Deliberately Considered has suspended the publication of new posts. I am now turning my full attention to a new project, Public Seminar. I thought I might be able to work on both DC and PS, but alas it is not possible. The new project is a seminar that has its roots in my intellectual home, The New School for Social Research, and in my experience here at Deliberately Considered.

The mission statement of the new project:

P.S.

“Confronting fundamental problems of the human condition and pressing problems of the day, using the broad resources of social research, we seek to provoke critical and informed discussion by any means necessary.

We use short form posts and long form essays, audio and video reports and discussions, and links to provocative materials of critical public interest anywhere we can find them. We are committed to creating a distinctive intellectual community, suspicious of clichés, informed by diverse experiences, theoretically heterodox, politically plural, worldly.

We work in the tradition of critical scholarship and public engagement of the original New School for Social Research (1919) and its University in Exile (1933). We seek to open the discussion of experts to broader publics, in the United States, and crucially far beyond, in the tradition of Charles Beard, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Emil Lederer, Max Wertheimer, Frieda Wunderlich, Hans Speier, Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt.

Public Seminar is an extension of The New School’s legendary ‘General Seminar,’ founded by the original exile scholars. Through it, we are constituting a public seminar for the 21st century.”

It is my hope that Public Seminar will continue and extend the work of Deliberately Considered. I developed Deliberately Considered with an understanding that more and more political, cultural and private life was developing in and through new media, and with a sense that this presented both great opportunities and great dangers. It opened public expression and discussion. More people could express themselves and a broader range of perspectives are expressed. Global conversations now occur. It is possible for the politics of small things to become large very quickly, dramatically revealed in the new new social movements of 2011, from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, and much in between. Classical eloquence again became a strong grounds for politics, as was revealed in the political life or Barack Obama.

We have observed these developments in the past four years, as we have also tried to avoid some of the evident problems of the new media environment, a deluge of questionable information, the confusion of news with rumor, tendentious political argument that confuses rather than illuminates, intellectual gated communities rather than open intellectual exchange. Our response to these problems is summarized by the name of our site Deliberately Considered. We tried to slow things down a bit, adding serious thoughts about the events of the day, from a variety of different perspectives, theoretical positions, experiences and places: left, right and center; East, West, North and South. I am proud to say that I think we have succeeded to a notable degree.

Yet, it is my judgment that we needed to broaden the circle of deliberation, that I needed to join up more explicitly with the traditions, practices and promise of the New School to succeed in using the new publishing and discussion qualities of the web to achieve the goals of Deliberately Considered. Thus, Public Seminar.

Over the past few months we have moved some of the posts on Deliberately Considered to Public Seminar. We will continue to do this. Eventually we may import the entire DC archive to PS, but that for the time being is technically challenging and too labor intensive. We, thus, will continue to make the past posts available at www.deliberatelyconsidered.com. Want to know the origins of the term “skin in the game” or consider whether there are any serious intellectual conservatives, or want to understand the Obama presidency as revealed in his speeches, and much more? You can still come here.

This site is my creation. It has been identified with my name, though this was probably a mistake. PS has a more collective identity, connected as it is to a discursive intellectual community. This is what I always wanted. It seems right to dedicate myself to that now. Yet, I want to thank all the loyal readers and the great authors of Deliberately Considered posts, from whom I learned a great deal. And especially I thank Naomi Goldfarb and Aron Hsiao, who made DC possible, and are now doing even better work as we extend the Deliberately Considered project:

“(Providing) a platform for informed response to the events of the day, by putting them in larger historical and theoretical contexts… dedicated to lending perspective by considering both what is close to home in the everyday life of ordinary people and what is happening elsewhere in other parts of the world, … not primarily concerned with who’s up and who’s down or tendentious polemics, but with trying to understand the promise and perils of politics and culture, exploring alternatives to prevailing clichéd ways of understanding and acting.”

As we withdraw from the active publishing here at Deliberately Considered, I encourage you to join us at Public Seminar. And perhaps sometime in the future, I may decide to return to DC if events of the day or in my life warrant it.

The threat of a shut down of the federal government put a crimp in protests planned for DC, but it didn’t shut them down. On Tuesday, October 8, 10,000 people came to demand immigration reform. Backed by major unions, the rally and march had been in the works long before anyone thought a small group of Republican House Members would force the federal government to close in order to compel a delay in the start of the Affordable Care Act.

As the clock ticked on passing a continuing resolution to pay federal bills, permits were in place and everything was set to go. Several hundred people had signed up to be arrested at the foot of Capitol Hill in order to demand that the bill passed by the Senate in June be voted on in the House. Plans were thrown into turmoil when the deadline passed and numerous federal employees were told not to report to work on October 1. Parks all over the country were closed, including the Mall. There is no fence to actually keep people off the Mall, but the shutdown did affect uses requiring a permit, such as the erection of a sound stage. Rally permits were revoked at the last minute.

The organizing committee didn’t cancel the rally; instead it negotiated with the National Park Service and the US Capitol Police, whose personnel were among those furloughed. At the last minute, it was agreed that events could go on, including the planned civil disobedience at the foot of Capitol Hill, with some adjustments.

For many years civil disobedience in the nation’s capitol has been negotiated and choreographed somewhat like a stage play. Fifty years ago, when large protest resumed in DC after a hiatus of several decades, such actions were spontaneous. Police cracked down to discourage future disruptions. This did not work. It just made the cops look bad. The resulting court cases, both criminal and civil, were expensive.

