WQCovFall06.Sub.2 9/19/06 10:38 AM Page 1

The Nuclear Power: The Revenge Mao Now Both Sides of the Shia By Ross Terrill

WILSON By Martin Walker

The QUARTERLY SURVEYING THE WORLD OF IDEAS QUARTERLY THE GLOBAL RACE FOR KNOWLEDGE THE GLOBAL

The Global Race for KNOWLEDGE Is America Losing? Autumn 2006, Vol. 30. No.4

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The Wilson Quarterly Published by the International Center for Scholars FEATURES www.wilsonquarterly.com

16 The Revenge of the Shia | By Martin Walker For centuries, members of Islam’s Shia sect lived under the heel of the rival Sunnis. The Shia’s rise from oppression may prove to be the greatest of all the upheavals shaping the Middle East today. DEPARTMENTS

Mao Now | 22 By Ross Terrill 2 EDITOR’S COMMENT Thirty years after his death, Mao Zedong is already a fading folk memory in China. But China—and the West—must grapple with 4 LETTERS the real Mao before his damaging legacy can be laid to rest.

13 FINDINGS 29 THE GLOBAL RACE FOR KNOWLEDGE: Turn-of-the-Century Terror IS THE U.S. LOSING? Middle-Oxford America’s universities are the envy of the world, but the world is racing to catch up. Everybody now recognizes that Virtual Elephants knowledge is a key to economic growth. Our authors take a Keystroke Diplomacy hard look at the strengths and weaknesses of the American university, and at efforts to close the gap in China, Germany, 69 In ESSENCE and India. Iraq’s Disappearing Oil Trading in Dreams The New Ivory Tower | By Christopher Clausen The Music of the Spheres China’s College Revolution | By Sheila Melvin If Found Innocent, Try, Germany: The Humboldt Illusion | By Mitchell G. Ash Try Again

India: Tiny at the Top | By Philip G. Altbach 91 CURRENT BOOKS Why the Liberal Arts Still Matter | By Michael Lind Paul Maliszewski on the 20th century’s greatest forger

59 NUCLEAR POWER: BOTH SIDES David Lindley on string theory Foreign energy supplies are more insecure than ever, and Eric Weinberger on the murder alarm over global warming is growing. As public debate that transfixed Holland about the option of nuclear power revives, so do the questions. Brief Reviews: Victor Navasky, Robert J. Samuelson, Roy Reed, Nuclear Power Is the Future | By Max Schulz David Macaulay, Richard Restak, Lauren F. Winner, Eric Nuclear Is Not the Way | By Brice Smith and Arjun Makhijani Jones, and others

ON THE COVER: Photographic illustration from Veer.com. Design by David Herbick. 112 PORTRAIT

The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A Slice of Woodrow Wilson

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 1 The WILSON QUARTERLY EDITOR’S COMMENT

EDITOR Steven Lagerfeld

Compared to What? MANAGING EDITOR James H. Carman

SENIOR EDITOR Judith M. Havemann A cynic, it’s said, is a disappointed romantic, so I suppose I qualify LITERARY EDITOR Sarah L. Courteau EDITORS AT LARGE Ann Hulbert, James Morris, as a cynic about the American university. From the show trials of Jay Tolson political correctness to the mundane rites of academic guildsman- COPY EDITOR Vincent Ercolano ship, it’s been one heartbreak after another. It has long seemed to CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Daniel Akst, Stephen Bates, Martha Bayles, Linda Colley, Denis Donoghue, me that the American university is the General Motors of the Max Holland, Stephen Miller, Walter Reich, Alan Ryan, Amy E. Schwartz, Edward Tenner, Charles knowledge economy, a comfortable oligopoly ripe for ruin. Townshend, Alan Wolfe, Bertram Wyatt-Brown But it’s always necessary to ask the simple question, Compared RESEARCHER Rebecca J. Rosen BOARD OF EDITORIAL ADVISERS to what? And despite the university’s many imperfections, our K. Anthony Appiah, Cynthia Arnson, Amy Chua, cover articles on the global race for knowledge leave American Robert Darnton, Nathan Glazer, Harry Harding, Robert Hathaway, Elizabeth Johns, Jackson higher education looking pretty good in relative terms—vigorous, Lears, Seymour Martin Lipset, Robert Litwak, Wilfred M. McClay, Richard Rorty, Blair Ruble, diverse, adaptable, and productive. Peter Skerry, Martin Sletzinger, S. Frederick Starr, Philippa Strum, Martin Walker Much of today’s anxiety about the university concerns FOUNDING EDITOR Peter Braestrup (1929–1997)

America’s ability to produce enough engineers, scientists, and BUSINESS DIRECTOR Suzanne Napper other specialists to supply the knowledge economy. Closer CIRCULATION Cary Zel, ProCirc, Miami, Fla. The Wilson Quarterly scrutiny makes those worries seem exaggerated, though not com- (ISSN-0363-3276) is published in January (Winter), April (Spring), July (Summer), and pletely unfounded. It ought to concern us just as much that we are October (Autumn) by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 producing too many mere specialists—too many narrowly (or Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Complete article index available online at under-) educated graduates who are unprepared to think as www.wilsonquarterly.com. Subscriptions: one year, $24; expansively as true “knowledge workers” must or to participate two years, $43. Air mail outside U.S.: one year, $39; two years, $73. Single copies mailed upon request: fully in democratic life, and too many academics who are unwill- $8; outside U.S. and possessions, $10; selected back issues: $8, including postage and handling; outside ing to venture beyond the confines of the academy to the larger U.S., $10. Periodical postage paid at Washington, D.C., and additional mailing offices. All unsolicited world of the public square. manuscripts should be accompanied by a self- In his essay on p. 52, Michael Lind proposes that we look one addressed stamped envelope. MEMBERS: Send changes of address and all subscrip- step down the ladder, at the American public high school, for reme- tion correspondence with The Wilson Quarterly mailing label to Subscriber Service, The Wilson dies to some of the university’s shortcomings. High school is known Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, Palm Coast, FL among education specialists as the black hole of the American edu- 32142–0406. SUBSCRIBER HOT LINE: 1-800-829-5108 cational system, the place where standards collapse, test scores POSTMASTER: Send all address changes to The Wilson Quarterly, P.O. Box 420406, plummet, and young people by the thousands lose momentum—or Palm Coast, FL 32142–0406. Microfilm copies are available from Bell & Howell In- are lost altogether. Whether it’s engineers or philosophers we want, formation and Learning, 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. U.S. newsstand distribution through BigTop that may be the place to look for the greatest improvement. The uni- Newsstand Services, a division of the IPA. For more versity deserves criticism, but I suspect that the future won’t be won information call (415) 643-0161 or fax (415) 643-2983 or e-mail: [email protected]. or lost in the ivory tower itself, but on the road to it. ADVERTISING: Sandi Baker, MKTG Services, Inc. Tel.: (215) 968-5020, ext. 152, Fax: (215) 579-8053, —Steven Lagerfeld E-mail: [email protected].

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IMMIGRANTS IN AMERICA Dakota’s cities where new immigrants while Fargo has not yet become one of Congratulations to the WQ for are mainly to be found. As in Iowa, the Blair Ruble’s “mélange cities,” it has its fine collection of essays on immi- increase in the number of Hispanics— become a much more diverse and inter- gration, “Us and Them: Immigrants in mainly from Mexico but also from esting place in terms of food, dress, lan- America” [Summer ’06]. As a histo- Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, and guage, celebrations—in a word, cul- rian of rural America, I found Stephen other Latin countries—has been espe- ture. At every North Dakota State Bloom’s “The New Pioneers” particu- cially great. Between 1990 and 2000, University graduation nowadays, when larly interesting. total numbers rose by about 60 per- I hear a Sudanese graduate serenaded It is perhaps not as extraordinary as cent. Even more impressive was the with enthusiastic ululation from female we might think that new immigrants nearly 65 percent increase in the pop- relatives in the crowd, I am reminded would be drawn to the rural Midwest. ulation of Asian immigrants, many of that this is not the North Dakota I came After all, the Midwest and the Great whom fill an increasing number of jobs to 32 years ago. Plains were largely settled by European as university instructors, physicians, David B. Danbom immigrants who were able to create and software engineers at Microsoft’s Author, Born in the Country: A History of relatively isolated ethnic communities Fargo facility. Rural America (1995) that sometimes endured for three or North Dakota’s immigrant profile is Professor of History four generations. My father was born in also shaped by an aggressive refugee North Dakota State University Stanton, Iowa, an overwhelmingly relocation program undertaken by Fargo, N.D. Swedish community. The Lutheran Lutheran Social Service. Over the past church there conducted services in 35 years, LSS has sponsored substantial Swedish until the end of World War II, numbers of refugees from nearly two Stephen Bloom suggests that at which time my grandmother—born dozen countries, most of whom have towns and industry could not survive in Iowa of immigrant parents—refused been settled in the Fargo area. The without the foreign influx, which is to attend any longer because services in result is that Fargo, a city of about required by the native exodus. In fact, English were “not religion.” Her reac- 90,000, now includes about 6,000 the appearance of foreign workers in tion reminds us—as we are reminded refugees. Of these, approximately 2,200 the 1970s predated the departure of by Peter Skerry in his WQ essay, are Bosnians, 1,000 are Vietnamese, native workers. Plains towns did not “Mother of Invention,” and by Jon 900 are Somalis, 900 are Sudanese, need those workers at that time; native- Gjerde’s book Minds of the West and 500 are Kurds. born Americans did all the jobs in (1999)—of the ambivalence of immi- The growing presence of refugees in meatpacking and other industries. But grants toward the United States and the city has been marked by some fric- when the federal government quadru- American culture. tions. The public school system has pled annual legal immigration and Like rural Iowa, rural North Dakota struggled to educate large numbers of allowed illegal migration to expand is on a downward demographic trajec- ESL students, who speak nearly 50 sep- even faster, some corporations had tory, but it lacks the poultry and meat- arate dialects, and there have been cul- enough surplus manpower to bust packing plants that would draw large tural clashes, particularly over gender unions and slash wages, benefits, work- numbers of immigrants. It is in North expectations and female equality. But ing conditions, and safety, leading to wage depression throughout the Plains LETTERS may be mailed to The Wilson Quarterly, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. economy and driving away native work- 20004–3027, or sent via facsimile, to (202) 691-4036, or e-mail, to [email protected]. The writer’s telephone number and postal address should be included. For reasons of space, letters are usually edited for ers. Without the immigration of for- publication. Some letters are received in response to the editors’ requests for comment. eign workers, meat [ Continued on Page 6 ]

