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NAOMI WOLF, Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series
Writer, Feminist, Social Critic and Political Activist
Co-Founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership
October 11, 2007
Kane Hall, Room 130, 7:00 PM
The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
The Founding Fathers believed that the proper goal of the State
was to make men and women free to develop their faculties and to
pursue virtue and wisdom. Our Constitution was built around
these principles, protecting civil liberties and developing a
careful system of checks and balances which protected our
freedom from tyranny. Naomi Wolfs latest work, The End of
America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot exposes how the
escalation of Executive Power has eroded these core values and
systems, limiting our Congress to make laws, and our courts to
interpret them a scenario that our Founding Fathers foresaw and
warned against. Wolf outlines in this citizen call to action,
reminiscent of Thomas Paines revered Common Sense, the real
threats that exist to our civil liberties and explains how
working together we can solve the growing threat.
_____________________________
Naomi Wolf is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical
Leadership, an organization devoted to training young women in
ethical leadership for the 21st century. The institute teaches
professional development in the arts and media, politics and
law, business and entrepreneurship as well as ethical decision
making.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School
CHANDRA MUZAFFAR, Walker Ames Lecture Series
International Movement for a Just World, President
October 30, 2007
Kane Hall, Room 110, 6:30 PM
Religion and Politics in a Post 9-11 Southeast Asia
While religion has figured in politics in parts of contemporary
Southeast Asia for decades, it has assumed greater significance
in the post 9-11 period. To what extent is this due to the Bush
Administration’s ‘War on Terror’? Or, are the new religious
tensions and conflicts in the region the product of domestic
politics? What are some of the possible solutions to these
conflicts? How will these solutions be helped or hindered by the
US’s global and regional role?
_____________________________
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is both a social activist and an academic.
He is President of the International Movement for a Just World
(JUST), an international NGO based in Malaysia, which seeks to
critique global injustice and to develop an alternative vision
of a just and compassionate civilization guided by universal
spiritual and moral values. Chandra is also the Noordin
Sopiee Professor of Global Studies at the Science University of
Malaysia (USM) in Penang.
He has published extensively on civilizational dialogue,
international politics, religion, human rights and Malaysian
society. The author and editor of 20 books in English and
Malay, many of his writings have been translated into other
languages.\
In 1977, he founded a multi-ethnic social reform group called
ALIRAN, committed to raising public awareness of issues
pertaining to democracy and ethnic relations in Malaysia, which
he led for 14 years. Today, apart from his role in JUST,
Chandra sits on the board of a number of international NGOs
concerned with social justice and civilizational dialogue.
Chandra also travels abroad frequently, giving lectures and
speaking at seminars and conferences. He is also a regular
speaker at meetings at home in Malaysia. Chandra is also a
recipient of a number of academic and community awards from
overseas.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School, Southeast
Asian Studies (Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies),
Department of Sociology,
Department of
Anthropology,
Department of Comparative Literature
LAWRENCE LESSIG, Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series
Professor, Stanford Law School
November 2, 2007
Kane Hall, Room 120, 7:00 PM NOTE: ROOM CHANGE
Is Google (2008) Microsoft (1998)?
Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School
and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society.
Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman
Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the
University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on
the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on
the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Lessig represented web site operator Eric Eldred in
the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the
1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. He has won
numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation's
Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American's Top 50
Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright
that could stifle innovation and discourse online."
Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The
Future of Ideas (2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
(1999). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on
the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public
Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.
Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management
from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from
Cambridge, and a JD from Yale. He teaches and writes in the
areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of
cyberspace.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School, School
of Law, Shidler Center for Law, Commerce and Technology,
Center for
Communication and Civic Engagement,
UW Libraries,
Center for Internet Studies
JULIAN BOND, Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series
Chairman, NAACP
Professor of History, University of Virginia
Distinguished Professor, American University
February 6, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 130, 7:00 PM
Civil Rights Then and Now
From his student days to his current Chairmanship of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), Julian Bond has been an active participant in the
movements for civil rights, economic justice. As an activist who
has faced jail for his convictions, as a veteran of more than 20
years service in the Georgia General Assembly, as a university
professor, and as a writer, he has been on the cutting edge of
social change since 1960.