Over time police and protestors learned to work things out in advance. The cops knew how many personnel and paddy wagons to have available, and the protestors knew that they would have a chance to do their thing before sorting out who did and did not want to be arrested. With occasional exceptions, behavior on both sides became far more civil.

These changes happened throughout the nation, though not evenly or everywhere. Essentially, sitting in to get arrested, whether it was blocking the sidewalk or filling a room, became institutionalized, as had the unruly practices of picketing, striking and leafleting before it. Rules emerged to govern behavior, which were mostly followed by police and protestors. The goal was to get maximum messaging at minimum cost.

Following post-shutdown negotiations, the permit to have a sound stage was restored, though the sound stage had to be assembled the day before the rally in a heavy rain. After a welcome by the DC Mayor, numerous Members of Congress, members of the clergy and union leaders spoke from this stage. Ordinary immigrants got mike time to tell their stories.

A rousing address by Rep. Leon Guierrez (D IL), leader of immigration reform efforts in the House, sent thousands of people down Jefferson Drive to the street between the reflecting pool and the west lawn of the Capitol. The list of those to be arrested had been reduced to 211 to accommodate the U.S. Capitol Police, who had to report for work every day even though they were not being paid.

It was an “A” list, with eight Members of Congress and 90 union leaders as well as some ordinary folk. Most of the union members wore identifying t-shirts, especially UNITE HERE and LiUNA local 78. The 211 lined up on the east side of the street, facing west, so the photos could show the Capitol dome in the background. Observers crowded across the street, cheering and calling out to each one arrested. In between were several lines of police, one for crowd control and the others to handcuff each person arrested and escort her or him to a paddy wagon. The cops did not interfere with the organizers who gave selected protestors letters to spell out the message:

CONGRESS GET TO WORK –AMERICA NEEDS IMMIGRATION REFORM

Twelve hours later everyone had gone in and out of custody. Each had paid a fine of $50 so they did not have to return to court or face trial. This was also negotiated; the usual fine for one of these actions in DC is $100. Most of those arrested paid their own fines, but arrangements were made for those with insufficient funds.

And now that the government shutdown is over, immigration reform is again on the top of the public agenda.

On Sunday October 13th, the Moscow neighborhood of West Biryulevo became the site of a large anti-migrant riot. The riot ended with four hundred people detained by police, several over-turned and torched cars, and the looting and destruction of a small shopping center. It began as a meeting of residents with police to demand action in the murder investigation of Yegor Sherbakov. Sherbakov, a twenty-five year old local resident, was stabbed to death on Thursday night while walking home with his girlfriend.

People in the neighborhood speculated that the assailant might have worked at one of the many local outdoor fruit and vegetable stands or he might have been a taxi cab driver. The one thing that everyone is sure of is that the assailant was a foreigner, one of many migrant workers, or gastarbeiters, that are now living in Russia.

This riot is the most recent in a series of incidents evincing a growing tension surrounding migration from the “near abroad,” a term used in Russian to describe the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan. It comes two months after officials in Moscow set up pre-deportation detention camps for migrant workers detained en masse after a police officer was injured by the relatives of a migrant worker while trying to make an arrest at an outdoor market. Recent sweeps for migrant workers in Sochi prompted Human Rights Watch to demand that the International Olympic Committee make a statement condemning the detention and deportation of migrant workers in an Olympic host city.

It is difficult to ascertain the real number of migrants in Russia today, but estimates vary from between five and twelve million. Most migrants are employed as unskilled laborers on construction sites, as janitors, mini-bus drivers, or operate small commercial stands selling fruits and vegetables. They are extremely vulnerable to abuse by their employers, who withhold pay or confiscate passports, and by the police, who regularly conduct “document checks” and demand bribes.

While rising food prices, unemployment, or corruption are perceived to be the chief problems facing Russia, migration is steadily becoming an increasingly salient topic of public discussion. Research carried out by the Levada Center shows that there has been a considerable increase in the number of people that view migration as the paramount social problem: while only 7% of people cited ‘influx of migrants’ as the social problem that worried them most in 2007, by 2013 that figure had gone up to 27%. Politicians and the media fuel public animosity toward migrants. Television channels regularly devote attention, in the form of hour-long specials, to horrific incidents of violence allegedly perpetrated by migrant workers. Opposition and regime politicians, who usually agree on very little, are united in their negative opinion of migrant workers. In the recent Moscow mayoral election, both Sergei Sobyanin, the incumbent pro-Kremlin mayor and Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger and opposition candidate, took an equally hard stance against migrants from the Caucasus and central Asia. Sobyanin campaigned on a promise to keep the Russian capital Russian and Navalny told people gathered at one of his neighborhood campaign rallies that migrant workers were responsible for the growing number of drug-users in Moscow.

With a rapidly aging working population and declining birth rates, Russia is facing a very serious demography crisis. As a result, migrant workers serve an increasingly important and increasingly visible role in the economy. In theory, the Russian government has recognized this. Last summer, President Putin endorsed the State Migration Policy Concept, a policy paper that described migration as a public good and recommended programs to help migrants more easily integrate into Russian society. In practice, however, Russian laws on the issue are complicated and indirectly discourage legal migration. Entry into the country for citizens of members of the Commonwealth of Independent States is relatively easy because of the visa-free regime. People from former Soviet republics can enter and leave Russia using their “internal passports,” a relic leftover from the Communist-era that controlled the internal movement of citizens. People entering the country this way have up to ninety days to register with local migration officials. Most do not register.