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[ Continued from page 4] processing and oth- mer ’06] was thorough and engaging, Finally, India faces the classic er industries would still be providing it did not sufficiently address three cru- pigeonholing dilemma, in that it derives middle-class lifestyles for the sons and cial aspects of India’s rise. much of its economic success from only daughters of the Plains, and the towns The first of these is India’s environ- one sector: information technology. would be without the various social mental problem. A recent edition of While IT is no doubt a dynamic area, issues and costs Bloom describes. The Financial Times analogized India’s whose importance appears primed to Assimilation indeed looks formida- rapid urbanization to Great Britain’s grow in the decades to come, I am ble, considering the diminished sense of period of industrialization in the 19th unable to think of any developing econ- national identity of native-born Amer- century. The scale of dislocation that omy that has achieved long-term, sus- icans and the more diverse cultures of this process engenders, however, is sure tainable growth on the back of one immigrants. But I am optimistic. to be several orders of magnitude industry. India, then, must tap its peo- Research suggests that if new immi- higher in India’s case, if for no other ple’s creativity and branch into new gration is reduced to traditional num- reason than its population. According areas if it is to succeed. Unfortunately, bers for at least the next 20 years, we to the United Nations, India is set to it cannot initiate this process without can expect to see an assimilation of this overtake China as the world’s most pop- implementing some intellectual cor- recent great wave of immigrants that is ulous country by 2045, with 1.5 billion rectives: In particular, India’s educa- as successful as this country achieved people. Massive inflows of labor to its tional institutions have heretofore with the great wave of eastern and cities are polluting India’s air, contam- focused far more on theory than they southern Europeans before the 1920s. inating its water, and poisoning its fish- have on application. According to a The fundamental problem of the pres- eries. Although standard paradigms of June 2005 report of the McKinsey ent wave of immigrants is in the raw development economics posit that eco- Global Institute, only 25 percent of numbers of people involved. nomic progress can occur independ- India’s engineers can compete in today’s Reducing annual immigration ently of environmental reforms, India’s global economy. numbers to the traditional quarter- current condition suggests otherwise. I hasten to note that I am neither a million level (down from nearly two At such point as environmental condi- cynic nor a naysayer. I believe, like most, million legal and illegal immigrants of tions interfere with individuals’ ability that India has great promise and wish recent years) would not only do wonders to function normally, labor productiv- for it to succeed. However, any state- for the immigrants now here, but would ity and, accordingly, economic output ment of its potential must come along- provide great new opportunities for will decline. side an acknowledgment of its peril. native-born Americans who have been Second, socioeconomic disparities For while India is properly proud of its left out of our current economic system are likely to widen as globalization con- economic achievements, it will have to (such as the 40 percent of black men tinues. While a narrow segment of address the aforementioned issues if it who do not have a full-time job). Both India’s population accrues benefits from seeks to continue its present success. “us and them” would benefit. increased trade flows and multinational Ali Suhail Wyne Roy Beck penetration, hundreds of millions are Fredericksburg, Va. Author, The Case Against Immigration (1996) sinking further into poverty. India’s President, NumbersUSA wealthiest states possess five times as Education & Research Foundation much aggregate income as its poorest Martin Walker presents a Arlington, Va. ones. Of the roughly one billion indi- cogent analysis of India’s growing viduals across the world who sustain strategic cooperation with the United themselves on less than $1 per day, 36 States. India has begun to break in last- INDIA’S UNCERTAIN percent live in India. In order to fathom ing ways from the legacies of state FUTURE the severity of this problem, consider socialism that characterized Jawaharlal While Martin Walker’s assess- that between 1995 and 2003, approx- Nehru’s vision of modern India in the ment of India’s economic trajectory imately one million Indian farmers 1940s. India in the 21st century is a [“India’s Path to Greatness,” WQ, Sum- committed suicide. nuclear nation that holds joint mili-

6 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 LETTERS

tary exercises with the United States and has embraced economic liberal- ization. Walker’s analysis captures U.S. policy shifts in recognition of these changes and provides some fascinating details of George W. Bush’s own inter- est in making such shifts. India is poised to emerge as a key player with global geo-political significance, a role it has long aspired to, even in the era when it attempted to shape global pol- itics as leader of a nonaligned “third force.” However, India’s success, as Walker rightly notes, will depend as much on its own domestic policies and as it does on international strategic arrangements. On the domestic front, the most pressing question at hand is how India will address its internal political chal- lenges, which include the persistence of significant socioeconomic inequalities that pose challenges to the promised benefits of liberalization and the con- tinued strength of Hindu nationalist organizations that contest India’s long- standing secular traditions. There is no better example of these challenges than the case of the 300 million–strong middle class that scholars and public commentators alike hold up as the    ÿ     ÁÂ Ã embodiment of India’s potential great- ness. In reality, this middle class rep-    ÿ  ÿ ÁÂÿ  ÃÂ ÂÄ   Á resents both India’s promise and its potential pitfall. India has indeed been    ÿ changed by the rise of a new highly visible and politically assertive middle ÿ  class that supports both the push  ÁÂ ! "# toward economic reform and India’s $ % % %& ' new strategic and geopolitical role. ()*** + &% , % %- " . However, the rise of this new middle , -- class has also sparked new conflicts, - -- % % for it has grown increasingly resistant !-" " +*/+0- to an electoral democratic process that " ÃÄÄÄ ÿ ÿ it views as too open to claims from sub- %1%.%.- ordinated social [ Continued on Page 9]

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 7 FROM THE CENTER

A HAVEN FOR THOUGHT

One of my favorite comments made by a Authority, providing an indispensable record of America’s departing Wilson Center scholar was that the Center is misjudgments and missteps in Iraq. In both cases, the like “a university without faculty meetings.” Just as stu- Wilson Center offered time, distance, and space for these dents are the driving force within colleges and universi- talented journalists to produce their early drafts of history. ties, our scholars and fellows are the Center’s lifeblood. The Wilson Center also offers important resources. And just as students fill out course evaluations, we ask our Several scholars and fellows commented that they could departing scholars and fellows to make their own part- not have completed their work without the support of our ing comments—or shots—as they leave. staff; the assistance of an intern; the access to our library The Wilson Center hosts nearly 150 scholars and fel- resources, including the ; or the Cen- lows each year, all of whom work—in the Wilsonian ter’s growing technological capacity. Indeed, as in so tradition—at the intersection of scholarship and public many institutions around the world, our information policy. Fellows come for a full academic year, public- technology and computer support staff are among our policy scholars for shorter terms. Based on their evalua- most valuable assets. tions, we have learned that one of the best things the Cen- Yet perhaps the resource heralded most frequently ter can offer is space. As one scholar wrote, “Without ques- was the access we offer to people. Within the Center, tion, being away from my home institution allowed me scholars and fellows interact with one another in infor- to focus solely on my research and writing. The Center mal meetings and in regular Work in Progress sessions, gave me a wonderful space and the resources to do noth- where they hear presentations on colleagues’ projects. The ing but think and write.” Or, as another put it, “Not to be Center hosts nearly 700 meetings each year, offering an interrupted by teaching preparation or committee meet- enriching environment. One scholar said, “At the begin- ings is a blessing.” ning, it was difficult for me to choose between my writ- The productivity resulting from this space is remark- ing and attending these sessions.” Many draw on the able. Our most recent sample of 22 scholars and 40 fel- resource of America’s capital city, meeting with repre- lows gave more than 50 lectures, wrote or are writing 67 sentatives of institutions such as Congress, the State articles, and completed nine book manuscripts at the Wil- Department, the International Monetary Fund, or one of son Center. And we offer a haven from more than faculty the myriad of Washington think tanks and universities. meetings. Two journalists from The Washington Post This access is particularly important for researchers recently spent time at the Center working on books based accustomed to working on far-flung campuses. on their time reporting from Iraq—Anthony Shadid, From these comments, we also receive vital recom- who wrote part of Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the mendations for improvement. For instance, the Center Shadow of America’s War here, and Rajiv Chan- is now working to upgrade its technological capacity, drasekaran, who completed his recently released Impe- and we are constantly striving for more diversity—in rial Life in the Emerald City. discipline, geography, race, and ethnicity. Yet even the Both books offer illuminating portraits of different comment on the smallest matter (that faulty printer or sides of life in Iraq. Shadid draws on reporting that won air conditioning vent) helps us make the Wilson Center him a Pulitzer Prize by giving voice to the Iraqi people, a more perfect place, so that our scholars and fellows can sharing their cycles of frustration, hope, and tragedy work with all of the benefits we offer, and none of the from life under Saddam Hussein through the American interruptions that normally mark their bustling lives— invasion and ensuing insurgency. Chandrasekaran takes be they deadlines or faculty meetings. the reader into the Green Zone—the “Emerald City”—that Lee H. Hamilton served as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Director

8 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 LETTERS

[ Continued from page 7] groups. Large seg- that simultaneously entertains and Lee H. Hamilton, Director ments of the urban middle classes have educates through some kind of BOARD OF TRUSTEES in fact supported the Hindu national- challenge. Joseph B. Gildenhorn, Chair David A. Metzner, Vice Chair ist movement. Such conflicts, and the The real question about video EX OFFICIO MEMBERS: James H. Billington, political choices of India’s middle class, games, then, is “What do they teach?” Librarian of Congress, Bruce Cole, Chair, National Endowment for the Humanities, Michael O. Leavitt, will shape the direction of the country’s In addition, games that involve play- Secretary of Health and Human Services, Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, Lawrence M. Small, Secretary, democracy. ers in “virtual worlds” raise their own , Margaret Spellings, Secretary One of India’s greatest strengths as set of questions: What kind of world of Education, Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. Designated Appointee of the President from an emerging power lies in its long- is being constructed? Do the virtues Within the Federal Government: Tami Longaberger standing ability to effectively combine and skills inculcated in that world PRIVATE CITIZEN MEMBERS: Carol Cartwright, Robin B. Cook, Donald E. Garcia, Bruce S. Gelb, political change and stability within a correspond to this one? Suellentrop Sander R. Gerber, Charles L. Glazer, Ignacio E. Sanchez framework of enduring democratic concludes that because the design of THE WILSON COUNCIL Sam Donaldson, President institutions. It is this fact that distin- video games rewards players for Elias F. Aburdene, Jennifer Acker, Weston Adams, Cyrus A. Ansary, David B. Apatoff, David Bass, guishes India from its regional neigh- uncovering, accepting, and follow- Lawrence E. Bathgate II, Thomas Beddow, Theresa bors and lends it a unique strategic ing certain “rules,” these games may Behrendt, John Beinecke, Joseph C. Bell, Steven Alan Bennett, Stuart Bernstein, James D. role. The challenge for India is not well be creating a generation of orga- Bindenagel, Rudy Boschwitz, A. Oakley Brooks, Donald Brown, Melva Bucksbaum, Richard I. whether it will remain a democracy nizational “yes men” whose innova- Burnham, Amelia L. Caiola Ross, Joseph A. Cari, Jr., Mark Chandler, Julia Chang-Bloch, Peter B. Clark, but whether its democracy will retain tional skills are limited to thinking Melvin Cohen, William T. Coleman, Jr., Michael D. its liberal secular democratic character. within reductionist and ultimately DiGiacomo, Elizabeth Dubin, F. Samuel Eberts III, I. Steven Edelson, Mark Epstein, Melvyn J. Estrin, India’s lessons hold insights for schol- automatizing systems. Such games Susan R. Farber, A. Huda Farouki, Michael Fleming, Joseph H. Flom, Charles Fox, Barbara Hackman ars and policymakers who increasingly train the mind along rigidly dichoto- Franklin, Norman Freidkin, John H. French, Morton have had to come to terms with the mous paths of analysis and evalu- Funger, Alma Gildenhorn, David F. Girard-diCarlo, Michael Glosserman, Roy M. Goodman, Raymond distinction between setting up formal ation—not surprising in a medium A. Guenter, Kathryn Walt Hall, Edward L. Hardin, Jr., Marilyn Harris, John L. Howard, Osagie O. electoral democracies on the one hand whose logic is grounded in strict Imasogie, Darrell E. Issa, Benjamin Jacobs, Sheldon Kamins, James M. Kaufman, Edward W. Kelley, Jr., and sustaining liberal, secular democ- binary gatekeeping. Christopher J. Kennan, Joan Kirkpatrick, Willem racies on the other. But shooter games also push to Kooyker, Steven Kotler, Markos Kounalakis, Richard Kramer, William H. Kremer, Daniel Lamaute, James Leela Fernandes radical limits the distinction between Langdon, Esq., Raymond Learsy, Dennis A. LeVett, Francine Gordon Levinson, Harold O. Levy, Frederic Author, India’s New Middle Class: Democratic “what is important and what isn’t” in V. Malek, David S. Mandel, Esq., Anastasia Mann, Jeffrey A. Marcus, John Mason, Jay Mazur, Robert Politics in an Era of Economic Reform (2006) narratives dependent on identifying McCarthy, Esq., Stephen G. McConahey, Donald F. Department of Political Science and killing targets eminently worthy of McLellan, Alan L. Meltzer, J. Kenneth Menges, Jr., Esq., Tobia G. Mercuro, Kathryn Mosbacher, Rutgers University destruction: monsters, ghouls, orcs, Jeremiah L. Murphy, Martha T. Muse, John E. Osborn, Paul Hae Park, Jeanne L. Phillips, Michael New Brunswick, N.J. the undead, etc. The practice of rec- J. Polenske, Donald Robert Quartel, Jr., Bruce Ratner, Thomas R. Reedy, Carlyn Ring, Edwin ognizing and liquidating simplistic vil- Robbins, Esq., Juan A. Sabater, Roger Sant, Timothy lains ought to raise concerns about R. Scully, Thomas Shuler, Jr., George P. Shultz, Raja W. Sidawi, John Sitilides, William A. Slaughter, VIDEO GAME LESSONS the training implicit in such games James H. Small, Shawn Smeallie, Thomas F. In “Playing With Our Minds” Stephenson, Robert Stewart, Norma Kline Tiefel, and how it is to be applied to real- Timothy Towell, Mark C. Treanor, Anthony G. [ Summer ’06], Chris Suellen- world conflict resolution and problem Viscogliosi, Christine M. Warnke, Peter Watson, WQ, Faith Whittlesey, Pete Wilson, Deborah Wince- trop makes a persuasive case for the solving. Considering the potent power Smith, Herbert S. Winokur, Jr., Diane Wolf, Paul Martin Wolff, Joseph Zappala, Richard S. Ziman, ability of video games to teach play- of games to train the mind, the highly Nancy M. Zirkin ers to overcome challenges through polarized and dehumanizing models The Wilson Center is the nation’s living memori- analysis, strategy, problem solving, of conflict created in these virtual al to Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. It is located at One Woodrow code breaking, and innovation. But, worlds may function as more than Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20004–3027. Created by law in as Suellentrop says, the educational merely harmless amusement. 1968, the Center is Washington’s only independent, wide-ranging institute for advanced study where aspect of such games is nothing new. Moreover, these virtual worlds vital cultural issues and their deep historical back- Indeed, it could be argued that by offer players a simple “comfort zone” ground are explored through research and dialogue. Visit the Center at http://www.wilsoncenter.org. definition a “game” is any routine of escape and control, in stark con-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 9 LETTERS Support The Wilson Quarterly!

