Women in Green

Q. What do they use to vacuum the Whitehouse?

A. A Dyson. And what a good vacuum it is.

Harry Potter on Political Theory

I read this article over at Hogwart's Professor (a UofC grad, as it happens) about the ties between Machiavelli and Harry Potter. Irrespective of the important genre of contemporary literature that is Harry Potter, I finally understood the greatness of Machiavelli. In the chapter 17 of HPPS/SS* Quirrelldemort comments, "There is no good and evil, there is only power..." (p 291). This line dovetailed nicely with a thought the inimitable Jim Block offered me this summer. He said that while contemporary philosophy is finding difficulty hitting firm metaphysical ground, political theory can always take for granted Power, and its operations on systems.

Machiavelli is not merely a pragmatist, always making the proper chess move, but proposing an entirely new political geometry. Not unlike Einstein, Machiavelli claims that the universal political fabric is neither one way nor the other, good nor bad, but a geometry of power!

And no, I am neither proud that it took me this long to figure this out, nor that I had to learn it from Harry Potter. So it goes.

* Geek for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone/Sorcerer's Stone.

The Just v. The Good, or Bad

Statements like these bother me:

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said [regarding the verdict of I. Lewis Libby]. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison." -NYT

This is the second time in a week I have been consternated by such a commentary on the Justice system (the first was when Israeli AG Mazuz claimed to strike a plea bargain because it "minimize[d] the harm to the institution of the presidency" in his words). You don't commute a sentence because you feel like you understand the law better than the jury or the judges. You are just the executive, sans Juris Doctorate, I might add. The president does have the prerogative to commute a sentence, but as the executive not as an officer of the law.

Oddly, my feelings are reversed for the case of Mazuz. There he is not responsible for the "institution of the presidency," but bringing cases to trail and getting convictions. If he can't get a conviction, plea bargains are acceptable, but in the face of the evidence, not the defendant. Law examines the individual person, politics examines the state. Can we please keep those two things separate?!

Happy American History Written by the Victors Day!

Steamboat Mickey, only Farfur, and no steamboats

Why I am posting this? It is not merely to show how bad, mean, no-good, rotten, etc the "other side" is. Firstly, I think it is funny in a certain Itchy & Scratchy sense, except it was not produced with parody in mind. Regardless, it has the, "oh my goodness, no one would really show that, would they?!" Fox Prime Time appeal.

Additionally, it is instructive to see a primary source, which comes to illustrate a very fundamental aspect of this regional conflict. If this is what you tell your children, then more likely than not, this is what they will tell their children.

Habeas Corpus, Habeas Corpus

I consider myself a liberal, but I also identify strongly with a textualist tradition of legal interpretation. That puts me in a tight spot when trying to develop opinions on cases like Panetti v. Quarterman. While Mr. Panetti was, and is, obviously insane, the Fifth Circuit already heard the habeas motion and dismissed it (per Justus Thomas's decent). Do you hold a strict reading of the law like Thomas, or do you make things up in the name of a right-end like Kennedy? Orin Kerr over at Volokh has more intelligent things to say than I could.

The Immigration Bill is Dead! Long Live the Immigration Bill!

So the Immigration Bill died on the floor of the Senate today. What a great outcome. I feel very strongly about the need for a complete reform of our immigration code and I was furious with many of the provisions in this piece forward by the bipartisan group of Senators. The path to citizenship was not clear at all and provisions such as requiring Z-visa aliens to "touch home base" (i.e. return to their country of origin) or the $500 fee for the visa (processing not included), plus a $2,000 fine, plus 3 years back taxes were self-defeating. What illegal immigrant can afford $2,500+?

I wish the problems with immigration in this country were solved, but I am willing to take a good solution over an immediate one. That is probably even more likely now.

I'm special

As I began to spaz before starting Grad School, I realized the following:
I am smart. I really am. I can think creatively and rigorously. According to my SAT scores I am in the 95 percentile.
Let's assume that is true, and there are only 5% of people who are smarter than I. That leaves roughly 350 million, individual, unique, free and autonomous agents (assuming the population of the world at 7 billion) who are better at whatever it is that I consider myself good at.
I shudder to think how I rank with regards to things I am not particularly good at, like community service, etc. Coming off a week of graduations and people being told they are unique and special, 350 million really puts subjectivity in a different light.

Synthetic Myths

How can one judge a good myth? What makes a myth strong and powerful is very difficult to discretely identify, but the properties of a strong myth would seem to be slightly less vague. A good myth is trafficable such that it does not loose efficacy in a different time or space. The Jeffersonian myth of American federation would appear to be one of those good myths. Whether in a classroom or on a farm, in a courthouse or in battle, Americans internalize the story of their founding, and the values such as liberty, freedom and felicity that it radiates.