Since 2007, the government has generated a quota for the number of migrant workers that are allowed to be legally employed in Russia. While demand for labor is high, the quota is relatively low, and has been steadily reduced over the last four years , pushing more and more people into illegal employment and away from registration. Migrant workers are also subject to a higher income tax than Russian citizens, 30% instead of 13%, incentivizing them to agree to lower wages under the table rather than a higher taxable salary. The cumulative effect of this system is a large, undocumented, voiceless, and vulnerable population that has no access to social services or legal recourse to deal with employers. Rather than addressing these issues, the Russian government has focused on excluding migrants from working in certain sectors of the economy, like retail, and putting up further barriers to legal work in the form of exams on Russian language and history. In the meantime, the number of illegal migrant workers, as well as public discontent, is growing and tragic incidents like the murder of Sherbakov provide an opportunity for nationalistic groups to harness widespread casual racism into mass violent action.

Well, I’m currently out of work. Rent is due today.

But what if I refuse to pay the rent UNLESS my landlord agrees to change the lease, lower the rent, give me my security deposit back, allow for pets and let me borrow his car once a week to pick up groceries? Better yet, no rent will be forthcoming unless he immediately cancels the lease, sets it on fire and allows me to decide how much rent I feel like paying each month. No? I simply won’t take no for an answer, even if it means I’ll be evicted next month.

I’m really tired of being thrown under the bus by these backward-thinking extortionists in the House of Representatives. Today America is really, literally broken. Still, I hope that congressional leaders and the president do not appease the hostage takers. That would be a very bad precedent to set for future congresses and presidents. Paying the ransom would only encourage the hostage takers to exact more demands the next time rent is due, no matter how unrealistic or unrelated the demands may be. The DC gridlock would continue indefinitely. It’s BAD FAITH to include the same poisonous pills in what should be routine legislation to keep the government running and pay the bills that are already racked up.

Who cares about election results? Who cares what the Supreme Court says? If you don’t agree to X, Y and Z, we will blow up the government and force the first default in American history! What kind of governing is that? Is that a democratic way to resolve disagreements?

House Speaker John Boehner refused to let the House vote to temporarily keep the government open at the current sequester levels, with no other strings attached, just to buy time to negotiate an actual budget. But because this approach would not destroy Obamacare, the Tea Party has instructed Boehner to block it. Why won’t Boehner allow the democratic process to play out in a full House vote, like the Senate did? Because the simple stop-gap bill would pass with BI-PARTISAN support, throwing the Tea Party destructionists into a tizzy. His job as Speaker would be in jeopardy.

Playing into the House’s new approach to negotiating a budget and paying the bills would reward and promote a new and destructive form of governing–one that is completely undemocratic. Democracy CANNOT work this way. It’s closer to how terrorists do business. The full faith and credit of the United States just doesn’t seem to matter to them. It’s only a bargaining chip to be used to force their narrow vision on the rest of the country, without going through the electoral and legislative processes that are established by our Constitution. So much for the rule of law! The US and global economies be damned.

Public servants work hard to help their families, neighbors and perfect strangers live better lives. That’s the point of choosing a career in public service. To give something back to the community. To empower your fellow citizens to make things better. To ensure that laws are enforced–laws that Congress passed to make sure buildings and bridges don’t collapse, to make sure your food won’t make you sick or kill you, to keep the air and water safe, the list goes on and on. Because of their work we are undoubtedly safer, healthier, smarter, faster, more productive. Public servants, like most contemporary Americans, believe their government should be there to help people and communities and businesses work together in mutually beneficial ways. Public service should be an honor, a privilege, something worthy of respect.

But then these friends and neighbors, who work for you, start hearing from some in Congress that they are out-of-control, greedy, lazy, job-killing leeches who do nothing more than push worthless papers around all day in pursuit of destroying liberty and freedom, providing no real service or value to anyone except themselves. They wonder how they could have become the enemy. They wonder why they are being blamed for things that are not their fault. They wonder why their paychecks are being cut while the true culprits of fiscal insanity walk away and get fatter. They wonder: “Why do I care anymore?”

So, with that, I’m heading into my office to close down. I’ll change my voicemail and email messages, get all of my stuff from the fridge and lock my door. Clean air will have to wait for another day. This is EXACTLY what many House Republicans have been dreaming about since 2010. And it’s all on the record, well-documented history in the making. The battle for the soul of America rages on. It’s time to confront the hostage-takers and to show them there will be NO RANSOM in exchange for simply doing their jobs, performing their most basic constitutional duties.

Maybe I’ll be back to work tomorrow, or the next day, or. . . . But in a sense the damage is already done. A small minority found a way to throw the whole country over the edge, and they didn’t flinch when executing their plan. A group of legislators clearly demonstrated that they do not care about democracy or value the rule of law. Well, I still do care. And I’ll wait here until I’m authorized to participate in my democracy and uphold the rule of law again.

To the House GOP: Negotiating in bad faith is NOT negotiating at all. Stop holding the country hostage. Do your basic job and keep the government running, pay the bills. Then sit down and figure out how to resolve your differences in an intelligent, professional and CONSTRUCTIVE manner. This means having to compromise, and not bringing the rest of the country down with you when you fail to get 100% of what you want.

Prisoners and suspects

Two years have passed since the unexpected appearance of a protest movement in Russia. Today the movement has declined. White ribbons, a symbol of the democratic movement, are out of fashion. And most of 28 participants of the peaceful oppositional meeting of the 6th of May 2012 that were arrested during the authorized demonstration in Moscow are still in prison. Ordinary people and activists have been accused in riots and violence against police during anti-Putin meeting. The meeting was much more peaceful in comparison with protests in Greece or Turkey. Experts from the President’s Council in Human Rights have even declare the guilt of officials in several cases of violence at the demonstration. But the prisoners remain in jail and a mechanism of repressions is turning around. “The Investigative Committee—a structure accountable only to president Putin—has constructed the case as a wide-ranging conspiracy stretching from rank-and-file street protestors to established politicians.”

