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Michael Sfard, The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. Published 2018. If you’re an Israeli human rights lawyer who wants to know what the point is, you have to commit to Zhou Enlai’s opinion on the French Revolution: “It’s too early to say.” When does making ameliorative arguments—"you can’t take this particular parcel” rather than “you can’t take any of the land”—carry out your duty to your individual client but maybe concede some legitimacy to the overall scheme? What counts as victory? (Most of the time, partial victories seemed to come from convincing the Supreme Court that it had to limit, though not ban, state abuses because to write an opinion just allowing those abuses would harm the country’s reputation too much internationally.)
Daniel A. Bell, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University:Written by a Canadian who, frankly, would pretty clearly be one of the guys who goes Nazi in Dorothy Thompson’s Who Goes Nazi? https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ Example: Despite not being a Communist (he is a scholar of Confucianism), he tries to get rid of an annoying colleague on a work chat group by pointing out how anti-communist the colleague is. And it doesn’t work immediately, because a wiser administrator says “don’t worry, he’ll soon do something we can clearly kick him off for,” which then happens. He likes the decisionmaking system at his college, and though he has reservations about autocracy he’s ok with limiting political power to Party members as long as Party membership is in theory open to everyone. (He can make nearly sympathetic noises about Uyghurs because he’s writing in English, which he says outright; he doesn’t love censorship but is ok with it as long as he’s mostly allowed to do his work.) Recommended reading only if you need to see what this kind of guy’s mind is like and how he compartmentalizes.
Fashion and Intellectual Property, ed. David Tan, Jeanne C. Fromer, & Dev S. Gangjee: Interesting collection about the intersection of the two titular concepts, from shanzhai in China to geographical indications used to protect fabric designs to sneaker wars in Australia.
Rebecca Solnit, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change: Solnit is a sharp critic, especially of patriarchy, and is trying to write about hope for what comes after: “A butterfly is the end of a caterpillar. The beginning—the next era—comes after the end of the last one, and in between comes a lot of falling apart.” So we take the steps that we see in front of us towards the better world we are trying to imagine. We don’t pay as much attention to the development of renewable energy sources, despite the incredible improvements in them, because they’re taking place slowly and incrementally, which makes for a boring news story. We’re just bad at noticing incremental change: “I remember how the economic policies of Ronald Reagan created mass homelessness, but if you forget that, you can imagine homelessness is inevitable or the result of personal failings or local conditions, not primarily a creation of the radical rearrangement of the national economy in pursuit of a return to the old inequality (and similar cuts to social services in other countries produced similar forms of desperation and displacement).” But it’s in the interrelatedness of everything that there’s hope. Indeed, she thinks the right-wing backlash is against so many groups and causes because it’s against acknowledging interconnections. “At some level, the fact of climate change is offensive to isolationists, since the climate is the great overarching system within which all life on earth exists, and climate science and climate activism both announce that everything we do has consequences because everything is connected.”
Nicholas Buccola, One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal: MLK Jr. and Barry Goldwater were active at the same time, offering Americans contrasting views of freedom. Goldwater’s was deeply confused and focused on states’ rights (the theory being that local government was closest to the people; Goldwater conceded that African-Americans should be allowed to vote, but not that the federal government should do much about it; he claimed for a long time that segregation was a moral wrong but not a legal one). MLK’s was a positive vision of human flourishing.
Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: Cultural history of Peanuts and its reception, first as existentialist humor, then as wholesome Americana, with excursions into women’s lib and environmental consciousness from an individualistic perspective. Peanuts strips were open textured enough that people on all sides of an issue could think Schultz agreed with them or was criticizing them, as documented in the letters they wrote him. I didn’t realize how religious Schultz was; he personally corresponded with Reagan about, among other things, abortion. Schultz eventually responded to pressure (mostly it seems from white liberals) by introducing Franklin, a Black kid, but never knew what to do with him; I would have appreciated more than a mention of how Peppermint Patty became a lesbian icon. Given my interests, the best tidbits were about how people either sent copies of the strips to politicians to express their own views or rewrote the strips using white-out and similar techniques to express their own views.
John J. Sullivan, Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West: A traditional Republican, Sullivan was at State and then the ambassador to Russia under Trump 1 and a chunk of Biden’s presidency. His description of Russia under Putin as an implacable enemy of the United States unfortunately rings true, and his description of their indifference to truth and bloodlust now describes our leaders as well.