For the last half decade I have fervently challenged the notion that Palestinian nationalism was a false (i.e. weak) myth. The fact of the matter is, I would argue, if people say they are Palestinian, they are Palestinian irrespective of historical evidence to the contrary. The events of the past six days in Gaza are leading me to challenge this dogma.

Dennis Ross mentioned the "three state solution" this week (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) but dismissed it out of hand. I believe he did this more out of a pragmatic approach to politics than a reasoned one. The factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah reveal a very live and significant rupture between the two societies. The West Bank and Gaza are very different in their social, religious and economic composition, and it is beginning to appear as if they are more different than they are similar. That coupled with the geographic divide between the two stretches of land makes the eventual confluence of these two cultures seem only that much more remote. I agree with Mr. Ross that a two state solution might be more convenient, but I don't know if it should be more possible.

And here is where I feel Palestinian myth wears thin. Its claim is too bold and too recent--many who are alive today still remember when this narrative was being composed. While Palestinians may have self-identified for many years, the ability to forge a national identity, one that is beyond self-identification (meta-self-identification, as it were) only began in the '70's with Yassar Arafat. When this myth is now threatened and forces rise which seek to subvert this story to Egyption-Qutbist ideologies, the people, qua nation, does not rise to combat this perill. When liberty was at risk in America, brother rose up against brother to ensure that a nation constituted of the people and by the people shall not perish from this earth. The fact that American myth was strong enough to sustain the country through the war between the states and narrate history through the waters of national despair is indicative of its fastness. I fear that the synthetic nature of the Palestinian myth is evidence through the wear of this resolve.

NPR on UChicago

David Brooks said of the immigration bill this week:

I agree with E.J. [Dionne] on this, [the immigration bill is] brilliant but not lovely. Sounds like my college classmates. UChicago folks.

It's official.

For know what is above you...

...a watchful eye, a listening ear and a book in which all your deeds are written. (Avot 2:1, loose translation)

Amnesty International seeks to make literal this mishna when it launched eyesondarfur.org today. The conflict in Darfur is, unfortunately, very complicated with many facets (alot of ins, alot of outs). By posting satellite imagery of troubled hotspots in Darfur, Amnesty hopes to dissuade the Sudanese government's role in genocide by allowing people around the globe to see images of the conflict from above.

While I think there is what to be desired in this technology (I would like to see better resolution and more real time imagery. At this stage the images are still too vague to reconstruct a serious portrait of the real-time conflict) this appears to be a wonderful idea in concept. Offering global transparency to international conflicts allows a method for real oversight (quite literally). Obviously such technologies can be distorted to infringe on privacy, but for now this appears to be a creative solution to an otherwise ongoing mess.

Terrorists of Yester Year

After watching POTC 3 for the second time it occurred to me that pirates of the 18th and 19th centuries might be a close analog to contemporary terrorists. They were rouge bandits, acting in only very loose collaboration with one another, but collectively posing a severe threat to both commercial and passenger vessels. Pirates were known for being ruthless, having no dignity for human life and showing little compassion (although much of that perception is, no doubt, exaggerated). Yet, the pirate threat was all but eradicated in the 20th century. How? If I had more time I might try to look into the historical and political dimensions of the pirate threat, and how it was eventually quashed.

Mishnayos for Bill

To sign up to learn mishnayos le'iluy nishmas Chaim Yisrael ben Ilana go to www.shloshim.org and search for "Bill Maddex". The shloshim will be June 25th.

Bill Maddex ז"ל

Bill was niftar this past shabbes. When a friend of mine came to prospie at the UofC he met Bill in the kitchen. Bill warned Adam with complete seriousness, "You might not want to come here, there are a lot of really weird people."

Bill was unique in a community noted for uniqueness. He tenured seventeen years over twenty-three and left a mark on all who knew him. He played twenty year chess games, he read thousands of books, he knew tens of thousands of baseball statistics. All effortlessly. He was, takka fucking nuts in all the right ways. In many ways he represented all the best that Hyde Park and the UofC offers. He was abrasive, but gentle, harsh but engaging. He would never let a fellow interlocutor off easy. I remember one shalush shudes when he turned a particular grad student into a gelatinous puddle for questioning the fossil records ability to verify evolution. Bill gave him at least two chances to back down. Then he let him have it. Bill would even correct personal stories I would tell; he knew that much.

He was almost mythical. You can tell people of this Bill who works at the Co-op and repairs bikes, but could school a good number of the faculty with one intellectual arm behind his back. No one would believe you. Who would believe a man who read ten thousand books before he was forty? Bill just wasn't like others. He was singular.