In May 2012, many provincial activists have organized discussion camps for all interested in politics. Well-known politicians with rank-and-file activists participated. Homes of ordinary provincial activists were checked a year after. Police was searching proofs of preparation for overthrow of the state regime during the 6^th May demonstration in Moscow. However many of the pursued activists were far away from Moscow on the 6^th of May 2012. Nevertheless, even interest in politics was criminalized. It would be frightening, if it weren’t so absurd. Most of those activists are young, moderate and not very experienced. Police came to their homes in early morning, frightened them and their parents, took some agitation materials from authorized demonstrations and… did nothing after this. Activists just have got their taste of fear, and the Investigative Committee continued to search for clues of anti-Russian global conspiracy among trade-union activists in Yekaterinburg, and participants of political discussion camps in Chelyabinsk and Perm. Provincial activists witnessed this, but were not arrested. However 28 ‘prisoners of the 6th May’ are still absurdly accused of rioting, and many are in prison. Activists insist the prisoners could be free if people came out to streets and challenged government. The fact that the most popular oppositional leader, Alexey Navalny, was unexpectedly (and as experts suggested, temporary) released from custody after demonstrations in his support, verifies this wide-spread opinion. But people still haven’t free “prisoners of the 6^th of May,” possibly because the uprising needs wider aims for action.

Can we call all this repression? Even if we can, it’s very strange.

Strange protests

Strange repression came after strange protests. The first post-election demonstration on 5 December in Moscow 2011 began unexpectedly, both for authorities and opposition. Most oppositional leaders called on the democratic public to boycott the unfair and uncontested election. But among the democratically-oriented public, there was a demand for political activity. The word “citizen” had new connotations: ordinary urban residents without any activist experience considered agitation and coming to demonstrations for fair elections their civic duty. It was the most significant outburst of political activity since Perestroika. Public interest in politics was inspired after years of de-politicization and apathy. The first days of demonstrations even authorities were confused by unforeseen protests. Television reports from demonstrations were without comments, quite a-typical for dependent Russian television. However, after a few days, the authorities had formed an official opinion and strategy on the demonstrations.

Later demonstrations were authorized and passed without clashes with police. In Moscow, the demonstrations were localized in Bolotnaya square (“Bolotnaya” is a Russian word for “swampy”), which became a symbol of political loss among radical politicians and activists. The later demonstrations looked like a holiday or carnival. In interviews of the protestors, the most wide-spread expectation was “they (authorities) will know we (protesting people) are numerous.” This expectation resembles slogan from Occupy movement: “We are 99%.” Although demands for new fair elections of the president and parliament were concrete, it was obviously impracticable for authorities. Oppositional leaders were criticized for their hesitancy and uncertain strategy, but doubtfulness characterized even people’s demands and expectations. The protest movement has now declined, and even new activists, who took part in protests, say that the demonstrations were irrational. Actually, demands and argumentation of protesters were rational, but their belief in changes appears to have been irrational today.

Real protests; Real Results

However the processes of politicization have begun. It can be described as a wide and amorphous popular demand to influence to policy and politics. In different places, it takes different forms. Together with democratic protest movement, that are visible for media, different forms of local self-organization have arisen. Most of them are not well-known, but very significant for overcoming soviet practices of authoritarian policy and for forming viable communities. One of the most successful cases of self-organization is ecological movement against copper-nickel mining in agricultural region near river Khoper. This successful movement manifested not only in mass demonstrations, with sophisticated democratic system of coordination, but also in effective direct action. The incapacity for direct action was one of the significant features of the all-Russian protest movement in Moscow and many other Russian cities. Nevertheless, after anti-nickel demonstration on 22^nd June in small town Novokhopersk, people have destroyed drilling equipment that was set up illegally (video). The protesters’ anger led to an official investigation of legitimacy installation of drilling equipment. Activists caught by police, charged for rioting, were released in 3 days.

Apparently real mass popular protests yield real results, disarming the authorities.

In May 2013 one of Italy’s leading newspapers, La Repubblica, published an article entitled “Nimby effect on renewable energy – Italy allergic to biomass electrical generation.” Living in an agricultural area where green energy subsidies have boosted the production of biomass power stations over the past few years, I couldn’t help laughing at a similar condemnation of protests against the economical power games that lie behind green economy policies, and in which I have gotten increasingly involved over the past year. Yes, many of the people involved in the numerous bottom-up committees are worried about what is going on in their back yard, but perhaps that’s also because local politics have no interest whatsoever in defending those back yards. Moreover, a sound collaboration among various committees and associations that operate both locally and on a regional and national level prove that this is more than a group of residents concerned about their neighborhood. So it’s not all that simple. Hiding behind the ever so popular green economy business, in these times of crisis, it is easy to put off any criticism of biomass electrical generation as plain nimbyism. Yet the threat is real.

Other than the discomfort for residents, i.e. the stench and the frequency of heavy vehicles passing continuously (and often without considering speed limits) on the narrow country side roads to transport corn, grain and grass to the power plants, there are a number of very serious risks, problems and ethical issues involved.

Health: experts have demonstrated that these plants produce noxious gas that may cause cancer and birth defects. Medics, university professors and scientists have sound the alarm on more than one occasion, participating in counter-informative events and protest demonstrations, but local governors – with some minor exceptions – and media have remained indifferent to their criticism.

