Trump and Perverse Pearl Harbor Analogies

Normally, I would reserve the time around the anniversary of Pearl Harbor for posting about the attack itself, rather than the dismaying consequences for US domestic history (there is plenty of time for that at other times of year, especially the Japanese American Day of Remembrance).

However, I'll bend that rule this year.

In the wake of Donald Trump's demand that the government "shut down" entry to the US by Muslims (see previous post), some of his enthusiastic supporters helpfully sought to justify the proposal by likening it to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Pressed on the matter, Trump, who usually doubles down on every claim, only half-owned this position, citing FDR's anti-naturalization proclamations against German and Italian as well as Japanese aliens. Pressed still further, Trump waffled. When asked whether he was praising the World War II internment camps for Japanese Americans, he told both Joe Scarborough and George Stephanopoulos that he was not, but he was less definitive in replying to the question from Time:  "I certainly hate the concept of it. But I would have had to be there at the time to give you a proper answer."

In point of fact, of course, the issue turns less on the treatment of enemy aliens than of American citizens whose ethnicity was their only link to the Axis powers. And here, our citizens were treated very differently. Although the large German and Italian American populations had significant elements sympathetic to fascism, whereas--in the words of the Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives--"No Japanese American or Japanese national was ever found guilty of sabotage or espionage," it was the latter who were singled out for collective internment.

That didn't turn out very well.

Whether you are familiar with the story or need a refresher, here's a little piece from the vaults, discussing the climate of fear that led to the internment order and caused many Americans to applaud or at least acquiesce in it.

* * *

Other posts on the Japanese American internment camps and related topics.

Even Scarier Than Halloween Bad History: Everyday Ignorance

Both kidding and serious concerns about bad documentaries notwithstanding: I know that, were I to lay out the reasons that "The Burning Times" is an atrocious travesty of history, I could have an intelligent discussion with my Hampshire College classes.

Sometimes we forget how lucky we here in the Five College Consortium are, privileged to work with students who are on the whole smart and well educated or at least educable.

Not everyone is as lucky.

Consider, for example, this footage from Texas Tech.

Sure, sure, these things have a sensationalistic "gotcha" quality about them and may well not be representative. Still, can you imagine how any American claiming to be educated could not know who won the Civil War? or even what the two sides were? See for yourself.


(h.t. wj)

Pandering ghost tours and bad witchcraft documentaries pale in comparison.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And You Thought Halloween Was Scary? How About Teaching Bad History About Witchcraft??

Often as not it's bad history rather than scary costumes that forces historians to turn away and scream in terror every Halloween.

I was dismayed to see that Hampshire College--admittedly, the Spiritual Life Center and Community Partnerships for Social Change, rather than an academic class--was sponsoring a screening of one of the worst pseudohistorical documentaries for the occasion.

"The Burning Times" is a 1990 piece in the National Film Board of Canada's "Women and Spirituality" series. It has developed a popular following for all wrong reasons, which will become immediately obvious:

This documentary takes an in-depth look at the witch hunts that swept through Europe. False accusations and trials led to massive torture and burnings at the stake, and ultimately to the destruction of an organic way of life. The film questions whether the widespread violence against women and the destruction of the environment today can be traced back to those times. 

The intention of my Hampshire colleagues was good, I am sure: to add some intellectual content to a holiday long known here for its substance- and sex-related excesses, to highlight the historical oppression of women, and to acknowledge neo-paganism within the scope of spiritualities in the college community.

Unfortunately, the film is a slick and sloppy New Age compilation of errors, half-truths, omissions, and exaggerations.

Given that "The Burning Times" describes the city of Trier as "French" even though all the signs on the buildings shown are in German and it belonged to France only briefly--from 1794 to 1815, never during the Middle Ages--an attentive viewer might think to question the film's larger claims such as the characterization of the witch hunts as "the women's Holocaust" (at 14:19).

I remember one colleague here in the Five College Consortium lamenting to me that whenever students saw "The Burning Times," it took him at least half a semester to unteach the idiocy they had absorbed. Some years ago, when I saw that WGBY, the local Public Television station, was showing this sorry film during a pledge drive (adding insult to injury), I went so far as to call them up and explain that I was therefore not going to donate any money that year.

Yes, it's that bad.

The work of any professional historian will suggest how much more complex the reality was.

Even a glance at David Hall's appropriately titled essay on "Witchcraft and the Limits of Interpretation" (New England Quarterly, 1985) should make anyone pause before making sweeping generalizations covering many centuries and countries.  But his piece is rather heavy going.


For those seeking the bird's eye view, Brian Pavlac, author of Witch Hunts in the Western World, helpfully lists:

Ten Common Errors and Myths about the Witch Hunts, Corrected and Commented

1. The Witch Hunts were an example of medieval cruelty and barbarism.
2. The Church was to blame for the Witch Hunts.
3. The Witch Hunts specifically targeted women.
4. The Witch Hunts were an attempt at "femicide" or "gendercide," meaning the persecution of the female sex, equivalent to genocide.
5. The Witch Hunts were all alike.
6. Millions of people died because of the Witch Hunts.
7. People condemned during the Witch Hunts were burned at the stake.
8. During the time of the Witch Hunts, witches actually existed and worked magic.
9. In modern usage, the term "Witch Hunt" can be applied to any persecution of a group of people.
10. Modern witchcraft/magick/wicca is a direct descendent of those practices done by people during the Witch Hunts of 1400-1800.

