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On March 30, 2023 I delivered my farewell Legacy Lecture to the UM-Dearborn community.  There were  70 plus people present.   The event had four stages.  First, two colleagues (Don Anderson and Elias Baumgarten) reflected on my career and their interactions with me;  then I delivered my talk; then five memorable students were on a panel to discuss their work with me; then there was an Open Mike.  The full event was about two hours.   The full video event is available on the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters Deep Blue website.  

My talk was around 50 minutes.  That is what is here. 

Thanks for listening.  

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On May 14, 1948  (on the American calendar) the Zionist forces in Palestine declared the arrival of the state of Israel.  2023 is the 75th anniversary of that event.  Israelis and Jewish nationalists in general consider this to be a day of liberation.  To Palestinians it is a day of catastrophe (Nakba) when they lost not only their farms and homes and quarries and orchards and professions  and bank accounts but their homeland.  The inflammatory rhetoric in our own country around these events gets very unpleasant.   Just this week a local school system in the Detroit suburbs lost its superintendent and a high school  principal because they allowed a Palestinian to speak to the sophomore class.  

As an educator, I always tried to present the matters surronding these events in a way that made them accessible and helpful to my students, whatever their background.  During the decades that I taught my class on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict I was very successful at that.  I had a couple of off-campus people or groups raise issues, but never once did I ever have a regular student raise a complaint.  (Although several came by after class to discuss their experiences and their perspectives.  I always appreciated those conversations, which I always told the class I wanted to hear). 

The last semester that I taught was during the pandemic and I had to record my classes and then forward them to students.  That was very difficult to do, to be completely detached from my students.  But it had the advantage of leaving me with a cache of recorded lectures.  Several of those on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict have been  previously posted.  Many of those involve the events of 1948.   This is one of them.   They are all there on the Stocktonafterclass site waiting for you.  This podcast is one.  You are welcome to listen to others as you wish. 

Glitch:  During the lecture, I got a number wrong.  It was the fabricated number of fatalities during the Deir Yassin massacre.  The number I mentioned was was 254, made up by Zionist spokesperson Mordechai Raanan on the spot.  I think I said 280.  The number of 248  reported by BBC and the New York Times, and used by trusting professors for decades until the true number of 110 emerged in the 1990s. 

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In 1862 Victor Hugo wrote what may be the greatest novel of the 19th century.  He wrote this masterpiece in 14 months, while he was in exile.  It is about Jean Valjean who was sentenced to the galleys for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his widowed sister and her chidren.  Many people have seen the film or stage version of this novel, but the written text is stunning.  Was it divinely inspired? I don't know.  Did the hand of God reach down and direct the hand of the author?  I don't know.  I do know there were times when I said to myself, "Hugo did not write this.  No human being could have written this."  This is my discussion of this book, and of several other books written by inspired geniuses.  The podcast is 41 minutes long.  Do yourself a favor and listen to it.  And then read the book.  Or should I say, "the books discussed herein"?

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The Dominion Lawsuit Against Fox News, April 18, 2023

As a part of the Big Lie conspiracy theory, that Donald Trump had won the 2020 Presidential election but it had been stolen from him, Fox News began to feature attacks on Dominion Voting Machines.  They said that Dominion machines had “flipped” millions of votes from Trump to Biden, thus stealing the election.  Needless to say, this would destroy Dominion’s credibility, especially in Red States.  

Dominion sued for $1.6 billion. 

Legally, there were two dimensions of this lawsuit:  First, did the evidence show that Fox had indeed defamed Dominion?  And if so, how much should the damages be? 

On April 18 the trial began.  Everyone was expecting a six week drama.  But before the opening statements could be delivered, the judge announced there had been a settlement.  This podcast tells you what happened.  

Under court rules, the elements of a settlement are private and do not have to be revealed unless the parties agree to reveal them.  Sometimes there is a non-disclosure component to a settlement.  The public may not even know of such a provision unless the parties reveal its existence.  

Please note that Smartmatic also has a $2.7 lawsuit against Fox.  And Dominion has outstanding lawsuits against Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell.  

Also note that  Alex Jones lost a lawsuit that cost him $1.4 billion dollars for saying the Sandy Hook killings were fakes.  No one thinks he will ever pay it.  But Fox is a rich and powerful corporation with deep pockets. 

Also note that while most Americans have multiple sources of news, 75% of conservatives rely heavily upon Fox News.   And Fox wants to keep it that way.  Fox executives live in fear that they will lose their viewers to their smaller rivals Newsmax or Oan.  There is a furious race to hold onto the kooky element who believe that 135% of all eligible voters in Detroit actually voted in 2020.  (Note:  It was actually around 55% turnout).  

Glitch:  That famous Supreme Court case about defamation is NYT v Sullivan.  In my rush to get this finished the same day as the settlement, I got that wrong.  (If Fox had been as honest about their mistakes as I am, they would have 3/4 of a billion dollars more in their bank account than they do now). 

Note:  Recorded on cell phone.  

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A Palestinian Reflects on life in Ramallah and Life in Ann Arbor

Last year, Ramsey Hanhan published a slightly fictionalized memoir of his life.  It was called Fugitive Dreams:  A Personal Memoir. 

Ramsey grew up in Ramallah, nine miles north of Jerusalem.  His parents were 1948 refugees.  In those days Ramallah was predominately a Christian town.  Today it is a bustling city.   