Profit: the presence of a relatively high number of power plants in small areas, producing energy not for the purpose of disposing biological waste in return for energy but for the sole purpose of gaining subsidies, is highly problematic. For one, what to do with all the energy that is being produced? With the companies being privately owned, the energy is not being invested in the community. It is sold at a much higher rate than “ordinary” energy, whereas the subsidies are at the citizen’s expense.

Farmland: to be able to feed the anaerobic digesters of such an excessive number of power plants, farmers are being “encouraged” to one-crop farming, which is eventually harmful for the farmland. In fact, for a few years now a large part of the farmland in my area is used to grow corn, which is harvested when it is still green and grinded. A potential disaster for the local food industry!

Ethics: this also brings along the ethical problem of harvesting crops not to feed people but simply to burn them, without using the energy that is being produced.

So these are the main problems in a nutshell. Anyone who has been attending meetings and protests over the past few years knows this. Yet, local governors ignore the problems or downplay them. They treat citizens as nimbies, or pretend not to have any say in the matter, which is untrue. Currently we are collectively struggling against a project to build a renewable energy park with no less than four power plants, only a few miles from my town, adding to the existing four to five power plants already in function
or under construction, not to mention a landfill and an incinerator nearby. Is one power plant not more than enough? But the mayor of San Pietro in Casale, a town nearby which is granting one authorization to build power plants after another, yet always on the border with adjacent communes, is indifferent to the citizens’ concerns. Undoubtedly he has business interests in green economy, and the anaerobic digesters are only a part of his master plan. Thus, he has completed the construction of a long-awaited swimming pool, in an attempt also to boost his popularity, no doubt. In doing so he has had over 40 poplar trees nearby the swimming pool and adjacent sport centre cut down: they were accused of casting shadows on the solar panels located on the roof of the sport centre. Is this, then, green economy?

The problem is universal, though. A brief article in a British current affairs journal caught my eye during a recent trip to the UK: it speaks of both solar energy and green energy subsidies for biomass electrical generation threatening UK food production. Protests occur in other European countries as well as in the States and in Canada. Going against the grain of green economy is very difficult, because green economy is necessary. We cannot continue exploiting the earth without considering alternative sources of energy, especially in countries which have important natural resources, such as wind, water and sun. If only we could find a way of keeping out profiteers, greedy politicians and the mafia.

Ary was, crucially, a good man. In this post, Kenneth Prewitt, Michael Cohen and Riva Kastoryano join me in remembering a great scholar and gentleman. -Jeff

He started his career as an Africanist, whose work on the Ivory Coast stands as a classic in the field. Aristide Zolberg became famous as a stellar essayist, whose sharp creative insights could illuminate in elegant strokes great puzzles of the human condition, including perhaps most significantly his “Moments of Madness,” a deeply learned piece reflecting on the telling question he posed: “If politics is the art of the possible, what are we to make of the moments when human beings in modern societies believe that ‘all is possible’?” And then there is his great achievement: A Nation by Design, his magnum opus. It is both a crucial account of an under examined part of the American story, while it is rich with comparative insights, as Riva Kastoryano describes in her reflections. It is a classic for reasons that Ken Prewitt underscores.

Ary was a disciplined scholar, as Michael Cohen highlights, who crossed disciplines freely, a tough – minded empiricist with great imagination. He was also a man who experienced a great deal, both the good and the bad life offered in his times. A Holocaust survivor, whose memoirs of his childhood await publication, he was married to the great sociologist of memory and art, Vera Zolberg. (For my appreciation of my intellectual relationship with Vera click here)

Ary and Vera, co-conspirators, together for sixty years, they were a beautiful team, and as a team they contributed to family (their children Erica and Danny and many more), friends, colleagues and students, and the world of arts and sciences broadly. “The Zolbergs” hosted innumerable New School events, as well as informal dinners, in their beautiful SoHo loft, with impeccably prepared meals, setting the stage for intriguing conversation, featuring Ary, the great cook and storyteller.

We at The New School and a much broader academic and personal world are in mourning. Here are some thoughts of Kenneth Prewitt, Riva Kastoryano and Michael Cohen, Ary’s good friends and colleagues. More sustained discussion of Aristide Zolberg’s work will surely follow. A memorial event at The New School in September is now being planned.

Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia University

The mark of an unusual intellect is scholarship that is timely – it speaks to today’s issues – and timeless – it will be read a century and more from now. Ari Zolberg’s scholarship, and especially his magisterial A Nation By Design, is a case in point. This was his last major work, where perhaps one is less surprised to find a lifetime of scholarship put to such brilliant use. More surprising is that his earliest major book Creating Political Order, written nearly a half-century ago, has the same remarkable feature. It was must reading for any interested in the newly independent nations of West Africa, but it is still being read today – and not just for its value as political history. Each of these books, as was true of all his writings, has an air of immediacy. But each is theoretically rich in a manner that speaks across decades if not centuries.

This combination of immediate relevance and insights that cross time and place made Ari an exceptionally valued colleague and teacher, as hundreds can testify. I offer one personal example. Shortly after finishing my Ph.D., Ari was instrumental in my recruitment to the University of Chicago. In one simple and wise sentence he taught me what the life of the mind was about – “what matters is to do one piece of scholarship truly well, because if you can do it once you can do it again, and you will want to.”

Michael Cohen, The New School

Ary was intellectually tough. I had gone to Chicago to study with him because of his unique approach to understanding African politics and my desire to do fieldwork in the Ivory Coast, the site of his early work. I still remember receiving my first paper back from him. It looked like a war zone, every page filled with comments, questions, and suggestions written in bright red. I was stunned. At the bottom of the last page, he wrote, “pretty good paper.” I still have it, 47 years later.

