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Press Release: A Dutch Appeal to All New Yorkers

This comes via a friend, and I thought the sentiment was quite nice. Please click on the PDF links. The images are funny. — Thursday, September 9th PRESS RELEASE REAL World Citizens A Dutch appeal to all New Yorkers to keep leading by example as the World’s center of diversity. In May 2010 a new initiative, REAL Dutch, was launched in anticipation of the controversial participation of Geert Wilder’s right-wing PVV party in parliamentary elections. A series of posters was spread on the streets and in the media to show how muslimas are just as much Dutch as any other…

Sotomayor Nomination

Frank Rice has a good piece on the Sotomayor nomination today, and how it the process highlights how difference is threatening to some people, even though difference is becoming more normative. See also Stewart and Colbert. Unfortunately, while Rich focuses on Latino/a aspects, I think he misses the larger issue of how we all fear difference. For example, this type of fear applies to Muslims, but also emanates from Muslims. Hopefully, the recent experiences with Pres. Obama and Sotomayor help highlight how we fear difference and how we can overcome it.

The Long Shadow of Torture (November 4, 2010)

Iranian-American political scientist Darius Rejali is one of the world’s leading experts on torture, and in particular on how democracies change torture and are changed by it. In the wake of Wikileaks revelations about torture in U.S.-occupied Iraq, we explore how his knowledge might deepen our public discourse about such practices and inform our collective reckoning with consequences yet to unfold. [From The Long Shadow of Torture (November 4, 2010)] torture