(detailed explanation of each here on his Women's History Resource Site).

Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance deal specifically with the film:

Overview:

We are not going to win many friends in the Neopagan communities with the following essay. However, we believe it to be accurate. It is a story that needs to be told.

The facts are that almost all of the information that is generally accepted as truth by the Neopagan community about the "burning times" is wrong:

• The total number of victims was probably between 50,000 and 100,000 -- not 9 million as many believe. 

• Although alleged witches were burned alive or hung over a five century interval -- from the 14th to the 18th century -- the vast majority were tried from 1550 to 1650. 

• Some of the victims worshiped Pagan deities, and thus could be considered to be indirectly linked to today's Neopagans. However most apparently did not. 

• Some of the victims were midwives and native healers; however most were not. 

• Most of the victims were tried executed by local, community courts, not by the Church. 

• A substantial minority of victims -- about 25% -- were male. 

• Many countries in Europe largely escaped the burning times: Ireland executed only four "Witches;" Russia only ten. The craze affected mostly Switzerland, Germany and France. 

• Eastern Orthodox countries had few Witch trials.[....]

• Most of the deaths seem to have taken place in Western Europe in the times and areas where Protestant - Roman Catholic conflict -- and thus social turmoil -- was at its maximum.

Any questions?

If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that changing historical facts is no way to redress historical injustice or bring about historic change. Even would-be radicals need to do their homework.

And You Thought Halloween Was Scary? How About Historians Giving in to the Ghosts?

Halloween brings its share of inanity and insanity, ranging from offensive costumes to drunkenness and vandalism. Still, my pet peeve is all the bad history.

One  topic of perennial concern to people in the museum and historic preservation world is: ghosts. Do we prostitute ourselves when we indulge the public taste for these apparition-oriented events?

There is a range of opinion, from those who pander, to those who categorically shun any such programming. Most of us, I think, hold to a middle stance: it is fine to have programs that engage or teach about local supernatural legends, it's really bad (certainly: cheesy) to do events that feature ghostly special effects (a house museum is not a funhouse), and it's absolutely unacceptable to endorse and enable pseudoscience such as so-called paranormal research.

Tennessee archivist Gordon Belt (@GordonBelt) wrote a classic piece on the dilemma of "haunted history" and "heritage tourism" a couple of years back. In a very different vein, "anarchist house museum" guru Franklin Vagnone (@FranklinVagnone) argues that a good-natured embrace of the ghost-hunting fad--here, by the Morris Jumel Mansion--can be worthwhile:





Two curious things about that: (1) although the historic Morris Jumel house serves as the setting, it is not mentioned by name in the film  (2) and indeed, the skit describes the action as taking place in "Amherst, Massachusetts." Alas, there is no structure as grand as that in our fair town. Not the first time people found the good Amherst name worth appropriating, though. You may recall that the fake documentary about the "Blair Witch" (fake) documentary included an interview with a fictional "Charles Moorhouse, Professor of Folklore, Hampshire College."

The Morris Jumel House, perhaps more controversially, also opened its doors to the Travel Channel's "Ghost Adventures" program. Two clips (1, 2) and, if you prefer, the whole:


Ghost Adventures S09E03 George Washington Ghost by horror_motion

It's certainly free publicity that the site would not otherwise get. Is that nonetheless too high a price to pay? You be the judge.

By the way, it's good to be reminded that there are practical downsides to going for the ghosts: a student who worked in one major house museum told me that visitors broke at least one object object while trying to navigate the darkened edifice on one such "ghost tour." Not what we call responsible collection management. Forewarned is forearmed.

Speaking of forearms, I was taken aback to see that the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, is prominently featuring a severed arm reputed to come from the battlefield of Antietam in its "Behind the Screams" (yes, really) Halloween tour.

"But," they assure us, "it's not just a marketing gimmick." Yeah, right.

Still, I was shocked to see the museum opening its door to paranormal researchers and allowing these frauds to spend the night--though for a healthy fee, of course. A museum of science, of all places? (admittedly, it's called "the most haunted place in Frederick" Maryland, but I have no idea how many others there are or how haunted they may be).

Do those who give in to the ghosts prostitute themselves? Perhaps. But then, maybe they're just coolly calculating their interests and laughing all the way to the bank.

My Take on Akin: The Republicans' Dismal Science

 Are the Republicans leading us back into the seventeenth century (or beyond)?

The Rape of the Levite's Concubine, from:

The history of the Old and New Testament: extracted out of Sacred Scripture 

and writings of the Fathers...translated from the Sieur de Royaumont, by several hands;

 supervised and recommended by Dr. Horneck, and other orthodox divines (London, 1711) 

The papers and web were filled with denunciations of Representative Todd Akin's asinine remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy. In fairness, he was not saying that "rape" as such was legitimate. Rather, as far as I could tell, he was using the word, "legitimate," in the sense of "genuine": i.e. trying to say that, when a woman is clearly forced to have sex against her will, she cannot become pregnant. That is ignorant and offensive for another whole set of reasons:  unacceptably narrowing the definition of rape, while betraying an abysmal understanding of science as well as current social and political standards (the more so, as it is all tied up with regressive ideas on reproductive freedom). But wait, it's worse. He sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

At any rate, despite the fact that so much had already been said, I thought I would add some historical context. It's no mystery, but (no pun intended), I found it in a historical mystery set in Restoration England.