or many readers, the WQ is not just another magazine. Throughout the WQ’s The WILSON QUARTERLY Fexistence, its readers and editors have been embarked together on a common journey. We have shared a commitment to looking at issues from more than one side, an aversion to spin and superficiality, and a deep curiosity about new knowl- edge in every corner of the world. As the WQ celebrates its 30th anniversary, it is stronger than ever, and the editors are full of plans for the future. But we need your support. In a media world dominated by the cool, the quick, and the cynical, the revenues that flow to the WQ and other serious independent publica- tions from subscriptions and other sources are not sufficient to cover all costs. If you value the WQ’s unbiased, in-depth insight into the world of ideas, consider making a tax- deductible gift to the magazine today. Whether you can give $25 or $1,000, please support this one-of-a-kind endeavor. All contributions will be recognized in the pages of the WQ. Questions? Contact the Editor, Steven Lagerfeld, at (202) 691-4019, or steve.lagerfeld@ wilsoncenter.org. Send your tax-deductible contribution to: The Editor, The Wilson Quarterly 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20004–3027 Checks and credit cards accepted. Make checks payable to The Wilson Quarterly. If using a credit card (Visa, MasterCard, or American Express), please indicate name on card, account number, and expiration date. Fax: (202) 691-4036. trast with the ambiguities and uncer- with a future in which we would like lective welfare, and “consumer sov- tainties of real life. Such games may to live? ereignty” provides an adequate foun- build cognitive skills, but this hardly Gregory Desilet dation for the good society. addresses the player’s psychological, Author, Our Faith in Evil: Melodrama and the However, such models falsely as- social, and emotional well-being. Effects of Entertainment Violence (2006) sume that we make good decisions Adolescents are particularly vulner- Longmont, Colo. consistently over time. If we need to able to the dysfunctional, escapist, sacrifice now for the sake of some- and even addictive seductions of thing better later, we face a “com- games during a time of life that pres- EXERTING SELF-CONTROL mitment problem.” An innate psy- ents special challenges for their emo- In “Who’s in Charge Here?” [WQ, chological bias magnifies immediate tional development and commu- Summer ’06], Daniel Akst ably benefits, and diminishes remote nicative ability (see Adam Cox, “Lost describes the emerging awareness of ones. But choices still have to be in Electronica,” in Psychotherapy Net- self-control as a source of well-being. made. We choose by falling back on worker, July–August ’06). This awareness has been sidelined in “commitment devices,” routines, and In short, it makes as much sense recent decades by the widespread institutions that tell us what to do: to question and critique the design of acceptance of “rational choice,” established life patterns like educa- video games as it does the structure according to which all decision mak- tion, marriage, insurance, savings. of all stories we repeatedly tell our- ers know what they want and have Affluence and the flow of novelty selves through the media, asking all the means to obtain it. Thus, by def- exacerbate the predicament. Self- the while: What do our virtual worlds inition, choice equals well-being. Pri- control is not a matter merely of indi- teach us about living in the real vate choices are then added up by vidual heroics. New goods, like ciga- world? Does what we learn square the “invisible hand” to maximize col- rettes or no-fault divorce, offer

10 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning Taught by one of America’s Great Professors easoning, tested by doubt, is argumen- tory, philosophy, literature, fine arts, the sci- tation. We do it, hear it, and judge it ences, and mathematics for intelligent, every day. We do it in our own minds engaged, adult lifelong learners. If a course is R ever less than completely satisfying, you may and we do it with others. What is effective rea- soning? And how can it be done persuasively? exchange it for another or we will refund your These questions have been asked for thousands money promptly. of years, yet some of the best thinking on rea- Lecture Titles soning and argumentation is very new and is a strong break from the past. 1. Introducing Argumentation and Rhetoric Argumentation: The Study of Effective 2. Underlying Assumptions of Reasoning, 2nd Edition is equally a course in Argumentation argument and in reasoning. This course teach- Library and Photographs Division, Prints of Congress. 3. Formal and Informal Argumentation es how to reason. It teaches how to persuade Debating the meaning of courage are Alcibiades (wearing military garb) with Socrates (seated). 4. History of Argumentation Studies others that what you think is right. And it 5. Argument Analysis and Diagramming teaches how to judge and answer the argu- 6. Complex Structures of Argument ments of others that you should think as they than finding the truth is prized, that is 7. Case Construction—Requirements and do. not why most of us exchange arguments.) Options Professor David Zarefsky’s lectures are The course does not require any special 8. Stasis—The Heart of the Controversy filled with examples of actual controversies, prior knowledge or training. 9. Attack and Defense I but his perspective takes us beyond individual 10. Attack and Defense II disputes so we can see the structure of all dis- About Your Professor 11. Language and Style in Argument putes. This perspective orients us within any Dr. Zarefsky is the Owen L. Coon 12. Evaluating Evidence argument, so argumentation can be seen clear- Professor of Argumentation and Debate and 13. Reasoning from Parts to Whole ly as an exchange, and not just a flurry of Professor of Communication Studies at 14. Reasoning with Comparisons words. Northwestern University, where he has taught 15. Establishing Correlations 16. Moving from Cause to Effect What You’ll Learn for more than 30 years. The Student Government of Northwestern has elected 17. Commonplaces and Arguments from The lectures reveal several striking facts Professor Zarefsky to the Honor Roll for Form that can make argumentation accessible and Teaching 13 times. 18. Hybrid Patterns of Inference familiar to you. 19. Validity and Fallacies I About The Teaching Company 20. Validity and Fallacies II • The tools of formal logic, while essential We review hundreds of top-rated profes- 21. Arguments between Friends and even definitive for mathematics and 22. Arguments among Experts programming computers, are inadequate sors from America’s best colleges and universi- ties each year. From this extraordinary group, 23. Public Argument and Democratic Life to decide most controversial issues. For 24. The Ends of Argumentation example, the ideal of deductive reasoning, we choose only those rated highest by panels of the syllogism (“All men are mortal. our customers. Fewer than 10% of these Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is world-class scholar-teachers are selected to mortal.”) is rarely used in real argument make The Great Courses. We’ve been doing largely because it is useless. this since 1990, producing more than 2,000 hours of material in modern and ancient his- • Arguments fall into a handful of distinct categories—and the same issues are at stake each time one of these patterns SAVE UP TO $185! occurs. OFFER GOOD UNTIL JANUARY 14, 2007 • There are six kinds of evidence that can be advanced to prove an argument that something is true—and the same tests for 1-800-TEACH-12 (1-800-832-2412) Special offer is available online at truth can be applied to these types of evi- Fax: 703-378-3819 www.TEACH12.com/3wq dence every time.

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compelling satisfactions, but their As Daniel Akst writes, self- known as the abstinence violation ultimate cost is hidden. Immediate control is critical to our health and effect. Individuals who are trying to gratification does not last. It swamps economic well-being, as well as to our control themselves but have a small appetites and induces habituation, success in school, work, and relation- slip (for example, an alcoholic who leaving us worse off than before. ships. Moreover, he correctly notes has a small drink) may feel that Hence self-control is not merely a that the number of temptations we because they have already broken problem for individuals. It is a chal- face has been growing, while access to the rules, they might as well con- lenge for society and government too. those temptations has become much tinue (for example, go on a bender). Well-being requires us to balance easier. Many of the societal constraints Hence, a small slip can become a present and future satisfactions. To against these behaviors have been major relapse. attain it, we may need to query our loosened as well. What this means is Paradoxically, the best hope for faith in “rational choice” and in sov- that the self has become much more self-control may be the self. Despite ereign consumers. critical in self-control. our limitations, there are probably Avner Offer Unfortunately, there are limits few “irresistible” impulses. Some- Author, The Challenge of Affluence: on what the self is capable of doing. times, self-control is a matter of Self-Control and Well-Being in the USA There is evidence that self-control is undermining the strength of the and Britain Since 1950 (2006) very taxing. In fact, we may have temptation, either by learning new Chichele Professor of Economic History limits on how much self-control we ways of coping or reinterpreting University of Oxford, England can exert—if we exert self-control cravings. If we are able to improve over one sphere of our lives, we very our self-control—much as we Daniel Akst describes the well may have less ability to exert improve our physical strength and “self-regulating” individual as one with self-control over other domains health through exercise and prac- the ability to maintain self-control even (hence, Akst’s comment on the law tice, there is no reason why we while society’s external “brakes” on of conservation of self-regulation is should not be able to improve our behavior weaken and fall away. In real- closer to the science than he might mental strength and willpower ity, things simply do not work this way. recognize). For instance, researchers through practice as well. To begin with, most of us spend our have found that the more effort indi- Mark Muraven lives working in organizations in which viduals exert to maintain self- Department of Psychology we answer to a superior, who in turn has control during the day, the more State University of New York, Albany a superior. If we do not do what the likely they are to lose control over higher-ups tell us, we will not be around their drinking that evening. for long. But it is the family Mr. Akst As a means of dealing with our THE WQ’S NEW LOOK most underestimates. The dynamics innate shortcomings, Akst discusses I read the Editors’ response within our families have a great effect pre-commitment, which has the net [WQ, Spring ’06] to the gentleman on our behavior. As a family therapist, effect of making self-control the only who was disappointed in the WQ’s I have seen this proved many times choice. This is certainly one way to makeover. I was surprised at first when over. Akst’s views seem to fall along the help ensure self-restraint. Similarly, I saw the redesign, but as I read the fault lines Marxists colorfully call “bour- setting firm and clearly defined rules issue, I was pleased with the changes. geois subjectivity.” We may think that about behavior (and punishing The whiter, less glossy pages are easier we are “free”—and in our own minds we transgressors) also has been found to read, and the shape is more like a are—but we live within an array of very to increase people’s motivation to book, making the magazine handier to powerful structures and institutions. If engage in self-control. Having rules carry with me when I am reading it artists and poets feel a need to rebel, imposed on us has its own prob- during the course of my day. Thank they do not have to look far. lems, however, both in the loss of you for the very welcome change. Dr. John D. McBride freedom for people who do not have Susan E. McMasters Bettendorf, Iowa self-control problems and in what is San Antonio, Texas

