By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 8th, 2011 
Next week I am off to the New School’s Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. The Institute opens today, but I will be arriving a few days late. As I review the events of this week at Deliberately Considered, I am anticipating my work at the Institute, which will be reflected in upcoming posts. The last two posts, on Iran and on American identity, in fact, were informed by Democracy and Diversity experience.
In the most mundane way, the Institute is like many other international summer schools. Students from many different countries, this year Kazakhstan, Ethiopia, Italy, Poland, and the USA, among others, come together to study a set of problems from a number of different academic perspectives. As usual, in my judgment, the topics are particularly interesting, this year, each addressing the theme of the year The World in Crisis: “Gender in Crisis? Strengths and Weaknesses in the Strategy of Emergency” (Prof. Ann Snitow), “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” (Prof. Jeffrey Goldfarb and Prof. Daniel Dayan), “Romancing Violence: Theories and Practices of Political Violence” (Prof. Elzbieta Matynia), and “‘We the People’: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Belonging” (Prof. Sharika Thiranagama). Still there are many summer schools that offer interesting programs with talented students such as we have. Yet, there is something special about this Institute that makes it different than most summer programs, linked to its history.
In terms of my student’s observations and reflection on Iran this week, our institute is in a sense, paraphrasing Hannah Arendt, a not so lost treasure of  the revolutionary tradition. He observed how freedom was experienced in the days before and after the 2009 elections in his country, and noted how even in the face of extreme repression, the ability of independent people to speak and act in each other’s presence is still consequential, apparently preventing the execution of Habibollah Latifi. But the real significance of the free politics, before the elections of 2009 and through the Facebook . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: Democracy and Diversity and Free Public Action
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 6th, 2011 
I recently read a student paper which I found to be quite inspiring. The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, uses Hannah Arendt to make sense of the oscillations between hope and despair in Iran. The interpretation of Arendt and its application to an ongoing political struggle remind me of my response to the democratic movement in Poland in the 80s and 90s, also informed by a fresh reading of Arendt. The author sensitively explores the potential and limitations of free public action in an authoritarian political order, highlighting the resiliency of free politics. Here are some interesting excerpts from the study. -Jeff
 The streets of Tehran had turned into free public spaces days before the 2009 Presidential Elections. The vibrant scene of groups of people with antagonistic political ideals arguing and debating with one another was truly amazing and unique. After the elections, in a spontaneous concerted act, three million people walked in silence, protesting the results of the election. Those who walked up from Enghelab (Revolution) Square to Azadi Square experienced a sacred time and space. They experienced for a few hours a power that has been engrained forever in their minds. The actors involved created a story and have “started a chain of events,” as Arendt put it in The Human Condition. While they did not walk the path of revolution to freedom, they did experience freedom when they were debating in public corners.
On the days prior to and after the elections, Iranians experienced the extraordinary, because they challenged the “commonly accepted.” They “acted in concert” and owned the streets of Tehran from which they had always felt alienated. The streets of Tehran, ever since, have gained a different meaning. They are a reminder of a moment of “greatness” that will never lose its new acquired significance. It is “greatness” because it breaks through the commonly accepted and reaches into the extraordinary. Whatever is true in common and everyday life no longer applies because everything that exists in the extraordinary is . . .
Read more: Iran: The Meaning of Free Politics
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 24th, 2011
I am not completely satisfied with my last post. I’m afraid I wasn’t clear enough. I wanted to express my appreciation of Obama’s speech on Afghanistan, while highlighting what I see to be the limitations of his foreign policy. I wanted to show how, judged realistically, Obama’s speech on the Afghanistan drawdown was a significant advance, but also wanted to show why I think he did not go far enough. It’s about principles, not numbers.
Obama presented a vision of change in the direction of American foreign policy, although he didn’t fundamentally question the premise of America as a superpower with global responsibilities. I appreciate and support the vision, but question the premise. I also worry about the identification of defense of country and national security with military capability and response. But, I don’t expect the President of the United States to publicly challenge this identification. He is commander-in-chief and a politician who must ultimately make sense to the majority of the American people, while I can happily call myself a pragmatic pacifist, with all the contradictions that involves. The speech struck me as being successful because Obama linked short terms goals with long term ends, i.e. withdrawing from an unpopular war while diminishing the power of Al Qaeda and giving Afghans a decent chance at determining their own just future, with changing the direction of American foreign policy.
