James North writes: I remember Mahmood Mamdani from 35 years ago, when he was the most dynamic leader of the newly-organized union of graduate students at Harvard. Today he is a distinguished professor at Columbia, one of our most original…
Last night I went to hear Rashid Khalidi speak at the Brooklyn Reform synagogue, Beth Elohim. A gorgeous temple, and before giving Khalidi the microphone at the altar, Rabbi Andy Bachman went down the list of groups that had sponsored…
Bruce Wolman writes: Larry Summers is not the only one raking it in from business interests while temporarily out of public service. Tony Blair is also doing well in the ka-ching-ka-ching department. Mind you Blair is not just a retired…
Truly a shocking and ultimately disgraceful piece by Ron Kampeas at JTA, saying there’s no Jewish Maureen Dowd–which is to say, a columnist who celebrates his/her ethnic roots. In the end disgraceful because it is emblematic of the general lack…
Bruce Wolman urges me to stop talking about Jeffrey Goldberg. He says that Goldberg “willfully ignores material counterfactuals to maintain his narrative” and suggests that my perseveration will bring me down to Goldberg’s boxcutter level. I’m not convinced. Goldberg is…
the neocons, now repositioning themselves in the militant center, for Obama. Important, smart piece by Bruce YoungSmith at TNR on Bill Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative, reported earlier by Jim Lobe and Daniel Luban. Jane Harman, good liberal Dem, is aboard….
An important debate took place on Wednesday: What to do if Iran gets nukes? at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Two neoconservatives, Elliott Abrams and Joshua Muravchik, were pitted against the newly-realist Martin Indyk…
my friend Rob used to say, and, made wise by Iraq, Andrew Sullivan seems to agree with him here. Multinational force, to protect the Palestinians. And surely that means, get back to the Green Line? OK but General Petraeus, what…
Neocons can’t be neocons anymore, or they can’t keep the same names. Here’s an important piece by Jim Lobe and Daniel Luban on a Kristol-Kagan group very much like the defunct Project for a New American Century, which ordered up…