12 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 FINDINGS brief notes of interest on all topics

Turn-of-the-Century a terrorist’s bullet touched off World Europe and the Middle East in the Terror War I—anarchists killed Empress second half of the century, the anar- Elisabeth of Austria (1898), King chists, with their revolvers and Archaic anarchism Humbert of (1900), and King knives, had already slipped from Autumn this year began in a blur of Carlos of Portugal and his crown public memory.” commemoration, as different groups prince (1908). Other victims included vied to memorialize the fifth anniver- Spanish premier Canovas del Castillo Speak With Forked sary of the 9/11 attacks, and to pin (1897), French president Marie- Tongue, Memory down their precise implications as the François Carnot (1894), and U.S. first defining moment of the 21st cen- president William McKinley (1901). A unified theory of tury. But maybe there’s a blur because “As assassins had to be within Günter Grass we’re all standing too close. A nearly close range, they had virtually no Journalists, politicians, and literati in forgotten scourge offers unexpected chance of escaping: Death was their Germany and elsewhere piled on parallels to today’s pervasive terrorist penalty,” Blainey writes. “They were gleefully when the famed novelist and threat, argues Geoffrey Blainey, histo- the equivalent of suicide bombers.” national moralist Günter Grass rian emeritus at the University of But terrorism ebbs and flows, and admitted this summer that he, so Melbourne, in A Short History of the “when a new wave of terrorism hit insistent that others be completely Twentieth Century honest about their pasts, had (Ivan R. Dee). His concealed his youthful service in the parallel: the anar- Nazis’ elite combat unit, the Waffen chists who menaced SS. His detractors might have spied European mon- the snake in the grass sooner if they’d archies at the dawn of simply kept up their subscriptions to the 20th century. the academic journal German Life Monarchy was and Letters, which prophetically then at its height as a explained the whole thing (albeit in governing system. rather murky language) in April. Europe and Asia had Its scholarly authors report on the mostly kings; Russia, “frenzied memory work” that Ger- tsars; India, an mans have been doing since reunifi- (absentee) empress. cation, when different groups found But anarchism pre- themselves saddled with wildly con- sented monarchy flicting versions of recent German with an implacable, history. To the East-West divide soon frightening enemy. In were added left-right and gener- the space of a dec- In 1894,an Italian anarchist stabbed French president Marie-François ational spats, as younger Germans ade—and well before Carnot to death, as depicted in this Le Petit Journal engraving. tired of their elders’ obsessive Ver-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 13 FINDINGS

gangenheitsbewältigung, or striving recall that the British public, asked Elvish word to have entered the Ox- to come to terms with the past. Seek- to vote for the century’s greatest ford English Dictionary.” (A jealous ing to make sense of the racket, the book, bypassed works by the likes of W. H. Auden said one of his dearest editors argue that Germans today are Virginia Woolf and Joseph Conrad ambitions was to be cited in the OED embroiled in “memory contests,” an to choose J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved as the coiner of a word.) The longest inevitability since any memory is by Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien is OED entry for a Tolkien coinage— nature uncertain and incomplete. equally famous (at least among fans) and, to the authors, the one enduring Referring extensively to the works of for the entire languages he invented mystery—is for the word hobbit itself, the pre-confession Grass himself, one for Elves, Dwarves, and other crea- for which Tolkien contributed an scholar speculates that “subconscious tures, complete with elaborate elaborate imaginary derivation while memory imprints of National Social- etymologies tracing their imaginary admitting that he thought he had ism . . . [engender] displaced and dis- relationships to Old English, made the word up but wasn’t quite torted memories across the gener- Icelandic, and related tongues, of sure. The authors note that hobbit has ations,” while another argues that which he was a lifelong scholar. Few since taken on a host of other mean- “heterogeneous” memories (of Ger- realize that he also worked ings, most recently as the popular man guilt side by side with German professionally as an etymologist dur- term for an apparent species of suffering, for instance) produce ing a two-year stint helping to write diminutive humanoids whose fossils trauma and repression. the Oxford English Dictionary—a were discovered on the Indonesian Indeed, Grass, confessing at age period, he said later, when he island of Flores. 78, likened his suddenly inconsistent learned more than in any other com- war memories to “peeling the onion” parable time in his life. Virtual Elephants (the title of his newly published Fresh from the Great War, with a autobiography), and insisted that young family to support, Tolkien Not exactly on parade those memories remain vague to joined the OED staff in 1919 and Zoo animals don’t engage in politics, him, as do his motives for finally was assigned a tricky stretch of the as far as we know, but the people revealing them. Others have had letter W. Drawing on his expertise in who look after them certainly do. In plenty to say about those motives, medieval Germanic languages, The Politics of Zoos: Exotic Animals and most of it isn’t very charitable. Tolkien plunged in, researching the and Their Protectors (Northern Illi- The academics are kinder, and more complicated derivations of such nois Univ. Press), political scientists optimistic: The University of words as wan, warm, waist, waggle, Jess Donahue and Erik Trump Konstanz’s Aleida Assmann, for and wallop. Three present-day describe four decades of behind-the- instance, argues that memory con- editors of the OED—Peter Gilliver, scenes snarling and biting between tests “can only contribute to a Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund two very different species of animal greater diversification, energy, and Weiner—have compiled this early “protector.” On one side of the fence complexity of German memory.” work in The Ring of Words: Tolkien are zoo professionals—conservation Assmann sees this as healthy, and the “Oxford English Dictionary” scientists, veterinarians, and the though she may not have anticipated (Oxford Univ. Press). They’ve added like—who, ever since widespread just how much “diversification” of their own analysis of some of habitat destruction began threaten- memory could occur within a single Tolkien’s later coinages, adaptations, ing some species with extinction in person. and borrowings, ranging from ent the 1960s, have seen zoos as the and attercop to confusticate and Noah’s Ark that can preserve species Middle-Oxford eleventy-one. through care and captive breeding. Tolkien’s philological labors came On the other are animal rights Tolkien’s word-hoard full circle as later editions of the OED activists, who seek to “save” individ- Those looking for more lighthearted began to cite many of his own coin- ual animals from zoos entirely. memories of the last century may ages, including mithril—“the first Elephants have become a “mar-

14 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 FINDINGS

quee species” in this fight. Animal- video access to the hoi polloi. tion (April 2006). Revisiting the rights activists trumpet the creatures’ This campaign has been quite suc- “contact hypothesis”—the hoary need for the bigger spaces and warm- cessful, demonstrating that, for the idea that personal contact between er climates of privately run elephant American political animal at least, individuals of different groups is sanctuaries. Zoo people get equally populism is still an easier sell than the best way to reduce conflict— thunderous about the great affection conservation. The proof’s in the pet- Katelyn Y. A. McKenna and Yair citizens feel for their local elephants. ting: Attendance levels at the nation’s Amichai-Hamburger argue that Some animal-rights groups want an zoos show that, while Americans are online meetings score higher than all-out ban on elephants in zoos, concerned for animals’ welfare, they real ones on every measure that’s while others have made the fate of want to see their elephants live—not thought to contribute to fruitful particular local elephants an issue in on a screen, no matter the size. interaction: apparent equality, municipal elections. absence of social status signifiers Alarmed by this encroachment on Keystroke Diplomacy such as clothes or jewelry, intimacy, their traditional territory, and fearing and voluntary participation. “The that they could gradually lose the Beats being there Internet,” they conclude, “may be right to display their “charismatic People may want face time with said to provide opportunities for a megafauna,” zoos have fought back. their elephants, but when they try successful contact that are superior The preserves, zoo partisans argue, interacting with human beings dif- to those provided in a traditional would become sanctuaries only for ferent from themselves, virtual is face-to-face meeting.” That could elitism, with managers and rich better, argue two Israel-based be, though you wonder if they’ve donors still getting to see the pachy- researchers in The Journal of wandered into the blogosphere—or derms up close, while selling remote Computer-Mediated Communica- tried online dating.

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 15 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Revenge of the Shia

Every increase in the violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq raises the threat of a wider sectarian upheaval that could vault Iran to dominance in the Middle East.

BY MARTIN WALKER

In December 2004, as the United Nations evoked the specter of a new Middle East divided along Security Council began to grapple with the challenge sectarian lines. It would set the long-downtrodden of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and as Iraq started its Shia against their traditional Sunni masters, rulers, slow topple into civil war, one of the closest and most and landlords. If the first battlefield was Iraq, the two trusted American allies in the Middle East began to leaders suggested, the next would be the oil-endowed warn publicly of the emergence of a “Shia crescent” in regions of the Persian Gulf, southern Iraq, and Azer- the region. Jordan’s King Abdullah, a Sunni who baijan, where Shia happen to live. In this scenario, the claims direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, ayatollahs of Shiite Iran could then secure control of sounded the alarm that a vast swath of the region, the Iraqi, Saudi, and Caspian oil and gas fields by stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian placing them under the protection of their own Ocean and from the oil-rich Caspian Sea to the even nuclear arsenal, thus establishing the first Islamic richer Persian Gulf, was coming under the sway of the state to achieve great-power status since the collapse Shia branch of Islam. More ominously, he implied of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. that this looming Shia empire would take its direction A glance at the map suggests that this scenario is from Tehran. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at least plausible. Although they are a minority of echoed this warning last year when he said, during an some 150 million in a region of almost 400 million and interview on al-Arabiya television, “Most of the Shias the larger Islamic community of 1.3 billion, the Shia are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are liv- dominate the region to the east of the Suez Canal. ing in.” They are a strong majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Abdullah and Mubarak, two of the most prominent Yemen, and Bahrain. The Shia now form the largest Sunni leaders, have, along with senior Saudi officials, single Islamic community in Lebanon and cluster along the Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia. There are Martin Walker, editor emeritus of United Press International and a substantial Shia minorities in Kuwait (35 percent), senior scholar at the Wilson Center, is the author of several nonfiction and fiction books, including The Caves of Périgord (2002). Qatar (15–20 percent), the United Arab Emirates (six

16 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Shia World

Area with significant Shia population

Shia as percentage of population, 1989–91

Source: http://www.morainevalley.edu/ctl/MiddleEast/photoGallery.htm percent), Pakistan (15 percent), and Afghanistan (15 empires, are now in a position to use their numerical percent). Since the Alawites, who provide the current majority to dominate the country’s politics. The Shia ruling dynasty of Syria, are an offshoot of the Shia sect, triumph in Iraq is constrained only by the Sunni Jordan’s King Abdullah is only slightly stretching the resistance, which is fast approaching the dimensions truth to talk of a Shia crescent running from Tehran of a full-scale civil war. At the same time, the fierce through Baghdad to Beirut. From his vantage point in response of the predominantly Shia Hezbollah of Amman, Abdullah’s little kingdom appears encircled, Lebanon to the Israeli attacks of July 2006 has com- and as he looks eastward, he sees Shia majorities all bined with the Shia’s numbers (slightly over 40 per- the way to Pakistan. Watching from Riyadh, the Saudi cent of Lebanon’s population of four million) and monarchy may feel secure in the numerical domi- their presence in the government to give them a dom- nance of Sunnis in the kingdom, but its restive Shia inant voice in that Mediterranean state and frontline subjects are concentrated in the parts of the country status in the Arab confrontation with Israel. where the oil fields lie. Nowhere has the Shia resurgence aroused more For the first time in centuries, the Shia of the Arab opposition than among Sunnis in Iraq, much of it world can taste the prospect of power, while the Sunni deliberately incited by Al Qaeda’s late leader in that are experiencing the bitterness of being overthrown. country, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The Shia of Iraq, long suppressed by the Sunni elite, Perhaps best known in the West for his participation who cooperated with the Ottoman and British in the videotaped beheadings of Western hostages,