Read the full story in The Propagandist: "Republicans. Confidently Leading America into the 17th Century."

As a bonus, you can also see there Jonathon Narvey's take on a nice little video clip of Bill Nye the Science Guy: "Creationism is Anti-American."

Confusion to our enemies!

Getting the Christian Right

I recently mentioned David Sugarman, "Melville in Jerusalem," Tablet Magazine, 16 August 2012.

It's a fine piece, but there is one odd phrase, describing Melville as:

 The philosophically inclined child of a Christian father and pious Calvinist mother.

Yikes. This is the sort of thing I get from my students (though from them, it's usually: "Catholics and Christians"). Last I checked, Calvinists were indeed Christians. And pretty serious ones, too. Ever heard of the Puritans? or at least the Pilgrims?

Although Tablet describes itself as "a new read on Jewish life," I don't think this is what was intended.

Charitably interpreted, perhaps Sugarman meant merely that the father was of conventional generic Christian disposition in contrast to the more fervent mother. But then, one should say what one means.

A little proof-reading here? Please?

More on Problematic and Spurious Martin Luther King Quotations

So, the flap over the quotation on the Martin Luther King memorial seems to have been resolved just in time for his holiday today.

The King sculpture is not the only example of deliberately and problematically selective quotation on the National Mall. The example that always comes to mind for me is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, inside of which the Founding Father’s words are displayed. Panel Number 3 contains a ringing denunciation of slavery as “despotism” and a call for emancipation: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” It stops there rather than including the next sentence: “Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."

Here, Jefferson is arguably the beneficiary rather than victim of abbreviated quotation though it would be interesting to debate which of the two versions best expresses his larger legacy.

As John Adams famously said, facts are stubborn things. So are quotes, not least to the extent that we marshal them as “facts” in our arguments. For all our modern belief in questioning political authority, we still, across the spectrum, invoke textual authority (in fact, I just did that here). We cite the words and wisdom of great men and women because of the authors as well as the content, in the hope that our arguments might derive strength from their borrowed prestige. If they said it, it must be true.

Worse than selective quotation are spurious quotes or attributions of authorship. The most notorious example pertaining to the Founding Fathers is an antisemitic fabrication in which Benjamin Franklin purportedly warned the Constitutional Convention against Jewish influence in the new nation. Concocted by American right-wing extremists in the 1930s, it was widely cited by the Nazis and still circulates today among hate groups ranging from the KKK and neo-Nazi Aryan Nations and Stormfront to Hamas.

Of course, false quotations can arise from cynical manipulation, misguided good intentions, or just plain ineptitude. Reverend King, poor man, has been a victim of all three: the latter, just months before the Memorial controversy broke.

Soon after President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin Laden, there began to circulate a purported quotation by Martin Luther King that seemed tailor-made for the occasion:

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

We are familiar with the related phenomenon in the case of Nostradamus: every time a major world event occurs, someone either reinterprets a vague quatrain as a clear prophecy of the occurrence, or just invents a new one out of whole cloth. It was disheartening to think that Rev. King might be thus exploited and reduced to that status.

In this case, the explanation was a bit more complex but less malign. A Facebook user had apparently offered her personal reaction to the killing (the first sentence), followed by a quotation from King, naming him as the source of the latter. Other users then circulated the comment, without the quotation marks, carelessly attributing the whole to King.

As in other contexts: if it sounds too good (here, in the sense of appropriate) to be true, it probably is.

Unfortunately, deliberate manipulations of King’s writings also exist. The best example, i.e. the one with the longest “legs,” involves an alleged statement on the relation between Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism. Rev. King, who worked closely with many representatives of the Jewish community in the Civil Rights Movement, was a staunch opponent of antisemitism (“because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all”), and a believer in the necessity of a secure and democratic Jewish state, aware that criticism of Israel sometimes stemmed from or masked darker motives. His views on these issues are a matter of record.

Somehow, though, this was not good enough for someone, who felt the need to improve upon reality by concocting a perfect conglomerate of a quote. Over the years, I’ve called people out for invoking it, however innocently. What is so fascinating is that this inauthentic piece, unlike the Bin Laden one, fooled so many people for so long. It can serve as a textbook illustration of the problems of sourcing and interpretation that historians engage in all the time.

At some point a little over a decade ago, a “Letter to an anti-Zionist Friend” purporting to be by Rev. King began to circulate. It reads, in part:

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews — this is God's own truth.

In a way, it is both understandable and astonishing that no one caught on. Whereas the obvious clumsiness and arrogance of the truncated “drum major” quote reflected neither King’s style nor his personality, this one sounded authentic in sentiment and typical in tone.