While a student at Morehouse College over forty years ago, he
founded the Atlanta student sit-in and anti-segregation
organization, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC). As SNCC's Communications Director, Bond was active in
protests and registration campaigns throughout the South during
one of this nation’s most difficult times.
Elected in 1965 to the Georgia House of Representatives, Bond
was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to
his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was re-elected to his own
vacant seat and un-seated again, and re-seated only after a
third election and a unanimous decision of the United States
Supreme Court.
In 1968, he was co-chair of a challenge delegation from Georgia
at the Democratic Convention. The challengers were successful in
unseating Georgia's regular Democrats, and Bond was nominated
for Vice-President, but had to decline because he was too young.
Bond serves as Chairman of the Premier Auto Group PAG (Volvo,
Land Rover, Aston-Martin, Jaguar) Diversity Council and is on
the Boards of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council
for a Livable World, and the advisory board of the Harvard
Business School Initiative on Social Enterprise, among many
others.
Bond has served as commentator on America's Black Forum, the
oldest black-owned show in television syndication and his poetry
and articles have appeared in numerous publications. He has
narrated numerous documentaries, including the Academy
Award-winning A Time for Justice and the prize-winning and
critically acclaimed series Eyes on the Prize. He has been a
commentator on The Today Show and was the author of a nationally
syndicated newspaper column called “Viewpoint.” He has published
A Time To Speak, A Time To Act, a collection of his essays as
well as Black Candidates Southern Campaign Experiences.
Serving since 1998 as Chairman of the Board of the NAACP, the
oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United
States, Bond continues with his activism, working to educate the
public about the history of the Civil Rights movement and the
struggles that African Americans and the poor still endure.
In 2002, he received the prestigious National Freedom Award.
Throughout his influential career, Bond taught at several
universities, including Williams, the University of
Pennsylvania, American, Drexel, Harvard and the University of
Virginia. The holder of twenty-three honorary degrees, he is a
Distinguished Professor at American University in Washington,
DC, and serves as Professor of history at the University of
Virginia.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School
IAN RUSKIN, WALKER AMES Lecture Series
Actor
Harry Bridges Project, Founder
February 12, 2008
Meany Studio Theatre, 7:30 PM
From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks- a one man play
Ian Ruskin, founder of the Harry Bridges Project, is a graduate
of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Ian has worked
extensively in theater, television and film. He first portrayed
Bridges in "Citizenship: The Harry Bridges Story" at an ILWU
convention in Los Angeles. Ian's appearances as Bridges have
included other union conventions, labor festivals, universities,
historical societies, museums and schools.
This multi-media one-act play, approximately one hour long, is a
human portrayal of Bridges’ passion, struggles and wicked sense
of humor. It features many of his own words – from his rallying
speeches of the 1930’s to the high drama and comic absurdity of
his trials – and covers his life from his childhood in Australia
until near his retirement in the 1970’s. It includes the 1934
General Strike in San Francisco, the hearings and trials, his
marriages and divorces, the constant controversy of a union
involved in social and political issues, and the groundbreaking
Mechanization and Modernization agreement. It features rare
labor songs and archival photographs and footage, and is an
exciting and entertaining way to explore 50 years of American
history. A performance includes the audio/visuals, props,
program notes and, if wanted, a pre-show talk about the issues
involved. The simple stage design adapts to any situation and
space.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School, The
School of Drama,
Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, and
History
Department
IRVING GOTTESMAN, Walker-Ames Lecture Series
Senior Fellow in Psychology, University of Minnesota
February 27, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 110, 6:30 PM
The Uphill Battle for Understanding the Roles of Genetics in
Mental Diseases
The burdens to our society for the direct and indirect costs of
major mental disorders in terms of dollars and human misery is
enormous. Efforts to ameliorate the suffering and costs by
discovering root causes among the distal genetic causes were
heralded and then boosted further by the clear advances in the
Human Genome Project. A quick fix has eluded researchers,
but the hype has been moderated, not dashed, by the reality of
what it means to unravel the complexities of complex genetic
diseases. We are in the same boat as those who pursue the
causes of diabetes, heart disease, and epilepsies.