I now know that he was preparing me for serious social science research. He demonstrated, by example, what it meant to “prepare,” to be aware of the intellectual commitment required before one went into the field. It was, as he once remarked, “just showing respect for the people you would be meeting. You should know who they are and where they came from.”

This was more than just advice about fieldwork, but also I came to understand, about him. People should know that he had traveled a long way himself – at that time from Belgium, to New York, to Chicago, to Abidjan, and the journey continued.

I am forever grateful for these lessons. Not easy, but profoundly helpful.

Riva Kastoryano, Sciences Po

I first met Ary in 1984 in a workshop in Paris, at Sciences Po. I had just finished my Ph.D. on migration and urban sociology and gotten a Lecturer position at Harvard, in Social Studies. We talked about migration studies in France and the United States, the questions it raised in the two countries, and the challenges. This discussion was very important for me, it was a very valuable initiation to (re)think my thesis with his arguments and in comparative perspective. He would say afterwards that “Migration studies were not a priority at Sciences Po. I kept telling them how important it is and very soon they will have to realize it.” He was right.

It was Ary who introduced a political approach to the study of migrations in France, in the early 1980. Until then, research, theses and books were mainly on the economic implications of migrations, taking migrants as a part of the labor force. We also had sociological studies on the process of migration itself, inspired mainly by the urban sociology of the Chicago School. Ary stimulated students to think of migrants as political actors… That was new! And he had a lot of echoes, influencing the orientation of many research projects in France.

Ary’s views and writings on migrants’ political participation, on the one hand, and migration on a more macro level as border controls on the other, have had a great influence on the next generation. He studied refugees, immigrants and immigration from many various angles: border control, immigration policy, immigration and foreign policy, integration, ethnicity, citizenship of course, with a historical perspective. He questioned the responsibility of the international community, human rights and development policy, and wondered about the future, when he wrote in 1991 on “the future of international immigration.”

In an interview I conducted of him in 2007 in New York that has been published in CERI’s book series on “challenges of the globalization,” we talked about the changing understanding of borders and the new challenges of the globalization. “On the political level state borders still matter, but I think they will go through transformations in the XXIst century.” He was always using a comparative perspective: “the nature of borders has changed in the European Union, maybe we will get to the same situation in North America. It would be easy for the United States of America with Canada, but more difficult with Mexico.”

Comparisons – spontaneous and reflexive – have been the basis of his thoughts and writings. Even in his last book A Nation by Design is about immigration in the United States, it is impossible not to think of other contexts, and he himself questioned whether the American nation is not after all “a nation like others.” Comparisons led him to develop global visions before the age of globalization in social sciences: already in 1995 he writes about “global flows, global walls, global movements, global system.”

Historian, sociologist, political theorist, Ary thought discussed and wrote about all aspects related to the arrival, settlement, integration and assimilation of migrants. New challenges led him to question conventional approaches without rejecting them. He questioned the resistance around language (Spanish in the United States) and religion (Islam in Europe), as new perspectives to review the classical patterns with new lenses of multiculturalism, citizenship, dual citizenship and transnationalism emerged, always in different contexts. Ary Zolberg, the cosmopolitan, at the same time Africanist, Europeanist, Americanist. He didn’t have any choice but to compare within a global perspective.

His fame and work is not limited in Europe to France. Belgium – his native country of course, Austria, Germany, Netherlands; you will see Ary’s name in every prestigious institutions in these countries, and conferences, and in the tables of contents of influential journals and collective books.

I had the privilege to participate in many conferences with Ary in many different cities in Europe and the United States. Beyond very stimulating presentations and fascinating general discussions, it was a real pleasure to stroll with Ary in those cities, go to museum, bars, restaurants… He was a bon-vivant, full of energy, always discovering new places, new tastes… He always had many stories to tell.

When I visited Ary in the hospital in Paris after his stroke, I was scared. When I saw him recovering so wonderfully, I thought that he was as we say in French “the force of the nature” “the force of life”. And he was…. I repeated that when I last saw him a month ago in New York, with the idea of rejecting that he can reach an end. I will miss him for all of that.

“We must confront and defeat the ugly stain of separatism seeping through the Union flag. […] Better an imperfect union than a broken one. Better an imperfect union than a perfect divorce. […] Together, we are stronger. […]Together, we are safer. […]Together, we are richer. […] Stronger. Safer. Richer. Fairer… Together.”

The above sentences come from a speech delivered by now Prime Minister and then the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, in December 2007. Over the last six years, Mr. Cameron has stated his case repeatedly, in December 2012 and in April 2013. In all those speeches on the benefits of international cooperation, the PM referred to Scotland and its status within the United Kingdom. Rather unsurprisingly, he has never applied the same line of argument when discussing the United Kingdom’s position within the European Union.

Distorted image

Over the last four decades, numerous publications sought to explain the complexity of British relations with the uniting Continent. While many factors are undoubtedly at play, their influence eventually seems to depend on yet another one, namely, a distorted image Britain has, not so much of the European Union, but of itself. Let’s take just one example.

In the coming years, Britain’s position within the Union will be conditioned to a large extent on its economic performance. So far, the anti-EU campaign in Britain was presented as a crusade lead by energetic free marketers against an overblown European state – a millstone round the economy’s neck. This narrative will be more and more difficult to sustain should major continental economies come out of the crisis sooner and more vigorously than Britain: a very likely scenario, given the fact that, after three years in power, Mr. Cameron’s government is now in charge of a smaller economy than the one it inherited in 2010.

