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Why we sued the American Studies Association By Simon Bronner & Michael A. Rockland

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

In the past few years, the American Studies Association (ASA) has been diverted from its scholarly mission—promoting the study of American culture—to a political one, by leaders seeking to turn the ASA into an organization that advocates for social change far beyond American borders, and with an unwavering focus on delegitimizing Israel. This effort culminated in a resolution for an academic boycott of Israel in December 2013.

The Israel boycott was put together by a small group that has commandeered the ASA, and is opposed by a substantial number of ASA members. It has torn the group asunder. It has sullied the name of the ASA. And, we contend, it violates the law.

This week, the four of us filed a lawsuit against the ASA to return the group to its core scholarly mission. We are lifelong academics in the field of American studies.
All of us care deeply about the study of American civilization. We have given our professional lives to the study of this rich field, and through our teaching, we seek to pass along our passion to our students. Combined, we have been teaching American studies for approximately 150 years. One of us is the editor of the ASA’s Encyclopedia of American Studies and an ab officio officer of the ASA, and another is a former editor of the annual Bibliography Issue of the American Quarterly, the official journal of the ASA. Two of us are winners of the Marie Turpie Prize, the ASA’s award for outstanding teaching, advising and program development in American studies.

We now fear what will happen to academic programming in American studies. We see how the ASA’s anti-Israel boycott has alienated our students. Few of our students and fellow faculty members attend ASA meetings any longer.

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Underrated: Ayelet Shaked Daniel Johnson

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

If you haven’t yet heard of Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s justice minister, you will soon. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with all her policies, some of which are undeniably hardline. She is quite simply the most charismatic, formidable and ambitious female political leader to have emerged in Israel (or anywhere else, for that matter) for a long time. She hails from the high-tech industries that have transformed the Israeli economy, she is articulate (in English as well as Hebrew), energetic and ruthless. As she’s just 39, she has a long career ahead of her and, barring accidents, will sooner or later be prime minister. Israel hasn’t had a woman in that job since Golda Meir and many people think it’s about time.

So who is Shaked (pronounced “shah-ked”)? Her background is typical for a third-generation Israeli, combining Ashkenazi and Sephardi (her mother’s family came from Russia in the 1880s, her father’s from Iran in the 1950s), liberal and conservative, secular and religious elements. Growing up in Tel Aviv, the most sophisticated and progressive city in the Middle East, she served in the army and — like so many conscripts — moved seamlessly into computer engineering. Promoted to marketing manager for Texas Instruments, she might easily have made a career among the entrepreneurial yet left-leaning Tel Aviv elite. But she had already made Judaism and Zionism the core of her outlook and, while still secular, gravitated to centre-right politics. By the age of 30 she was running the office of Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, the prime minister, and seemed poised for a stellar career in Likud, the dominant party of the Right.

The first sign that this might not happen came in 2010 when, with Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Naftali Bennett, she launched a new Zionist ginger group, My Israel. Then, in 2012, Shaked demonstrated the boldness that would become her trademark. She left Likud and joined Bennett, who had become leader of Jewish Home. A year later Shaked was elected to the Knesset, where she made a dynamic impression as the only secular woman in a religious party. During the Gaza war in 2014, she caused outrage by sharing an article on Facebook that referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes”. By last year’s general election, Jewish Home had become a key part of the ruling coalition and Netanyahu appointed Shaked to the key portfolio of justice.

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Thought of the Day “Brexit? Yes!”

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

“A vote to leave is the gamble of the century.

And it would be our children’s future on the table, if we were to roll the dice.”

David Cameron, February 2016

“We have our own dream and our own task. We are with it, but not of it. We are linked but not combined.

We are interested and associated, but not absorbed.

If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.”

Winston Churchill, 1953

On June 23 the British will go to the polls. They will vote whether to remain in or leave the European Union. Preliminary polling suggests the decision will be close. There is comfort in staying – the status quo is easy, while change portends unknowns. Maintaining the current system is the preference of many, even as the country drifts toward greater political control from Brussels. The knowledge that bigger government is accompanied by diminished personal freedoms doesn’t bother those who say “stay!” Yet, the creep of “big” government is insidious. It lulls one into complacency; it assuages before it suppresses.

