If you’re roughly of my generation or older, you might remember Saul Bellow’s telling a New York Times journalist, back in the 1980s, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I’d be glad to read them.” It quickly became a notorious remark, which one of my later housemates loved to hilariously mock. It was also one of the many opening shots of the canon wars, which continued into the 1990s, when those arguments finally sputtered out, only to be revived with the backlash against Barack Obama. It says something about the state of things today that back then it was one of the most esteemed men of American letters, a Nobel Laureate to boot, who […]
One of the more difficult challenges in the midst of the Salaita affair is to hold onto the possibility that a university could handle the Israel-Palestine debate in ways that are worthy of a university. Virtually all sides of this debate seem to agree that, of course, Chancellor Wise was going to capitulate to the combination of outraged donors and potent constituencies. I myself have gotten so used to the cycle of call and response—administrators succumbing to donor and political pressure; massive counter-mobilization mounted by students, faculty, staff, and citizens; administrators reversing (if we’re lucky) their decision—that I sometimes forget that administrators need not toggle endlessly between powerful donors and mobilized publics. Political theorist Bonnie Honig, whose letter to Chancellor […]