Yet, the course of British economy, and consequently, the country’s political leverage, may change significantly as soon as the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement with the United States is signed. The new opening between the EU and the U.S. might shift the balance of power within the Union, though which way will this rebalancing go depends largely on Britain. During the negotiations, London might either lead the whole process in the name of Europe or distance itself from the EU and act rather as a middleman between the two sides, thus trying to revive its “special relationship” with Washington. The latter strategy is more likely both to occur and to backfire. Middlemen always run the risk of being cut off, and should the free trade agreement be signed without Britain, it will be a living proof to Washington that it can do good business with Europe without any mediation.

Split personality

A true Euro-American partnership is possible only if the European Union acts as a whole. Britain, because of its relatively recent loss of a global superpower status, quite understandably still has difficulty coming to terms with the new reality. The result is a split personality, which leads British diplomats to strive for conflicting goals. One day they want to play along the U.S. in the global Premiership League, the other they urge Brussels to grant Britain the status of a second Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein – countries which on the world stage usually display much humbler ambitions.

The question is, therefore, whether Britain can give up on the already tattered “special relationship” with the U.S. as well as “special treatment” in the EU, and realize it can do much more as a fully dedicated EU member that its distant partner. It is all the more important because just as there are no indispensable people, there are no indispensible countries. In his annual expose, a few months ago, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs advocated a radically pro-European policy, claiming that the troubles in the South and British “insular aloofness” present a great opportunity for Poland – already the EU’s sixth largest economy – to get to the EU’s “most inner decision-making circle”.

What is Europe about?

The major argument for united Europe made at the time of its creation was that it guaranteed peace. When Britain joined it in 1973, it was mainly about prosperity versus economic malaise. Now it is said the case for Europe is about power versus irrelevance. Such classifications are more misleading than revealing – a united Europe should be about all these issues. Together European countries are “stronger, richer and safer” – just as the members of that other union established in 1707 the British are so familiar with.

What therefore can Europe do to keep Britain in? Quite simply, the best solution seems to be to present the British with a mirror and ask them to take a closer look.

As an American, but one very familiar with Central and Eastern Europe, I believe that integrated Europe is extremely important for several reasons. First of all, it is important for maintaining peace and stability, and thus, for overcoming terrible legacies of the Second World War, so devastating to Europe and the rest of the world. Secondly, European Union plays a crucial role in creating economic opportunities for all of its members. The current crisis should not make us forget how prosperous Europe is and can still be. Thirdly, European integration might be a driving force behind a process of creating broader sense of political identity. Europeans have so many different cultures and nationalities and there is a need to bring them together, so that they have some shared sense of community. Any European project has to take this into account, but at the same time create means for people to cultivate their own national identity at the local level.

The process of European integration has gone through a number of changes since the early 1990s. Some of them were very encouraging, and some problematic. The first dramatic change occurred right after 1989, when the long-lasting Soviet domination over a large part of the continent collapsed and many nations suddenly had to reinvent their states, drawing upon their own democratic traditions. In Poland or Czechoslovakia, as it then was, i.e. countries with some history and strong feelings for democracy, this transformation proceeded quite smoothly. In other states it was less clear on what traditions new institutions should be built. In Hungary, where I now live, there have been strong democratic traditions, but also strong authoritarian traditions, dating back to the Habsburg era. The same is certainly true of Romania, Bulgaria and other countries in the Central and Eastern Europe. These were the initial challenges, later developing in the 1990s.

At that time there were two major steps, Eastern Europeans were eager to take in order to revive and develop their democratic traditions. The first one was the NATO accession. Joining the alliance which has been at the center of the Cold War, but which was really committed to the defense of democracy, was a very important moment for them. Being admitted to the group meant becoming a member of the democratic community. The EU accession – the second of the steps – was more complicated, but perhaps even more important. Undoubtedly it created more excitement among the public, also because of some practical advantages of participating in the common market and being able to travel within the Schengen zone.

Ten years after the accession, we clearly see that at least some expectations of the public have not been met. Why? Firstly, there was a structural problem from the very outset. European Union was designed largely as an economic project and it failed to create effective instruments of political participation for the public. Centralization of the European bureaucracy in Brussels and the development of a highly structured regulatory governance system created a growing frustration among the Central European societies, and indeed among other European peoples as well. A democracy deficit at the highest levels is one of the major problems EU needs to tackle in order to develop. It has been partially addressed by the growing political influence of the European Parliament, which has become a more active player in representing opinions of the European electorate. But I think there is still a lot to be done in order to give people a sense of participation. Otherwise, they will always turn for help only to their national governments, which can sometimes act against Brussels.

The second big factor undermining trust in the European project was obviously the economic meltdown. The way the euro crisis has been managed so far seems to prove that southern and eastern regions of the EU are treated as secondary areas by the central economies of Germany, the Benelux area and to a lesser extent France. Economic instability has also created some further tensions, since people affected by the crisis want to identify the causes of it and punish those, who are allegedly to blame, i.e. immigrants and ethnic minorities. As a result in many European countries xenophobic sentiments are on the rise. The anti-immigrant, anti-Roma perspective that you see in Europe today is very disturbing. These are pan-European phenomena, not specific to the Central and Eastern Europe. Naturally, different politicians in different countries are using these processes to foster their own interests. This is particularly true in Hungary, but in other countries as well.

