UNE Center for Global Humanities and its founding director, Anouar Majid, host Jonathan Israel on Radical Enlightenment and the Making of the French Revolution (1750-1800). Jonathan Israel’s work is featured on the List Muse 100 Best History Books of All Time list.
Category: History
Melvyn Bragg’s Radical Lives
Melvyn Bragg examines the lives, work and legacy of two men whose ideas have had tremendous consequences both in their own time and down the centuries: John Ball and Thomas Paine.
Now Is the Time: John Ball
Rights of Man: Thomas Paine
Conversations with History: Perry Anderson
On this episode, UC Berkeley’s Harry Kreisler talks with Perry Anderson Professor of History and Sociology at UCLA about his intellectual journey and the status of the left.
Let’s Talk About Genocide: Inferring Israel’s Genocidal Intent
For other articles in this series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
When I first set out to prove that Israel is committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, I focused mostly on its genocidal acts. While there’s consensus between pretty much anyone that bothered to examine the Convention of Prevention of Genocide [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16] on the fact that Israel is committing the first three out of five genocidal acts:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
A debate remains about Israel’s intent to bring about the Palestinian people’s “destruction in whole or in part”. The Russell Tribunal, in its latest “Extraordinary Session on Gaza” and the 2009 “Fact Finding Committee On Gaza” chaired by John Dugard, both illustrate a narrative of colonialist destruction of the social fabric and a partial wiping out of the indigenous population. Frustratingly enough, both stop short of ruling genocide. While the Russell Tribunal simply says “it would be for a criminal court to determine”, the Dugard report goes into much greater detail.
Palestine in Whole or in Part
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Genocide: Inferring Israel’s Genocidal Intent”
Sectarianization: Steven Heydemann & Joshua Landis on the Trajectory of the Syrian Nightmare
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to interview two of the leading Syria experts in the world, Steven Heydemann and Joshua Landis, about the “big picture” of the Syrian conflict and the wider crisis engulfing the Middle East today, as part of the CMES Conversations series produced by the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver. Landis, while best known as a blogger and commentator on Syria, is an historian. Heydemann is a political scientist who has written an influential study of Syrian politics covering the years 1946-1970.
The two interviews offer contrasting perspectives, but both take us several steps back from the news cycle and place the events unfolding in the region today in a wider historical, comparative and global lens. This was the focus of the forum that brought them to Denver, “Sectarianization: ISIS, the Syrian Conflict & the Future of the Middle East”. Sectarianization will be a central focus of our in the coming months, and is the theme of the book my colleague Nader Hashemi and I are currently co-editing (our last book being The Syria Dilemma).
Steven Heydemann is Vice President of Applied Research on Conflict at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). He’s the author of Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970, the editor of War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East and co-editor of Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran.
Our interview revolves largely around Heydemann’s far-reaching report “Syria’s Uprising: sectarianism, regionalisation, and state order in the Levant”, published by the European think tank FRIDE. Have a look:
Joshua Landis is Associate Professor in the College of International Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where he is also Director of the Center for Middle East Studies. Widely regarded as one of the leading Syria experts in the world, he is the former President of the Syrian Studies Association. He writes and edits the widely-read blog Syria Comment.
Our interview revolves principally around two of his recent articles: “The Great Sorting Out: Ethnicity & the Future of the Levant” and “Why Syria is the Gordian knot of Obama’s anti-ISIL campaign”. Have a look:
The Best of Tony Judt
The following is a sample of the best videos featuring Tony Judt on Youtube, and a small selection of noteworthy articles.
Disturbing the Peace: Intellectuals and Universities in an Illiberal Age
The Best of Eric Hobsbawm
The following films are the best of Eric Hobsbawm on Youtube. Hobsbawn is one of the greatest British historians of te 20th Century, his Age of Revolution, from the ‘Age of’ series, is listed as one of the 100 Best History Books of All Time.
Hobsbawm on 9-11, Marxism, Brazil, and Neoliberalism
Geoffrey Wawro – Quicksand
The above is a presentation at the National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel “Special Relationship” on March 7, 2014 at the National Press Club.
Dr. Geoffrey Wawro is Professor of History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas in the Dallas Metroplex. Wawro’s book Quicksand is a history of American involvement in the Middle East. Quicksand is in the ListMuse Best 100 History Books of All Time list.
In Search of Shakespeare
In celebration of the Bard’s forthcoming 450th birthday, here is the BBC’s four part series on the lives and times of Will Shakespeare. It’s hosted by Michael Wood.
1. A Time of Revolution
A Lecture by Walter LaFeber
The following is a lecture given by the great historian of US foreign policy
P U L S E 