Framing Shame: War Crimes and Paralysis
by AKoenig
“I admire President Nixon’s courage. It is difficult for me to understand … why people are still criticizing his foreign policy — for example, the bombing in Cambodia.” — Lt. John McCain, 1973
“Collective guilt is … partly constituted by individual shame.” — Peter Forrest
In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s exhilarating victory, many on the Left are wondering how much of their […]
On the Future of Gaza
by Adel Safty
The War of Punishment and Frustration
The Israeli assault on the Palestinians pitted one of the most powerful armies in the world against a political movement with a crude military organization, using home-made rockets.
Yet Israeli leaders have discovered that wiping out Hamas is not an easy task if only because Hamas’s significance lies in what it symbolises — the […]
Putting Away Childish Things
by Advocate Staff
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
—Corinthians 13:11 “In the epoch in which we now live, civilization is not an ideal or an aspiration, it is a video game.”
—Benjamin R. Barber
I am not one to gush, especially when it comes […]
Open Letter to Hunter College President Jennifer Raab
by Advocate Staff
An Open Letter to President Jennifer Raab Hunter College, CUNY
January 25, 2009
Dear President Raab,
Your email of January 15 asked our community to join you in proclaiming “hooray for Hunter,” after the college was recently ranked number eight on Princeton Review’s list of Best Value Public Colleges for 2009. But unfortunately the bargain that Hunter offers its students is produced […]
In Memoriam: John Patrick Diggins (1935 – 2009)
by Advocate Staff
BILL KELLY
In the days since Jack Diggins’ death, I’ve been struck by how many times I’ve heard and read that Jack was beyond category: a contrarian, a maverick, a relentlessly independent thinker. To some extent, Jack cultivated that perception. His own assessment of himself as “to the right of the Left and to the left of the Right” […]
CUNY News In Brief
by Advocate Staff
Enrollment at Record High
With the economy spiraling into a nose dive of recession, the number of New Yorkers returning to school has spiked in the past recent academic year. Enrollment has surged to record highs since September 2008, as the total CUNY-wide student body has reached nearly a quarter of a million students.
But the crappy economy cannot […]
Free Choice and Adjunct Equity
by Renee McGarry
In a news conference on Friday, January 30, Mayor Bloomberg announced what many are referring to as his doomsday budget. This included one billion dollars in budget cuts, the core of which calls for laying off over 23,000 city workers. According to Bloomberg, the majority of these workers will be New York City public school teachers — as […]
Every Man Alone, A Phoenix
by Alison Powell
John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a Biography by John Stubbs. W W Norton & Co., 2008. 592 pages.
For every man alone thinks he hath got/ To be a phoenix, and that there can be/ None of that kind, of which he is, but he.
—John Donne, An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary
Psychologically, it seems (despite all evidence to the […]
A Swooning We Will Go: On Pipilotti Rist’s ‘Pour Your Body Out’
by CMatlin
Pour Your Body Out (7345 Cubic Meters), by Pipilotti Rist. At the Museum of Modern Art.
How do we approach Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s video installation Pour Your Body Out (7345 Cubic Meters)? The criticism, if it can be called that, up to now says that one should be completely enamored with the visual spectacle of seeing […]
The Crisis Of Labor
by Carl Lindskoog
Kim Moody, U.S. Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival from Below. Verso, 2007, 320 pages.
Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path Toward Social Justice. University of California Press, 2008, 324 pages.
As the global economic crisis deepens, the attack on […]
