Month: August 2009

The wonders of ILL

Upon reading Chrissy Callahan’s article, “Books for classes: Less is more” in The Hoot, I am surprised to find that the most convenient alternative to book-buying is not mentioned at all: Interlibrary Loan. This process is fairly simple, and it allows you to obtain your textbooks from the library without being tied to reading them in the library. How does this work? Start at the LTS website, and click “Find Books and More.” From here you will see a link for “Other Library Catalogs,” and then World Cat. Simply search for your textbook, click on the title, and press “Get it.” If Brandeis has a copy, make sure to make a note that our copy is checked out or you need it for more than the 2 hours that reserves allows (only if this is true, of course!). The ILL department will order your book and deliver it to the main library for a loan period of about a month. Note, however, that you need to order it early–the process can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

While this is not a viable alternative for textbooks that are used throughout the semester, I have found it very useful for those books that we only read and discuss for a short period of time. If you’re never going to use a book again, why buy it when you can get it from the library?

Welcome Back!

Welcome home to the nest, where we shall learn to fly on the wings of knowledge and eat the worms of… knowledge. Now that I have my yearly metaphor out of the way, some light, semi-interesting reading worth taking a look at…

Financial Status Report

This latest document shows that our budget gap-closing measures, spearheaded by a $7.4 million suspension of payments to faculty retirement accounts, are going pretty much according to plan. Actually, slightly better – French writes,

At the conclusion of FY 2009, the University’s financial status can be characterized as slightly stronger than the middle-case.

Our endowment, rather than suffering a 30% loss, has dropped only 17.3% in FY 2009, much better than the ~25% drop at most peer institutions. However, we still need to recruit 400 more students and retire 35 faculty members over the next few years if we are to remain on schedule.

In other news, the new Shapiro Science Center has been declared “fully operational,” just like the second Death Star.

University Learning Goals

are here. Essentially, after Brandeis, you should have a mastery of all kinds of communication, intellectual, and critical thinking skillz. You should be creative and flexible, like a good porn star. You should understand everything and everyone, and  be able to maintain six pack abs in only 2 minutes a day. And most importantly, you should read Innermost Parts every single day of your life.

Expect regular posting from here on out. Tell your friends.

Privilege Watch, Mini-Case File #1.5: The Color of Money

[Hopefully there’ll be another, more in-depth case file by the end of the week]

When you’re a religious group with a long history of intolerance and racial animus like the Mormons, interfering in the democratic process to legislate your sexual mores isn’t just something you do in the state next door. It now looks like the Mormon church is employing its financial resources to derail the Equality Bill in the United Kingdom, a broad piece of legislation to bring together several already-enacted anti-discrimination measures.  They have retained a distinguished law firm with the aim of building a coalition of religious groups to protect every Englishman’s right to bash gays (or at the very least ensure exemptions for religious organizations).

Meanwhile, if you’re a Muslim-American charity founded to help children and families victimized by an illegal occupation, your government will distort evidence and make wild, unfounded assertions in order to convict you of “material support for terrorists”, a charge so nebulous and subjective it resembles a Rorschach ink blot.

So, to quickly review: Providing essential supplies to the victims of a brutal military siege? Illegal!

Funding cultural and sexual imperialism so you and your fellow bigots won’t catch the gay cooties? Hell yes!

Registration

Have your interests changed a little bit over the summer? Do you have that one class that you really wish you had signed up for? This is just a reminder that as of 12:01 am on MONDAY, AUGUST 17 registration for fall classes are once again open. Ready, set, go!

Brandeis prof’s book bowdlerized by publisher

cartoons-that-shook-the-world-190

Brandeis politics professor Jytte Klausen’s new book on the 2005 Danish Muhammed cartoon controversy has been selectively censored by its publisher, the Yale University Press. The New York Times reports today that Yale ordered the images of the actual cartoons to be removed from the book.  Entitled The Cartoons That Shook The World, the book was intended to be the definitive account of the incident which caused riots and 200 deaths, as well as a worldwide debate over journalistic ethics. The Yale Press stated that the publishing of the actual cartoons in the context of a book about them “could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.” But even more controversially, Yale removed images of Muhammed other than the cartoons from the book, and furthermore told Prof. Klausen that it would only allow her to read the reasons for the decision if she agreed not to disclose them to anyone.

Personally,  I find the Yale Press’s action utterly unreasonable. Admittedly, I do not know the full reasoning behind the decision, since the Press will not disclose it. But seeing the cartoons is an important part of understanding the controversy about them, and the book will lose much of its value without being able to show its subject. I hope this decision is reversed or Prof. Klausen finds a new publisher.

Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammed in New Book by Jytte Klausen. The New York Times. August 12, 2009.

Brandeis Stamp

Turns out that Louis Brandeis will get his very own stamp.
As a Louis Brandeis supporter, I am pleased with this decision.

However, here’s some more exciting news: Melvin J. Urofsky is coming to Brandeis!

Allow me to explain. Ever since I wrote a final paper on Louis Brandeis, I’ve realized how much of a great man he was. Forget Judging – this guy was an activist par excellence.

Melvin J. Urofsky is one of the best -if not the best- Brandeis biographers. He’s going to show up at the Faculty club on September 29th to promote his new book. Be there; you’ll thank me later.

Privilege Watch Case File #1: First They Came for the Dead White Men

While my introduction to Privilege Watch focused primarily on race, my first case file will also touch on sexism and Christian privilege. The latter is something that I feel I’m exceptionally sensitive to. As a Jewish atheist, public presumptions of faith, especially Christianity, are glaringly obvious to me in a way that it seems Christians don’t recognize. Partly I attribute this to my summer internship in atheist activism with the Secular Student Alliance, but I also think that the experience of exclusion clues one in to the reality of the dominant culture. As Womanist Musings puts it:

“If you are gay or lesbian you’re an expert in heterosexist culture and how it marginalizes the various sexualities because for the entirety of your existence you have had to negotiate it to be able to survive.  If you are of colour you are an expert on white privilege and racism because for the entirety of you life you have been assaulted by it.  If you are differently abled you are an expert on abelism because for the entirety of your experience you have been denied access by others, or told to capitulate and remove yourself from any and all social actions.  The oppressed are experts because we live it every damn day of our lives.”

Obviously, I can’t claim to have experience with those specific oppressions, but I think that this idea will be a running theme of Privilege Watch – namely, that minorities, be they racial, sexual, gender, religious, or ability, often know more about their dominators than they do.

Anyway, today’s case file starts with this Fox News clip. You can also see this at the wingnut propaganda site The Fox Nation under the wholly misleading title, “Guess Which Words Are Banned From Your Kids’ Textbooks?”:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbZuSOq5Ftg[/youtube]

I saw that sneer, Steve Doocy! Just for that you deserve a smack upside the head.

Continue reading “Privilege Watch Case File #1: First They Came for the Dead White Men”

Privilege Watch: An Introduction

It seems that ever since Obama’s election, affluent white hetero Christians – by far the most economically and politically powerful bloc in the country, far beyond their real numbers – have suddenly been waking up in the middle of the night, screaming “Holy shit, I’m not nearly as privileged as I used to be!” Their hysterics are prima facie absurd, in that their money and influence is still enough to, for instance, block necessary health reform and hate crimes legislation. If, as Bill O’Reilly says, the white Christian power structure is under serious attack, it seems to be fairly shrugging off the blows.

At the same time, though, these charges are pretty dangerous. Let’s leave aside the fact that (to use the above example) if health care isn’t reformed, millions will remain uninsured and suffer serious health consequences. I mean that conservative demagoguery can seriously fucking kill you. If puns really are the lowest form of humor, I’ll dub this list

Right-Wing Assholes’ Greatest Hits!

  • The vicious and unsubstantiated charges leveled at Dr. George Tiller by Bill O’Reilly and other anti-choice fanatics created the hateful atmosphere that led to his assassination.
  • A 22-year old white supremacist’s shooting of three Pittsburgh police officers came after an extended stroking of his paranoiac love gun by Glenn Beck, who waxed rhapsodic about FEMA concentration camps.
  • Jim Adkisson’s shooting of a Unitarian church in Tennessee was prompted by his hatred of liberals and Democrats. His desired targets included the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America listed by Bernard Goldberg.

These are not fringe incidents. The direct perpetrators may not be considered part of the mainstream, but they share a significant and critical affinity with the vanguard of the social conservative movement: namely, the belief that they are defending a traditional, god-given social order from dangerous outsiders. Continue reading “Privilege Watch: An Introduction”

Local Boy Makes Good

Recent Brandeis grad Pat Garofalo went straight from editing the Hoot to working for the Center for American Progress. I hear you ask, “yeah, so what?”

That job is so cool that Pat can interview the Senate Majority whip without breaking a sweat. Look:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGFXeNigz0&eurl[/youtube]

Update: I’ve been thinking. To one-up the Hoot, I suggest that an editor from The Justice go chess-boxing with Harry Reid. They must, in order to regain their honor. 🙂 Hannah Kirsch, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.