Meanwhile, here’s a thoughtful piece from Peter Singer in this month’s Harper’s. Singer is famous for Animal Liberation and was relevant in our discussion on food, but here he is talking about another recent Junta topic: Wikileaks.

Singer’s essay revolves around the Panopticon, the conception of a system in which everyone can be observed by a central authority, without knowing if we are being watched at any given moment. (Oddly, this is something I was recently thinking about.) Foucault called it “the perfection of power,” and Orwell dramatized it as Big Brother. Drawing a line from Rodney King to Julian Assange, Singer argues that the technology used to control us can be used against our controllers; therefore the Panopticon, icon of totalitarianism, is actually a great thing. Turns out we all behave better when we think we’re being watched.

This essay being behind the paywall, I’ve posted it here for your reading pleasure.

JohnJ started us off with a quick overview of artistic movements in the last 140 years, with an emphasis toward trying to explain how we got to the present moment, not just in terms of movements and periods, but in terms of the modern way art works: galleries, openings, agents, etc. It wasn’t always this way, but there is a pattern. Certain “tastemakers” – those with money or influence – determine what is relevant and what gets promoted, and these people are not all artists. They are curators and patrons and customers, from Lorenzo d’Medici to modern hedge fund collectors.

But that is the “art world,” separate from art itself, where an artist must make a living using his work – and often himself – as a commodity. When did art become a path to celebrity? Some argued that it was with Picasso and other painters around the turn of the 20th century – essentially that celebrity came with the rise of the mass media. But wasn’t Shakespeare’s name known throughout England in his day? Well, yes, but he had a technological boost as well; he wrote in the wake of the invention of the printing press.

There were some interesting sidenotes about writing, with the question being raised whether it should be included in a discussion about “art.” Of course! said I, and some others, although a painter disagreed and it was painting that dominated the conversation. What about poetry, does anyone still write it? Yes, said a poet who was with us, and brought up Mary Oliver, who is indeed prolific, but who is also part of an earlier generation (b. 1935). I pointed out that Twain grew massively wealthy and famous by his writing (although he died a pauper), and until recently it was still possible to become a celebrity by writing (although if it’s fame you’re after, you’d better stick with crime or romance novels and skip the poetry.)

Damien Hirst is “the first billionaire artist.” Which is absurd on its face, but it brings up good questions about authenticity. If Hirst puts a shark in a glass case full of formaldehyde, what makes it different from you or I doing the same? DC wanted to know why a urinal, when placed behind a “velvet rope” by DuChamp, suddenly became art. The question becomes one of context: the place where one views the art, the background of the artist and how much of it is written next to the piece, and of course the title of the piece can change interpretations easily. DuChamp called the urinal Fountain.

DuChamp said that anyone could be an artist; that anything could be art. This was the precursor to Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame, and today it is really happening. Art is life, art is expression, art is commodity. The thing and the representation of the thing now overlap so heavily as to be nearly the same thing. In The Society of the Spectacle, Guy DeBord wrote “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.” That was 37 years before Facebook. Today it presents a paradox: if everything is art, then nothing is art. So how do we know what’s good or bad?

We have to learn for ourselves what feels authentic and original. And those tastemakers are important. They perform a real function, by paying constant close attention. They watch the ticker of the art world go by, and from the great flow deduce the zeitgeist. Only over time do patterns emerge. But like Jeff*, a painter in attendance, said, “You come to New York as a young person painting still-lifes, with a traditional background, and you see what’s happening here, and you stop doing that, because what you’re doing could have been done 300 years ago.” When John Cage wrote “4:33″ it was revolutionary. But writing a silent song today is not relevant, because it’s not moving the needle.

Towards the end, we spoke of art which lives but is not commoditized – the work of the undiscovered or unappreciated. Henry Darger lived alone in a small apartment, having little social interaction, yet was busy producing lengthy novels and paintings. Van Gogh was never famous in his lifetime and died penniless. And for some, dressing up like superman is a path for “fame and fortune.”

Like JohnJ said, “We could talk about this all night, and no one is going to leave here saying, ‘Yes, we’ve got it figured out now.’” With that in mind, I’ll end here and say thanks again to everyone who came out. It was a great night. Look for the next Junta to gather near the end of May…

* I originally attributed this to Sam. Apologies.

