The Advocate

Book Review: Unpacking an Israeli Obsession

Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram. Stanford University Press (2009).

In the context of frequent rhetorical sparring and escalating threats of nuclear destruction, little common ground is said to exist between Israel and Iran. Enmity between the two states is often framed as the product of irreconcilable geopolitical, ideological, and strategic differences. Iran’s support of terrorist organizations that seek Israel’s destruction, the regime’s religious character, and supposedly anti-Semitic leadership all appear to ensure confrontation between the two states.

Book Review: Radical Imaginings

Imaginal Machines by Stevphen Shukaitis. Autonomedia (2009).

At every level, Imaginal Machines is a subversive text. Against the rising tide of complacency, Stephven Shukaitis sketches out new possibilities for political engagement that are at once seditious and savvy.

Book Review: “A Quiet Unlike Any Twilight”

Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World by Joshua Poteat. The University of Georgia Press (2009).

In 1851, the same year Moby-Dick was published and the first World’s Fair was held in London, German engraver and printer J.G. Heck published his Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science. The scientific revolution that began in the mid-sixteenth century was over and science had assumed its modern form.

Future Still Uncertain for Kurdish Iraq

"Christians and other minority groups have also been the targets of choice in Kirkuk of late. While the violence there has not exhibited the same characteristics of systematized execution as in Mosul, the results have been no less horrific. Most recently, insurgent groups have carried out attacks on Christian businessmen, and have continued their practice of assassinating municipal security forces, routine violence which has claimed the lives of hundreds of police officers over the past few years."

Whose University?

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Last November, as many of you will no doubt remember, students and faculty at the University of California staged a series of protests and building takeovers in response to the UC Regents’ decision on November 19 to increase undergraduate [...]

CUNY News-In-Brief

Paterson to CUNY: “Take a Hike…A Tuition Hike!" The money used to fatten Mathew Goldstein’s wallet isn’t going to grow on trees, people, so get ready to pony up some cash! As if David Paterson hasn’t already caused the students at CUNY and SUNY enough grief with his statewide cuts to higher education, Governor Justice is now looking to help the struggling university systems recoup some of those losses by proposing legislation that would allow the Boards of Trustees at SUNY and CUNY to increase and/or adjust tuition rates at will. Paterson’s new bill (euphemistically titled the Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act) would neither empower students nor provide for any greater innovation

Breast Health: Building Awareness

This morning, as I slipped into my underwire, c–cup-with-a-hint-of-padding Donna Karan bra, I realized, again, that I have yet to find the perfect-fitting brassiere. No, I am not seeking a nature-defying, power-boobs effect (I need to be able to see the book in my lap, for starters) nor am I negating DKNY’s efforts to help [...]

Book Review: This New Yet Still Approachable America

A New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Belknap Press (2009).

A book as long and as rich as A New Literary History of America cannot have justice done to its many individual essays in the space of a single review. Nevertheless, highlights from the volume fairly leap out every twenty or thirty pages or so, begging especial mention

Book Review: Pictures of an Institution

The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. W. W. Norton and Company (2010).

The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected by Jonathan R. Cole. Public Affairs (2010).

In The Marketplace of Ideas, Menand narrows his emphasis to a set of particular issues, but in the process provides a useful overview of American higher education. The book is organized into three essays examining three particular issues in higher education: 1) the history of the general education curriculum, 2) the logic of academic disciplines and the allure of “interdisciplinarity” as a buzzword in academia, and 3) the politics of professors and the academic labor market.

Book Review: “Beyond the Intensities of the Fountain”

A Village Life: Poems by Louise Glück. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2009).

One way to approach a book of poems is to imagine not how the poet speaks, but from what stage. Wordsworth talks out of the woods, on a long walk. Allen Ginsberg shouts to his reader from a crowded bar.