That the tone was in fact just a bit too “typical”—a patently poor pastiche of the “I have a dream” speech—should, however, have been a tip-off that something was amiss. More surprising still, even though no one seems to have seen the “letter” before it was cited in a reputable 1999 book, no one checked the purported original publication in a 1967 issue of the now-defunct Saturday Review, a reference that proved to be non-existent. Apparently, because the book contained a preface by Martin Luther King III, everyone simply assumed that everyone else considered the text authentic on the grounds that, well, if it was not, someone surely would have said so.

Finally, CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) pursued the matter, and at the start of 2002, sent out a news alert (on which the above is based), announcing that the “Letter” was a forgery.

Part of the problem was that the sentiments expressed in the letter were in general harmony with King’s documented views. The political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and later, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, reported that King, toward the end of his life, responded to an anti-Zionist student by saying: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.” Perhaps because that remark was documented only in imprecise personal recollections of an oral exchange (some critics have even called this account into question) the forger decided to construct a longer formal and exhortatory text around it.

In so doing, of course, he (or she) did no service to either to King or to some putative political cause.

Fabrication will not solve our problems. For that matter, neither will idle speculation. No one can say exactly what Rev. King would make of any specific policy today. We honor him by taking the historical record seriously: pondering his actual words and deeds and their continued relevance in a changing world.

A decade ago, in the same piece that contained the brief, purportedly authentic quotation, Lewis concluded,

King taught us many lessons. As turbulence continues to grip the Middle East, his words should continue to serve as our guide. I am convinced that were he alive today he would speak clearly calling for an end to the violence between Israelis and Arabs. [ . . . . ]

He would urge continuing negotiations to reduce tensions and bring about the first steps toward genuine peace.

King had a dream of an "oasis of brotherhood and democracy" in the Middle East. 

As we celebrate his life and legacy, let us work for the day when Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, will be able to sit in peace "under his vine and fig tree and none shall make him afraid."

It's hard to argue with that, which should be more than enough to occupy us on a day dedicated to non-violence and service.

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!"

Pre-Occupied: Hampshire Anti-Israel BDS Activists Continue to Distort the Past, Look to the Future

It was bound to happen. I had been wondering how long it would be before the anti-Israel divestment (BDS) movement would attempt to claim its role in the Occupy Hampshire movement.

Although the issue appeared in the fliers and literature of the College’s Occupy activists, it had not been prominent in the larger scheme of things. When it came up at the rally here last month, it was almost as an afterthought: one individual brought it up during the open microphone time.

"Occupy Wall Street—Not Palestine!"

Snapshot:

In this version of what has become the standard "heroic" narrative, valiant activists, carrying forward the noble tradition of divestment from South Africa that their forebears had initiated, took on the College's equally sordid ties to Israel and won. The College, however, due to either lack of principle or lack of nerve, never acknowledged this, and rather, denied that the whole incident had taken place. Here, these actions are said to be in keeping with a general opposition to socially responsible investing.


Highlights/excerpts:

• introducing the notion of socially responsible investing, and Hampshire's tradition of activism. The term, he says, needs to be "unpacked": (0:35) "thinking about, like, where are we putting our money, and why are we putting our money there?"

• (c. 0:45) "um, it's something that, apparently, as, like, the administrations and the board have said, just, like, fundamentally disrupts the whole idea of a board, because our job is to make money . . . so why would I be thinking of socially responsible things?"

• (c. 0:57) regarding the socially responsible investment committee (CHOIR): "the administration never wanted it to be there in the first place"

• (c. 1:25) "in 2007 or so, students on campus brought it [=CHOIR: the socially responsible investment committee] back, specifically around S... [revealingly, starts to say: SJP, i.e. Students for Justice in Palestine] Palestine, because, a lot of you know, there is [?] Israeli occupation, a bunch of companies are making weapons for the Israeli Army and communications [scattered boos]."

• (c. 1:45) "eventually in 2009, this school was the first school in the US to divest from the Israeli occupation. [loud cheers and whistles] The school, immediately after that decided to deny that, the school denied that it was a political, it was not a political thing, it had nothing to do with Israel. They hired a socially responsible investment company just in order to depoliticize it. The school that doesn't believe in socially responsible investing, it hired a company to do screening, they didn't trust the students to do it. They used that screening to depoliticize it and say it had nothing to do with Israel."

The speaker goes on to claim that Islamophobia prevails on campus. [A glance at our courses and events suggests otherwise. In fact, Ralph Hexter, the President at the time of the divestment controversy, employed a personal research assistant whose field was Islamic history and culture, and who therefore taught those subjects at Hampshire: 1, 2.] The speaker goes on to characterize the policy review process as dishonest, disguised, and deliberately dragged out.

• (03:25) “I noticed, very subtly, on the Intranet [ . . . ] before the Snowpocalypse, that there was going to be a meeting about this new, supposedly we now have a new socially responsible investing, uh, comm…—not committee—but, like, written, written-out plan. The Snowpocalypse came, so it didn’t happen. I sent an email to Beth Ward, who is, um, the secretary of . . . I'm not sure [laughter; . . . ] she's, like, the spokesperson for the Board of Trustees."