Will these two factors undermine the whole process of European integration? We should do all we can to prevent it. European integration is of crucial importance for the reasons of peace, stability, economic prosperity and democratic rule across the whole continent. This is even more true today than ever. That is why I was pleased to see Croatia becoming a member, and I think it is of crucial importance to bring in other Balkan countries. Dynamic European integration, even if it has serious problems today, should continue and must not be reversed.

* John Shattuk is an American legal scholar and diplomat. He was the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 1993 to 1998, under President Bill Clinton. From 1998 to 2000 he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. Since 2009 he has been the President and Rector of Central European University (CEU) in Budapest. This article originally appeared in Kultura Liberalna.

Last week, I intended to write my reflections on President Obama’s speech at the commemoration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Instead, I offered my ambivalent thoughts on Obama on Syria. Summarized in my opening: “Two Cheers for Obama.” The potentially tragic decisions of the week overshadowed, in my mind, the enduring accomplishments and challenges of decades. Obama is not only threatening Assad. Assad is threatening Obama. A march to war overshadowed a poignant remembrance of this historic march of 1963.

I closed my reflections by expressing my fear that this overshadowing may become emblematic of the Obama presidency: significant work on jobs and freedom challenged by questionable military and national security adventures, including not only the potential attack on Syria, but also drone warfare and heightened domestic and international surveillance. Unlike the President’s full-throated critics on the left and the right, I am not convinced that his positions have been simply wrong. Yet, I too sense that there is a pattern here that is troubling, especially so since the ideals which Barack Obama embodies, symbolizes and has acted to fortify are of such crucial importance to the vigor and health of the American body politic, revealed in his speech commemorating the great civil rights march and its most powerful leader, Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama’s talk, like King’s, is not cheap. His words often act. He is the only man to have been elected President of the United States based on a speech, (William Jennings Bryant was nominated but not elected), and his speeches, in form as well as content, continue to be consequential. This was my hope when I watched and then read the text, despite recent events in Syria, and the possibility of an American attack. Obama’s words on jobs and freedom, and the people who marched on Washington, tell us something about who we are, where we are going, and by what means, and as I see it, even offer interesting insights into the Syrian dilemmas.

The speech revolved around an irony. While, Obama honored King and his eloquent rhetoric, he emphasized the more humble deeds of the many who came to Washington and gave the words substance.

“We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.

But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV. Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters. They lived in towns where they couldn’t vote and cities where their votes didn’t matter. They were couples in love who couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten, and children fire-hosed, and they had every reason to lash out in anger, or resign themselves to a bitter fate.”

The humble were in Obama’s telling the real heroes:

“Because they marched, a Civil Rights law was passed. Because they marched, a Voting Rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else’s laundry or shining somebody else’s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed, and Congress changed, and, yes, eventually, the White House changed. (Applause.)”

Leaders lead when they are pushed, Obama argues. The eloquence of leaders such as King, but also Obama himself, has power when it is empowered by social movement. Odd to hear the President argue this, a reading of leaders and activists that he also emphasized in his second inaugural, as he is preparing for acts of war that are not only unpopular, but seem to distract from his principal policy initiatives, as Robert Reich recently observed on his blog.

And in the speech, Obama argued the urgency of not being distracted, for, much is left to be done. From defending past gains, to completing the project:

“But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn’t bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote, or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all, and the criminal justice system is not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails, it requires vigilance.” (Applause.)

He highlighted the legacy of the March by pointing to two courses of action. On justice – there is an urgency to push back reaction, to fight against those who would again limit access to the ballot and who accept growing inequalities and incarceration, and on jobs, there is an equal urgency grounded in the pursuit of happiness:

“For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea — that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security — this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms — as a promise that in due time, ‘the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance’.”

I have a dream, or at least I can imagine, a way out of the Syria dilemma, inspired by these words of the President. In terms of my last post moving from two cheers for Obama to three.

Under pressure of the social forces he celebrated in his address marking the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Washington, Obama works with world leaders to find a course of non-violent common action to responding to the atrocity of Assad’s chemical warfare. I admit that is probably a pipedream.

But alternatively, I can imagine very positive results of Congress turning down Obama’s request for authorization of the use of force in Syria. In his defeat Obama still will have expressed his strong response to the use of chemical weapons, and the need to find more diplomatic means to control Assad will become the order of the day.

It may cost Obama immediate political capital, but it may also help him more assuredly move American foreign policy in the direction he has long sought, that his words point to and can enable in the future. The state senator who spoke up against a stupid war, without democratic support, will have achieved his goal. The newly elected President who won his Nobel Prize for the perceived promise of changing the direction of the global hegemon, will get a boost from among others his most right-wing opponents. The Nobel Peace Laureate explained why war is a necessary evil to be avoided when possible, and this may come to pass. It will become harder for the President, as his aides now emphasize, to embark on military actions for the rest of his term, but it will also make it harder for future presidents to engage in such action without the approval of Congress and the American people. The result will be an American foreign policy that is more suited to the emerging global order, that is less militarized, and is more subject to democratic restraints. America will have turned an important corner: a tactical defeat for the President, but in the long run, a major strategic victory, a foreign policy that Martin Luther King Jr. and the marchers of ’63 would approve of, a foreign policy that makes it more likely that the struggle for jobs and freedom will move forward.

Coming out of my dream I still am deeply concerned, as is President Obama that those who would use chemical weapons against innocent civilians should not go unpunished and must be stopped. Obama’s obligation now, as he and his Democratic critics, such as Congressman Grayson, see it, is to make the case for military action against Syria disclosing all the purported evidence of its necessity. But those same critics, of the left and the right, must then work on effective non-violent action. I fear this is another pipedream.