I don't know why Bill deigned to talk to me or even, dare I say, befriend me. I never really knew why I merited his company. I just realized one day that his, "Do you know what you are talking about?!" was not hostile, but the rhetoric of engagement. When I was applying to grad school this fall, he had more recommendations of faculty to work with than most professors in the field I had met with. One summer I got to sit in on a Shmuli-Bill three hour long conversation about the '04 Illinois Senate race, baseball and Iowa federal politics in the 20's. When I was foolish enough to ask how they knew all this trivia, they looked at me with stupefaction. "I don't know, we just read." I admired his intellect, I admired his commitment to his family and I admired his strength of character.

As I remarked this morning to Larry, they don't make 'em like they used to. Larry replied, "I don't think they ever made them like that."

Our deepest sorrow extends to Jen and Shaya. The family will be sitting shiva in Eugene, OR.

ברוך דיין האמת

I am sorry to report the passing of our dear friend Bill Maddex (Merle Agic, Chaim Yisrael ben Ilana).

Refuah Shleimah

The person often known as Merle Agic has been diagnosed with metastatic cancer in his liver and is entering treatment shortly. Chaim Yisrael ben Ilana.

For Zev

The Philosophical Lexicon

Civic Reading

Last day to issue comments on proposed changes to the way states issue federally recognized ID cards is May 8th. I am attempting to read the regulations through so I can complain out of frustration, and not ignorance, as if often the case.

Seriously though, I really don't like any mechanism which further removes identification from identity. No one should be able to tell you that you are not who you are.

How to Pick a Grad School

So this post is probably too late to help anyone, least of all me, but I thought I would gather my thoughts now while they are still relatively fresh. It might also prove interesting to contrast my impression not with my feelings in a few years.

In this list I assume the goal of going to Grad School and getting a PhD is so that one might go on to teach at a tier one research university. If the purpose is to go find a lucrative job or teach at a small liberal arts school I don't know that I am addressing that directly.

1. How many faculty members are there in your department/subfield? Are there strong supporting departments?- While people often encouraged me to look at programs with a particular faculty member I liked, one can never be sure that things will work out with one individual. I firmly believe that the information one can glean about particular instructors during the application process can not significantly predict whether or not you will be able to work closely with them. Obviously one should look for a program where the faculty members share similar interests to your own, but it is important to keep in mind that, even if you could ascertain a current ideal instructor, grad school is formative and thus one is likely to change interests and focus.
To this end, it is nice to have many different sources of critique. Go to a program where you are going to find a number of strong voices. If there are other prominent departments in the university which are associated somehow it will help spread out coursework and provide other influences for your work and on your committee. Try not to put yourself in a program which will have you hitting your head against blunt objects e.g. you like Derrida and Foucault and the faculty is heavily Straussian.

2. What people think of your department- Coming out you will be assessed based on your work, but also the program you are coming from. If people think the department is good, it is. I was shocked how many people in Political Theory programs are under the impression that Chicago still has a good theory program, even though it has been sparse for 30 years! (Robert Pape and John Mearsheimer do great work, but theorists they are not. Social Thought gets all the good ones.) If you do wind up selling out (the lucky ones) a degree from Yale looks a whole lot better than a degree from Michigan. The sad part is, it is often the case in the academy too.

3. Do people know your professors?- This can be assessed in two ways, either by asking people in your field, "Hey, have you heard of Prof. Blank?" or by looking at their CVs. Pay attention to how many articles they have published and in what journals. If they have published books, under what publishers? If a few people in your department have Cambridge or Belknap, you are doing OK.

4. Can you talk to the students?- From my understanding, professors are busy people (or they think they are, which is very often the case too) and so you will probably spend a lot of time thinking things through with your peers. If they don't seem like they want to talk to you or ask the same sort of questions you do, be wary.

5. Happiness index- Grad School is a long while, and if you are Melancholy you probably won't think or write. Ask the grad students if they are happy, they will all say yes, but their qualifications will then be interesting. Try to avoid urban environments which will make you sad, or climates that you don't like. Don't forget to factor in your stipend into your standard of living. A warm, sunny apartment in Philadelphia might produce better academic results than a cold basement on the West Side in NY.

It is a given that you have to work endlessly to get the most junior appointments in the academy. It won't hurt to have a supportive program in the process.

Bagel Dropping

Bagel Dropping: To make conspicuous reference to common Jewish cultural items.

This is generally done in order to reaffirm one's standing as a member of the "tribe". For example using words like "oy yev" as an exclamatory or referencing bagels as a uniquely Jewish cultural affect. No one who is frum* thinks of bagels as particularly Jewish; it's just Sunday morning breakfast, that's it.

*note the conflation of frum with Jewish, but anyhow...