Professor Andrzej Rapaczynski set out by stating the skewed numbers in political contributions of those working at universities. The liberal slant of academia is well set into the popular psyche but the lopsidedness is quite stark when viewed in pure dollar terms. We’re talking 80-90% of academics contributing to the Democratic Party. Rapaczynski said we, as a society, are “trained to be sensitive” to discrimination, to minorities; that after so many decades (centuries?) of innate racism and sexism, we have lately (relatively speaking) realized our error and so become very attuned to the fact that certain segmants of society have been trampled upon. We are constantly asking how many blacks are on the teaching staff, whether there are enough women, and so forth. But when it comes to Republicans, well, “this is not something we are interested in addressing.”

Now, these laws – Title VII, Title VIII, and others – are oriented towards eliminating discrimination using a fact-based method. If we look at the ratio of Asians teaching at Harvard, we can come up with a number, a percentage. We can easily determine the percentage of women faculty at Princeton. And we can say that if such numbers are found to be statistically out of whack – if women make up a mere 3% of the staff at Stanford – then we have evidence that something is not right: namely, that there is discrimination in hiring. These levels can be used as the basis for lawsuits, because such disparity, so the argument goes, cannot be an accident. Yet, not only can we not sue a university for having a faculty that is 94% Democratic, but this is not even a matter of serious discussion.

Andrzej said that often, among New York City society, at dinner functions and such, he feels “like a left-wing intellectual Jew at an Alabama fundamentalist dinner”. That when he puts forth his ideas, he can see his wife cringe. And that it is precisely that feeling which should not be occurring among the students of an institution of higher learning; that no student should be made to feel that his ideas are balderdash, that he is among the wrong.

Rise of the Right

Over the last 20-30 years, the American political right has been in the ascendence. The “Reagan Revolution” of promoting free markets, deregulation, privatization, etc, has been the strongest force in Washington. One may need to forget about the backlash of the last two years, or even (if one is an ardent Bush-hater) the last eight years, but as Professor Rapaczynski argued, since about the time of Reagan, the Republican party has been “the party of ideas.”

Now, one may claim that Bill Clinton brought the Democrats to power and reversed this trend. Yet Clinton’s primary achievements were welfare reform and balancing the budget, which are fairly conservative ideas. Clinton was a centrist, a member of the pro-business Democratic Leadership Council, and helped in his first election by Ross Perot splitting the Republican vote. So I would agree with Andrzej that the Clinton administration fit into the general trend of the rise of the right.

Yet this shift has not been reflected in the universities. And that void in the teaching staffs of our greatest institutions works to turn a good portion of the youth against the universities. Academia becomes a favorite flogging horse of the right, and this is not good for the health of the nation. It is not good for the state of education.

At this point in the discussion, Alex pointed out that if what Professor Rapaczynski said were true, that Republican academics were being denied jobs based on political leanings, then wouldn’t there be more class action suits against them? Wouldn’t those shut out be suing, in the great litigious tradition of this country? Andrzej’s answer was that Republicans (or Democrats, or Greens) are not covered under civil rights statutes. The laws cover “immutable” characteristics, which political beliefs are not.

So what can be done? As the Students for a Democratic Society used to say, “consciousness-raising.” When finding himself in a discussion over an open post at Columbia, and hearing arguments about how more blacks or women are needed, Professor Rapaczynski will say, “Yes, I agree, but the demographic we are most underrepresenting are Republicans.” This inevitably draws a laugh, but as he says, “I hope, on some level, that it sinks in.”

Anti-Semitism

We segued into part two of our discussion. Professor Rapaczynski led with his thesis that the anti-Zionist movement represents “a turn against Jews, disguised as a turn against Israel.” This provoked some rebuke, which was lessened when he defined anti-Zionism as the belief that Israel was “born in sin” and that the only solution was its elimination. While admitting that one can criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic, he claimed that if one scratched the surface of some of these views, claims that those holding them have nothing against Jews “seem inauthentic.”

He identified five pillars that “formed the basis of 19th-century anti-Semitism.” They are a rejection of:

• Cosmopolitanism
• Capitalism
• Jews
• America
• Exploitation

If one today added to this list “Israel,” Andrzej claims, he would have the 20th/21st-century definition of “anti-Zionism.”

Essentially, he says, anti-Zionists believe that Jews don’t have a right to a state in Palestine. In Professor Rapaczynski’s experience, this view is widely accepted in Europe, but not in America. He therefore limited his discussion to Europe, where he feels that this view is posing a danger to the world. So, for example, “when the French minister says that ‘I don’t think we should be dying for this shitty country,’ the only controversy is that a newspaper reported what a minister said in private.” (I looked unsuccessfully for a citation of this.) Or the boycott of Israeli scientists by some in European academia. (For more examples, see some of the professor’s citations in his introduction of the topic.)

