We see it as a place where we want to continue to be a community of the faithful for generations to come." (read the rest)

It is interesting to note the contrast with North Church. The latter has far fewer members, struggled heroically to come up with the funds for emergency repairs following storm damage to the steeple and roof, and then saw its plea for a modest $ 7000 in Community Preservation Act funds to complete the repairs rejected at last spring's Town Meeting. Both churches are "contributing structures" in their respective national historic register districts, and we can only hope that both will continue to generate the loyalty and resources that they need. They are part of the cultural patrimony (as the French would say) of the town as a whole.