I want a change of direction more radical than the President, but I still can’t be against all wars. Although I realize that non-violent action often gets  things done more effectively and decisively than violent action, I believe that sometimes violence, including military force, is necessary. I understand, even support, the military action in Libya, but I also realize that the use of force in such situations is an indication of weakness. . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: War and Peace
By Rafael Narvaez, June 16th, 2011 
After a couple of centuries of errors, today we know that there is greater genetic variation within races than across them. Racial groups differ in more or less 6 percent of their genes, which means that ninety four percent of variation occurs within conventional racial categories. Race is thus a construct without genetic basis. To be sure, it is not a biological fact, the American Anthropological Association says, but “a social mechanism invented during the 18th century” in part to justify the European colonial expansion. The notion that there are human subspecies stems primarily from colonial ideologies, particularly from the idea that nature, and thus God, ordained a hierarchy of races, a belief that justified slavery and underpinned the laws and the logic that governed colonial economies.
Consider the notion that there is a “white race,” which is generally defined in the U.S. as “descent from any of the original peoples of Europe,” as census folk say. The idea that a white race naturally stems from any European roots is very recent. Bear in mind that the Romans, the Greeks, the Gauls, the Franks, etc., never thought of themselves as “white,” as sharing the same racial boat by virtue of being “Europeans.” Julius Caesar could never think of himself as white. A direct descendant from Aphrodite, he was, instead, of the race of the gods. To find folks who believe that European ancestry, broadly conceived, endows them with a race, we have to go all the way to the 20th century. We have to picture a time when the children and grandchildren of European immigrants to the U.S. melted into a common culture and eventually into a common “white race.”
This happened by the middle of the 20th century. In 1922, Jim Rollings, a black man from Alabama, was dragged to a court accused of the crime of miscegenation, of having had very consensual sex with a white woman, one Edith Labue. Luckily for the defendant, the woman in question was Italian. As soon as the judge discovered that important piece of . . .
Read more: The Fictoid of Race
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 15th, 2011 
A while ago, I read a frightening piece in The New York Times, on looted weapons in Libya. The hopeful side of the report is that the opposition to the brutal dictator (who has systematically attacked unarmed citizens) is militarily empowered, using the weapons of the dictatorial regime against the dictatorship. But the Times report emphasized the dangers. With arms now circulating outside the formal control of the state, there is a high likelihood that some of them will reach the black market and get into the hands of terrorists outside this zone of conflict. C.J. Chives, the Times reporter examines particularly this dangerous side of recent events there.
Indeed it’s scary. Nihilists of various sorts might obtain missiles that are capable of attacking commercial airliners. As someone who often flies abroad for professional and family purposes, I am particularly concerned. This security threat is very real, Chives reports, because in relatively recent past examples of state arsenals being looted by civilians, Uganda in 1979, Albania in 1997 and Iraq in 2003, the fear has been confirmed.
When I was reading this article, I thought about another circumstance when such fear in the end seems to have proven unfounded, and in which I was peripherally involved. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989 led many to worry that terrorists, who had been armed and supported by the Soviet bloc, would become rogue and free floating. Further, there was the fear that their preferred weapons, sophisticated plastic explosives, specifically semtex, might be used in new ways, not disciplined by the logic of the cold war. It was in this context that I became a suspected terrorist.
I was coming home from a two month trip around the old Soviet bloc in the late winter of 1990. This visit would later become the basis of my theoretical travelogue, After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe. I . . .
Read more: Reflections of a Terrorist Suspect
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 10th, 2011
As I reported last week, Daniel Dayan and I had a nice lunch in Paris on the terrace of a little restaurant at the Palais Royal. He ate blood sausage. My wife, Naomi, and I had couscous with chicken. I followed Daniel’s recommendation and ordered mine with olives, a dish that was his grandmother’s specialty back in Morocco. We discussed what proved to be the theme of last week, looking at North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of Europe. But of course, we couldn’t and didn’t ignore the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, then raging in Paris. The following evening, he extended his side of the conversation in a crisp essay, which we posted on Monday. Here I continue my side of the conversation.
