31 Comments
The National Review, which in Spec-speak is like the “Chris Shrugged” of right-wing rags, (“William F. Buckley Shrugged”?), has anointed Chris Kulawik as the paradigm of all that’s right with the current state of discourse about the Middle East. The problem, natch, is Fulbright-winning, Ph.D. holding professor Juan Cole, who is just ruining everything with his big ideas and his big words.
…and speaking of trouble with the Middle East, Sammy’s Halal has disappeared from the corner of 111th and Broadway! The Hungry Lion (who prefers to keep his identity a secret) is on the case. Which is good because he’s a student, and not someone who’s studied Sammy’s Halal for decades or anything and has written books about it and teaches a class about it at an Ivy League university.
– JNW shrugged
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31 Comments
@bookie If I were an entrepreneurial chap, I’d open a betting pool on what each year’s embarassing controversy is going to be.
I’d put money on MEALAC-Gate Redux: David Project Strike’s Back
@by the way the bwogger is obviously one of those pretentious CC loudmouths as well, here’s an example of El-Haj’s ‘big words and big ideas’ straight from her book:
““The making of archaeological evidence, however, entails interventions that go well beyond interpretative acts. In excavating the land, archeologists carve particular (kinds of) objects out of the contours of the earth’s depths – depending, of course, on the specific excavating techniques used, the kinds of remains made visible, and which of those remains are recognized as significant and thus recorded (inscribed as evidence) and preserved. In so doing, archaeologists assemble material culture henceforth embedded in the terrain itself, facts on the ground that instantiate particular histories and historicities.””
Wow. Archaeologists dig shit and tell us what it means. Yeah, real merit in her verbosity.
@who honestly reads the eye?
@thanks for the worst writing to grace these bwog pages this school year.
@Hello Nachos is being replaced by Community Food and Juice, a juice-bar/eclectic-American diner.
@DHI Although I just looked at one of the lists and it would be pretty awesome if “said” was replaced by “spoke.”
@Sprinkles So everyone who feels Professor Abu-Hajj’s record of scholarship needs to be carefully examined for accuracy before she’s given tenure is some sort of idiot who can’t understand “big ideas” and “big words?” That’s lame, Bwog. Lame.
@because... conservatives are thrilled that such a vocal righty manages to exist at what they stereotype (not completely irrationally) as the most leftist of universities.
The real question is:
I know he likes all the attention, good or bad, but does Chris know how much of a joke he is among his peers?
Chris, if you’re reading:
A HUGE joke of a man. A joke almost too sad to laugh at. Almost.
@maybe Chris doesn’t consider you his peer?
Re Nacho’s:
http://bwog.net/index.php?page=post&article_id=3848
@hmmm I always just considered all Columbia students to be my peer. Then, I realized that maybe I have the definition of peer wrong. You’re right! I looked it up on dictionary.com. Indeed, definition #5 asserts:
“Peer: a member of any of the five degrees of the nobility in Great Britain and Ireland (duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron).”
Sorry for the mix up! No viscount thinks you’re a joke, Chris!
@EAL First of all, we are FAR from the most leftist of universities. We’re not even the most liberal in the Ivy League. That dubious distinction belongs to Brown. Yale and Harvard are also just about as liberal as we are.
Secondly, Kulawik’s not that bad a guy, and I’m not even a Republican. He’s a libertarian conservative, certainly not a Bush supporter (nor a neocon) right now. I don’t consider him a joke at all. What I do disapprove of is that he seems to purposely attract controversial speakers to campus in an effect to build attention to the Republicans on campus. At least when the Dems bring someone here, it’s not some nutcase liberal. I do think the Plinko board was fairly juvenile, though.
@hmm How do you know that Kulawik is a libertarian conservative & that he doesn’t support Bush? I really doubt he would be libertarian & I would also think he still has faith in the Bush admin.
@because Kulawik is psycho pro-Israel… most libertarians don’t give a flying fuck about Israel
@Not really We care about it because it is an example of a democratic society in a desert of archaism. We just don’t care about the Biblical right-to-exist aspect.
@annoyed What does Chris Kulawik do to get so much favorable press? I’m sick of hearing that kid’s name.
@did bwog find out whats going in nacho’s?
i hear its an organic food and juice bar. please find out more.
@I'm tired of people asking what’s going in at the old Nacho’s site. Seriously, people, read:
A) Last week’s Eye, which has an interview with the people opening the new place
B) Eater, which has mentioned the new place several times, and it’s connection to an old place
or C) Bwog, which I’m sure has mentioned it as well, in a way that’s easily findable if you type in the words “Nacho’s closing” or something to that effect and then just scan your search results.
And I know exactly what’s going in there, and the entire story behind it, and the concept, and what they’re serving, but I’m not gonna tell you because you’re lazy.