Greg Grandin, America, América: A New History of the New World: Long, fascinating account, starting with Spanish colonialism and integrating it/contrasting it with British (the French get much shorter shrift); a key thesis for the first few centuries is that the Spanish encountered lots of people and had to decide what to do with them, leading to much theorizing—mostly Catholic—of both the inherent dignity and the inherent inferiority of non-Europeans. By contrast, the North American colonists found a land already ravaged by disease and thus didn’t develop the same conceptual apparatus. But I found even more interesting the account of Latin American influence on international law; its theorists flipped the meaning of sovereignty to assert that conquest was illegitimate. A good read!
Srdja Popovic with Sophia A. McClennen, Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism: Available freely under a CC license, https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501756061/pranksters-vs-autocrats/#bookTabs=1. Basic thesis: “Dilemma actions are an effective tool for a range of situations. They have been used to advance democracy, human rights, and accountability struggles across the globe. They break down fear and apathy and offer the public an energizing way to resist oppressive authority. They can shift public narratives of mighty opponents from ‘scary and powerful’ to ‘weak and laughable.’ They also work as a recruiting tool for new members because they show the public that engaging in nonviolent resistance can be fun and satisfying. They lead to media coverage and social media awareness because these tactics make for entertaining stories—authoritarians look foolish and the protesters look creative, cool, and unafraid. Dilemma actions succeed: they often lead to social change and advances in democracy. And, even more important, groups that engage in dilemma actions inspire others, leading to replication of their tactics, adjusted for different contexts and types of struggles.”
Although the dancing Portland frogs are easy examples, “the most effective issues are usually related to government prohibitions or policies that intrude into people’s personal lives …. So, the first step in designing a dilemma action is to review the opponent’s policies for burdensome restrictions on people’s day-to-day activities.” Minneapolis, though it wasn’t at all funny, was about the burden of ICE terrorism on everyone. A dilemma action requires the opponent to choose between “granting the nonviolent movement an exemption to the restrictions or engaging in unpopular sanctions,” and thus should have “a constructive, positive element, such as delivering humanitarian aid.” Protests should aim to put enforcers in conflict with themselves: “When a police officer has to choose whether or not to arrest a nonviolent protester at a demonstration doing something funny and popular, for example, there is a conflict between the economic (keep the job) and the social (agree with the protester) domains.” Humor helps get mass media coverage, as does appealing to widely held beliefs, such as that “governments shouldn’t tell you that you can’t wear a particular type of hat.”
Some dilemma actions backfire, though, e.g., making protestors look disrespectful to religion by having an event in a church, or disrespectful to the National Anthem by kneeling during it to protest police violence. Focus on the fact that “the media can’t resist covering stories where those in power are made to look silly or stupid.” That’s where the dancing frogs come in.
Daniel A. Bell, The Dean of Shandong: Confessions of a Minor Bureaucrat at a Chinese University:Written by a Canadian who, frankly, would pretty clearly be one of the guys who goes Nazi in Dorothy Thompson’s Who Goes Nazi? https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ Example: Despite not being a Communist (he is a scholar of Confucianism), he tries to get rid of an annoying colleague on a work chat group by pointing out how anti-communist the colleague is. And it doesn’t work immediately, because a wiser administrator says “don’t worry, he’ll soon do something we can clearly kick him off for,” which then happens. He likes the decisionmaking system at his college, and though he has reservations about autocracy he’s ok with limiting political power to Party members as long as Party membership is in theory open to everyone. (He can make nearly sympathetic noises about Uyghurs because he’s writing in English, which he says outright; he doesn’t love censorship but is ok with it as long as he’s mostly allowed to do his work.) Recommended reading only if you need to see what this kind of guy’s mind is like and how he compartmentalizes.
Fashion and Intellectual Property, ed. David Tan, Jeanne C. Fromer, & Dev S. Gangjee: Interesting collection about the intersection of the two titular concepts, from shanzhai in China to geographical indications used to protect fabric designs to sneaker wars in Australia.
Rebecca Solnit, The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change: Solnit is a sharp critic, especially of patriarchy, and is trying to write about hope for what comes after: “A butterfly is the end of a caterpillar. The beginning—the next era—comes after the end of the last one, and in between comes a lot of falling apart.” So we take the steps that we see in front of us towards the better world we are trying to imagine. We don’t pay as much attention to the development of renewable energy sources, despite the incredible improvements in them, because they’re taking place slowly and incrementally, which makes for a boring news story. We’re just bad at noticing incremental change: “I remember how the economic policies of Ronald Reagan created mass homelessness, but if you forget that, you can imagine homelessness is inevitable or the result of personal failings or local conditions, not primarily a creation of the radical rearrangement of the national economy in pursuit of a return to the old inequality (and similar cuts to social services in other countries produced similar forms of desperation and displacement).” But it’s in the interrelatedness of everything that there’s hope. Indeed, she thinks the right-wing backlash is against so many groups and causes because it’s against acknowledging interconnections. “At some level, the fact of climate change is offensive to isolationists, since the climate is the great overarching system within which all life on earth exists, and climate science and climate activism both announce that everything we do has consequences because everything is connected.”