Ramsey grew up under the Israeli occupation.  His textbooks had to have an Israeli stamp certifying that they did not have any Palestinian content.  No mention of the literary heroes  Ghassan Khanafani or Mahmoud Darwish for example.  (He was delighted when he got to Ann Arbor and found all of Darwish’s poetry in the library).   One of his first memories was when he was three and his mother told him to stay away from the window.  He could get hit by a stray bullet. 

In 1987 the first Intifadah began.  To a kid It was exciting but it divided his classmates.  Suddenly there was fear of “Birds,” i.e., informants. 

In time his family moved  to Canada, and then to the U.S.   Ramsey entered the University of Michigan (and ended up with a doctorate in Engineering and became a professor).  He quickly got involved in student activism.  His insights on the complexities of trying to create a unified student movement will be of interest to anyone who has ever gotten engaged in such movements. 

Ramsey told me he would be in the Detroit area so I invited him to come by to let me interview him.  This is the first time I have tried such thing.  I hope you will let me know if you found this useful.  (Stocktonafterclasspodcastdicsussiongroup@gmail) 

Note:  My sound system was not working so this interview was done on a cell phone. You may have to fiddle with your dials to get it right.  

Blah! 

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Almost everyone knows about Winnie the Pooh, but not as many know about the Christopher Robin Poems.  There were two collections of these poems, later gathered into a single book, The World of Christopher Robin.  These are poems that my sons and my grandkids know very well because Jane and I read them over and over.  (Recently we mentioned this collectin to my grandson and he began to recite the one that he liked the most).  

Kids love to hear things like this over and over but for parents, or grandparents, to engage in this repetitious recitation,  there has to be a certain entertainment value for the performer.   And these poems were a delight to read.   Maybe that is why I have wanted for some time to do a podcast reading some of them to you.  

These were written a hundred years ago, which means they are now out of copyright. 

I am only reading a selection, so I encourage you to buy the book, especially if you have a young person in your life.  

Hint:  You can start reading to them as soon as they can hold their head up.  They won't understand the words but they will understand the music and rhythm of the poems, and will know that you love them enough to hold them and read these poems over and over. 

And if our experience is any indication, they will grow up to be amazing human beings. 

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With Israel being led by the most extreme government in its history, and with violence escalating on the West Bank, I thought it might be useful to repost this podcast.  Ian Lustick is a significant political scientist.  He specializes in intractable ethnic and colonial conflicts, and how they end.  This is his discussion of why Israel is incapable to addressing its occupation, and why the U.S. is incapable to pressuring them. 

I have another podcast on possible outcomes, including the Black Swan scenario. 

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Jane and I met Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter once, but I think we, and other Americans, knew him long before that.  These are my reflections on the life of a great American. 

This includes his election as governor, Camp David, Panama Canal, his personality, and especially issues of race and racism. 

It also includes his books, and especially An Hour Before Sunrise, his book on growing up in small town Georgia, and the nature of racial issues. 

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Background to the Ukraine War.  Observations from February 24, 2022

This war will not end with the defeat of the Russian army or with Vladimir Putin in the Hague for a war crimes trial.  There will have to be a settlement.  This podcast offers some thoughts on the nature of the conflict.  

Back in 2008 there was a crisis in Ukraine.  It led to the separation of two regions from Ukraine, and the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula.  I convened a Faculty Forum on the event, asking my knowledgeable colleagues to help us understand the issues.  I delivered some thoughts of my own on the American role and the American interests.  This talk is based on my comments at the time, and how they relate to what is happening now.  There is also updating to the current situation.  

I wrote this podcast on February 23, 2022 in the afternoon.  My plan was to record and post it later that evening, but events intervened. By the time I was ready to follow through, the Russian military had initiated its attack.   I added a few supplementary comments the morning of February 24 as the world was trying to figure out what was going on.  I posted on Facebook a simple statement:  “Now we understand how the world felt when we invaded Iraq.”  

Two glitches

First, there was a lack of clarity at the point when I explained that NATO was founded with an anti-Russian clause in it but this clause had now been removed.  It sounded as if I had said “Not removed.” 

Second,  twice I mention the wonderful journal Foreign Affairs, but called it Foreign Policy.  Foreign Policy is also a good journal but it is not the same as Foreign Affairs. 

 When this war began, we thought the Russian army would be in Kiev within a week.  We saw massive convoys of Russian tanks heading west.   We thought President Zelinskyy would probably be dead or in exile.  And yet the Ukrainian army is holding on, and Zelinskyy is an international hero.   And this war seems to have taken on characteristics that we could never have predicted.  Year II seems equally ominous. 

Note that my analysis may not be what you expect.  

Some names: 

              Adam Rapacki

              Yanukovich

              Zelinski

              Samuel Huntington

              George F. Kennan

              General Giap

              John Mearsheimer 

Some Terms or places

              Maiden Square

              Donets, Luhansk, Donbas

              Abkhazia and South Osettia

              Kiev

Curious Factoid:  Maiden Square in Kiev uses a borrowed word from Arabic.  Maiden is the same as Medina, the important pilgrimage site in western Saudi Arabia.  Medina means city. 

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Sixty years ago, the New Yorker published a long analytical essay on the Eichmann trial by the famous intellectual Hannah Arendt.  It became an instant classic.  It also became the center of rabid controversy.  This is a short discussion of Hannah Arendt, of her life, and of what happened when she published her discussion of this trial.