[Ironically, Beth Ward, who has a long record of activism on behalf of peace and progressive causes, was in the audience, having joined the "Occupy" gathering a short time earlier. She can be seen in the green coat almost directly in front of the concrete pilaster bordering the windows of the building in the background.] Speaker continues:

(03:57): "Anyways, I just want you all to be aware that there is a new socially responsible investing, um, piece out there. We don't know what it is, it's been completely untransparent." Speaker again questions the character of the process.

(04:14) "So it's all just, like, a real mix. I've asked for when they're going to have a meeting about what this is. Hopefully, we'll be finding out soon, but you should, it's something, like, that's our ability to pressure the school to divest from things. We can also do it in popular campaigns, we need to be doing popular campaigns like this. But be aware that the school, again, is consistently trying to not let us know what it's invested in because it is invested in, not just in Palestine, it is invested in prisons, it is invested in, um, like, other wars all around us. So it's not just about Palestine, but that was one location again, when students get activated, they, that's what they start. So, um, I don't want to keep talking, but I think it's worth it still [?]."

(04:56) Chant: "Occupy Wall Street—Not Palestine!"

Summary:

The talk of course presents a highly tendentious narrative of what was by all accounts a rather tortuous process—complicated by the inveterate tendency of the institution to speak in bureaucratese and circumlocutions, and to respond with soft tones and blandishments rather than a loud voice and a fist on the table.

This is arguably the most famous academic “divestment” case in the United States, a situation remarkable mainly because this loud and persistent claim is based on a willful misreading of the facts. We live in a postmodern age of "truthiness," after all.

As should by now be well known: In February of 2009, after a long campaign, anti-Israel activists on campus formally asked the College to divest from a handful of companies that, they claimed, supported “the Israeli occupation of Palestine” and violated the College’s socially responsible investment policy.

The College, acting in accordance with its procedures, duly looked into the matter not on these political grounds, but in order to determine whether the firms violated that existing policy. The upshot: some of the holdings in question were found to be in violation of the policy, others were not. The College further discovered that several large funds contained numerous problematic items and agreed to relinquish such holdings accordingly. Finally, the College also found its existing socially responsible investment policy to be problematic and unclear and ordered a review that would lead to the drafting of a better policy. This is well documented. (further: 1, 2, 3, 4)

That was all. The College acted on the basis of its own regulations, targeted no country or particular type of investment, and made no political statement.

Unfortunately, the well-organized activists immediately announced to the world that Hampshire College, which had been the first to divest from holdings in South Africa, had now divested from "the Israeli occupation of Palestine." What better way to propagate the view that Israel practiced “apartheid”? It was that historical record that made the College such a prize and gave activists the hope that they might be able to punch above their weight. After all, the amount of money in our endowment—barely $ 31 million—is trivial in comparison with those of even our neighbors, such as Amherst and Smith, whose portfolios top a billion dollars.

The incident is not intrinsically remarkable: because nothing happened. Indeed, if it set a precedent at all, it was for the subsequent pattern of false claims of other divestment incidents, from banks to businesses. (Jon Haber has been documenting this meticulously for several years.)

* * *

To say that the College is not committed to ethical investing is as insulting as it is untruthful. It is true that there was initial resistance to the idea when it began, but that was in the 1970s (well before most of us were here, of course). Things have changed. I was the faculty member of the Board of Trustees a decade ago, so I can attest that we took the concept very seriously. The College was and has been committed to the principle that it is possible to satisfy the demands of both fiscal sustainability and social responsibility.

As for that review of the investment policy, there is nothing conspiratorial about it. Regarding the argument that the College didn't allow the students to "do" the screening. If the word "do" implies giving sole or ultimate authority to students: correct, that's not how things work. (I've just finished co-chairing the Governance Task Force, which undertook a comprehensive review of College policies and procedures.) But that is also a vastly oversimplified notion of the process. To be clear: the College would not leave that task entirely to staff or faculty, either. All three constituencies are represented on CHOIR (as on most Hampshire governance bodies), but professional expertise is sometimes required. When the initial review—prompted by the students—turned up numerous possible problems with the massive fund as a whole, the College, quite logically, brought in experts. And KLD, the firm that the College turned to, (a) is the leading firm in socially responsible investing practices and (b) found over 200 violations in the fund in question. Any member of the community—including a student or student group—is always free to bring forward a request for action or information regarding specific investments. This is exactly what happened in this case.

One reason that the subsequent review of investment policies and procedures took so long was that the campus was embroiled in various unrelated internal controversies involving everything from construction projects to admission policy, and, in the past year, was focused on the search for a new president. Even under the best of circumstances, the nitty-gritty work of internal research and policy development is carried out in committee and not in the public square. In any case, there has been public input on our overall values and policies, and the people leading the process are trusted members of the community. The meeting about to take place is in fact a public forum: It presents the new policy to the community so that anyone can offer comment in the course of the coming week. If it was announced only via the Intranet, that is simply because the daily email bulletins and corresponding web posts are always the place where official announcements are first disseminated.

No one who has not been involved in the review process or related administrative decisions can say what is in the document. According to my sources, at any rate, it will most likely present a very robust and rigorous policy, but not one that explicitly targets any particular country or political cause. This is of course as it should be: one does not design the overarching investment policy of an institution around a single case.

Anyway, we will soon find out: the results will be announced this afternoon at 3:30.