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 17 Revenge of the Shia

Zarqawi set a strategic goal of making Iraq ungovern- in Iraq? Has any Islamic state in history ever tried able by unleashing a wave of sectarian killings that?” Zawahiri also warned that the hideous video- designed to foment civil war between Sunni and Shia. tapes of beheadings should stop. “We can kill the cap- One early captured message that he tried to smuggle tives by bullet,” he urged. (Zarqawi’s instruction to out to Al Qaeda’s leaders, Osama bin Laden and “kill all the Shia, everywhere” has been regarded as so Ayman al-Zawahiri, suggested that such a course was extraordinary that some Shia refuse to believe that this his only hope of success, that he had to provoke the taped sermon is genuine. General Mohammad Baqer Sunnis by dragging the Shia “into the arena of sectar- Zolqadr, now Deputy Interior Minister for Security ian war.” In one of his first attacks, in August 2003, he Affairs and one the most powerful men in Iran, sent his father-in-law on a suicide mission to the claimed that he did not believe Zarqawi really existed, sacred Shia site of the Imam Ali mosque. Nearly a and that such extremists were Zionist agents sent to hundred worshipers died, including Zarqawi’s target, divide Muslims.) Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, widely seen as a moderate and unifying presence. In a four-hour anti-Shia sermon, released on the t is now a fairly semantic question whether to define Internet a week before his death in a U.S. bombing the bloody sectarian slaughter in Iraq, bringing 100 raid in June but apparently recorded two months ear- Icivilian deaths a day in July, as a civil war or some- lier, Zarqawi ran through a list of Shia “betrayals” and thing marginally less awful. But since the deliberate cited a number of venomously anti-Shia tracts written attack on the main Shia shrine in Samarra this past by scholars in the fundamentalist Wahhabi branch of February, the sectarian killings have intensified, with Sunni Islam. He declared that there would be no “total Shia militia now said to be as ruthless and murderous as victory” over the Jews and Christians without a “total Zarqawi’s followers. Along with the kidnappings and annihilation” of the Shia, whom he called the secret general lawlessness, the sabotage and economic dis- agents of Islam’s enemies. “If you can’t find any Chris- ruption, the killing has overshadowed two apparently tians or Jews to kill, vent your wrath against the next successful Iraqi elections, soured the American elec- available Shia,” Zarqawi said. He claimed that his fel- torate, and undermined the Bush administration’s low terrorists, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, were only attempt to turn Iraq into a showcase for its wider strat- pretending to oppose Israel, while in reality their mis- egy of encouraging democracy in the Middle East. That sion was to protect Israel’s northern border. Zarqawi policy was already suffering from the warnings given by concluded with a formal declaration of war on the America’s traditional allies in Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Iraqi Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr and his “bastards.” Arabia (the same leaders who were warning of the dan- (Large parts of this bizarre and possibly unhinged gers of the Shia crescent) that the policy of democracy outburst focused on defending the chastity of the and elections was likely to benefit America’s Islamist ene- Prophet’s wife Ayesha against Shia slurs, on discussing mies rather than its friends. whether the Ayatollah Khomeini was a pedophile, The grisly scenario that lay behind the concerns of and on assailing “wicked” Shia clerics who purportedly the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Saudi leaders is that a defended unusual sexual positions.) Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq could erupt into a wider The Shia-Sunni schism, which emerged out of a Sunni-Shia war across the Arab world, a larger and dynastic struggle following the death of the Prophet later version of the Iran- that lasted for most in ad 632, has all the bitterness that centuries of the- of the 1980s and bled, exhausted, and impoverished ological and earthly conflict can create, but Zarqawi’s both countries. The most callous practitioner of attacks on the Shia were so extreme that the estab- realpolitik might see this as preferable to a war between lished Al Qaeda leaders tried to rein him in. Zawahiri Islam and the West in some lethal rendition of Samuel chided him in a letter last year, swiftly published on Huntington’s famous “clash of civilizations.” Such a the Internet, that asked, “Why were there attacks on conflict certainly cannot be ruled out, but the conse- ordinary Shia? . . . Can the mujahideen kill all the Shia quences for the region and the world’s oil supply, and

18 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Revenge of the Shia even the potential for global suicide if Iran obtains intellectuals, Fouad Ajami, a professor at the School of nuclear weapons (or if Pakistan joins the fray), are Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins Uni- almost too hideous to contemplate. versity. Ajami tried to counsel the president that the There is, however, good reason to question the fore- Shia resurgence was a historical process that would bodings of Sunni leaders. After all, Shia solidarity did prove difficult and probably could not be stopped. In a not prevent the Shia conscripts of southern Iraq from subsequent meeting at the Council on Foreign Rela- fighting stoutly against their Shia fellows on the other tions, Ajami said, “The idea that the Shia will make side in the Iran-Iraq War. And alongside the sectarian their claim on political power in the affairs of the Arab slaughter between Sunni and Shia in today’s Iraq is world and that it will be peaceful is not really tenable. It being waged another vicious battle between the rival will be a very, very contested political game. And we have Shia militias of Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the to be willing to accept this. And we must not be scared Badr Brigade. In Saudi Arabia, despite the Wahhabi off by what the Jordanians and the Egyptians and oth- clerics and their claims of Shia heresy, the monarchy has chosen to conciliate its Shia minority, easing THE GRISLY SCENARIO is that a Sunni- some of the restrictions it had placed upon them. Shia civil war in Iraq could erupt into a wider The pan-Islamic solidar- ity toward Lebanon in Sunni-Shia war across the Arab world. recent months also sug- gests that the Shia and Sunni masses are more easily rallied against their com- ers are telling us. . . . We should not be frightened of rad- mon Israeli enemy than against one another. Nonethe- ical Shiism; we should understand these things on their less, a power struggle between the entrenched Sunni own terms. We should not jump when someone says to establishment and the rising and newly confident force us ‘radical Shiism,’ for one interesting reason—right?— of the long-underprivileged Shia is under way, and 9/11. The 19 who came our way were not Shia. They were extremists on both sides seem determined to pursue it good Sunni boys, and we should remind the Arab bloodily. regimes when they try to frighten us out of our skins that When President Bush met his envoy, L. Paul Bre- in fact we also have another menace, which is radical mer, at the U.S. air base in Qatar in June 2003, less Sunnism.” than two months after the fall of Baghdad, the diffi- Ajami made a further point about the kind of social culties of bringing the two sides together seemed and political change the Shia resurgence could bring foremost in his mind. According to Bremer’s memoir, to the Arab and Islamic worlds, citing a Kuwaiti Shia My Year in Iraq (2006), Bush asked if the American friend who had suggested, “If you take Egypt out of the attempt to bring representative democracy to Iraq Arab world—and it’s a kind of outlier country, histor- would succeed. “Will they be able to run a free coun- ically, culturally, in every way—there is no Sunni try?” the president asked. “Some of the Sunni leaders majority in the Arab world. . . . The region becomes a in the region doubt it. They say, ‘All Shia are liars.’ group—a multiplicity of communities and sects, and What’s your impression?” the place of the Shia in that landscape truly changes. “Well, I don’t agree,” Bremer replied. “I’ve already So the region is being redrawn.” met a number of honest moderate Shia, and I’m con- King Abdullah of Jordan, Egypt’s Mubarak, and fident we can deal with them.” the Saudi monarchy all have their own very good rea- Three years later, in June of this year, the same prob- sons to protect their current positions in the Arab lem dominated conversation, as Bush invited to the world and to be alarmed at the changes the new Shia White House one of the best-known Arab academics and role could bring. The question is whether their anxi-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 19 Revenge of the Shia ety is shared by their own people or simply reflects dreadful losses of Saddam Hussein’s repression after concern that the empowerment of the Shia implies the 1991 and the deaths by sectarian strife in the last empowerment of Iran to the detriment of the Sunni three years, the American interventions have brought Arab establishment. There is no clear answer. The about an unprecedented era of empowerment and history of Sunni-Shia and Arab-Persian tensions liberation. This is unlikely to produce the kind of grat- points one way; but the rallying of Sunni public opin- itude that would see statues of the two Bushes erected ion behind the Shia resistance of southern Lebanon in Kurdish Suleimaniya or in the Shia city of Basra, but this past summer and the hailing of the Hezbollah the effect of this double liberation on the politics of leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah as the new Saladin, Iraq and of the region has been revolutionary. The bal- the new pan-Arab hero, point to a different future, in ance of power between Sunni and Shia, and (because which Arab and Islamic solidarity against Israel will of the empowerment of Iran through the departure of trump the traditional Sunni-Shia enmities. The only its old enemy Saddam Hussein and of the Sunni- safe conclusion is that the political situation is too dominated Iraq that he represented) between Arab dynamic and the ethnic and sectarian politics of the and Persian, has been fundamentally shifted. region are moving too fast for any easy prediction. This vast political change coincides with the dra- Another regional specialist who is consulted by the matic socioeconomic and intellectual changes that Bush administration, Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign are sweeping the Islamic world, triggered by some of Relations, has sketched out a scenario for an inter- the globe’s highest birthrates, by the surging fluctua- Islamic clash of civilizations. Everything hinges on the tions in oil prices (and the resulting instability of state ability of the United States and Iran to normalize rela- budgets, pensions, and employment), and by the tions and work together to manage Shia-Sunni ten- impact of globalization, which has brought unprece- sions. “If Washington and Tehran are unable to find dented numbers of non-Muslims to live and work in common ground—and the constitutional negotiations the region. To this must be added the groundswell of [in Iraq] fail—the consequences would be dire,” Nasr demands by Arab women and civil society, by the warns. “At best, Iraq would go into convulsions; at worst, newly educated professional class, and by Arab it would descend into full-fledged civil war. And if Iraq democrats for human rights and a greater say in pub- were to collapse, its fate would most likely be decided by lic life; the intense theological debates between advo- a regional war. Iran, Turkey, and Iraq’s Arab neighbors cates of the puritan and the more relaxed forms of would likely enter the fray to protect their interests and Islam; and the incalculable impact of the outspoken scramble for the scraps of Iraq. The major front would and less censored new satellite television media. be essentially the same as that during the Iran-Iraq War, only 200 miles farther to the west: It would follow the line, running through Baghdad, that separates the pre- n a sense, the Islamic world is undergoing almost dominantly Shiite regions of Iraq from the predomi- simultaneously its Renaissance, its Reformation, nantly Sunni ones.” Iand its Enlightenment, and the Shia are living their But look at the issue from a perspective that con- version of the civil rights movement, all while reeling siders the catalytic role that has been played by the two from the impact of economic and media revolutions. American interventions in Iraq, in the wars of Presi- Considered in this light, the emergence of Al Qaeda dent Bush the elder in 1991 and of his son 12 years might be seen as a particularly virulent symptom of this later. From the point of view of the Kurds, the 1991 war tumultuous Arab transformation and as a response not became—after Saddam Hussein’s postwar repression just to the perceived sins of the West, but also, in the case and the mass flight of refugees into Turkey—a kind of of Zarqawi, as an extreme Sunni reaction to the Shia liberation, under the protection of the Anglo- resurgence. Of all the tectonic shifts now jarring the American no-fly zone. The Kurds of northern Iraq Middle East, the rise of the long-subdued Shia promises enjoyed a regional autonomy that has been consoli- to be the most potent, and potentially the most dated by the war of 2003. And for the Shia, despite the destructive. ■

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Mao Now

China’s transformation in the 30 years since the death of Mao Zedong has been breathtaking. But it will not be complete until the nation comes to terms with Mao’s complex legacy.