@EAL The National Review is not that bad, relatively speaking. It’s more like the Republican version of The New Republic. Now, The Weekly Standard, there’s a right-wing rag.
@clearly this bwogger didn’t rtfa.
um yah, thanks for posting juan cole’s qualifications but you’re echoing the point the national review was making–that even a youngling like Kulawik could author a somewhat substantive article on the El-Haj issue while purported brilliant academics like Juan Cole and many others who’re defending prof. el-haj’s work are simply resorting to ad hom ‘but they’re sheeple right wing zionists!!!lol!!!’
Consider Kulawik’s relative fellation of somebody he obviously disagree w/: “To circumvent the inevitable criticism, let’s clarify: this is not a call to discriminate against unpopular ideas, but poor scholarship. Consider for the sake of this rejoinder the life and work of Edward Said. For all the rock-throwing and pro-Palestine sentiment, the late Columbian was a brilliant scholar who made significant contributions to not only his discipline, but academia and society at large. Agree with him or not, he was, unequivocally, one of the great minds of the 20th century. There’s no denying that a scholar of Said’s stature deserved tenure. Unfortunately, Massad is no Said. If it were simply a matter of denying tenure to professors with different political beliefs than my own, the ivory tower would be a pretty lonely place.”
and Juan Cole’s brilliant argument:
“I hope academics all around the country will step up to thwart this dangerous attempt at silencing views not approved by the Right-Zionists (i.e. people who would vote for Bibi Netanyahu if they lived in Israel, and who think they have the right to decide who the chair of the history department at the University of Montana should be and who that chair can invite to speak on campus).
Some of the policing of thought, of course, is by Right-Zionists against liberal Jews, a form of anti-Semitism that seeks to brand other Jews as unpatriotic.”
But hey, he won a pulitzer. He shouldn’t have to make arguments anymore
@clearly your name is Chris Kulawik
@In Summary... You support the International Cabal of Zionist Catholic Communist Race-Traitor Bankers in their quest to conduct the holocaust/cover it up/start the New World Order.
@that's not juan cole’s argument. that’s his explanation of what he means by ‘right-zionist’, necessary to preempt ludicrous accusations of anti-semitism.
its a good thing you’re an anon commenter, cause you compare unfavorably to both kulawik and cole.
@also kulawik isn’t losing much by praising said. said is safely dead i’ll give him credit for broad-mindedness when he says something nice about a LIVING political opponent.
@DHI Did anyone’s elementary school have “said is dead” posters that encouraged you to use other words instead of “said”? That shit was all wrong, said is a good word and people be winning Pulitzers with it. Fuck those posters.
@rjt I don’t recall a slogan about it, but remembering my elementary/middle-school days I do find it really weird that we were so encouraged to think of alternates for stuff like “said,” and to use adverbs, etc., when later pretty much everybody figured out that both of those are hallmarks of really bad writing.
I guess maybe the idea is to engender interest in vocabulary? And then people can figure out what is terrible later?
@Columbian I think I’ve been here for too long when the first thing I think of here is “Edward”
@did you read cole’s article? He referenced a number of complaints by professors against ‘anti – israeli’ speakers/profs and dismissed all of them as the nefarious machinations of a right wing zionist cabal. This wasn’t some type of defense of a group of people because they were ascribing to minority views amongst people who are of similiar culture because in many of the cases he even cited there were serious issues of the academic merit of some of the speakers’ work.
It’s a paranoid and hateful strawman’s argument when he claims that all of these arguments are fueled by right wing zionist hate (how dare those infidels vote for netanyahu!). Just compare the MESA letter written to Depaul regarding Finkelstein.
That was a reasonable well written letter which opined what they felt was a very poor treatment of Finkelstein and where they asked for his tenure to be judged upon academic merit.
Juan Cole seems intent on demonizing his opponents, something that Profs. at our own MEALAC dept have been victims of.
By the way, I’m poster #4 and Kulawik is stupid a lot of times. He’s not a ‘conservative libertarian’—he’s almost certainly a neocon, but just cause he’s wrong sometimes doesn’t mean that the intellectually lazy should presume he always is.
@cole linked to a bunch of individual incidents. he didn’t describe them, but left that for the links – common and perfectly fair style of blog post. he then made a few scattered brief comments: 1) these incidents are “zionist-fascism” (i agree that’s over-the-top), 2) he hopes academics will step up and stop this, 3) much of this is targeted at liberal jews, 4) oh by the way the occupation of gaza is brutal. most of what you quoted was his parenthetical definition of his term ‘right-zionist’, and had no pretense to be an ‘argument’.
@also sammy’s is overrated.
i meant this site too: http://cueat.com/
@i guess http://www.cueats.com
http://www.campusfood.com/campus.asp?campusid=25
don’t cut it anymore?
@Hey! But what about Matt Schoenfeld?