Almost as interesting as learning about the policy itself will be watching the spin that people try to put on it. Assuming that things unfold as described above, the BDS advocates will have two choices: express outrage, or claim victory and go home. That is, they will be disappointed if there is no explicit political statement or if certain holdings are retained. On the other hand, they may attempt to claim credit for having at least indirectly triggered the whole process. Hell, they may try to do both: take credit and yet demand more.

For nearly three years, the BDS activists have boasted relentlessly of their success. Their standard line has been that they succeeded, but that the administration—as as result of a mixture of its own cowardice and sinister pressure from outside pro-Israel groups—has refused to acknowledge defeat. This is the basis for the divestment myth that BDS faithful cling to and repeat like a Gospel narrative. More recently, though, they have given signs of perhaps trying to walk that story back a bit. At the 2010 graduation ceremony, an SJP activist (so oppressed by the system that he was chosen to be student commencement speaker) expressed frustration that the effort had not really succeeded. The above video simultaneously claims that "this school was the first school in the US to divest from the Israeli occupation" and that, still, "it is invested . . in Palestine."  Merely a slip of the tongue arising from extemporaneous speaking? Perhaps. But then why, if we already divested, does the flier—presumably prepared with ample care—challenge readers to "launch new divestment campaigns against Hampshire's ties to the Israeli occupation"?

So, which is it? Are we celebrating victory or still seeking it?

The BDS activists don’t know what they are talking about. Literally.

That should tell you something.


As for the results of that meeting on socially responsible investment policy? Stay tuned.

* * *

Updates

Additional updates since original posting:  video transcription, flier image; minor edits.

Preliminary coverage of the investment committee report  here. Detailed report to follow. (now posted: here)

Being A Wingnut Means: Never Having to Learn Spelling

One of the things that I've noticed about both blog posts and signs at political rallies is the frequency of misspelled words.

Here are a few scenes from the competing Occupy Amherst and Amherst Tea Party rallies in October.

I felt sorry for this poor student:

I tried (ever so gently) to point out that radicalism is no excuse for having failed to master seventh-grade spelling. In vain did I commend to her the advice of Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, Deputy People's Commissar of Education and Enlightenment:

The student . . .  must know how to use the dictionary and he must always have it handy by him; likewise, books of reference, encyclopaedias, etc.

For some reason, she did not get the point. Pity.

She should be storming a library, not the bastions of capitalism.


Still, it was the nutjob extremists who were by far the worst spellers (as well as thinkers).

It stands to reason: If you can't control your own spelling, you develop paranoid fears of conspiracies controlling the world.

This mistake was more intriguing:

You'd think that someone concerned about the lives of Muslims would take the trouble to learn how to spell the term correctly. I wondered: Could it be that he was actually a scholar, conversant with the classic "Musulman" and variants? Nah.

In the end, it turned out that this poor antisemite wasn't alone.

He was eventually joined by the lost soul who had haunted the September 11 commemorations in protest.

In September (above), she had been merely a phantom menace. Here, she became vocal and took on this dapper dude from the Tea Party:

"Satan's Spawn": always a good conversation-starter.

Karl Marx: No Pain, No Gain! (I paraphrase)

"no royal road to science"

Occasionally, when students insist that a reading assignment is difficult or complain about the amount of work (in fact a reasonable amount, if one stops to consider that college is or should be the equivalent of a full-time job), or when I come across a badly written and badly reasoned news article or policy document, I ask myself what the best advice or response is. One could do worse than to cite Karl Marx.

From the Preface to to the 1872 French edition of Capital  l:

To the citizen Maurice Lachâtre

Dear Citizen,

I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of “Das Kapital” as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.

That is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once.

That is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.

Believe me,
dear citizen,
Your devoted,

Karl Marx
London
March 18, 1872

Arabs Across the Middle East Are Dying to Vote (literally). And Amherst? ehhh

To cite Louisa May Alcott, "no earthquake shook the town" (more on that later).

Admittedly, the issues are rather less dramatic here than in Libya or Syria, and many races were uncontested (though because of either satisfaction or complacency rather than dictatorship).

Still, the turnout was abysmal and embarrassing (8.5 %, we are told).  When I went to vote in Precinct 1—properly restored to the traditional site at historic North Amherst Church parish hall after an embarrassing error earlier this year (1, 2, 3, 4)—around 4:00 p.m. the number of valid votes cast was still under 50 (there were a few spoiled ballots above and beyond that).

In the evening, I was in Town Hall for a Historical Commission meeting (next door to the School Committee) and then headed over to Rafters, where several candidates and their supporters were congregating. A good place to follow results, because, above and beyond the presence of the flat screen monitor tuned to Public Access Television, it's guaranteed that someone there will always be getting even newer running vote counts by text message or phone call. Ballots and beer, a match made in heaven.

The results in the key town-wide contested races:

Aaron Hayden won re-election to the Redevelopment Authority after a credible challenge from activist Vince O'Connor (880-504).

The big surprise—even stunner—of the evening was that incumbent Library Trustee Chair Pat Holland finished third (with only 660 votes) in the race for two seats, after fellow incumbent Chris Hoffmann (832) and newcomer Michael Wolff (665). There will no doubt be much speculation as to the cause, in light of recent controversies over the trustees' management of the Library.