Nicholas Buccola, One Man’s Freedom: Goldwater, King, and the Struggle over an American Ideal: MLK Jr. and Barry Goldwater were active at the same time, offering Americans contrasting views of freedom. Goldwater’s was deeply confused and focused on states’ rights (the theory being that local government was closest to the people; Goldwater conceded that African-Americans should be allowed to vote, but not that the federal government should do much about it; he claimed for a long time that segregation was a moral wrong but not a legal one). MLK’s was a positive vision of human flourishing.
Blake Scott Ball, Charlie Brown’s America: Cultural history of Peanuts and its reception, first as existentialist humor, then as wholesome Americana, with excursions into women’s lib and environmental consciousness from an individualistic perspective. Peanuts strips were open textured enough that people on all sides of an issue could think Schultz agreed with them or was criticizing them, as documented in the letters they wrote him. I didn’t realize how religious Schultz was; he personally corresponded with Reagan about, among other things, abortion. Schultz eventually responded to pressure (mostly it seems from white liberals) by introducing Franklin, a Black kid, but never knew what to do with him; I would have appreciated more than a mention of how Peppermint Patty became a lesbian icon. Given my interests, the best tidbits were about how people either sent copies of the strips to politicians to express their own views or rewrote the strips using white-out and similar techniques to express their own views.
John J. Sullivan, Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir from the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West: A traditional Republican, Sullivan was at State and then the ambassador to Russia under Trump 1 and a chunk of Biden’s presidency. His description of Russia under Putin as an implacable enemy of the United States unfortunately rings true, and his description of their indifference to truth and bloodlust now describes our leaders as well.
Greg Grandin, America, América: A New History of the New World: Long, fascinating account, starting with Spanish colonialism and integrating it/contrasting it with British (the French get much shorter shrift); a key thesis for the first few centuries is that the Spanish encountered lots of people and had to decide what to do with them, leading to much theorizing—mostly Catholic—of both the inherent dignity and the inherent inferiority of non-Europeans. By contrast, the North American colonists found a land already ravaged by disease and thus didn’t develop the same conceptual apparatus. But I found even more interesting the account of Latin American influence on international law; its theorists flipped the meaning of sovereignty to assert that conquest was illegitimate. A good read!
Srdja Popovic with Sophia A. McClennen, Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism: Available freely under a CC license, https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501756061/pranksters-vs-autocrats/#bookTabs=1. Basic thesis: “Dilemma actions are an effective tool for a range of situations. They have been used to advance democracy, human rights, and accountability struggles across the globe. They break down fear and apathy and offer the public an energizing way to resist oppressive authority. They can shift public narratives of mighty opponents from ‘scary and powerful’ to ‘weak and laughable.’ They also work as a recruiting tool for new members because they show the public that engaging in nonviolent resistance can be fun and satisfying. They lead to media coverage and social media awareness because these tactics make for entertaining stories—authoritarians look foolish and the protesters look creative, cool, and unafraid. Dilemma actions succeed: they often lead to social change and advances in democracy. And, even more important, groups that engage in dilemma actions inspire others, leading to replication of their tactics, adjusted for different contexts and types of struggles.”
Although the dancing Portland frogs are easy examples, “the most effective issues are usually related to government prohibitions or policies that intrude into people’s personal lives …. So, the first step in designing a dilemma action is to review the opponent’s policies for burdensome restrictions on people’s day-to-day activities.” Minneapolis, though it wasn’t at all funny, was about the burden of ICE terrorism on everyone. A dilemma action requires the opponent to choose between “granting the nonviolent movement an exemption to the restrictions or engaging in unpopular sanctions,” and thus should have “a constructive, positive element, such as delivering humanitarian aid.” Protests should aim to put enforcers in conflict with themselves: “When a police officer has to choose whether or not to arrest a nonviolent protester at a demonstration doing something funny and popular, for example, there is a conflict between the economic (keep the job) and the social (agree with the protester) domains.” Humor helps get mass media coverage, as does appealing to widely held beliefs, such as that “governments shouldn’t tell you that you can’t wear a particular type of hat.”
Some dilemma actions backfire, though, e.g., making protestors look disrespectful to religion by having an event in a church, or disrespectful to the National Anthem by kneeling during it to protest police violence. Focus on the fact that “the media can’t resist covering stories where those in power are made to look silly or stupid.” That’s where the dancing frogs come in.
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