My first response came in the form of an email I wrote him upon receiving his piece:
I don’t agree with you on all points, centered on two issues: the way the distinction between private and public moves (the most general issue), and how the presumption of innocence necessarily varies from one institutional sphere to the next, from the judiciary to the police to the press, for example. Consider the case of a child molester and how the presumption is enacted or not by different people placed differently in the society. This is an empirical and normative issue. More soon. Again it was great seeing you and great receiving the post.
In the case of a child molester, the police look for a suspect and attempt to confirm guilt, while in court there must be a presumption of innocence. Before, during and after a trial, the press and the general public judges, independently of formal legalities, and explores whether they think justice is done by the police and the courts, sometimes in a sensational way. The spheres of public activity and the press are different from the professional activities of the police and the courts. And quite clearly, when the issue is child molestation, the public and the press are predisposed, often without regard to the solidity of the evidence, to believe the police, given the nature of the crime . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: DSK and the Presumption of Guilt
By Rafael Narvaez, June 8th, 2011 
 Ollanta Humala, a left-wing nationalist, has won the presidency of Peru. He obtained a narrow margin, probably four or five percentage points, over his contender, Keiko Fujimori (the final official count was not available at the time of writing). As I suggested in a previous post, Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing populist and the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, ran with the goal of freeing dad and dad’s buddies from prison, where they presently spend their days on charges ranging from large-scale thievery to murder. Many Peruvians feared, myself included, that electing Keiko would be tantamount to transferring these criminals from their cells to the offices of government. For at least the next five years, the duration of Humala’s future administration, this will not happen. For now, Peru has avoided the embarrassment of legitimizing, via the popular vote, one of the worse banana republic dictatorships in Latin America.
The future with Humala is uncertain. Throughout the campaign, he was accused, again and again, of “Chavismo,” of being but a sidekick to Hugo Chavez, bent on applying the obsolete and even ridiculous Chavista template to Peru. To counter this notion, Humala, dramatically and operatically, swore on the bible to scrupulously follow not Chavez’s but Lula’s steps, promising to actually strengthen the market with private as well as with state-oriented investment, while also building programs to increase redistribution of wealth.
No one realistically expects a Brazilian miracle in Peru within the next five years. But in a deeply polarized country, with an already large and zealous right-wing opposition, Humala has no choice but to fulfill his moderate, market-oriented promises. It is likely, therefore, that the economic growth that Peru has been experiencing in the past decade will continue, perhaps after an initial period of internal market speculation and attendant problems such as devaluation and an increase of investment risk indexes.
A couple of reflections
To be very schematic, two left wings seem to be emerging in Latin America. On the one hand, there is the old-guard, populist, anti-imperialist, caudillo-dependent, big-government-oriented left wing headed by Chavez (“capitalism may have ended life on Mars”). On the other hand, . . .
Read more: Elections in Peru, the Runoff
By Daniel Dayan, June 6th, 2011 
In France, is Dominique Strauss-Kahn “presumed innocent” until proven guilty? In fact, he is presumed guilty until proven innocent. Or worse, he is presumed guilty, until confirmed guilty since the French media usually expect courts to confirm their own “enlightened” judgment and can be extraordinarily vindictive when they don’t. Thus, a petition signed by thousands of journalists “condemning” the court that condemned the national French TV Channel Antenne II for broadcasting unsubstantiated allegations. This post is about the media treatment of the presumption of innocence.
Consider a driver who deliberately speeds and runs over a policeman in front of a crowd of witnesses in order to avoid being checked at a road block. The driver is described in the news as the “presumed” author of the policeman’s coma. The word “presumed” here is a language automatism, an adornment, a legal curlicue. There is not a shadow of a doubt that this driver‘s car hit the policeman. No matter how grotesque, the word “presumed” tends to be repeated in such situations “ad nauseaum.”
