A wonderful development, from Texas: concealed carry weapons now are permitted in the university classroom, with the predictable ass-covering maneuvers by university administrators, hoping in advance both to pre-empt the student who goes berserk when you “trigger” him by saying the wrong thing, and to cover the university’s ass in case the worst case scenario actually materializes (“we told you someone would go berserk and shoot you if you taught that controversial material”).
Author Archives: Irfan Khawaja
John Oliver on Donald Trump
This is brilliant, and completely on target.
H/t: Suleman Khawaja
A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land (and Other Tales of Exile)
I think it was Emerson who said that sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. This passage from a New York Times Op-Ed by Peter Wehner (yes, one and the same) suggests that sometimes an inward scream is better than a worked-out blog post.
At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth. “Follow justice and justice alone,” Deuteronomy says, “so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” The attitude of Thrasymachus is foreign to biblical Christianity. So is Trumpism. In embracing it, evangelical Christians are doing incalculable damage to their witness.
“So that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.” No questions to be asked on what was required to get it.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird that Somehow Got Into My Office
With humble apologies to Wallace Stevens.
I.
Among twenty piles of Critical Thinking exams
The only moving thing
Was a blackbird that somehow got into my office. WTF. Continue reading
John Holt at Res Publica
My friend, colleague, and former high school English teacher, John Holt, has just started a blog called Res Publica. As you may have figured out, John sometimes comments here at PoT under the handle “jrholt1236.”
John was until recently an Associate Professor of English at Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey. Now, from what I gather, he mostly spends his time reading, sailing–and blogging. He resides with his wife in a small rural hamlet in New Jersey and on a small nameless island off the coast of Maine (no, I’m not making any of this up: there are rural hamlets in New Jersey, and I’ve been to Holt’s Isle).
So bookmark/follow his blog. Meanwhile, I’m still on (substantive) blogcation.
Felician Conference Due Date Extended
The due date for submissions to the Tenth Annual Felician Conference on Ethics and Public Affairs has been extended a week to March 8.
Sabahat Zakariya: “Muslimish of New York”
As I said, I’m on hiatus from active blogging, but that doesn’t stop me from doing passive blogging. In case you’re wondering, this is what a passive post looks like.
So here’s my cousin Sabahat Zakariya on SoundCloud, doing a piece for NYU Radio called “Muslimish of New York.” It’s an amusing-informative description of the situation of the younger generation of Muslim American apostates–rejecting of Islam, but wary of Islamophobia. I know the feeling.
By way of introduction: Sabahat is a Falak Sufi Scholar in the Department of Near East Studies at New York University, and in the master’s program in journalism there. She’s a single mom, speaks in a thick Aitchison College brogue, and makes the best chicken biryani in Park Slope. She’s (kinda) promised to do some blogging at PoT, but she’s busy, so who knows.
Gimme a Break
I’ve decided to take a bit of a hiatus from active blogging. I’m just finding it impossible to blog and keep up with my other commitments–teaching, running a pre-law program, running an ethics institute, co-chairing a committee on leadership and social justice, and trying to get a degree in psychology. I’ll probably be taking at least a month off, but may well take the rest of the spring term off.
Last Call: CFP, Tenth Annual Felician Institute Conference
Last call for papers or abstracts (papers preferred) in ethics or political philosophy for the Tenth Annual Conference of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. Due date is March 1 March 8. The conference itself runs all day, Saturday, April 23, 2016 in the Education Commons Building of Felician University’s Rutherford campus: 227 Montross Ave., Rutherford, New Jersey, 07070. Plenary speaker is J.L.A. Garcia (Boston College), “Grounding the Metatheory of Morals.”
Please note the call for papers/abstracts for a special dedicated session on the ethics, politics, and economics of adjuncting.
Send papers in blind review format to felicianethicsconference@gmail.com. More information here.
Republican Islamophobia: A Response
This is a much belated response to Peter Saint-Andre and Michael Young on Republican Islamophobia, from my post of January 5. Given its length, I’ve decided to make a new post of my response rather than try to insert it into the combox.
Looking over the whole exchange, I can’t help thinking that the point I made in my original post has gotten lost in a thicket of meta-issues orthogonal to what I said in the original post. I don’t dispute that the issues that Peter and Michael have brought up are worth discussing, but I still think that they bypass what I actually said.
Policy of Truth 