I get the need (I suppose) to see the bright side of things as expressed in this article on LinkedIn, especially after the misery of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hospital workers did great things during the pandemic, and can be justifiably proud about the good they did. But I wish I had thirty minutes with a hospital executive at the level of Mikelle Moore below, to give them a small dose of some realities with which they seem oddly unacquainted.
I just got news today, a week after the fact, of the untimely passing of my friend and colleague Barbara Gordon, Associate Professor of Music and Instructor in French at Felician University. Hired about a year before I was (2007), Barbara essentially built the university’s music department and program (including its choir) from the ground up, and was responsible for just about every major musical event–religious, classical, jazz–that took place on campus. She organized the Christmas concert as well as the musical parts of the convocation and commencement ceremonies, and virtually every concert and recital in between. Where there was high musical culture to be had at Felician–be it Adele, Bach, or Coltrane–Barbara was likely behind it.
Continue readingContinue readingMany academics object to Koch grants but not government grants. As far as I can tell, the objections to the former apply with equal or greater force to the latter. Consider two:
1) The Kochs have committed injustices and accepting Koch money makes you complicit in those injustices, even if the funded project is wholly unrelated to them.
But of course the government has committed injustices; indeed, injustices far graver than anything the Kochs have been accused of (e.g. murdering people daily). Furthermore, most of what people find objectionable about the Kochs is their lobbying efforts. Yet the government should also bear some responsibility for seeking and accepting the influence of Koch money in that case. If you accept money as part of your murder for hire business, you are at least as morally blameworthy as the buyer.
As many readers will know, I just spent the last eight months working full time for OR EVS at Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, New Jersey. About a week ago, I started a new job as a junior analyst in hospital revenue cycle management (RCM) with Aergo Solutions in Iselin, New Jersey. People have asked how I like my new job. Get back to me on that when I know what the hell I’m doing, since for now, I obviously don’t.
For now, I can only comment on the transition between the one job and the other. And the only comment I can muster is that I’m having trouble putting things in words. The difference between working for OR EVS and working for hospital RCM is so stark and abrupt that I’m inclined to think that you really have to experience it first-hand to know what it’s like. One day you’re working with fracture tables; the next day, you’re working with pivot tables. The two things have about as much in common as the two jobs themselves.
Continue readingIn one year, Felician University has lost its President, its Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, its Dean of the School of Business, its Registrar, and most recently, its Vice President of Academic Affairs. Before that, it lost a Trustee, a previous VPAA, a Provost, the Dean of Nursing, and two Deans of Business. Vanity compels me to mention that it also lost an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Pre-Law Adviser, along with literally dozens of faculty and staff, often terminated on the flimsiest of pretexts, and in some cases, on the basis of manufactured scandals and outright lies.
Continue readingAbraham Foxman was for decades the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, and is currently its National Director Emeritus. Paul Surovell, a Facebook friend of mine, is a peace activist and Chair of South Mountain Peace Action in Maplewood, New Jersey. The exchange between them (below the fold) is both revealing and astonishing.
Revealing because despite using them all his career, Abraham Foxman literally has no idea what the word “libel” or the phrase “blood libel” actually mean. Astonishing because Surovell’s final accusation really is as obvious as he says it is: Foxman’s aversion to the very acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering seems to suggest either that Palestinian suffering doesn’t exist, or that it’s deserved even in children, or that even if it exists, it doesn’t merit acknowledgement. Why else would that be, except on the assumption that non-Jewish suffering by definition takes a back seat to Jewish suffering? How much clearer could the sheer dehumanization of Palestinians get?
Continue readingWhy is it called “The Three Musketeers” rather than “The Four Musketeers”? Was Alexandre Dumas really the author? Was Auguste Maquet the author? Was the novel based on real people and events? Was it based on a previous novel by somebody else? Were there any sequels or spinoffs? Do all the existing translations suck? Was Dumas racist against blacks? Was he black himself? Was d’Artagnan more of a villain than a hero? Did he fight Cyrano de Bergerac? Are the publishers of Dumas’s works guilty of literary fraud? And finally, and most importantly, is the “Three Musketeers” candy bar actually made out of musketeers? If these questions have got you tossing and turning all night – get fast, fast relief with this one weird video!
In case anyone had missed the message, the cause of and movement for Palestinian rights is flatly incompatible with anti-Semitism. Put differently, there is no justifiable way of being in favor of Palestinian rights on anti-Semitic grounds or for anti-Semitic ends. When anti-Semites try to appropriate the Palestinian cause for their own purposes, or hijack the cause by attacking innocent Jews, consistent defenders of Palestinian rights are among the first–and loudest and clearest–to call them out. Here’s a piece from CommonDreams for anyone who still has doubts about the supposed “connection” between anti-Semitism and Palestinian rights (ht: Kevin Carson). There is no connection, just the wholehearted disavowal of one.
Continue readingI’ve been reading The New York Times just about every day for the last 35 years, paying special attention to their coverage of Palestinian-Israeli issues, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen coverage like this, below. I don’t know what took so long, but this article, for once, captures the lived reality of Palestinian experience in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Better late than never.
This post is a follow-up to part 1, about the fire at Nassar Farm, and was originally posted on Facebook, August 14, 2019, just after my visit there. I guess I was painfully right about “uncertain” outcomes.
What you see below are photos of the Nassar Farm, or the Tent of Nations, on a hill near the Palestinian village of Nahalin, surrounded by four settlements of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc (Neve Daniel, Betar Illit, Alon Shvut, and Elazar).* The Nassar Farm lies on a hill toward which all four settlements are slowly expanding. Each expansion involves what the Nassar family regards as an encroachment on or violation of their property boundary, which they trace a century back to Ottoman times.
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