A survey of the facts from genetic epidemiology for mental
disorders, in the context of the pre-World War II history of
psychiatric genetics, will be followed by some reflections for
our difficulties. Endophenotypes, conceived as measurable
components unseen by the unaided eye along the pathway between
disease and distal genotype, have emerged as an important
concept in the study of complex neuropsychiatric diseases. Their
discovery will lend accuracy to genetic counseling.
An endophenotype may be neurophysiological, biochemical,
endocrinological, neuroanatomical, cognitive, or
neuropsychological (including configured self-report data) in
nature. Endophenotypes represent simpler clues to genetic
underpinnings than the disease syndrome itself, promoting the
view that we can “decompose or deconstruct ”psychiatric
diagnoses, resulting in more straightforward—and
successful—genetic analysis. However, to be most useful,
criteria that include candidate genes or gene regions,
heritability inferred from relative risks in relatives, and
disease association parameters must be construed within some
kind of systems-biology framework, not unlike that recommended
for understanding complex systems in many organisms and society
itself.
_____________________________
Professor Gottesman currently holds an endowed chair in adult
psychiatry and is a Senior Fellow in psychology at the
University of Minnesota, as well as an emeritus chair in
psychology at the University of Virginia. His distinguished
career includes plaudits from British, Japanese and American
professional associations, including the Joseph Zubin Award for
lifetime contributions to psychopathology from the Society for
Research in Psychopathology. W. H. Freeman published his
award-winning 1991 book, Schizophrenia Genesis -- The Origins of
Madness, which has been translated into Japanese and German. His
more recent work focuses on psychiatric genetics and genomics.
Prof. Gottesman has mentored 35 Ph.D. students, and an annual
lecture on behavior and neurogenetics has been endowed in his
name at Virginia.
Sponsors: The
Graduate School,
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences,
Department of
Medicine,
Department of
Epidemiology,
Institute for Public Health Genetics
NANCY CARTWRIGHT, Walker Ames Lecture Series
Professor of Philosophy, London School of Economics Centre for
Philosophy of Natural and Social Science
Professor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
March 6, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 120, 6:30 PM
Evidence-Based Policy - So, What's Evidence?
Evidence-based policy is widely mandated throughout the US and
the UK and increasingly in Europe, at the international,
national and local levels. Huge efforts are now put into
providing institutional structures and policing to ensure that
evidence is considered. But suppose you are sitting on a
policy-making committee. What facts should you want to learn --
what facts should you count as evidence? And how should you
marshal the information you decide to allow into discussion to
come up with a reasonable judgement? Philosophical theories can
tell you the answer in principle but they tend to be altogether
too abstract, or too circular, to be of practical help. On the
other hand most practical advice is based on far too narrow a
vision, jumping in at the middle with a focus on one special
problem or another (like 'bias'), not systematically grounded.
This talk will explore the problems and provide the outlines of
a theory of evidence that can work for evidence-based policy.
_____________________________
Nancy Cartwright is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy,
Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics
and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of
California at San Diego. She is also Director of the LSE Centre
for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science. During the first
half of her career at Stanford University she specialized in
philosophy of physics and in the join of history and philosophy
of science; since going to LSE and UCSD she has turned her
attentions to philosophy of economics and social science, where
she has special interests in causation, modelling, and evidence.
Cartwright's most recent book is Hunting Causes and Using Them:
Studies in Economics and Philosophy (CUP). Earlier works include
How the Laws of Physics Lie (OUP), Nature's Capacities and their
Measurement (OUP), The Dappled World: Essays on the Boundaries
of Science (CUP), and with J. Cat, L. Fleck and T. Uebel, Otto
Neurath: Between Science and Philosophy (CUP). She is a fellow
of the British Academy, of the American Philosophical Society,
of the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Macarthur
Fellow and has recently been elected president of the Philosophy
of Science Association and the Pacific Division of the American
Philosophical Association.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School,
Department of Philosophy
KAREN MATTHEWS, Walker-Ames Lecture Series
Professor of Psychiatry, Epidemiology, and Psychology,
University of Pittsburgh
April 1, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 110, 6:30 PM
Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Psychobiological Origins of
Cardiovascular Disease
Coronary heart disease (CHD) and hypertension do not emerge
suddenly in mid-life, but are preceded by decades of risk
development. In this presentation, we will review
recent data connecting psychosocial factors with early
stage atherosclerosis and high blood pressure. We offer a
life-course model, called the reserve capacity model, which
connects socioeconomic status, psychological stress, and
negative and positive emotions across the life span.
