Author: Ophelia Benson

What is a lost tribe anyway? From Marie Antoinette to Imelda Marcos, what are the uses of ‘simple people’? Where does the World’s Fair come in?

The blank slate became Official Theory, enforced by “accusation, intimidation, name-calling and moralising intellectual questions that are questions of fact”.

The Guardian offers a page of Orwell links.

Does enlightenment summon its own enemies into being?

And interesting issues are raised – is objectivity possible? If not, why write history at all? Why not just pledge allegiance to something?

Philip Foner helped himself to students’ work, and many of them fumed but kept quiet about it.

‘…the outlandish claims that were frequently made for Potter made you wonder whether some of these people had ever read anything else.’

It’s become hip to regress into childhood.

Michigan’s law school can continue to consider race; undergraduate programme is unconstitutional.

The US Supreme Court narrowly upholds University of Michigan’s use of race in admissions, rejects point system.

Under God, one man one vote, Muslim child – language does shape our consciousness.

The Dini case, a conspicuous ‘debate’ in Tucson, a new ‘Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination’ in Ashcroft’s Justice Department.

Race is a fiction, therefore everyone must learn to be completely obsessed by it. Eh?

A mash note to Alan Sokal in the Guardian.

Matt Ridley on the way genes and experience interact.

Bristol University will continue to consider backgrounds as well as academic records.

The reporter who investigated what happened at the Baghdad Museum says the waters are still being muddied.

Whether the arts should be judged on aesthetic grounds, or on ethnic representation.

Virginia Woolf told jokes, including obscene ones, Doris Lessing points out.

Woolf’s early notebook reveals – surprise! – she had her flaws.