Library Controversy Holds Public Interest, Even in the Dog Days

From the Amherst Bulletin:

Breaking news: Jones Library Trustee Evaluation Committee has disbanded

Just received word that the Jones Library Trustees have disbanded the committee whose review of longtime Director Bonnie Isman had sparked such controversy on the Board and in the town as a whole (see recent posts).

No further details yet, but will add as they become available.

(As I only recently returned from a trip abroad, I still have to upload the recently composed final post on the unfolding of this crisis, which will follow shortly.)

23 August 1793 Revolutionary France decrees the "levée en masse"

One of the great days in the history of revolution, democracy, and warfare:  The revolutionary French Republic, threatened by invasion on its borders and civil war at home, declared the "levée en masse," or mobilization of the entire nation, in what was the precursor of modern total war:  military, economic, and ideological, practical, symbolic, and psychological.

The six-page decree of the National Assembly, drafted by Lazare Carnot—the "architect of victory"—begins with the famous exhortation:

1. From this moment until that in which the enemy shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic, all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the service of the armies. The young men shall go to battle; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothing and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn old linen into lint; the aged shall betake themselves to the public places in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach the hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.

2. The national buildings shall be converted into barracks, the public places into workshops for arms, the soil of the cellars shall be washed in order to extract therefrom the saltpeter.

3. The arms of the regulation caliber shall be reserved exclusively for those who shall march against the enemy; the service of the interior shall be performed with hunting pieces and side arms.

4. The saddle horses are put into requisition to complete the cavalry corps the draft horses, other than those employed in agriculture, shall convey the artillery and the provisions.

5. The Committee of Public Safety is charged to take all necessary measures to set up without delay an extraordinary manufacture of arms of every sort which corresponds with the ardor and energy of the French people. It is, accordingly, authorized to form all the establishments, factories, workshops, and mills which shall be deemed necessary for the carrying on of these works, as well as to put in requisition, within the entire extent of the Republic, the artists and workingmen who can contribute to their success.

6. The representatives of the people sent out for the execution of the present law shall have the same authority in their respective districts, acting in concert with the Committee of Public Safety; they are invested with the unlimited powers assigned to the representatives of the people to the armies.

7. Nobody can get himself replaced in the service for which he shall have been requisitioned. The public functionaries shall remain at their posts.

In his classic history of the Revolution (already more than half a century old in its second edition), the great Georges Lefebvre notes that the levy was in part a response to pressure from below for more radical political and military measures, and moreover notes that the decree marked an important step in the efforts of the Committee of Public Safety—hence, the role of the quintessentialy calculating and systematic Carnot—to take control of an unruly revolutionary society that required discipline if it hoped to be victorious. The modern revisionist Simon Schama amplifies and reinterprets this view:

  In its original incarnation, then, the levée was meant to be a spontaneous explosion of martial enthusiasm involving large numbers of men, loosely organized and separated from the professional army.  It need hardly be said that this version of anarchic belligerence did not recommend itself to the engineers and technologists of the Committee of Public Safety. But it was a nonmember, namely Danton, who in the third week of August tried to put the concept of a conscript army back on the rails by making its expansion strictly proportionate to the amount of munitions, clothing and food with which it could be supplied.  The inspiring rhetoric of the Convention's decree in August was less a prescription for an uncoordinated call to arms than a vision of a militarized commonwealth with every lever and pulley working in perfect articulation.  The language drew heavily on Roman history, but the vision was that of Guibert's total war.

Greetings from Helsinki

Greetings from Helsinki, where I have been attending the annual conference of SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing), whose general theme is "Book Culture from Below." (Admittedly, most of Helsinki and the swelling tourist population were fixated on the coming festival, featuring U2.)

Although I had been considering sending regular posts from here, I decided to wait and think about posting some longer pieces later. Not only has it been a very busy and full schedule, what with meetings of the Executive Council and Board of Directors as well as the regular program of papers (not to mention the need to finish up my own talk).  In addition, this is the first SHARP conference to take advantage of Web 2.0.  We have been featuring live streaming coverage of major addresses and plenaries, and several colleagues and I have been energetically tweeting reports throughout the proceedings (Twitter hashtag #sharp10).