Finally, we discuss developmental processes during adolescence
that may reduce reserves for dealing with the psychological
stressors associated with socioeconomic status and lead to
heightened risk for later CHD and hypertension.
_____________________________
Karen A. Matthews, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychiatry,
Epidemiology, and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh,
where she is Program Director of the Cardiovascular Behavioral
Medicine Research Training Program and Director of Pittsburgh
Mind Body Research Center. Several assumptions have
guided her research. First, epidemiological constructs
linked to cardiovascular disease provide clues to constructs
that are important to study from a psychological perspective in
order to understand the mechanisms underlying the associations.
Matthews’ interests in such constructs as Type A, gender, race,
and socioeconomic status arose from this assumption.
Second, it is most informative to investigate these
epidemiological constructs at times of transition, because
change often can provide a unique window on underlying
psychobiological processes. Under these assumptions she
has pursued several lines of research primarily targeting the
adolescent and menopausal transitions in relation to the
development of negative affect, sympathetic nervous system
activation, hormonal factors, and subclinical cardiovascular
disease.
Dr. Matthews is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the
Socioeconomic Status and Health Research Program of the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She has previously
served as a member of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute Advisory Council, chair of the Center for Scientific
Review Advisory Committee, Editor-in-Chief of Health Psychology,
President of the American Psychosomatic Society, and President
of Health Psychology (Division 38) of the American Psychological
Association (APA). She has received the American Heart
Association Established Investigator award, the Distinguished
Contributions to Health Psychology Award from Division 38 of the
APA, the Distinguished Contributions to Pediatric Psychology
Award from Division 12 of the APA, the Society of Behavioral
Medicine Distinguished Science Award, the North American
Menopause Society Award for Cardiovascular Research, the
American Psychosomatic Society President’s Award, and the APA
Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology.
Sponsors: The
Graduate School,
School of Nursing,
Department of
Epidemiology (School of Public Health),
School of Medicine
RICHARD LEWONTIN, Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series
Alexander Agassiz Research Professor of Zoology, Harvard
University
April 15, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 130, 6:30 PM
Organism and Environment: The Organism as Subject and Object of
Evolution
In his presentation, Professor Lewontin will argue that the distinction between internal and external forces of evolutionary change, first articulated by Darwin, is a barrier to further scientific and political progress. Instead, it is now clear that all organisms actively create and alter the environments in which they live, so that every internal physical change induces a change in the corresponding environment. A direct consequence of such codetermination is that organisms and their environments coevolve. The implications of such knowledge for the sciences of ecology and evolution, as well as for the elaboration of a rational environmental politics, will be discussed.
_____________________________
Lewontin is an evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and social commentator who has worked in experimental and theoretical aspects of genetics and evolution.
His experimental work helped demonstrate the large amount of genetic variation that exists within species and the importance of changes in the relative reproductive fitnesses of different types of organisms in a population as a result of so-called "frequency-dependent selection". His theoretical work has concentrated on the dynamics of genetic changes in populations when natural selection acts on linked genes and the dynamics of genetic change when reproductive fitness is frequency dependent. He is also widely recognized as an incisive critic of public misconceptions of evolutionary biology and the misuse of science.
Professor Lewontin has won many prestigious awards and fellowships including the Fulbright Fellowship, the National Science Foundation’s Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Sewell Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists. Nevertheless, he sees his most useful contribution to evolutionary studies as having helped the formation of a large group, first at the University of Chicago and then Harvard, of independent and interacting biologists, historians and philosophers of science -- scholars who represent a vibrant and constantly renewing intellectual community.
