----- Original Message -----
From [deleted by JM so some random Columbia administrator doesn't get spammed]
Date Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:25:25 -0400
To many recipients;
Cc
Subject RUINS WORKSHOP - THIS THURSDAY
The Ruin Theory Group at Columbia University presents:
The Ruination of the Social and The Social Lives of Ruins
A one-day interdisciplinary workshop exploring the social significance
and impact of ruins
THURSDAY MARCH 26TH
9.30AM-1PM
754 SCHERMERHORN Ext.
PROF. SHANNON DAWDY (CHICAGO - ANTHROPOLOGY)
PROF. PETER FRITZSCHE (U ILLINOIS ? HISTORY)
PROF. ANN STOLER (THE NEW SCHOOL - ANTHROPOLOGY)
PROF. VYJAYANTHI RAO (THE NEW SCHOOL ? ANTHROPOLOGY)
PROF. JOHN COLLINS (QUEEN?S COLLEGE, CUNY - ANTHROPOLOGY)
Discussant
PROF. ZOË CROSSLAND (COLUMBIA - ANTHROPOLOGY)
All are welcome «» Lunch will follow
This event is sponsored by the Columbia Center for Archaeology and
Barnard Art History Dept.
23 March 2009
From my inbox: [Fwd: RUINS WORKSHOP]
15 March 2009
Talk to Hamas
Sure, its continued non-recognition of Israel may be a barrier to any lasting and secure settlement... sometime down the road. But it's a position that could also shift down the road, and since coercion and exclusion haven't worked so far to shift it, we should try something new.
Sure, Hamas has yet to renounce the use of force against civilians in the name of political struggle... but that could also change. And the prospects for peace are so bleak right now that we can ill afford to close off future options based only on past behavior.
Both points above are premised on the simple notion that we should not expect the future to be completely like the past, especially if we change our own behavior (to believe the opposite would be to deny our own agency). Neither will the future be radically different; all I am saying is that the simple act of engaging in a dialogue does not foreclose the goal of changing Hamas's commitment to these two unacceptable strategies and positions. But more to the point, there are two positive reasons to expect talking to Hamas to have positive relative payoffs.
First, I don't agree that talking to a previously excluded party doesn't concede anything. In this case, it concedes to Hamas something it has already: some minimal claim to represent some population roughly bounded by some territorial delimitation. Yes, it to some degree would legitimize Hamas as an actor - but with the act of legitimation comes the coupling of responsibility. The act of recognition embeds the party in a constellation of expectations and rules which did not apply to the previously excluded party (even if it would be naive to expect full or even partial compliance). Over time, the normative power of recognition could shift the very interests and identity of Hamas. This is boilerplate constructivism. (Yay! A policy application!)
Second, prospect theory would seem to indicate that granting even minimal concessions could deradicalize some members of the Hamas leadership independent of the goal of changing their preferences. Very roughly, prospect theory basically holds that as an individual moves from the "domain of losses" to the "domain of gains" - basically, as her feeling that she has something to lose increases - she also becomes less risk acceptant and more risk adverse. We obviously don't know where the tipping point is for any given individual, but when dealing with a collection of individuals, granting them ownership over something they did not have before could make them, on average, less willing to adopt radical strategies. Now, I'm sure there are a number of counterarguments from prospect theory that would be important caveats here (e.g perhaps Hamas is mostly composed of individuals whose subjective framings shift quickly back into the domain of losses no matter what gains you give them. But we could find out, by giving them something).
12 March 2009
Reflections on The Israel Lobby in a Post-Freeman America
1. Maybe they had a point?
2. End of list.
[Update: Oh, and the msm clues in.]
10 March 2009
Overzealousness
Seems to me that making an exception for religious headdress falls well within the bounds of reasonable accommodation:
A Muslim woman was asked to leave her place in line at a credit union in Southern Maryland and be served in a back room because the head scarf she wore for religious reasons violated the institution's "no hats, hoods or sunglasses" policy, the woman said yesterday.
06 March 2009
Schadenfreude!
Luke's link to Thomas Friedman's failures of foresight was excellent, but I am more entertained by John Tory's by-election defeat!
Failingest UTS graduate-cum-politician?
05 March 2009
Underachieving Your Country*
Things don't look particularly rosy:
During a three-hour televised hearing in San Francisco, only Justices Carlos R. Moreno and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar suggested that the court could overturn the marriage ban as an illegal constitutional revision.*With apologies to Richard Rorty.
04 March 2009
03 March 2009
Is it possible to discriminate against a state? (IV)
Another obnoxious editorial raises the question in a slightly different, more specific, form: is it possible to be anti-Semitic against a state?
The weirdness of this question is perhaps made even more obvious. The poster is clumsy, perhaps hackneyed - just as, in my perception, much "Israeli Apartheid Week" activity tends to be - but is there any reasonable sense in which it's racist? 
The state is represented by an object, suggesting it is more like a helicopter - an inorganic object - than a person or people. The author, of course, calls this a "fig-leaf": the helicopter is implicitly "the Jew." Of course, the state is, physically, neither an inorganic object nor a person or people. At least in this context, the state is not really physical in any non-trivial way. But the state is still plausibly an object: a symbol or social fact or collective identity or [insert generic constructivist-scientific-realist platitude here].
Therefore, it is at least possible to attack or negatively depict a state without attacking any person or group, except to the extent that citizens of a given state or external groups that shape state policy can be held responsible for the state actions in question. But the latter kind of attribution of responsibility is an empirical and moral question, not one to be a priori dismissed as discriminatory and racist. To what extent are Americans responsible for torture and cruelty? That would be a perfectly reasonable question for debate, and not racist or discriminatory in any meaningful way.
