Originally published at the History News Network, March 15, 2004.
The letters section of The New York Review of Books for February 12, 2004 contains a heated exchange between Bernard-Henry Levy, author of Who Killed Daniel Pearl? (2003) and William Dalrymple, who reviewed Levy’s book in the December 4 issue of the NYRB (“Murder in Karachi”). As it happens, I have a document that settles a contentious issue between them. I reproduce it below.
Continue readingFurther Reflections on the Jason Arday Case
My post on the Jason Arday controversy, “Black Plagiarism Matters,” has gotten more-than-usual traffic for posts at this blog, much of it via Roderick Long’s Facebook page (thanks, Roderick), where there’s an extensive discussion of the post, much of it admittedly point-missing and pointless. One common criticism I’ve gotten there is that my bringing up the Martin Stone case (as a contrast to the Jason Arday case) is an instance of “whataboutism.” Like so much Internet slang, “whataboutism” is a package deal concept. One part of the package captures something real and significant; the other embodies a confusion. A criticism involving an uninspected package deal ends up committing a fallacy of equivocation, which is my response to all of these criticisms. All of them commit a fallacy of equivocation.
Continue readingA bunch of us had a contentious discussion the other day about institutional neutrality, apropos of my then-upcoming talk about it at the Heterodox Academy conference. One topic that came up was how institutional neutrality relates to curricular decisions. Is there an institutionally neutral way of deciding, say, whether a given topic or discipline merits inclusion within the curriculum of a given institution of higher education? Or a neutral way of deciding whether a program, department, division, school, or university itself ought to set aside the resources to make something a formal subject of study? Since not everything can be studied, decisions have to be made about what gets included and what doesn’t. Can those decisions be made “neutrally”? Continue reading
“…Jesus did get in the way of empire…”
–Mary Anne Grady Flores, Ithaca Catholic Workers Movement
As I’ve mentioned here a few times (May 26, May 28, July 1), I support the direct-action activist effort to block weapons shipments from the United States to Israel. These shipments conscript our complicity in Israeli aggression, occupation, and war crimes, and also conscript (and are embedded in) civilian commercial networks that are exploited for military purposes. They turn all of us into accomplices of and human shields for wars of aggression and brutality, a status that I think we’re obligated to resist and refuse.
Continue readingOne of the biggest higher ed stories out there right now is the Jason Arday plagiarism case. The New York Times has run two articles on it in the last two days, the Guardian is running with it, the Times of London is pushing it, and then there’s Tech Times, Times Higher Education, The Telegraph and the BBC. From a more ideologically astringent angle, there’s Bari Weiss’s ever-impartial Free Press, some sermonizing at The Wall Street Journal, and some tooth-gnashing at Daily Caller. Obviously, you can count on the white nationalists to have weighed in. This is their chance to shine.
Continue readingI‘VE JUST GOTTEN WORD THAT THE COURT HAS, WITH LESS THAN 24 HOURS’ NOTICE, CANCELED TOMORROW’S TRIAL FOR THE SECOND TIME. APPARENTLY, A JUDGE AND PROSECUTOR COULD NOT BE AVAILABLE TOMORROW. THERE IS, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, NO RE-SCHEDULED DATE.
–Irfan Khawaja, August 4, 6 pm.
Port Elizabeth 4 Face Trial for Blocking the Shipment of Weapons to Israel’s Genocide
Press Contacts: Mary Anne Grady Flores, gradyflores08@gmail.com (607)-280-8797
Haqq Sankara, haqqsankara@tuta.com (interviews available)
August 5; press conference: 9:30 am; trial scheduled to begin 10 am (CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE)
1 Police Plaza
Elizabeth Municipal Court
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201
July 30th. Four activists known as the Port Elizabeth 4, face trial on Wednesday, August 5th at 10 am at 1 Police Plaza, Elizabeth, NJ (press conference at 9:30 am) for blocking the main roadway to the Port of Elizabeth on October 3, 2025. They were part of an autonomous coalition of 100 protestors who stopped trucks delivering military cargo to the Port of Elizabeth bound for Israel on the Maersk Sentosa vessel. By August 5th, the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza will have gone on for 1,028 days, beyond three years.
Continue readingI did my annual DEI certification at work the other day. It’s the same one I’ve done here since 2022. The training video is produced by a company called KnowBe4, which specializes in workplace risk reduction: “15+ years of behavior data, 70,000 global customers, 12-in-production security awareness agents…1 of 3 full time US workers has been trained by us.” Not a fly-by-night operation, and not unrepresentative of corporate DEI training. Just the reverse. The norm.
The training took all of 15 minutes. What did I learn? Six woke lessons.
Continue readingAnd so do I
Here at long last is Senator Holly Schepisi’s “response” to my earlier post critiquing her claims about the New Jersey Department of Health’s May 28 inspection of Delaney Hall:
Yeah. That’s really fucking stupid.
Continue readingHow to Fail an Intellectual Health Inspection
I’ve recently taken issue with New Jersey State Senator Holly Schepisi’s claims about Delaney Hall regarding who initiated force there, but here’s a post on a different topic. On June 9th, Schepisi posted an item on her official Facebook page claiming that a May 28 inspection by the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) had “proven false” migrants’ complaints about health conditions in Delaney Hall. This is her verbatim statement from the June 9 Facebook post, which she doubles-down on several times in the comments of the same post:
There have been so many conflicting comments made by NJ representatives regarding Delaney Hall but most of the claims of egregious living conditions made by Senator Andy Kim continue to be proven false. Here is the most recent example — if maggots were in food, if food was spoilt, the NJ Department of Health would not give Delaney a satisfactory health inspection.
To this end Schepisi cites a June 8 piece in Politico which links to the NJDOH report. The Politico piece summarizes the NJDOH report, and offers up some additional statements by Raynard E. Washington, New Jersey’s Commissioner of Health.
Continue readingI’ve praised both New Brunswick Today and its editor Charlie Kratovil on this blog before. If, as I’ve put it elsewhere, “New Brunswick politics is an education,” Charlie Kratovil deserves an endowed chair.
New Brunswick Today was the newspaper that published the most extensive expose, back in 2024, of the outrageous scheme by Edison township officials (and the Edison Police) to intimidate Spanish-speaking migrants stopped at the Edison rail station, following their expulsion by Governor Greg Abbott from Texas. Kratovil was the only reporter to go out and sue to get body cam video of the entire incident, publish it in its entirety, and make explicit that what it showed was an extended civil rights violation. Subtract his reporting from the record, and the event falls between the cracks and vanishes.
Continue reading
