Ivory Tower archives

Global warming and our collective meat-eating ways

Have you heard about Gidon Eschel and Pamela Martin's report on meat-eating and global warming? It's online here as a PDF file. Happy reading!

Hastings holds State of Black Europe hearing in Congress

In London in September or October 2004 this writer spoke on the panel, "Alliances We Need to Fight Racism" at the European Social Forum (Malmo, Sweden Sept. 2008). I participated as a member of the network Alliance of People of...

Africa “Outside” History? President Sarkozy’s infamous speech in Dakar, July 2007

Since his accession to the French presidency, I seem to have lost track of the times when to hear Nicolas Sarkozy speak is to re-affirm that truth indeed is stranger than fiction. It's likely that for most of his listeners...

Genuine Progress Indicator? Measuring economies as if society mattered

As so many consumer and exchange economies teeter on the brink, here's a fascinating index that could prove more useful to more people. Many of us are in the same time familiar with, yet put off by, words and terms...

Election 2008: help a grad student, take a survey

Marian's Blog received a survey request from a PhD student at Stony Brook University in New York State. Chris Weber is conducting a survey on "people's reactions to the presidential candidates in the upcoming election." Logically this would be aimed...

Black History Month on the Eve of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

It's Black History Month, folks. Today, renegade though it may be to some, my focus is on the peculiarities I'm observing in this 2008 U.S. presidential election season. I'll begin with a fact that may not be obvious to some...

Leon Higginbotham and South Carolina, on Martin Luther King Day

Perhaps you already know the name A. Leon Higginbotham, or maybe you don't. Until his death he served as a U.S. federal judge. Earlier he was a friend and college classmate of my father and his siblings. Not only did...

Michael Moore leaning toward John Edwards?

I got an email today with a very interesting "letter" (article) from Michael Moore in which he's definitely leaning toward John Edwards. Moore's article is entitled, "Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore." He...

Hollywood Apartheid, Or appreciating the Films of Oscar Micheaux (1883-1951)

lncreasingly more frequently I think of the late, great American -and Black American - filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux. For me, Mr. Micheaux's prodigiousness and genius remain as freshly astounding as his obscurity still largely enforced by U.S. society. Actress Hazel Diaz...

Post-Katrina, Cont’d: Let the People Rebuild - 2006 Harvard Jnl of African American Public Policy

For some strange reason we just don't seem to be hearing as much regular, in-depth news and information as we should about post-Katrina issues facing New Orleans, the Gulf Coast and the USA. So, we suggest you check the Summer...