There is risk in leaving the EU. It is a leap into the unknown. It is frightening to those who have grown accustomed to dependency, and unappealing to those who work in government. Almost certainly, the immediate reaction of financial markets would be negative. There are other concerns. Would the UK, as President Obama inappropriately suggested, go to the back of the queue in terms of trade with the U.S. and the rest of Europe? Would the economy lose a couple of percentage points of growth in GDP, as the wizards at the Financial Times suggest? Would leaving herald an end to the peace that has prevailed in Europe for the past seventy-one years? These are important questions, but ones with no no clear-cut answers. There is no crystal ball.

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Some Thoughts on the Politics, Profits, and Prophecies of Climate Change By Anthony J. Sadar

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

Dire climate change, predicted by atmospheric models but not substantiated by reality, has become the coinage of statists. Wealth transfer executors never had it so good. No wonder free-market thinkers and scientists whose currency is reality are targeted by the climate police.

But what if climate model output is not good enough to justify the transfer of trillions of middle-class tax dollars to politically-favorable machinates, let alone send someone to jail under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act? What if promoters of doom are somewhat biased in their thinking and even have some incentive for hoping for the worst where the atmosphere is concerned?

As hard as this may be to accept, it is possible that climate model results may be in serious error and doomsayers may be biased and incentivized somehow. After all, some of the most vociferous champions of climate chaos are not scientists but political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president. And, among those most likely to gain in power and profit are political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president.

Endorsement by politicians, along with the establishment of “settled science,” doesn’t particularly help science, rather it’s more likely to harm it. Examples of negative impact of politics and magisteriums on science abound–from Aristotle’s geocentrism to eugenics and Lysenko’s practice of science in the service of the Soviet state.

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Vienna police tell young blonde woman attacked by Muslim immigrants to dye hair, wear modest clothing, and don’t go out alone on transit after 8 By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

Welcome to creeping Sharia, Austria. When Muslims reach a critical threshold in the share of population, especially among young adult males, they begin enforcing new social rules. That is what is happening across Western Europe with the arrival of “refugees” from Syria and many other places.

The Local cites news from Vienna:

A student attacked by a gang of four men has accused police of blaming her because she had blonde hair and sexy clothing.

The incident happened when the young woman, identified only by her first name Sabina, who lives in the capital Vienna had been waiting for a train on the S6 line at the city’s main Westbahnhof station.

The 20-year-old, who was hospitalised after the attack by four men in which she was beaten and robbed, told Heute newspaper: “I felt so helpless.”

screen grab via Heute

“I had been standing on the platform waiting for the train when a man came up to me and spoke to me in a foreign language. He then started putting his hands through my hair and made it clear that in his cultural background there were hardly any blonde women. I told him to go away, and for a short while he really did go away.”

“But it was only to get his pals and a bit later he came back with three others. They stole my handbag and my cards.”

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A Confession of Liberal Intolerance By Nicholas Kristof **** see note

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

This is a stunning admission from an arch liberal at the NYTimes…..rsk

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.

“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.

The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.

Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.

Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents).

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THE DOCTOR WON’T SEE YOU NOW

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

Abraham M. Nussbaum When Doctors Stop ‘Seeing’ Patients

Dr. Nussbaum, the chief education officer at Denver Health, is the author of “The Finest Traditions of My Calling” (Yale University Press, 2016).
Physicians aptly speak of “seeing” patients. After all, medical training is a series of vision lessons. Students look closely at a nameless cadaver and disassemble it until it resembles the pictures in an anatomy text. They watch lectures in which interrelated organ systems are displayed as simple machines.

Often, however, doctors’ vision narrows too far. We begin to see the body as a collection of parts and lose sight of the person before us. Early in my medical training, this way of seeing began intruding on the rest of my life. During movies I imagined the best surgical approach for the actress. I saw friends’ physical imperfections as signs of syndromes.