BY ROSS TERRILL

In the early 1990s, a story circulated Following the eclectic nature of Chinese popular beliefs, among Chinese taxi drivers about an eight-car traffic acci- Mao is added to the panoply of faith. dent in Guangzhou that resulted in injuries to seven of the But where is Mao the totalitarian? Each of the major drivers involved; the eighth, unscathed, had a Mao portrait nations that experienced an authoritarian regime in the attached to his windshield as a talisman. The story fueled 20th century emerged in its own way from the trauma. Mao fever (Mao re) in China, with shopkeepers offering Japan, Germany, Italy, even Russia departed politically busts of Mao that glowed in the dark and alarm clocks with from systems that brought massive war and repression. Red Guards waving Mao’s little red book at each tick of the China, still ruled by a communist party, has been ambigu- clock. Mao temples appeared in some villages, with a ous about Mao. Although Mao’s portrait and tomb domi- serene portrait of the Chairman on the altar. Transmuted nate Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, Mao uses of Mao continue today. Nightclub singers in Beijing himself—unlike Stalin in Russia or Hitler in Germany—has croon songs that cite Mao’s words. Youths dine in “Cultural floated benignly into a nether zone as if somehow he was Revolution-style” cafés off rough-hewn tables with Mao not a political figure at all, let alone the architect of China’s quotations on the wall, eating basic peasant fare as they communist state. answer their cell phones and chat about love or the stock The cab drivers, farmers, pop singers, and shopkeepers market. are really only following the lead of the Chinese Communist This nonpolitical treatment of Mao Zedong Party, which does not quite know how to handle Mao’s (1893–1976) is an escape that fits a Chinese tradition. legacy. New history textbooks approved for initial use in When floods hit the Yangzi valley and farmers clutch Shanghai have largely brushed Mao out of China’s 20th-cen- Mao memorabilia to ward off the rushing waters, it is tury story. China has abandoned Mao’s policies but not reminiscent of Chinese Buddhists over the centuries faced the structural and philosophical issues involved in clutching images or statues of Guan Yin, the goddess of Maoism—and probably won’t until the Party’s monopoly on mercy, to keep them safe and make them prosperous. political power comes to an end. Yet unless China gets the Mao story correct, it may not have a happy political future. Ross Terrill is the author of Mao: A Biography (1999), currently a best The moral compass of the Mao era has gone, unre- seller in a Chinese-language edition in China, Madame Mao (1999), and China in Our Time (1992), among other books. His most recent book is gretted. But moneymaking, national glory, and a veil over The New Chinese Empire, winner of the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book the past in the name of “good feelings” are not enough to Prize. He is an associate in research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. replace it. Can a society that lived by the ideas of Confu-

22 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 cianism for two millennia, and later by Mao’s political athleticism, be content with amnesia about the Mao era and the absence of a believed public philosophy? In a recent biography, Mao: The Unknown Story (2006), Jung Chang and Jon Halliday pile up evi- dence that Mao was a monster to eclipse Stalin and probably Hitler and Lenin as well. “Absolute self- ishness and irresponsibility lay at the heart of Mao’s outlook” from his teens to his dotage, say the authors. In a second influential volume, The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1995), Mao’s physician Li Zhisui portrays the Chairman as exceed- ingly selfish, jealous, and promis- cuous. Soon after his book came out, Dr. Li came to speak at Har- vard, and I showed him around the campus. “Three words did not exist for Mao,” the gentle doctor remarked as we strolled. “Regret, love, mercy.” These two books— both written from outside China— explain the Mao era in China as essentially the consequence of hav- ing an evil man at the helm. Certainly Mao’s rule was destructive. Tens of millions of Mao’s image is seen everywhere in China—silk-screened on T-shirts, printed on clock faces, Chinese died in the forced collec- and, in this case, molded in solid gold—but discussion of his 27-year reign and its legacy is rare. tivization of the Great Leap For- ward of 1958–59, victims of Mao’s willful utopianism and even a flood or earthquake “proved” the evil character of the cruelty. Millions more died, and tens of millions had their emperor. Were the “good men” around bad man Mao lives ruined, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. blind to his failings for so many decades? Were the hun- Practicing brinkmanship toward India, Taiwan, and the dreds of millions of Chinese who bowed before Mao’s por- Soviet Union, Mao declared that a loss of hundreds of trait and wept at the sight of him out of their minds? millions of Chinese in a nuclear war would be a setback Mao made history; at the same time, history made China could readily digest. Mao. In addition to looking at Mao’s failings as a Yet “bad man” does not adequately sum up Mao and his human being, we must look at the structures and pres- legacy. To believe so would be to embrace the moral abso- sures that turned whim into tyranny. At the ideas Mao lutism of communism itself, with its quick verdicts (“enemy wielded. At the evaporation—in Mao’s case, as in that of the people,” “hero of the proletariat”), and to repeat the of several other dictators—of youthful idealism and manipulations of official Chinese imperial history, in which exactitude. Above all, at the seduction of a “freedom”

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 23 Mao Now bestowed from above by a party-state that believed it sha who had imbibed the idealist liberalism of T. H. Green, knew what was best for the citizenry. the late-19th-century British philosopher. Mao was a rebel before becoming a communist. The psychological root of his rebelliousness was hostility to his n a letter he wrote in 1915, Mao said, “Jesus was dis- father, and, by extension, to other authority figures. The membered for speaking out. . . . He who speaks out political root was dismay at China’s weakness and disar- I does not necessarily transgress, and even if he does ray in the face of foreign encroachment, shared by most transgress, this is but a small matter to a wise man.” Imme- informed Chinese of the period. Mao’s chief use for the diately we face a puzzle: Young Mao was an ardent indi- steeled individual was as a fighter for justice and China’s vidualist. In his years at the teachers’ training college he salvation. “The principal aim of physical education,” he attended in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, wrote in 1917 in New Youth magazine, “is military heroism.” Mao’s credo became the self-realization of the individual. The authoritarian strain in Mao’s individualism was “Wherever there is repression of the individual,” he wrote already present. in the margin of a translation of Friedrich Paulsen’s System Eventually, Mao’s respect for individual freedom col- of Ethics (1889), “wherever there are acts contrary to the lapsed. There were four causes. One was the powerful cur- nature of the individual, there can be no greater crime.” His rent of nationalism in early-20th-century China; the cry to first published newspaper work, written in 1919, was a rescue the nation eclipsed the cry for the self-realization of plea for the liberation of women, a passionate nine-part the individual. A second was the large role of war in China commentary on the suicide of a young woman in Chang- from the 1920s to the ’40s. Pervasive violence made polit- sha moments before her arranged marriage. ical debate a luxury and favored repression. A third was Mao at 24 saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an Mao’s embrace of Marxist ideas of class, central economic outbreak of freedom for the individual that lit the way for planning, and communist party organization. Fourth was China. A young female friend objected, “It’s all very well the hangover in Mao’s mind and Chinese society generally to say establish communism, but lots of heads are going of a paternalistic imperial mentality. to fall.” Mao, who had recently read Marx and Engel’s In the end, Mao Zedong, facilitated by Stalin, put the Communist Manifesto, retorted, “Heads will fall, heads population of the world’s largest nation under a regimen will be chopped off, of course. But just think how good that combined Leninism, the paternalism of early Chinese communism is! The state won’t bother us anymore, you sage-rulers, and, by the 1960s, a hysteria and military women will be free, marriage problems won’t plague you romanticism that amounted to fascism Chinese-style. anymore.” Although these words hint at Mao’s later cal- The imperative of national salvation was the first factor lousness about human life, it is striking that he viewed working against Mao’s attraction to freedom. Mao was Lenin’s revolution in terms of the “marriage problems” mildly attracted to a movement comparable in spirit to of individual women. Europe’s Enlightenment that sprang into existence in China The anarchism of Peter Kropotkin, the author of in 1919. Named May Fourth (after the date of an initial stu- Mutual Aid (1902), had a strong hold on Mao until he was dent demonstration), it aimed at modernizing China by nearly 30. A great virtue of the Russian anarchist, Mao felt, embracing quasi-Western ideas of individualism, democ- was that “he begins by understanding the common people.” racy, and science. Liberated individuals would rescue China. Anarchism in Mao’s perception was linked with But May Fourth soon split in two, a left wing jumping to Prometheanism; Friedrich Nietzsche was also among his Marxist collectivism and a right wing sticking with indi- early enthusiasms. The Promethean individual would pre- vidualism. Leftists, including the 27-year-old Mao, founded pare for his heroic role by taking cold baths, running up the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921. mountains, and studying books in the noisiest possible Bolshevism helped Mao be progressive and anti- places. This prefigures the fascism to come in Mao’s Cul- Western at the same time. Opposition to the West was nec- tural Revolution, just as fascism in Europe owed a debt to essary to many young Chinese leftists, despite the appeal Nietzsche. At the time, however, Mao’s individualism was of Western ideas, because of British and other foreign bul- nurtured by the influence of a Chinese professor at Chang- lying of China since the Opium War of 1839–42. From

24 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Mao Now

Lenin, Mao learned that social justice and national salva- farmers in a remote mountain region, he remarked, “The tion could come as one package. Leninism—and to a lesser struggle in the border area is exclusively military. The degree Marxism—joined anarchism, nationalism, and Party and the masses have to be placed on a war footing.” individualism in the ragbag of Mao’s political ideas. It was Mao spoke of “criticizing the Nationalists by means of a Lenin who showed Mao his road to power. Anti- machine gun.” imperialism was going to be for Mao, as it was for Lenin, A third enemy of freedom was the class, organiza- the framework for revolution. But this anti-imperialist— tional, and economic theory Mao drew from Marx and soon anti-Japanese—nationalism that Mao injected into Lenin. Here Mao’s story is similar to that of Stalin, Castro, the Chinese Revolution negated individual freedom. and others. Class theory has intrinsic distortions; people In the 1930s, Mao argued to the semicriminal secret often do not act as members of an economic class. Class society Gelaohui (Elder Brother Club) that its principles labeling became especially inimical to freedom when Mao and the CCP’s were “quite close—especially as regards our was forced to rely on farmers rather than workers as the key enemies and the road to salvation.” Of course, the threat of class in China’s revolution. Anyone who pointed out this enemies was the central point. In his appeal to non-Han departure from Marx’s theory of proletarian revolution “minority” peoples during the Long March of 1935–36, was stamped out as a renegade. when Mao emerged as the CCP’s top leader as the Com- Eventually, class became little more than a convenient munists retreated before Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist way to demarcate friends and enemies of the moment. forces, Mao challenged Mongolians to “preserve the glory of the era of Genghis Khan” by cooperating with FROM THE TIME MAO used force to the Communists. Pressing the Muslims to support him, confiscate the holdings of Hunan he told them that this would ensure the “national revival landholders in 1925, his political life of the Turks.” Of course, Chi- nese nationalism had cannot be understood aside from violence. turned Mao into a trickster. After the wars with Japan and Chiang Kai-shek were over, there would be no com- Hence, longtime colleague and expected successor Liu mon cause with the Gelaohui, no freedom for the Mongo- Shaoqi was “discovered” by Mao in the 1960s to be a “bour- lians or the Muslims of Xinjiang. geois” who had “sneaked into the Party.” Never mind that The violence that continually rippled through China Mao and Liu had worked together as leftist organizers on was another force militating against individual freedom. and off since 1922. After the death in 1925 of Sun Yat-sen, a leader in the over- Within a year of the founding of the CCP in 1921, Mao throw of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 and a founder of the also fatefully embraced Leninist authoritarianism, and Nationalist movement, the gun was prominent in Chi- with it Lenin’s argument that an elite revolutionary van- nese public life. Sun’s wavering leadership gave way to guard must guide the rank and file. He accepted the secrecy, warlordism, a violent rupture of the tenuous coalition of duplicity, and absolute party loyalty of communist disci- Nationalists and Communists in 1927, and growing incur- pline. Individual autonomy, honoring the truth, friendship, sions by Japan beginning in 1931. Guns were to freedom the long bond with Liu Shaoqi—they all meant little by as a cat is to mice. From the time Mao used force to con- comparison. With Leninism also came a cult of personal- fiscate the holdings of Hunan landowners in 1925, when he ity stemming from the vanguard theory; a logical further was just one of many CCP leaders, his political life cannot step was to posit a supreme leader who, in turn, would play be understood aside from violence, both the wars he waged a vanguard role for the party elite. Mao’s cult began in the and those waged against him. As he sought to organize dusty hills of remote Yanan, north of Xian, where he led a