One response to the professor was that many critics of Israeli foreign policy, for example, often find themselves unjustly labeled as anti-Semitic. Isn’t this an attempt to silence dissent by falsely accusing dissenters of discrimination? Andrzej conceded the point, but also posed a question. Which is the greater danger: oversensitive Jews who accuse others falsely of anti-Semitism, or the problem of real anti-Semites? Clearly he believed the latter was worse.

The conversation wandered a bit. There was mention of the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and Daniel mentioned the irony of being able to see the occupied territories while exiting the memorial. We spoke of the similarities between Israel’s war against Hamas, and America’s war against al-Qaeda; that both, while trying to stamp out “terror,” inevitably exacerbate the conditions in which terrorists multiply. But things were falling apart, the whiskey was taking its toll. We decided to wrap it. One last memorable idea rose above the others, and it was Daniel who laid it out:

“Anti-discrimination laws are meant to protect the weak, not Republicans and Israelis.” I think that merited further discussion, but a meeting of the Junta can last only so long. I’d be interested in hearing elaboration on all these topics in the comments, if any are so inclined.

We are delighted that Professor Andrzej Rapaczynski has agreed to spend the evening with us. I worked with Andrzej for 9 years at Project Syndicate, an international association of newspapers based in Prague, and he remains a good friend. Project Syndicate distributes opinion commentaries, which it provides for free to newspapers in the world’s poorest countries, while receiving financial contributions from those able to pay. Growing from a tiny organization when I first moved to Prague in the late 1990s, it has blossomed into one of the most influential sources of commentary in the world, with over 400 member newspapers in nearly 150 countries, and many of the most recognizable names in global politics, economics, literature, human rights etc. Andrzej is one of the founders of Project Syndicate and one of its four editors/directors.

Andrzej is originally from Poland and was a part of a group of dissidents who agitated for reform under communism. The resulting crackdown led to his immigration to the US. He has had a distinguished academic career, holding advanced degrees in philosophy and law, and is currently a law professor at Columbia.

Andrzej will introduce a discussion of two topics related to neglected aspects of discrimination. The first will be the surprisingly disproportionate numbers of Democrats in American academia. Studies show the proportion of academics who identify as Democrats is over 90% in most major American Universities (higher than, for instance, among organized labor). Yet, despite repeated calls for diversity in academia, very few people object to this or even notice that our academic research and discussion are overwhelmingly biased toward one point of view. And yet, according to most prevailing academic and legal doctrines from other areas of discrimination, it is absolutely impossible to get a similar disparity without actual exclusion. The interesting fact is, then, that discrimination bothers people with respect to certain categories of minorities, but the same people have difficulties in even noticing its existence with respect to others.

The second topic will be the rise of global anti-Semitism. This phenomenon is much more pronounced outside of the US, but the implications for the US are also serious. Andrzej spends a lot of time in Europe and is exposed in a unique fashion to global trends of opinion because of his role with Project Syndicate. In was in this capacity that he came across the attached commentary, which recently ran in Business World, a financial newspaper in the Philippines. It is the more interesting for the fact that its blatant anti-Semitism comes from a country that isn’t exactly known for its large Jewish population.

But the most disturbing trends are in Europe. Although much contemporary anti-Semitism takes the overt form of “anti-Zionism,” a very traditional anti-Jewish animus is often only thinly veiled in such manifestations as an anti-Semitic cartoon in a mainstream European paper or the boycott of Israeli scientists in British universities, conferences, and professional publications. Indeed, the relentless association of Israel with globalization (previously known as “rootless cosmopolitanism”), world capitalism, US imperialism, the domination of the press, and the control of the immoral entertainment sector harkens to the most classical forms of anti-Semitism. Criticizing Israeli policies of course doesn’t make you anti-Semitic, but supporting policies that are likely to endanger the lives of several million people living in Israel cannot be easily classified as a harmless intellectual opposition to “Zionism.” Andrzej will also argue that, unlike the anti-Semitism of the second half of the 19^th and most of the 20^th centuries, which was the preserve of the Right, today’s anti-Jewish animus seems to be largely associated with the Left, thus curiously returning to its origins in Europe before 1848.

We have yet to settle on a location yet, but will be in touch in the coming days with details.

