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Judith Butler's Remarks to Brooklyn College on BDS
Last night, Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti spoke about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel at Brooklyn College. The fact that the Brooklyn College Political Science department co-sponsored the event attracted a large amount of controversy.Usually one starts by saying that one is glad to be here, but I cannot say that it has been a pleasure anticipating this event. What a Megillah! I am, of course, glad that the event was not cancelled, and I understand that it took a great deal of courage and a steadfast embrace of principle for this event to happen at all. I would like personally to thank all those who took this opportunity to reaffirm the fundamental principles of academic freedom, including the following organizations: the Modern Language Association, the National Lawyers Guild, the New York ACLU, the American Association of University Professors, the Professional Staff Congress (the union for faculty and staff in the CUNY system), the New York Times editorial team, the offices of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Brooklyn College President Karen Gould whose principled stand on academic freedom has been exemplary.
The principle of academic freedom is designed to make sure that powers outside the university, including government and corporations, are not able to control the curriculum or intervene in extra-mural speech. It not only bars such interventions, but it also protects those platforms in which we might be able to reflect together on the most difficult problems. You can judge for yourself whether or not my reasons for lending my support to this movement are good ones. That is, after all, what academic debate is about. It is also what democratic debate is about, which suggests that open debate about difficult topics functions as a meeting point between democracy and the academy. Instead of asking right away whether we are for or against this movement, perhaps we can pause just long enough to find out what exactly this is, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and why it is so difficult to speak about this.
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Video of Jeffrey B. Perry talk on The Invention of the White Race
Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race is one of the twentieth-century's major contributions to historical understanding of race and class in the United States. In the book, first published in 1994, Allen details the creation of the "white race" by the ruling class as a method of social control, in response to labor unrest precipitated by Bacon's Rebellion. Distinguishing European Americans from African Americans within the laboring class, white privilege enforced the myth of the white race through the years and has been central to maintaining ruling-class domination over the entire working class.Last week, Brecht Forum hosted a launch party for Verso’s new edition of the book, which includes notes and an introduction by Jeffrey B. Perry. At the launch, Perry gave a lecture and slide presentation on Allen's two-volume classic.
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Who's Afraid of BDS? New York City politicians harass Brooklyn College
It’s not hard to imagine that anyone who skimmed the news this week might get the impression that something uniquely terrible is about to happen in Midwood, Brooklyn. “We’re talking about the potential for a second Holocaust here,” Assemblyman Alan Maisel warns. Assistant Majority Leader Lew Fidler and other New York City politicians write a letter to the Brooklyn College president threatening the school’s funding and claiming that their constituents feel “targeted and demonized.” “Jew-bashing grows in Brooklyn,” the New York Post proclaims. “Brooklyn College, a once-esteemed campus in the City University system, this week joins a long list of enemies — from lefty denizens of the Park Slope Food Co-op to Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who crave wiping the state of Israel from the map.”
Mental images of Ahmadinejad picking up some kombucha at the Park Slope Food Co-op aside, the level of hyperbole might make one wonder if Brooklyn College is hosting a neo-Nazi revival weekend or passing nuclear secrets to Iran. -
“A strong exposé of the hype surrounding genetics” – Genes, Cells and Brains reviewed in the Guardian, Nature and the New Scientist
We admittedly live in times plagued by an obsession with genetic manipulation of both ourselves and our species’ evolutionary path. Hilary and Steven Rose’s latest book, Genes, Cells and Brains, has stirred up a debate around the scientific validity and the moral implications of these efforts. Here is what reviewers Steven Poole, from the Guardian, Ian Wilmut, from Nature, and Debora MacKenzie, from the New Scientist had to say:
Putting aside certain epistemological doubts (as in, how can we be skeptical of neuroscanning experiments for making assertions that we can neither prove nor disprove using any other sort of reference; or, alluding to underlying behavioural characteristics of which we know neither their provenance nor how and where they manifest themselves), Steven Poole generally endorses the book’s motives and claims, which are that the science behind using the human genome and brain scans to understand and interpret humans and their behaviours is much more vague and imprecise than its proponents would like us to think. Additionally, he points out that the ‘medicalization’ which comes as a result is not only vague and imprecise; it is, in fact, dangerous as it provides the pharma-industry and the healthcare business with much more responsibilities and powers than they should be afforded. -
London anarchist bookshop firebombed
Freedom, London's oldest anarchist bookshop, was firebombed in the early hours of Friday 1st Febuary. Early reports suggest the bookshop on the ground floor and the building's electrics were "seriously damaged", despite the bookshop having been fitted with metal shutters following a bombing by members of Combat 18, a British neo-fascist group, in 1993. Thankfully, nobody was hurt in last night's attack.
Freedom Bookshop is home of Freedom newspaper, Britain's longest running anarchist newspaper, as well as the Freedom Press, the country's largest anarchist publishers. It also offers facilities for a number of radical and anarchist organisations including the Anarchist Federation, the Solidarity Federation, London Coalition Against Poverty, the Advisory Service for Squatters and Corporate Watch.
Freedom was founded in 1886 by volunteers including Peter Kropotkin and Charlotte Wilson. As well as arson attacks, the paper has also suffered repression at the hands of the state, with four editors being arrested for attempting "to undermine the affections of members of His Majesty's Forces" in 1945. Contributors to the paper have included Emma Goldman, George Orwell and Ethel Mannin. The bookshop remains a vital and lively hub for the anarchist movement in Britain.
Verso Books offer our solidarity to Freedom Bookshop. A cleanup will take place at the bookshop at 84b Whitechapel High St tomorrow, Saturday 2nd, at 1pm. A fundraising and donations campaign will open shortly. For more information please visit the Freedom facebook page.