He is the author of numerous scientific publications and more popular works, including The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, And Human Nature, The Dialectical Biologist, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions, and The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. His most recent book, co-authored with Richard Levins, is entitled Biology Under The Influence : Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School,
Medical History and Ethics
CLARE COOPER MARCUS, Walker Ames Lecture Series
Professor Emerita in the Department of Architecture and
Landscape Architecture, University of California Berekely
April 29, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 120, 6:30 PM
Green Space and Public Health: Restorative Landscapes in
Healthcare Facilities and Residential Neighborhoods
Staring with a brief overview of the history of healing
landscapes, the lecture will focus on how contemporary
healthcare design is taking note of research on the restorative
effects of exposure to nature. Restorative gardens that are
currently being designed for specific patient-populations will
be discussed, for example, gardens for those with cancer and
Alzheimer's disease; for patients recovering from strokes, brain
injuries, burns, and depression ; as well as gardens in
healthcare facilities for particular age groups, such as
children and the frail elderly.
A brief discussion of neighborhood design will focus on
preventative health, for example, how housing site planning can
encourage children's outdoor play and thus potentially help to
address the current obesity epidemic.
The lecture will end with a discussion of issues that still need
to be addressed; what we do not know; and the troubling question
- are healing gardens becoming a "fad"? And if so, is there any
way to "certify" those that meet the criteria we now know to be
essential, or would this be counter-productive?
_____________________________
Clare Cooper Marcus is Professor Emerita in the departments of
architecture and landscape architecture at the University of
California - Berkeley where she started teaching in 1969. Her
degrees are from the University of London, University of
Nebraska, and University of California- Berkeley, in
historical/cultural geography, urban geography, and city
planning.
She is internationally recognized for her pioneering research on
the psychological and sociological implications of architectural
and landscape design, particularly urban open space, affordable
housing, environments for children, the symbolic meaning of
home, restorative landscapes, post occupancy evaluation, and
evidence-based design guidelines.
Professor Cooper Marcus has received a number of honors and
awards for her work including the Exemplary Design Research
Award from the National Endowment for the Arts; a Guggenheim
Award to support research on cohousing; Progressive
Architecture's Citation for Research for Housing as if People
Mattered; the American Society of Landscape Architects' Merit
Award for People Places; the Environmental Design Research
Association/ Places Research Award for Healing Gardens; the
Bradford Williams Medal for outstanding writing on the social
values of designed landscapes in Landscape Architecture
Magazine; the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture
Outstanding Educator Award; and the Career Award from the
Environmental Design Research Association.
Her publications include numerous articles in professional and
academic journals; and five award winning books - Easter Hill
Village: Some Social Implications of Design; Housing as if
People Mattered - Site Design Guidelines for Medium-density
Family Housing (with Wendy Sarkissian); People Places - Design
Guidelines for Urban Open Space (with Carolyn Francis); House as
a Mirror of Self - Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home; and
Healing Gardens - Therapeutic Benefits and Design
Recommendations (with Marni Barnes). Her writing has been
translated into Chinese, Japanese, and French. She has lectured
and consulted in the US, Canada, UK, the Netherlands, Denmark,
Sweden, Italy, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and China.
Sponsors: The Graduate
School, College of
Architecture and Urban Design,
School of Public Health,
School of Social
Work
PETER AND
ROSEMARY GRANT Walker Ames Lecture Series
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Lecturer in
Ecology and Senior Research Biologist, Princeton University
May 1, 2008
Kane Hall, room 120, 6:30 PM
Evolution of Darwin’s Finches
The problem of explaining the origin of species has remained
with us since Darwin’s time. There is no shortage of ideas about
how speciation occurs, but there is a lack of empirical
information from nature that can be used to distinguish between
alternative mechanisms. A fruitful source of information is
adaptive radiations of certain groups of organisms, especially
those that have diversified relatively rapidly and recently and
continue to occupy the environment in which they evolved. In
this lecture we will discuss the findings from long-term
research into the biology of populations of Darwin’s finches on
the Galápagos islands. Fourteen species have been derived from a
common ancestor in the last two to three million years, none has
become extinct as a result of human activities and part of their
environment is still in a natural state. We will discuss the
ecological factors promoting diversification, how evolution
occurs when the environment changes, what the barriers are to
interbreeding, how they are inherited and what happens when they
break down.