Below you will find some stories and cartoons that we will discuss on the 5th.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.php?ind=W04&cycle=2004

http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/sectors.php?cycle=2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?scp=1&sq=krugman%20and%20academia&st=cse

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/531/4

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/universities-condemn-professors-israel-boycott/

http://www.monabaker.com/BakerLondonConference.htm

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB111766420704048626-6z8PnnbJmw_a2TIyQttsLnChkZs_20050705.html?mod=blogs

http://www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/arab/cartoon_arab_press_080702.asp

www.project-syndicate.org

Additionally, the following text is from Lexis:

The Boston Globe

April 28, 2002, Sunday ,THIRD EDITION

A WAVE OF JEW-BASHING IN EUROPE

BYLINE: BY JEFF JACOBY

SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. E7

LENGTH: 860 words

THE ROCKS HAVE BEEN LIFTED ALL OVER EUROPE, AND THE SNAKES OF JEW-HATRED ARE SLITHERING FREE.

In Belgium, thugs beat up the chief rabbi, kicking him in the face and calling him “a dirty Jew.” Two synagogues in Brussels were firebombed; a third, in Charleroi, was sprayed with automatic weapons fire.

In Britain, the cover of the New Statesman, a left-wing magazine, depicted a large Star of David stabbing the Union Jack. Oxford professor Tom Paulin, a noted poet, told an Egyptian interviewer that American Jews who move to the West Bank and Gaza “should be shot dead.” A Jewish yeshiva student reading the Psalms was stabbed 27 times on a London bus. Anti-Semitism, wrote a columnist in The Spectator, “has become respectable . . . at London dinner tables.” She quoted one member of the House of Lords: “The Jews have been asking for it and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.”

In Italy, the daily paper La Stampa published a Page 1 cartoon: A tank emblazoned with a Jewish star points its gun at the baby Jesus, who pleads, “Surely they don’t want to kill me again?” In Corriere Della Sera, another cartoon showed Jesus trapped in his tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel Sharon, with rifle in hand, is sitting on the sepulchre.

In Germany, a rabbinical student was beaten up in downtown Berlin and a grenade was thrown into a Jewish cemetery. Thousands of neo-Nazis held a rally, marching near a synagogue on the Jewish sabbath. Graffiti appeared on a synagogue in the western town of Herford: “Six million were not enough.”

In Ukraine, skinheads attacked Jewish worshippers and smashed the windows of Kiev’s main synagogue. Ukrainian police denied that the attack was anti-Jewish.

In Greece, Jewish graves were desecrated in Ioannina and vandals hurled paint at the Holocaust memorial in Salonica. In Holland, an anti-Israel demonstration featured swastikas, photos of Hitler, and chants of “Sieg Heil” and “Jews into the sea.” In Slovakia, the Jewish cemetery of Kosice was invaded and 135 tombstones destroyed.

But nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France.

In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseille; so was a Jewish school in Creteil. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words “Dirty Jew” were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day since Easter.

Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming “Jews to the gas chambers” and “Death to the Jews.” The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women, so that their relatives will kill them to preserve “family honor.” The French ambassador to Great Britain was not sacked – and did not apologize – when it was learned that he had told guests at a London dinner that the world’s troubles were the fault of “that shitty little country, Israel.”

“At the start of the 21st century,” writes Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well-known social scientist, in a new book, “we are discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence. . . . Hatred of the Jews has returned to France.”

But of course, it never left. Not France; not Europe. Anti-Semitism, the oldest bigotry known to man, has been a part of European society since time immemorial. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, open Jew-hatred became unfashionable; but fashions change, and Europe is reverting to type.

To be sure, some Europeans are shocked by the re-emergence of Jew-hatred all over their continent. But the more common reaction has been complacency. “Stop saying that there is anti-Semitism in France,” President Jacques Chirac told a Jewish editor in January. “There is no anti-Semitism in France.” The European media have been vicious in condemning Israel’s self-defense against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank; they have been far less agitated about anti-Jewish terror in their own backyard.

They are making a grievous mistake. For if today the violence and vitriol are aimed at the Jews, tomorrow they will be aimed at the Christians.

A timeless lesson of history is that it rarely ends with the Jews. Militant Islamist extremists were attacking and killing Jews long before they attacked and killed Americans on Sept. 11. The Nazis’ first set out to incinerate the Jews; in the end, all of Europe was burned in the fire.

Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come. If Europeans don’t rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, the Jew-haters will rise up and turn against them.