It was a marvelous experience, the more so as it demonstrates that it is indeed possible to organize a full SHARP conference in a site outside one of the major North American, UK, or western European metropoles boasting a larger membership in the organization.  Dedication and energy of organizers are all that are required, and all possibilities are open.  Who will be next to take up the Helsinki challenge?

Next year, making our habitual trip back across the Atlantic, we'll be in Washington, D.C.

[links & image update]

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21 August 1968: Warsaw Pact Invades Czechoslovakia, Crushes Prague Spring

Image via Wikipedia

[posted from Helsinki]

On the night from 20-21 August 1968, troops from the Warsaw Pact (with the exception of Romania) invaded Czechoslovakia in order to put an end to the perceived threat represented by the democratic reforms of the "Prague Spring" and Alexander Dubček's experiment in creating "socialism with a human face."

As the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party attempted to make sense of the unfolding events, it issued the following declaration just after 1 a.m.

To All the People of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic:

     Yesterday, August 20, 1968, at about 11 p.m., the armies of the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic, and the Bulgarian People's Republic crossed the state borders of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.  This took place without the knowledge of the President of the Republic, the Presidium of the National Assembly, the Presidium of the Government, and the First Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee. The Presidium of the Central Committee was then in session, preoccupied with the preparations for the Extraordinary Fourteenth Party Congress. The Presidium calls upon all citizens of the Republic to keep peace and not resist the advancing armies, because the defense of our state borders is now impossible.
     For this reason, our army, the Security Forces, and the People's Militia were not given the order to defend the country.  The Presidium considers this action [the invasion] to be contrary to the fundamental principles of relations between socialist states and a denial of the basic norms of international law.
     All leading officials of the Party and the National Front remain at their posts, to which they were elected as representatives of the people and members of their organizations according to the laws and regulations of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.  The appropriate constitutional organs have called into session the National Assembly and the Government of the Republic, and the Presidium of the Central Committee is convening the Party Central Committee in order to deal with the situation that has arisen.
(from:  The Czech Black Book, Prepared by the Institute of History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, ed. Robert Littell (NY: Avon Discus Books, 1969, 21-22)

Writer Arnošt Lustig recalled the tense atmosphere of the preceding months and the shock occasioned by the invasion itself:

"I did not count on occupation but my wife did. Whenever she heard a car outside the window, she said 'Russians are here', and they finally came. But it was still a shock for me. I thought it had nothing to with socialism. I was in Italy at the time and they invited me to the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party and asked me what I thought. I said that socialism degraded into fascism and that deeds are proving it. I said they are occupying a brotherly country which really liked them, as Russians, as liberators, and that they betrayed this trust horribly, and that I considered the equal to fascists. From socialism, it went to fascism, from utopia, it went to murder."

Although resistance was impossible and the government had earlier asked the US not to intervene on its behalf, for many citizens, the invasion was the humiliating repeat of the Munich Agreement, in which the nation again had to yield to outside hostile force without a fight.  For many observers inside and outside the country, the invasion was the less violent but no less ominous pendant to the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian Revolution just over a decade earlier.  The intervention resulting from the "Brezhnev Doctrine," declaring that the nations of the east bloc would not be allowed to move backward from what was called "socialism" sent the message that internal reform was henceforth impossible.  The misleadingly entitled process of "normalization" in fact concealed a policy of brutal repression.  Seventy-two citizens were apparently killed in the invasion, but the real toll came afterwards:  some 300,000 citizens emigrated, and dissenters who stayed behind lost jobs and found educational and career opportunities blocked.  The crushing of both reform and dissent was in effect the beginning of the "era of stagnation" that lasted until the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, who retroactively endorsed the Prague movement as a precursor of his own efforts.

