I am, as I write this, sitting in a quiet air-conditioned room in a comfortable, modern library. The window to my right looks out on a bright, sunlit plaza. The plaza hosts a series of high end restaurants, each of which is set up for outdoor dining, with umbrellas to ward off the sun and heaters to keep out the chill. There are maybe a couple of dozen people out there enjoying the warmth of the evening. In observing this scene, a non sequitur of a thought occurs to me. Five thousand seven hundred miles away, a genocide is taking place. People are being starved, shot, and bombed to death with obscene abandon. The contrast is so stark as to be surreal. And yet it’s real. Continue reading
Category Archives: Notes on the Anti-War Movement
Loyalty and Academic Freedom
The case of Jonathan A. C. Brown
A friend is circulating an Open Letter to Interim President Robert Groves of Georgetown University in defense of Professor Jonathan A.C. Brown, the Alwaleed bin Talal chair of Islamic Civilisation in the School of Foreign Service. Apparently, during the recent US-Israel-Iran war, Brown made this comment on X:
“I’m not an expert, but I assume Iran could still get a bomb easily. I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops,” Brown wrote on X.
Brown has tenure and a chaired professorship at Georgetown, but apparently the comment was regarded as frightening enough to call for his suspension. The President forced Brown to delete the tweet, and he’s now been suspended. He’s also been removed as chair of his department, which I believe was intended as punishment. Continue reading
“Kalven’s Complicit Executioners”
Stirring the POT (3)
Genocide and the Academic Chairs of Virtue
I had meant “Stirring the POT” to be a monthly series, but my last one was back in March and it’s now July, so I guess the “monthly” promise was destined to be broken.
I wrote my last installment just after the talk I gave on institutional neutrality at APPE, and a couple of months before the one I was then scheduled to give at the Heterodox Academy conference in June. The Heterodox Academy talk ended up being significantly different from the APPE version or the version I put on the blog back in March. At any rate, the third version was the charm. The talk was well attended and went very well. There were a few skeptical or critical questions during the Q&A which I expected, but there was also some significant agreement, which came as a surprise. I’ll save all the squabbling for a separate post. Continue reading
Death to the IDF
On this day, 249 years ago, Americans declared war on Britain, or at least on the British Army. To declare war on an army is to wish death upon it, and to act on that wish.
About a week ago, punk rocker Bob Vylan led a chant at Glastonbury Festival in Britain, wishing death on the Israeli military: “Death to the IDF.” I agree with him. The IDF should be defeated, destroyed, and if necessary, annihilated. It’s an army of aggression, conquest, occupation, torture, and genocide. It has no right to exist, and no right of self-defense. If any organization on the planet deserves death, it’s the IDF. Continue reading
Activism, Trespass, Violence
A little over a month ago, I wrote a post here called “Against Trespass,” intended mostly for campus activists for Palestine. It’s tempting, I argued, to want to engage in forms of direct action that involve trespass, and morally speaking–abstracting entirely from considerations of cost or consequence–it can be justified to do so. But once we re-introduce matters of cost and consequence into the equation, as we have to, trespass strikes me now as mostly pointless and self-defeating. For one thing, more often than not, it puts the activists who engage in it out of commission. For another, it doesn’t effectively do what most needs doing: generate widespread public support for Palestine. So on the whole, it can’t accomplish the good that activists want or need. It’s more likely to subvert it. Continue reading
Davenport et al on Regime Change in Iran
PoT’s own John Davenport has a piece in The Defense Post attacking the idea of regime change in Iran. John argues, reasonably enough, that a war with Iran is ill-conceived, partly because it’s based on Israeli deceptions, and partly because it’s likely to lead to terrible, even catastrophic consequences. Continue reading
Against War with Iran
People like to say that Near East politics is complex, but the war on Iran is blindingly simple. Aggression is immoral, as is participation in it. Israel’s war on Iran is a blatantly obvious, incontestable act of aggression, as is US participation in the war so far, along with any further participation. No one has bothered to provide even a semi-plausible justification for this war, no one can, and no one will. The whole thing is insane.
Continue readingKalven’s Complicit Executioners
I’ve previously mentioned that I’ll be giving a presentation on institutional neutrality at the Heterodox Academy Conference in Brooklyn a couple of weeks from now, Tuesday, June 24th. I have yet to write the paper up, but here’s the abstract, below. I’d be interested in/grateful for any comments, questions, objections, etc. I’ll probably be posting on material related to the paper over the next few weeks. Continue reading
Manifesto of the Israeli Embassy Shooter
I’ll have a post here on the Israel Embassy shooting as soon as I can make the time for it, but until then, do yourself the favor of reading the presumptive shooter’s manifesto, published at Ken Klippenstein’s Substack. Though I don’t agree with Klippenstein’s take on the shooting, he’s to be commended for publishing the manifesto, which is more than can be said of the usual defenders of “viewpoint diversity.” Continue reading
Policy of Truth 