With DSK, we are in a situation where the presumption of innocence matters because the facts are not established. Despite various forms of lip service, this presumption is resolutely trampled. In a recent talk show about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, stand-up comedian Michel Boujenah expressed uneasiness about the fact that most of the journalists around him started from the premise that DSK was guilty. He reminded them that DSK had to be considered innocent until proven guilty. “Yes, yes,” said the journalists. Then they went on with their debate. To them, the presumption of innocence was an annoying contrivance, something akin to the presence of a vocal anti-racist at certain dinner parties; a presence that proves annoying since it prevents guests from cracking race jokes. The stand-up comedian reiterated his remark. He was definitely spoiling the fun. “OK,” replied one journalist, just add an “if” to everything I say. Just put my words in the conditional!” Then he resumed the discussion as if the guilt of DSK was beyond any . . .
Read more: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Presumed Innocence
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 3rd, 2011 
The weather has been absolutely spectacular this week in Paris. Clear, sunny skies, low humidity, moderate temperatures. Yesterday, Naomi and I enjoyed having lunch at the Palais-Royal and walking through the city with our friend Daniel Dayan. Each day, we have been spending time in a park with our grandson, Ludovic. Especially nice was a family excursion to the Arab Institute, where we had wonderful pastries and panoramic views of of the city from its rooftop café. Being in Paris, thinking with a European perspective about the Arab world has been my theme of the week, as I, with the help of the editorial team at Deliberately Considered, have been keeping the magazine going.
I observed in my first letter from Paris that the common action of Coptic Christians and Muslims at Tahrir Square created a new pluralistic reality in Egypt. These days, this new reality is challenged, to say the least. There are great fears that sectarian conflict will rule the day in Egypt and in the region, as was reported in Tuesday’s New York Times. According to this report, a clause in the constitution formally identifying Egypt as a Muslim country deriving its laws from Islam, passed during the era of Anwar Sadat, and laws dating back to the late colonial era that stipulate specific restrictions on and privileges for the Coptic church have inflamed tensions. There is a marked increase in sectarian violence, with wild stories about abduction of Muslims, even reported in a historically liberal newspaper. These are very serious matters.
Formal political measures to address these issues are urgently needed. An idea floating that a Bill of Rights ought to be established as a precondition of electoral politics, as advocated by Mohamed El Barade, makes considerable sense. But just as important are indications that the power of definition, what I call the politics of small things, is being marshaled to combat dangerous anti-democratic developments.
![]( "A Copt (left) and a Salafi Muslim (right) debate politics and the revolution in Tahrir Square during a break </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") DC Week in Review: Letter from Paris II, Thinking about Egypt, Poland and China with “Skin in the Game”
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 1st, 2011 
I feel as if I am following President Obama’s itinerary through Europe. For me, it started with a quick stopover in Dublin on my way to Paris. My wife and I will spend more time in Dublin next week, where she will explore her father’s hometown for the first time. Naomi is one of a rare breed, an Irish Jew. Her family spent a generation there between Latvia and Canada. We are even going to be looking for a long lost elderly cousin. Later this summer, I will be off to Poland, on my annual teaching stint in The New School’s summer Democracy and Diversity Institute. These coincidences (I was also in London a few months ago) and returns come to mind because, as with Obama, my stay in Europe this time is stimulating me to think not only about European matters, but also about North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of European experience.
During his stay in Poland, the President met with former leaders of the democratic opposition and Solidarity movement, and noted that what Poland went through twenty-five years ago proves that the move from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one is quite possible, though also quite difficult. He spoke as a political leader wanting to position America and its allies together in support of the Arab Spring. He emphasized institution building, the rights of minorities and a free press. I don’t disagree with him, and I should add as an old Polish hand, it warms my heart to see my friends being used as an example of political success.
Yet, democratic consolidation is not completely achieved in Poland and among its neighbors, and there is always a threat, as has been observed here in Andras Bozoki’s report on the situation in Hungary, that a transition to democracy may be followed by a transition from democracy. This depends upon attitudes and shared beliefs of the citizenry.
![]( "Mourners in front of the Presidential Palace </i></strong></em></b>. . .
<p>Read more: <a href=") Letter from Paris: Thinking about the Middle East, North Africa and Central Europe
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DC Week in Review: Letter from Paris II, Thinking about Egypt, Poland and China with “Skin in the Game”
Letter from Paris: Thinking about the Middle East, North Africa and Central Europe