Resources from Radio Praha

• here, a summary of political history
• retrospective (with audio) from 2007, including the recollections by Lustig

Jones Library Drama Approaches its Climax: What outcome do you predict?

Rather than offering any commentary of my own as the Library crisis builds to its probable climax today, I thought I would instead simply share a little piece of print ephemera that I recently acquired. It's a vintage postcard of the Jones Library, which is attractive and interesting enough in its own right. What additionally intrigued me in this case, however, was the form. Originally, one put the message on the front of a postcard, for the law forbade any writing other than the address on the back.  In 1907, that changed, and people began to write on the cards in the manner familiar to us.  So-called "white border cards" flourished between 1915 and 1930. The current Jones building was opened in 1928. So, that all fits. But rather than providing a space for both the address and message on the back, this card puts the message area on the front, where the sender can check off one or more of a menu of message choices. 

The check-boxes intrigue me because they are the positive and civilian progeny of a military invention that Paul Fussell wrote about in his now-classic The Great War and Modern Memory.  The British "Field Service Post Card" (Form A. 2042), he says, "has the honor of being the first wide-spread exemplar of that kind of document which uniquely characterizes the modern world:  the 'Form.'  It is the progenitor of all modern forms on which you fill in things or cross out things or check off things."

The association of the normally placid Jones Library with bloody trench warfare, sadly, does not seem all that far-fetched these days.

Naturally, this got me to thinking:

If you were to send this card from the library now, which boxes would you check?

• Hot here?
• Do not expect to stay long?
• Will be here for some time?
• Will leave soon?
• Are all well?
• Don't worry?
• Congratulations?

Obviously, the precise answer would depend on just which role you were playing in the unfolding drama (though we all certainly could have used "The date has not been set" on several recent occasions, notably when the big meeting was postponed this week).

Or, if you were to design a new version of the card, what other message options would you include?  (haven't had time to create such an item myself).

Ultimately, then, it all boils down to:  What's your prediction?  Will the drama turn out to be a tragedy or a farce?

The meeting is scheduled for Friday (today), from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the large downstairs meeting room.

By the way, this happens to be Friday the 13th. Fortunately, I'm a rationalist and not a superstitious person, though I have a feeling the day will bring misfortune to one party or the other.  We all want what is best for the Library and the town as a whole, but so far, this controversy has been nothing but bad luck for all concerned.

Jones Library Crisis Continues: an eleventh-hour update

The Jones Library crisis that I announced at the end of last month has continued to deepen and gain ever greater attention. The newspapers have dutifully covered the meetings of the trustees and their evaluation committee, while Larry Kelley's "Only in the Republic of Amherst" and, in particular, its famed often anonymous commenters, have provided even more frequent and, uh, let us say, spirited commentary.  His blog has in addition posted key documents in full, notably, the dissenting report of trustee Chris Hoffmann, and the petition of protest by a distinguished group of citizens associated with the Jones LIbrary and other libraries in the Pioneer Valley.

Until now, the critics of the trustee committee conducting the required annual performance review of longtime Director Bonnie Isman—the ostensible focus of the controversy, but in reality just the most visible manifestation of a deep and growing conflict—have dominated the discussion.  It remains to be seen whether the triumvirate on the evaluation committee—Carol Gray, Pat Holland, and Sarah McKee—who have been talking for over a week about a response to unfair press coverage, can succeed in making their message heard.

Last Wednesday, George Goodwin, Chair of the Jones Friends/Trustee Subcommittee responsible for managing the half-million-dollar Woodbury Gift, wrote a sharp but controlled letter to the Gazette.  Perhaps consciously echoing Emile Zola's "J'accuse," he repeatedly charged the Trustee Evaluation Committee with showing a "lack of empathy":  for the other trustees, for the Friends, for the staff, and "most seriously," for Director Bonnie Isman.

