Recent videos showing ISIS members destroying Mosul’s museum and with it the loss of Iraq’s cultural and historical heritage are woefully sickening. The actions are undertaken supposedly on the basis of Islamic interpretation and an attempt on the one hand to destroy idols and on the other adhering to strict prohibition on art and figurines … Continue reading »
Zaytuna College: An accredited academic address for Muslims in America
March 4, 2015 stands as a historical date for American Muslims as the WASC Senior College and University Commission granted initial accreditation to Zaytuna College, thus becoming the first Muslim liberal arts college to be accredited in the United States. The Commission’s letter commended the “institution’s achievements” and praised Zaytuna leadership for “implementing a variety of … Continue reading »
There’s a real archaeological surprise in Honduras…
And if you have been following popular science reporting the last couple of days, you probably think you know what I mean. Well, that’s the surprise: you don’t. For those who haven’t seen the original report or its follow-ups, supposedly a “lost city” unknown to science, the “untouched ruins of a vanished culture”, has been … Continue reading »
Islamophobia: An Electoral Wedge Issue!
In 2011, the Center for American Progress published a groundbreaking report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” which managed to expose for the first time the funding sources behind the bigotry producing Islamophobic industry, the individuals responsible and the effective strategies that made possible to impact the mainstream. CAP’s report managed … Continue reading »
Why aren’t blacks migrating like they used to?
In a recent publication in the journal Demography, Patrick Sharkey analyzed patterns of geographic migration of black and white families over four consecutive generations. In prior generations, the NYU sociologist observed patterns of migration consistent with conventional wisdom, with massive outflows of blacks from the South toward cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and eventually the … Continue reading »
My Passage to India
I set off on my first passage to India when I was 12 years old. My father had a Fulbright grant to teach at Madras Christian College, in Tambaram, southern India, and he decided to take our entire family with him for the year. I remember being told about my family’s plans some time in … Continue reading »
Are we Charlie?
Upon arrival last week at Berkeley (I am a visiting scholar on a sabbatical leave) I was baffled by the silent campus. While the world was awash with “I am Charlie” protests in defense of free speech and condemnation of violence, the university that gained its fame as the cradle of the Free Speech movement … Continue reading »
U.C. Berkeley and the “Arts Race”
The New York Times recently (Nov. 16, 2014) proclaimed what many of us have long known to be true: there is an “arts race” among the nation’s elite universities. In recent years, some of the finest universities have invested large sums of money in arts facilities, in some cases remodeling existing buildings but also building … Continue reading »
Not everyone mourns for Ayotzinapa’s students
Forty-three student teachers (normalistas) disappeared on the evening of September 26 in the municipality of Iguala, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. The incident has attracted national and international attention, and it has also generated a wealth of speculation and misinformation. The daily reports concerning the discovery of numerous mass graves have further muddied … Continue reading »
Vocabulary retrogression
As is now well-known, scores on “intelligence” tests rose strongly over the last few generations, world-wide – this is the “Flynn Effect.” One striking anomaly, however, appears in American data: slumping students’ scores on academic achievement tests like the SAT. Notes of the decline starting in the 1960s sparked a lot of concern and hand-wringing. … Continue reading »
The Free Speech Movement’s passionate readers
“Passionate readers” is not the tag line today for the people swept up in the Free Speech Movement, but it fits just as well as other efforts to sum them up. Thanks to the archives that the Library has built, serious students of the FSM know this. Margot Adler, a familiar voice on National Public Radio … Continue reading »
TV’s Dora takes kids exploring where schools fear to tread
“For my kids to learn a second language — it’s so important to me,” Christiane Gauthier said in mournful tones, her own mother’s native Spanish fading fast among younger generations. Many parents share this lament as our children remain ill prepared for a diverse society, along with a job market that already rewards bilingual workers, … Continue reading »
What ‘Ivory Tower’ gets wrong
The documentary film Ivory Tower takes on national debates about higher education and renders them as compelling dramas, stories, and scenes. Andrew Rossi, the film’s talented director, previously used similar techniques to raise probing questions about the future of print journalism in an age of digitalization in his film Page One. Now Rossi asks whether “college is … Continue reading »
Telling stories vs. telling data
In a just-released preview of his new book, Narrative and Collective Action, public-policy scholar Frederick W. Mayer of Duke University discusses the power of the well-told story for leaders of social movements and politicians. Starting with the example of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mayer recounts how effective leaders deploy stories rather than analyses. Stories compel us, he says, … Continue reading »
Shake It Up, UC Berkeley Graduates!
Recently I had the privilege of delivering the commencement address to the graduating class in UC Berkeley’s program of Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Studies. It was May 21, 2014 in the Greek Theater, and nearly 400 students received bachelor’s degrees in the fields of American Studies, Cognitive Science, Interdisciplinary Studies, Media Studies, and Religious Studies. Here’s … Continue reading »
The World Cup begins
Starting today, the world’s attention turns to Brazil, where the 2014 World Cup begins. From cafés in Ramallah, to bars in Kampala, to a pub in Cambridge (where I’ll be watching), people of all ages will be shouting frantically at televisions, sometimes screaming in agony, other times delighting in joy. A truly global moment, the … Continue reading »
Work hours and the pay gap
Twenty-five years ago, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the phrase “stalled revolution” to describe how far American women had come since the 1950s. What she meant (in my reading) is that, although gender relations in America, from workplace to bedroom, had changed radically, the pace of change had slowed tremendously. The quicksand that bogged the … Continue reading »
Mourning 9/11 Victorian style
We have just witnessed the opening of the 9/11 memorial and museum at site of the destroyed World Trade Towers, an event that once more raises attention to how we Americans form our “collective memories.” (On collective memory, see here, here, here and here.) In a recent suggestive essay in the Journal of Social History, Stacy Otto argues that New Yorkers … Continue reading »
Bible readings
A recent story noted that president of the Hobby Lobby company, the company that took its religious objections to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) all the way to the Supreme Court, is a leader in a campaign to put Bibles and Bible classes into American public schools. As you would expect, this move is getting push back … Continue reading »
Old days, fast times
There’s a lot of discussion about speed these days – from the possible advantage of seconds that some users on the internet would get were broadband “net neutrality” to go away to the market-disrupting micro-mini-milli-second competition among “flash mob” stock traders to debates over the speed-up “bullet trains” might provide. It seems as if we … Continue reading »