Student and parents filed a lawsuit alleging history teacher violated student’s constitutional rights. … Read the rest
Smuggling
Dec 20th, 2007 11:41 am | By Ophelia Benson‘If the essays in “Thinking Politically” share a single theme, or better, a common tension,’ says Adam Kirsch, ‘it is Mr. Walzer’s effort to reconcile his liberal instincts with his leftist commitments to socialism and cultural relativism.’
… Read the restThe problem for Mr. Walzer, as a left liberal, is that the left has never really shared the morality of liberalism, or even credited it…To the left, the liberal love of freedom is a self-deception, designed to obscure the fact that the material conditions of life leave most [people] unable to enjoy their freedom. The danger of this conviction is that, once the love of freedom is discredited, freedom itself usually follows, as the history of the last century shows again and
Discover’s Top 100 Science Stories
Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonPollution, consciousness, planets, arctic thaw, dark matter, drought.… Read the rest
Mark Bauerlein on an Anthology of New Criticism
Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe disappearance of the New Critics isn’t just another evolution in intellectual history. It’s a critical gap.… Read the rest
Rustum Roy Says Something About Homeopathy
Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonAlso ‘homeophobia’ and the virulence of Ben Goldacre.… Read the rest
There is a Discursive Machine of Hegemony
Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonSoumaya Ghannoushi says something about Muslim women. Not clear exactly what.… Read the rest
Farrukh Saleem on Truth and Denial
Dec 19th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWho will take the honour out of these killings? Who will expose the horror from under the hijab?… Read the rest
A better discourse
Dec 19th, 2007 10:39 am | By Ophelia BensonAfter that it’s good to be able to read Farrukh Saleem.
Aqsa is dead; she can wear a scarf no more; can go to the school no more. Aqsa can change into jeans no more; she can breathe no more…Honour killing is our export to Canada…Of the 192 member-states of the United Nations almost all honour killings take place in nine overwhelmingly Muslim countries. Denial is not an option…[H]onour killings have taken place in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Intriguingly, all these honour killings have taken place in Muslim communities of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Denial is not an option.
Soumaya Ghannoushi, meet Farrukh Saleem. Denial is not an option (and neither is obfuscation … Read the rest
Hegemonic narrative strikes again
Dec 19th, 2007 10:26 am | By Ophelia BensonSoumaya Ghannoushi tells us there are two discourses that are actually one – that are ‘one in essence’: a conservative one that keeps Muslim women stuck at home and in the power of male relatives, and a liberation one that is opposed to the first one but is (somehow) wicked too.
It is a game of binaries that pits one stereotype against another: the wretched caged female Muslim victim and her ruthless jailer society against an idealised “west” that is the epitome of enlightenment, rationalism, and freedom.
Meaning…what? That there are no Muslim women in wretched ‘caged’ situations? That the ‘west’ is not in fact the epitome of enlightenment, rationalism, and freedom and therefore there are no Muslim women in … Read the rest
Cosmopolitan Courage on the Subway
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA Muslim Bangladeshi student risked injury to help three Jewish people who were being beaten up. … Read the rest
Eric Hobsbawm Interview
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonExcerpts translated for the German-challenged.… Read the rest
We Are Allowed to Use Reasons in Voting
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe can even decide not to vote for X because we disagree with X’s religious views. Imagine that.… Read the rest
A Stunning Performance in Mental Gymnastics
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMadeleine Bunting has taken the floor to wild applause.… Read the rest
The Pressures Inside Mr Parvez’s Head
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe question is how to deal with people who believe the laws of God should trump the laws of humans.… Read the rest
Life as a Fundamentalist Mormon
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonMarried off at 18 to a man of 50 – then things deteriorated.… Read the rest
Grayling Replies to Dalrymple on ‘New’ Atheists
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonThe old arguments have been forgotten by the reviving, resurgent, insistent, assertive-to-the-point-of-bombing religionists. … Read the rest
Jonathan Derbyshire on The Philosophy of Insults
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonWe should see certain kinds of offended feelings as being among the costs of free thought and inquiry… Read the rest
Ramin Jahanbegloo at World Philosophy Day
Dec 18th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia Benson‘Philosophy teaches you, and you teach others, how to think otherwise. To question and to criticize.’… Read the rest
Varieties of relativism
Dec 18th, 2007 2:46 am | By Ophelia BensonFrom Taliban, Ahmed Rashid, page 114:
Until Kabul, the UN’s disastrous lack of a policy had been ignored but then it became a scandal and the UN came in for scathing criticism from feminist groups. Finally the UN agencies were forced to draw up a common position. A statement spoke of ‘maintaining and promoting the inherent equality and dignity of all people’ and ‘not discriminating between the sexes, races, ethnic groups or religions.’ But the same UN document also stated that ‘international agencies hold local customs and cultures in high respect.’ It was a classic UN compromise, which gave the Taliban the lever to continue stalling…
In the chapter ‘Women and Cultural Universals’ in Sex and Social Justice Martha … Read the rest
Scholars Hook Up With Data on Facebook
Dec 17th, 2007 | Filed by Ophelia BensonA new way of doing social science, says Harvard sociologist. Predecessors could only dream of such data.… Read the rest