_____________________________
Peter and Rosemary Grant have been studying Darwin’s finches on
the Galápagos islands since 1973. Their fieldwork is designed to
understand the causes of an adaptive radiation. It combines
analyses of archipelago-wide patterns of evolution with detailed
investigations of population level processes on two islands,
Genovesa and Daphne. Their work is a blend of ecology, behavior
and genetics. They have collaborated with investigators to
estimate phylogenetic relations among the species of finches and
their relatives on the continent and in the Caribbean, and to
identify the molecular mechanisms involved in the development of
beaks that vary so conspicuously among the species. Their work
has been published in two books. A third book, entitled “How and
Why Species Multiply”, will be published by Princeton University
Press in October.
Rosemary was initially trained at the University of Edinburgh,
received a PhD degree from Uppsala University, and is now a
Research scholar and lecturer with the rank of Professor in the
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton
University. Peter is the Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology in
the same Department, having trained at Cambridge University and
the University of British Columbia. Before joining Princeton in
1986 he taught at McGill University and the University of
Michigan.
Sponsors: The
Graduate School,
YITZHAK LAOR, Jessie and John Danz Lecture Series
Poet, Author, Journalist
May 8, 2008
Kane Hall, Room 130, 6:30 PM
The Israeli Jewish Condition: Reflections on the Role of White Privilege
Israeli war heroes, in their representation in literature or
film, have always been a bit boyish, a bit not-yet-men. If we
compare them to the image of American war heroes in Hollywood,
we can see immediately, that despite being more or less the same
ages, they are represented very differently. Nowhere is this so
striking as when Hollywood itself comes to represent Israeli
soldiers. Then they look, of course, like Americans.
If movies in general, and Hollywood in particular, could offer
us redemption, or at least a solution for our troubled history,
one could say that Paul Newman, in his lead role in Preminger's
Exodus, was the realization of the Zionist yearning to be
something different than what we, the Jews, have always been.
Think of the joy American Jews and Israelis felt when that film
came out. Think of the pride. Here, in that film, based on Leon
Uris' bestseller, one could finally celebrate our joining "the
good people", the virtuous side: The Israeli war hero, the
handsome lover, was at last a true Wasp.
But what Hollywood could not really redeem was deeper
contradiction within our real life; in other words,
Zionism thought it would politically resolve the Jews' exile
within Europe, or within the West – Jews as "Orientals inside
the Occident" – not just by an Exodus, by merely going
elsewhere, but by going to the very heart of the colonial
hinterland of Europe, the East, not to become part of that East
but in order to become representatives of the West “over there",
far away from the exile we were subjected to "here", in the
West.
This is how Herzl put it in very crude words in his programmatic
book "The Jewish State". After his bitter and sincere
description of Europe's incurable racism toward the Jews he
writes: "For Europe we shall be like a solid wall against Asia
and we shall be on guard to defend Culture from the savages. As
an independent state, the connection between us and the nations
of Europe and will guarantee our existence". This prophecy
is symptomatic, yet the violence it brought about was not
targeted only against Palestinians, but also against the Jews
from Muslim and Arab countries who were brought to Israel, and
against religious Jews who were forcefully "modernized",
according to the Zionist vision of creating "a new Jew". In
short, the Colonial front was opened both outwards and inwards,
both against the Arabs and against any Jews who did not fit the
exact image of the New 'western', secular, Waspish Jew. This is
where Laor wants to begin. That imaginary solution – being West
only in the East, and being foreign again back in the West –
never offered Jews a moment of quiet normal life. It seems Paul
Newman was a momentary narcissistic pleasure.
_____________________________
Yitzhak Laor is an Israeli poet, author, and journalist. He was
born in Pardes Hanna, Israel. He is the author of five poetry
books, 19 novels, plays, and article collections. He is mostly
known for his poetry of political protest, particularly about
the Lebanese War of 1982 and the Israeli occupation of
Palestine. In his poem "In a Village Whose Name I don't Even
Know" he imagines himself stranded in a Lebanese village: "For a
moment I hoped that I would be caught."
Sponsors: The
Graduate School,
Department of
Comparative Literature,
Department of
English; Near
Eastern Languages and Civilization
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