That same evening, the meeting of the trustees, like its recent predecessors, drew an atypically large crowd.  The tension was palpable.  Trustee Chris Hoffmann announced that he was videotaping the meeting, and trustee Carol Gray, that she would be making an audio recording.  The moments of greatest tension came at the beginning, during public comment, and toward the end, when the trustees took up the issue of Carol Gray's desire to remain on the board during a ten-month absence from the country.  Former trustee and current Friends board member Nancy Gregg read a petition from former trustees, members of the Friends of the Library, professional librarians, and other concerned citizens. It called upon the trustees to ask the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners

to appoint a review committee of persons familiar with the governance and management of public libraries within the Commonwealth to investigate the procedures used by the Jones Library Trustees' Evaluation Committee in reviewing the performance of the Library Director; that the review committee be asked to make recommendations for resolving the controversies between the Trustees' Evaluation Committee and the Director, as well as with other members of the Board of Trustees, particularly with regard to the separate and/or shared roles and responsibilities of the Trustees and Director in the management of the Library (full text)

Trustee Chair Pat Holland responded by saying she hoped to create a board operating on the principle that we are all working to make the library better. There may be be ways to do the review better, she acknowledged, but she wanted a process  “that would help us to go" forward: “the evaluation has been done, we will formally turn it in at the next meeting.” “We will take this petition very seriously,” she assured Ms. Gregg.

Evidently that was not good enough for John Coull, who stood up and declared, with evident passion, "I am distressed by what I have seen,” above all, the harm being done to the institution:

I understand the behavior that I have heard about to be in fact a basic misunderstanding on the part of some members of this board about the roles and responsibilities among the director and trustees . . . .
I also am distressed to hear that an evaluation process has taken place with the possible objective of concluding the employment of a longterm director that is not at all the purpose of an evaluation process.

Chair Pat Holland responded, “we have this terrible dilemma here in that we have an evaluation that must remain confidential.” The Evaluation Committee had a "series of goals" that the director had accepted, and it was simply trying to measure her success in meeting them. And, in a significant declaration:

In no way have we called for her resignation—no way . . . . But we’ll talk about this at the next meeting so I think we should move on with our agenda here.

At this point, Carol Gray, who has been spearheading the trustee drive for change at the Library, including the more rigorous scrutiny of Director Bonnie Isman, asked to read the text of a letter that the Committee had written to the Springfield Republican in order to correct what it regarded as inaccurate coverage—“including serious misquotations,” she said, glaring at fellow trustee Chris Hoffmann. Chair Holland ruled that the issue could wait.  (To date, the Republican has not, as far as I know, seen fit to publish either such letter or a retraction.)

Library trustees deliberate (l.-r.):  Emily Lewis, Pat Holland, Sarah McKee, Carol Gray

Public comment concluded with an employee reading a letter detailing complaints of several members of the Jones Library staff, repeating earlier protests over the nature of their participation in the director's review: concerns that they were being asked about their jobs rather than hers, the feeling that they had been coerced into participating, and the fear that their comments were being misquoted.  (I understand that the trustees have now received the third complaint on labor practices from the Service Employees International Union [SEIU].)

After that, it was on to the mundane business of historic preservation restrictions, handicapped parking spots, grant funding for consultants and program assistants as well as "teens and tweens" initiatives, carpet samples, and how to treat "rudeness" in the revision of the Personnel Handbook.

The political and emotional temperature in the room rose again when it came to the discussion of trustee Gray's desire to remain on the Board while on a Rotary Scholarship to Egypt, where she plans to study sharia (Carol is law professor and a well-known local attorney).  Ms. Gray maintains that "remote participation" in government meetings, an option currently under consideration by the Attorney General, could allow her to fulfill all her duties via e-mail, Skype and other modern technologies.  Mr. Hoffmann argued that this would be a violation of the spirit of the law, which he and some others see as in intended to address the problem of the occasional absence rather than the extended leave.  How would people react if someone on Select Board were to be absent for ten months? he asked, citing the American Library Association Code of Ethics:

Assume your full responsibility as a board member. If you are unable to attend meetings regularly and complete work delegated to you, resign so that an active member can be appointed.