As chance would have it, today is an important anniversary in the history of voting rights. Mass Moments tell us,

On this date, in 1880, Louisa May Alcott and 19 other women attended the Concord Town Meeting. The year before, the Massachusetts legislature had made it legal for women to vote in school committee elections. A strong supporter of woman suffrage, the author of Little Women was the first woman in Concord to register to vote. She rallied other women to exercise the limited franchise they had been given. When the day came, a group of 20 women, "mostly with husbands, fathers or brothers" appeared, "all in good spirits and not in the least daunted by the awful deed about to be done." When the votes were cast, she later reported, "No bolt fell on our audacious heads, no earthquake shook the town."(read the rest)

Now this was a revolutionary act, but it took place in the late nineteenth century rather than the late eighteenth, i.e. not part of the American Revolution (although the scene was Concord, Mass.) It can be so hard to keep this stuff straight. Impossible, for the irrepressible and ever-erring Michelle Bachmann, it would seem. Readers will recall that she put her foot in her mouth in January when she declared (in one of several gaffes) that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more." Historians (and also just literate people) were quick to point out that the Founding Fathers owned slaves, and that slavery was not abolished until 1865.  She did it again this month when, speaking at an event in Macnhester, New Hampshire, she confused the Concord in that state with our own beloved Concord:  "You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord," and, lest there be any doubt, repeated the error a few minutes later. As the Boston Globe delicately pointed out, "The “shot heard ’round the world’’ may have echoed in New Hampshire, but it was, of course, fired in Massachusetts." Her response when reporters called attention to the gaffe: 

"So I misplaced the battles Concord and Lexington by saying they were in New Hampshire.

"It was my mistake, Massachusetts is where they happened. New Hampshire is where they are still proud of it!"

Well, that fixes everything.

She claimed that the reporting of an error of which a schoolchild should be ashamed was proof of "media bias."

I wonder who she thinks was at the Boston Tea Party—Alice and the Mad Hatter?

And people say Amherst politics is surreal?

Don't Know Much About History: Letter-writer blames Truman for recognizing Israel but forgets when he was President

A modest little news item, but one that I am unable to let pass without comment because its errors are too egregious and too typical of a fashionable strain of casual argumentation.

I have nothing against ignorance, but I do have a problem with arrogance.

What people do not know, they do not know, and often, they cannot be expected to know more.  To criticize them in such cases would be uncharitable at best, and nasty, at worst. However, those who do not know yet think they do, and those who simply should know better—they are in a different category. 

One sadly typical example of this kind of smug class bias and cultural elitism appeared in a letter to the Gazette over the weekend. Responding to an earlier letter attacking President Obama as a smart man but a political failure, the writer took the opportunity to explain how "Truman's lack of learning led to tragic decision." No, not the dropping of the first atomic bomb, as one might expect.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

To the editor:

For the most part, the July 10 letter "Wise leadership not guaranteed by genius" is one with which I can agree. A first-class education does not guarantee good judgment by our presidents. However, I would not sleep better with Harry S. Truman at the helm directing the ship of state in our time of spectacular crisis, as the letter states.

Perhaps the letter writer is too young to remember one of Truman's first acts as president. Without consulting either the American people or the Congress, Truman recognized what became the state of Israel and, by so doing, made us the hated enemy of millions of Palestinians and their fellow Muslims. Truman wanted to lessen the pain of Holocaust survivors and their fellow Jews, as the majority of Americans did. The Holocaust was the creation of Hitler and the German Nazis. Why would Truman wish to punish the Palestinians for the atrocious crimes of the Nazis? I doubt that he did.

Ben Franklin maintained that the man who educates himself has a fool for a teacher. Harry S. Truman was no fool but he did have a very limited educational background. In a documentary on the career of former Secretary of State George Shultz, this leader credits his formal education, a very rich one indeed, for his very long, successful career as a statesman starting with high honors in economics at Princeton and continuing both as a scholar and teacher at the University of Chicago. As I watched the film, I found myself thinking about Harry Truman and I have come to believe that had he been able to afford the high-quality education available to Mr. Shultz, Truman would not have taken it upon himself, well meaning though it was, to recognize the founding of the new nation of Israel in the midst of another country, a move that has resulted in years and years of turmoil and death.

Beverly Parker Bingham

Northampton

It's not worth taking the time to point out the host of factual and other errors, whether the canard that Israel was nothing but a misguided response to the Holocaust, or the convenient omission of the fact the UN had called for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states over five months earlier.

So let me focus on the main point: it is stunning that, in the midst of condescendingly accusing our 33rd president of ignorance, the writer reveals herself to be, uh,  less than fully informed:

"one of Truman's first acts as president"?

Well, let's see:  when did Truman become President? Upon the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on 12 April 1945. And when did he recognize Israel? On 14 May 1948. Truman had in effect served more than three quarters of the presidential term by this point.

There are many things to debate with regard to US policy in the Middle East, but fortunately, the calendar is not yet one of them.

Truman ignorant?  Physician, heal thyself! (As an "educated" person, Ms. Bingham presumably knows the source of that quote.) Or, as we'd say nowadays,  attempted history lesson:  FAIL (she may need to look that one up:  here's a link.)