So I took a leave of absence from med school to study history, literature and theology. The humanities taught me that the questions I was wrestling with are foundational to the history of medicine. In Platonic medicine, a physician sought to diagnose disease as a concrete fact. Hippocrates, who lived around 400 B.C., reoriented doctors toward seeking to understand the beneficial and deleterious forces in a patient’s life and then helping rebalance them in favor of health.

For the past two centuries, physicians have been counseled to pursue something akin to Platonic medicine, to act like scientists. Remarkable technologies—antibiotics, anesthesia, antisepsis—resulted. But physicians also shifted away from the Hippocratic pursuit of understanding patients. Today’s clinics are often alienating, as when a physician spends a checkup gazing into a computer screen. Half of doctors report feeling burned out, and a majority would advise against a medical career. CONCINUE AT SITE

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Progressives Against Lunch Bill de Blasio urges a boycott of Chick-fil-A in the Big Apple.

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

Progressives want to politicize everything, even chicken sandwiches. Witness New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaign to get his fellow citizens to boycott the Chick-fil-A restaurants that are opening around the Big Apple.

The fast-food chain opened its first New York restaurant last year, and the line at lunch time at the restaurant near our office stretches around the block. This is no small feat in midtown Manhattan, where you can’t walk 20 yards without hitting a deli, a food truck or some other fast-food joint.

This meeting of popular supply and demand is too much for Mr. de Blasio, who last week urged New Yorkers not to eat the spicy chicken fare because the chain’s owners are known for opposing same-sex marriage.

“Chick-fil-A is anti-LGBT,” said the mayor, who fancies himself a spokesman for all progressive causes. “I’m certainly not going to patronize them and I wouldn’t urge any other New Yorker to patronize them. But they do have a legal right.” Good to know he isn’t trying to ban the business, though give him time.

A Chick-fil-A spokesman responded that, “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect—regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.” There are also laws that ban discrimination. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Iran Test-Fires Another Ballistic Missile Iranian general quoted as saying missile with range of 1,250 miles was carried out two weeks ago

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

TEHRAN—Iran has test-fired another ballistic missile, the latest in a spate of tests following the implementation of the nuclear deal with world powers.

Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency Monday quoted Gen. Ali Abdollahi, deputy chief of army headquarters, as saying that the test-firing of the missile, with a range of 2,000 kilometers, or 1,250 miles, was carried out two weeks ago.

Iran, which insists the tests don’t violate the deal, is likely seeking to demonstrate that it is pushing ahead with its ballistic program despite scaling back the nuclear program following the deal that led to the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran.

In March, Iran test-fired two ballistic missiles—one emblazoned with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” in Hebrew—that set off an international outcry.

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Defining a Cyber Act of War The rules regarding this dangerous threat aren’t clear—some concision is urgently needed. By Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD)

Posted By on May 9th, 2016

The federal government has a fundamental responsibility to provide for the nation’s defense. Until recently, the government has fulfilled that role almost exclusively through nuclear deterrence and conventional military forces. But a new type of warfare—in cyberspace—is emerging as a top threat to America.

In recent years, foreign actors have used sophisticated technologies to acquire the personal files of millions of federal employees, to gain access to the private information of multibillion-dollar U.S. businesses, and to tap into the control center of the Bowman Avenue Dam in New York, among many other known cyberattacks.
Yet Washington has no clear policy for responding to a cyberattack. If an attack against the U.S. occurs through conventional military means, the policies are clear. These guidelines must be broadened to include the cyber domain.

Current U.S. policies permit the Defense Department to respond to a cyberattack against military forces and infrastructure. But the U.S. doesn’t have a clear policy governing the Pentagon’s response to a similar attack against critical civilian infrastructure.

If an attack occurs today, would the U.S. be able to respond in a timely manner? In the cyberworld, an attack can occur in mere milliseconds, requiring an appropriate response in real time. That might not be possible if explicit policies are not in place.

During a Feb. 9 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, I asked Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whether it would be helpful to have a definition of what constitutes an act of war in cyberspace. He replied that if the military had a “much fuller definition of the range of things that occur in cyber space, and then start thinking about the threshold where an attack is catastrophic enough or destructive enough that we define it as an act of war, I think that would be extremely helpful.” CONTINUE AT SITE