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 25 Mao Now settled life following the Long March, and seriously stud- nalistic rule. This was a fourth reason for Mao’s weak- ied Lenin’s writings for the first time. The later defense min- ening attachment to individual liberty. ister Lin Biao spoke of Mao in 1938 as a “genius”; in 1941, Mao’s eventual role as a supreme leader above even former classmate Emi Xiao called him “our savior.” Mao the Party gave expression to his father’s impact. Mao in could have no further doubt that he was a “hero” in the May old age became everything his father had been—and Fourth leftist mold, able (as he later put it ) to “teach the sun found young Mao incapable of being. Mao Shunsheng and moon to change places.” did not like to see his son reading a book; Chairman Mao came to scoff at book learning. Mao’s father made his son work in the fields against the boy’s will; Chairman Mao y the 1960s, Chinese arriving at urban work sent tens of millions to the countryside to do just that. units would bow three times before a blown up Mao’s father had been in the army; Mao made military Bimage of Mao’s face, asking for guidance with the virtues the yardstick for the nation’s values. People day’s labors. Before going home, they would bow again became props in Mao’s collective pageant. before the portrait, reporting to the Chairman what In the last two decades of his life, Mao became a they had accomplished since morning. The wisdom of changed leader, half modern Führer and half ancient Mao’s thoughts made the blind see and the deaf hear, Chinese sage-king. As the autocratic impulses of his said the official media. On airplanes, the flight began father and other antifreedom forces shored each other with a hostess holding aloft a copy of Quotations From up, the façade of his socialism decayed and his relation- Chairman Mao, then reading a selected maxim to the ship to the CCP changed. Mao fought two phantoms he passengers. (I recall, on a flight from Beijing to Xian, a could never vanquish: the failure of socialism to take on shrill voice delivering the startling quote, “Fear not hard- the splendor he expected of it and the refusal of the ship, fear not death,” just before the engines started up.) CCP to be simply a Mao Party. These disappointments Leninism had again, in Mao’s case as in Hitler’s and made him more arbitrary. “Revisionism” came to be the Mussolini’s, shown a certain hospitality to fascism. term Mao applied to the alleged betrayal that produced Mao’s commitment to the communist command his disappointments. But Mao never clearly defined economy was likewise antithetical to freedom. One revisionism; hence, he never found a way to eliminate it. thinker who saw the flaws of central planning clearly He knocked down many revisionists, but never long ago was Friedrich von Hayek, who spoke in the revisionism. 1940s of the “synoptic illusion.” There simply is no one One could say in Mao’s defense that after 1949 he had point, Hayek argued, where all the information bearing priorities higher than freedom. These included organ- on an economy can be concentrated, observed, and izing a vast country, stabilizing the currency, producing effectively acted upon. Rather, it is dispersed, changes steel and machine tools, and balancing Soviet and Amer- constantly, and only comes into play in the bids and ican power. And as a practical matter, the dictatorial offers of market participants. Freedom shriveled as Mao Soviet Union was willing to give him aid, whereas Amer- extended the command economy in the Great Leap For- ica was not. ward of the late 1950s. The demands made on the grass- Yet Mao’s impulse toward freedom was crippled at its roots were irrational for the reasons Hayek named. The heart. What is freedom for the individual? One viable grassroots, in turn, falsified reports going up to Beijing, form is freedom to act as you please as long as you do not as local officials were afraid to tell Mao the truth about inhibit a like freedom for others. A second notion is the bleak results of his social engineering. The next step that an individual is free to the degree she is able to real- was to punish the class enemies who, Mao concluded, ize herself. The mature Mao believed in neither of these must have sabotaged the beautiful socialist vision of the two concepts of freedom, though he was closer to the sec- Great Leap Forward. ond than to the first. He knew the kind of citizens he As an old man, Mao seemed to enjoy calling himself wanted in China. It was not for each person to realize “emperor.” He found influences from China’s imperial himself, but for all to become suitable building blocks for history both appealing and useful for bolstering pater- Mao’s Chinese update of Sparta. He egregiously confused

26 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Mao Now

Red Guards dispense revolutionary justice to an “enemy of the people”in a poster from the Cultural Revolution of 1966–67. the remolding impulse of Confucius with the functions tem lively, yet with the outcome of the debate fixed in of a modern state. “Can’t you change a bit?” he once advance. “I told the rightists to criticize us in order to help asked a roomful of intellectuals with “bourgeois” ten- the Party,” Mao said pathetically to his doctor. “I never dencies. But was it Mao the Confucian teacher talking or asked them to oppose the Party or try to seize power from Mao the dictator of a police state? the Party.” “Opinions should not be allowed to become conclu- Mao’s practical achievement was to unite China and sions,” Mao declared. In the abortive Hundred Flowers demonstrate to Asia that China after 1949 was a force to be drive of 1956, he realized that some cut and thrust was reckoned with. Other Chinese leaders in Beijing have built necessary as a safety valve against the rigidity of his on that achievement. But Mao’s social engineering efforts rule. But only Mao knew the difference between a flower were largely canceled by Deng Xiaoping after Mao’s death and a weed. The blossoms were to swell and open in 1976. In subsequent years, the totalitarian party-state according to a formula the gardener held in his pocket. became an authoritarian party-state. Under totalitarianism, Mao wanted the impossible: open debate to keep the sys- it is said, many things are forbidden and the remaining

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 27 Mao Now things you must do; under authoritarianism, many things noticed in a Shanghai department store. Such “Mao- are forbidden and the remaining things you may do. Today, ism” is the twitching of a society whose post-Mao lead- the retention of power and economic development, rather ers have brought economic advancement but political than the pursuit of ideological phantoms, is the drive around stagnation. Mao’s totalitarian leaps knocked illusions which the political process arranges itself. With Mao’s “new” out of generations of Chinese, but also soured them on Chinese man gone, the “old” Chinese man of family values public-spiritedness. By the destruction entailed in his and entrepreneurial spirit seems alive and well. revolution, and particularly his Cultural Revolution, The passing of totalitarianism has brought into view Mao took away China’s past. some tentative realms of freedom, including partial prop- China has moved beyond Mao as a builder of social- erty rights and the beginnings of autonomy for lawyers, ism. But China should never move beyond the grim les- journalists, and other professionals. Above all, there now son of how Mao could begin in idealism yet become an exists for most people the freedom to ignore politics. Yet the oppressor. It is easier and safer, of course, to criticize institutionalization of the new space opening up for Chi- Mao as an evil person, or simply to draw a veil over him, nese citizens has barely begun. than to broach the problem of the political system he As I write, Beijing has jailed three intellectuals on introduced to China. trumped-up charges behind which lie the sin of speak- Philosophically, a value to be retained from Mao is ing indiscreet words. Ching Cheong, chief China cor- that a society does require shared moral values. He was respondent of a Singapore newspaper, got five years for correct to see a good society as more than gadgets and “spying,” but really for getting a fee to speak at a sem- cars. Talking with the French writer André Malraux in inar run by a think tank that Beijing dislikes. Zhao Yan, 1965, Mao ridiculed Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin’s a researcher for The New York Times in Beijing, got statement at the 23rd congress of the Soviet Commu- three years for “fraud,” but really for feeding the Times nist Party that “communism means the raising of liv- information on some mild political tensions within ing standards.” Snorted Mao to the Frenchman, “And the Chinese government. Chen Guangchen, a blind swimming is a way of putting on a pair of trunks!” But self-taught lawyer, faces four years for “gathering a Mao’s proposed moral compass was a high-minded crowd to disrupt traffic,” but really for annoying officials fraud. The Chinese farmers were “poor and blank,” he in Shandong Province by representing victims of ster- said. On the blank page of Chinese humanity, Mao ilizations and forced abortions that were carried out the sage-king would sketch wonderful designs! contrary to Beijing’s own regulations. The rule of law Today, young pro-market Chinese who devour seems far off, and equally so a free press and much- Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and books on American needed federalism. The intended intimidation in these business are leaving Mao in the dust and embracing three cases is an all-too-clear residue of the Mao era, an antistate Chinese tradition (best known in the when citizens never knew where they stood in relation West through Daoism). They would like—but will to authority. not get—a China without politics. A new public phi- One might have expected Deng’s successor, Jiang losophy, when it comes, as it must, will draw on Zemin, and the current president, Hu Jintao, to put in China’s humanistic traditions as well as the best of the place structures that, following the Deng era, took experience of the People’s Republic. Procedurally, a account of the new relationship between politics and eco- new moral compass will come from below as people nomic and cultural life. But this has not yet happened. express themselves politically, not, again, as a diktat from a father-figure above. “When societies first come to birth, it is the leader who produces the institu- e return to the “solution” of having Mao tions,” said Montesquieu. “Later it is the institutions float into folklore as a modern-day Yellow which produce the leaders.” Later still, in a demo- W Emperor, whose photo on the windscreen cratic era, the voting public sustains the institutions will ward off traffic accidents, and who can serve as a that, in turn, frame those leaders who are given the fashion model for green silk pajamas, as I recently short term authority to lead. ■

28 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Global Race for Knowledge

Globalization stirs one great universal anxiety: Are we falling behind?

Now that question is being asked about the American university, the very foundation of U.S. strength in the global knowledge economy. Dire warnings are pouring forth from cor- porations, education groups, and science and engineering organizations. “Unless steps are taken now, the advantage the United States enjoys could be over within the next 10 years,” one Silicon Valley leader warned recently. Yet knowledge, and the ability to produce and use it, is notoriously difficult to meas- ure. Some widely cited numbers don’t hold up upon closer examination. Is China grad- uating eight times as many engineers annually as the United States, as one alarming report warned last year? Only if one counts recipients of two-year technical degrees and auto mechanics, among others, it turns out. The revised view that China is “only”

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 29 The Knowledge Race graduating two and a half times as many engineers as the United States is no cause for complacency. But what is the significance of that number? The very concept of a knowledge economy is surprisingly new. Until the past two decades, economists thought that labor and capital alone forged the wealth of nations, with knowl- edge (in the form of technology) serving as a kind of wild card. The new understanding of technology’s role is a magnificent discovery, as chronicled in David Warsh’s Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations (2006), but unfortunate in the way that it has also narrowed our think- ing about the sources of wealth. Long before economist Paul Romer did his pioneering research on the knowledge economy, social thinkers such as Daniel Bell and Peter Drucker developed the more spacious concept of the knowledge society. They recognized that techni- cal and scientific know-how is only the beginning of prosperity, much less human fulfillment. Knowledge societies need people equipped to think for themselves, institutions prepared to adapt to change, and social structures that are open and attractive to others around the world. North Korea has the scientific proficiency to build a nuclear weapon, yet it is anything but a knowledge society. With these qualifications in mind, we asked five contributors to explore the state of the university “knowledge industry” in the United States, China, Germany, and India. They show that while other nations may one day catch up to the United States according to some quan- titative measures, this is not likely to occur anytime soon. More important, they remind us that quality matters at least as much as quantity in the realms of knowledge, and that uni- versities are highly complex organisms. And they beg us to ask the larger question of how exactly we are impoverished if our neighbor gains in knowledge.