As for that great tv program on George Shultz:  We may note in passing that the three-hour (!) documentary was in fact controversial because of both its funders and its content (1, 2, 3, 4).  To be sure, Georg Shultz did some fine things, though he had a disturbing habit of working for or otherwise supporting some of the worst recent presidents.  Under Nixon, he helped to integrate construction unions.  And as Secretary of State under Reagan, he helped to re-professionalize the State Department.  He also attempted to maintain some distance from the Iran-Contra scheme, and eventually came to advocate dialogue with the USSR, though his record on both the Soviet bloc and Latin America is rather more complicated than the program suggests.

The writer would presumably take issue with some of Shultz's stances as a Cold Warrior. He endorsed and has even been called "Father" of the "Bush Doctrine" of preventive war.   Already in 1984, he said,

We must reach a consensus in this country that our responses [to terrorism] should go beyond passive defense to consider means of active prevention, preemption, and retaliation.

And as for Truman's "tragic decision"?  In 2007, in "The 'Israel Lobby' Myth," Shultz declared:

Israel is a free, democratic, open, and relentlessly self-analytical place. To hear harsh criticism of Israel's policies and leaders, listen to the Israelis. So questioning Israel for its actions is legitimate, but lies are something else. Throughout human history, they have been used not only to vilify but to establish a basis for cruel and inhuman acts. The catalog of lies about Jews is long and astonishingly crude, matched only by the suffering that has followed their promulgation.

Defaming the Jews by disputing their rightful place among the peoples of the world has been a long-running, well-documented, and disgraceful series of episodes across history. Again and again a time has come when legitimate criticism slips across an invisible line into what might be called the "badlands," a place where those who should be regarded as worthy adversaries in debate are turned into scapegoats, targets, all-purpose objects of blame.

Of course, it's really no different from what then presidental candidate Barack Obama himself said the following year:

It was just a few years after the liberation of the camps that David Ben-Gurion declared the founding of the Jewish State of Israel. We know that the establishment of Israel was just and necessary, rooted in centuries of struggle and decades of patient work. But 60 years later, we know that we cannot relent, we cannot yield, and as president I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security. . . .

a secure, lasting peace is in Israel's national interest. It is in America's national interest. And it is in the interest of the Palestinian people and the Arab world. As president, I will work to help Israel achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security

So, which is it?  Did Shultz take these positions because of or despite the "rich," "high-quality education" that he received from his elite prep school, Princeton, and MIT? And what's Obama's excuse? It was his educational qualifications that sparked the exchange of letters. Can both Truman the dummy and Obama the whiz kid be wrong?  It is perplexing.

President Obama also said, concerning peace-making, "I have no illusions that this will be easy."  Ignorant pronouncements of the sort contained in that letter certainly will not make the task any easier.

The next time the elitist writer is seized with a desire to dash off a letter to the Gazette, she would be better advised to walk over to the reference desk rather than rely on a stroll down memory lane.

A Great Historian Having a Bad Day

Writing about analogies recently and going back to David Hackett Fischer's Historians' Fallacies (1970) allowed me to rediscover a few howlers.

This one, by the great historian of popular movements and Revolutionary France, George Rudé, shows what happens when vigilance slackens and we lose control of language. His intended point might have been a good one, but the carelessness of the wording and logic undercut it and cause us to question the soundness of the analysis itself:

Thus, beheaded, the sans culotte movement died a sudden death; and having, like the cactus, burst into full bloom at the very point of its extinction, it never rose again.

Ouch. Perhaps not fatal, but painfully embarrassing.

David Hackett Fischer observes, "This statement combines three disparate analogies. It is objectionable on both stylistic and substantive grounds.  As a mixed metaphor, it is a literary monstrosity.  As a multiple analogy, it is a logical absurdity."

Moral: Even great historians have bad days. As the blurb on the back cover from Robin Winks in the New York Times Book Review says, "Scarcely a major historian escapes unscathed.  Ten thousand members of the American Historical Association will rush to the index and breathe a little easier to find their names absent."  (hmm, working on the quantitative reasoning and logic of that one, too.)

Lesson:  Watch out. (but be charitable)

Introducing Another New Rubric: "quote unquote: bad history"

Every good phenomenon has to have its bad counterpart (like Captain Kirk's evil twin), and so it is only fair (and fun) to call attention to bad writing (mainly historical), as in the case of the good examples: as serendipity or whim may dictate.

A starter:

Neil Sheehan, whose study of a Vietnam policy-maker, A Bright and Shining Lie, won considerable acclaim, attempts to duplicate his success with a biography of Cold War missile engineer Bernard Schriever. Reviewer J. Peter Scoblic says it does not succeed, challenging the book's entire logic regarding the strategic and historical role of the ICBM. ("Did Missiles Win the Cold War? A Soulless New Book Gets the History Wrong," The New Republic, 2 Dec. 2009. Among other things, the review picks out "one of the book's more infelicitous sentences":

technology was in the saddle of a horse named Fear in a race of human folly

Ouch! None of my students this semester displayed such a misguided striving for effect (though there were other mistakes aplenty).

It's a target-rich environment out there.

Suggestions welcome here, too.