“I’d be saying this no matter what else is going on,” he assured her, adding,"I’m angry that I’m being asked to excuse you for a third of your term."

Chair Pat Holland: “Let’s try to be calm, be civil about it."

Carol Gray, clearly acting hurt, asked for "civility," pleading, this “really damages the image of the library.”  The issue, she said, involved her ability to get the work done, not her physical presence.  Nobody can “force me to give up my seat,” she defiantly insisted, especially “considering I’m already putting in forty hours per week."

Trustee Emily Lewis affirmed, "I think Carol is right in commending herself to us. She has done a huge amount of work—and good work—in many areas.”

from left to right:  trustee Chris Hoffmann, Director Bonnie Isman, trustee Kathleen Wang

Director Bonnie Isman, attempting to mediate, said, “I always like to take a broader view,” explaining that one had to consider all possibilities and the role of precedent. The trustees would need to consider how they would in practice function as a 5- rather than 6-member board. She cited an example from the past in which a trustee was elected but never actually showed up for meetings. Fortunately, that was "the opposite" of the situation presented here, other trustees observed. Trustee Gray and her supporters were certain that the Attorney General would supply the desired answer quickly, whereas the skeptics suspected it might take as long as six months.

With that whimper rather than a bang, the meeting concluded.

The main news this week was that the meeting at which the evaluation of Director Bonnie Isman was to be presented had to be postponed from Tuesday until tomorrow due to an error in posting under the revised Open Meeting Law.  In the meantime,the Trustee Evaluation Committee sent off its long-awaited response to trustee Chris Hoffmann's detailed charges.  This week's Bulletin hasn't gone online yet, and I'll put up a link when it does, but the text of the document was already available for scrutiny on Larry Kelley's blog.



Postscript

A Town Meeting member who took the trouble to peruse (check the real meaning of the term) the minutes of the Jones Trustees came to the conclusion that the Evaluation Committee had, between January 4 and July 16, devoted 112 hours and 5 minutes to the review of Director Bonnie Isman.

Someone said to me, sarcastically,  "I guess that's still fewer hours than the Select Board meets. In a whole year."

Actually, the answer is: no.  Under the leadership of Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe, the Select Board has, thankfully, gone to meeting only twice a month rather than weekly except during Town Meeting season.  I haven't done a precise calculation (life is too busy and too short), but the Select Board met 27 times from the beginning of May 2009 to May 2010.  Assume that each session ran for the typical 3 or 4 hours (though those during Town Meeting last only an hour at most), and you end up with 81-108 hours.  And, looking over the agenda of our most recent meeting, this past Monday, I see that we dealt with 11 rubrics or (in practice) 33 separate items between 6:30 and 10:30 that evening.  Among our ongoing tasks this summer is the annual evaluation of the Town Manager, whose performance goals were recently listed in the newspaper.

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Historical Commission Calls Demolition Delay Hearing on Amherst College Fence

As noted in a recent post, a request came before the Historical Commission from Amherst College for permission to remove an old fence in front of one of the historic College properties.

At its meeting on 3 August, the Commission decided to schedule a demolition delay hearing, which will take place on 23 August at 7:15 p.m.

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.

Maurice Olender on the craft of reading and historical reasoning

A little gem from what Umberto Eco calls "one of the most beautiful books that I know on this subject":

A scholar's writings can be a place where conflicts crystallize: an author's whole work can be based on positions that to us seem mutually contradictory . . . .
  To confine an author to a simple image of his work, often concocted by later researchers for purposes of their own, is to recreate the past by inventing precursors for the present. . . .
  To take an author seriously, to view his work in the context of its times, to attempt to describe the twists and turns of his thinking does not, however, mean that one agrees with his conclusions or subscribes to his views. Obvious as this point is, it is worth making explicitly here.

Maurice Olender, The Languages of Paradise: Aryans and Semites, a Match Made in Heaven, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, revised and augmented ed. (NY: Other Press, 2002), 18