Christopher Clausen on the American Sheila Melvin on China’s uncertain knowledge industry ...... p. 31 college revolution...... p. 37 Mitchell G. Ash on Germany’s half- Philip G. Altbach on India’s peculiar hearted reforms ...... p. 45 neglect of higher education...... p. 49

Michael Lind on why the liberal arts still matter...... p. 52

30 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The New Ivory Tower

America’s higher education complex is a behemoth of mass produc- tion. But what, exactly, is coming off the assembly line? A veteran professor and administrator looks inside the new ivory tower.

BY CHRISTOPHER CLAUSEN

When I finished my Ph.D. and began work- who had flunked the largest number of freshmen. The ing at a large southern state university in the early 1970s, winner was almost always one of four women in their six- the grunts who taught freshman English had in their ties who had started out as high school teachers and possession a handsome athletic-style trophy of which graduated, so to speak, to the university when the they were extremely proud. Instead of a football or ten- post–World War II expansion of higher education cre- nis player or track star, atop its base stood a foot-high letter F. At the end of every term, this cherished object Christopher Clausen has been a teacher and administrator at five universities in the United States and Canada. His latest book is Faded would be awarded with great festivity to the teacher Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America (2000).

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 31 The Knowledge Race ated a temporary shortage of qualified faculty. approach $200 billion; the University of California These tough old schoolmarms were on the verge of receives $3 billion a year from the state government, and retiring as I came in the door, and their standards and that is just a fraction of the system’s total budget. The attitudes now seem as antique as the mandatory ROTC number of students, like the size of budgets, continues for male students that many state universities had only to mushroom, as the belief that a bachelor’s degree—at recently abolished. New assistant professors like me, the least—is essential to success has hardened into holy who were paid more to teach less, generally frowned on writ. The cost of American higher education has for the amateurism and provinciality we attached to our decades been rising faster than the price of gold or gaso- predecessors. The university was changing fast, and we line. Between 1995 and 2005, tuition and fees at public were part of the change. American higher education four-year institutions rose by 51 percent after inflation. was on its way to becoming a mature industry, with all Meanwhile the number of colleges and universities con- the benefits of greater professionalism, but also, in ret- tinues to grow. rospect, with much of the waste and confusion that Higher education in America has become a sprawl- come with unplanned growth in a sector largely shielded ing enterprise, an octopus with many apparently unco- from competition. It rarely occurred to anybody to spec- ordinated tentacles. Seemingly endless capital cam- ify realistically what purposes this vast and costly paigns and partnership agreements with corporations increase of scale was intended to accomplish, let alone blur the line between higher education and other major to question whether it might turn out to be a mixed economic entities (there is now a Yahoo! Founders Pro- blessing. fessor of Engineering at Stanford, and the University of California, Irvine, boasts a Taco Bell Chair of Informa- tion Technology Management). Yet the bottom line of all ntil World War II, colleges and universities this activity has become even harder to identify than it were a modest presence in American life, was in 1946 or 1960. One striking illustration of the U enrolling a tiny minority of high school grad- confusion of purposes is that, having established uates. The GI Bill of 1944 started to change all that. Sub- “research parks” in the 1980s to attract high-tech indus- sidized by a grateful nation, suddenly a much larger tries as tenants, many universities are now building proportion of young men and women acquired the col- retirement villages to entice the affluent elderly. lege habit, and in the 1960s their baby boomer children Higher education on this scale is something new in began swarming onto campuses. The result was an the world. Unlike American primary and secondary unprecedented burgeoning of higher education, partic- education, it is also the envy of the world. Yet we may be ularly at state institutions. New campuses sprouted starting to notice that some of its achievements shimmer everywhere, while old ones frequently tripled or quadru- like a mirage. This past August, the National Commis- pled their enrollments. Practically every teacher’s college sion on the Future of Higher Education reported that in the country proclaimed itself a university. Once mostly “the quality of student learning—as measured by assess- an amenity of the elite, a college education quickly ments of college graduates—is declining.” It cited a stun- became a necessity for anyone with ambition, and soon ning finding of the National Assessment of Adult Liter- after an entitlement. acy: Only 31 percent of college-educated Americans Few would have expected universities to prosper as qualify as “prose literate,” meaning that they can fully much as they did in the third of a century that followed comprehend something as simple as a newspaper story. the expansive 1960s. By the fall of 2005, there were That number has shrunk from 40 percent a decade ago, some 2,000 four-year colleges and universities in the apparently because the flood of badly educated new United States, enrolling in excess of 17 million students graduates is dragging down the average. (more than three-quarters of them in public institu- One reason we often overlook the shortcomings of tions) of hugely varying qualifications. These institutions higher education is that although in many ways modern confer close to a million bachelor’s degrees a year. The 20 universities resemble diversified corporations, they are richest schools have endowments that collectively also strikingly peculiar. American higher education

32 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race today looks somewhat like the Catholic Church of the the number of Division I football teams, each a late Middle Ages—another anomalous enterprise that multimillion-dollar business in itself, is too great for was once a ubiquitous presence, immensely rich in anyone but a sportscaster to keep track of the standings. money and talent, staffed by multiple hierarchies whose Considering the multiple vulnerabilities of higher principles of organization were opaque to outsiders, fol- education—to inflation, donors, state legislatures, and lowing its own arcane laws and mores, seemingly invul- parents who complain about skyrocketing tuition— nerable to criticism because, with all its contradictions, maintaining such an expensive status quo has been it still represented what the society as a whole regarded quite an achievement, but an achievement that has as its highest aspirations. required some hidden sacrifices. “The university shamelessly promised everything to everyone,” Jane Smiley wrote in her 1995 novel Moo, “and obody disputes that higher education is a good charged so much that prospective students tended to thing, that fine teaching and research enrich believe the promises. . . . Students would find good jobs, N society over and above their immediate eco- the state would see a return on its educational invest- nomic benefits—the main goal most students, parents, ment, businesses could harvest enthusiastic and well- and taxpayers have in mind—or that the professionals trained workers by the hundreds, theory and technology who spend their lives in these pursuits are as admirable would break through limits as old as the human race as any group of people. If we take all that as read, what (and some lucky person would get to patent the break- else might we notice when we peer through the fog of throughs). . . . Everyone around the university had given idealization that always seems to obscure the particu- free rein to his or her desires, and the institution had, larities of the university? with a fine, trembling responsiveness, answered, ‘Why While most people still think of undergraduate edu- not?’ It had become, more than anything, a vast network cation as the core function of colleges and universities, of interlocking wishes, some of them modest, some of the total undergraduate capacity of American higher them impossible, many of them conflicting, many of education today probably exceeds by a wide margin the economic advantages it confers, either on stu- ONLY 31 PERCENT of college-educated dents as individuals or on society as a whole. Most of Americans can fully comprehend something the jobs now held by col- lege graduates in sales, as simple as a newspaper story. transportation, services, and even the computer industry could be performed successfully by people with them complementary.” little or no higher education. For high school graduates, The instruction that Smiley’s Moo U, based loosely on as is often pointed out, going to college has become a Iowa State University, offers is a drop in the bucket of defensive necessity—you have to do it because everyone adolescent ignorance. Its research is harmlessly bizarre else is doing it—regardless of how unattractive another at best and destructive at worst. The faculty spend as lit- four years in school looks to the average 18-year-old. tle time on campus as possible. Cruelest of all, Smiley As for graduate education and research, the amount uses a hog to symbolize the university—a hog whose sole of duplication among 50 state systems, in addition to the purpose as the subject of an eccentric professor’s research Ivies and Stanfords and Dukes, serves no rational pur- project is to grow as fat as it is genetically capable of pose. At last count, more than 160 universities offered a becoming. When the grotesque beast escapes from its Ph.D. in English, a field where people with doctorates cage at the climax of the novel, it immediately drops dead have far outnumbered jobs since the early 1970s. Even of a heart attack. Smiley’s vivid satire displays some

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 33 The Knowledge Race unsurprising manifestations of human nature in large competition, institutions of higher education para- bureaucratic systems. Yet each of these realities takes doxically become more alike, thereby increasing redun- forms in the university that render it unfamiliar, some- dancy. In every subsector—Ivy League institutions, times even unrecognizable, to outsiders. gigantic public research universities such as the Uni- Normally, when an industry becomes overstocked versity of Wisconsin, elite liberal arts colleges such as with providers of a service, the least capable are even- Oberlin, or the middle-sized regional campuses where tually taken over by the more successful, or simply go most Americans pursue their studies—distinctiveness bankrupt and cease to exist. Think of Gimbel’s, TWA, of mission, curriculum, and expectations of students American Motors. The victorious competitors typically and faculty have diminished since the 1950s. Thanks become more efficient and distinctive. In higher educa- partly to accrediting organizations that apply national tion, however, there are several reasons why the normal standards uniformly, the cultural, denominational, effects of competition fail to operate. First, the extreme and regional differences that not long ago distin- difficulty of objectively measuring the relative success or guished, say, all-male, Quaker Haverford College in failure of a university makes it possible for the adminis- Pennsylvania from coeducational, Baptist Furman University in South Car- olina have narrowed to lit- tle more than local color. TO ADMINISTRATORS, “diversity” (One straw in the prevail- ing wind has been the vir- simply means recruiting more black and tual disappearance of single-sex higher educa- Hispanic students and employees. It has tion since the 1960s.) The University of California, no intellectual significance. Berkeley, and the Univer- sity of Virginia were once far more oriented toward trators of even the most disreputable institution to claim the differing needs of their states than they are today. that it has not failed. Both the criteria that define success The major exceptions to the trend are a few radically and the best means for gauging it are endlessly debat- contrarian religious schools such as Bob Jones Uni- able. Because the funding of higher education comes versity and Liberty University that are pariahs in the from such a diversity of sources, there is no immediate academic world. Given the emphasis placed on diver- connection between failure in the market (such as a sity in the mission statement of virtually every aca- persistent inability to attract sufficient numbers of stu- demic institution in the country, this homogenization dents) and utter collapse. seems ironic. But to administrators today, “diversity” Second, because the majority of colleges and uni- simply means recruiting more black and Hispanic stu- versities are public rather than private, any threatened dents and employees. It has no intellectual significance. campus usually has one or more legislators it can count Homogeneity has been reinforced by the rise of a on to save it from oblivion. Despite periodic alarms national managerial class in higher education. Unlike about the threat to such institutions, very few have gone in the past, most college and university presidents out of existence or suffered hostile takeovers since the today are not alumni or longtime employees of the end of the Great Depression. Even small private colleges, institutions over which they preside. According to a the most fragile members of the breed, have low fatality 2002 study, their average tour of duty is less than rates: About three shut down every year, many of them seven years. Beneath them sits an ever-expanding religiously based institutions, and new ones are always cadre of career administrators whose lives follow a being born. similar pattern as they move from one institution to Instead of becoming more varied in the face of another of the same type, rising successively from

34 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race department head to dean to provost and (occasionally) their own. They compete like gladiators, first for to president. Rather than embrace the historical pecu- tenure, then for the considerable amenities higher liarities of a particular school, academic managers education has to offer. Light-to-nonexistent teaching tend to pass their careers keeping up with the fashions loads, substantial research and travel budgets, fre- and taboos of the moment through professional quent time off, and a cascade of honorific titles help conferences and the administrative trade paper, make up for salaries that, even at the higher levels, The Chronicle of Higher Education. rarely approach what a comparably successful lawyer The notorious misadventures of former treasury or doctor would make. The average full professor in secretary Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard a Ph.D.-granting public university earned $101,620 put several of these anomalies on the front page, first last year, but the figure is almost meaningless because when he spoke indiscreetly (as it seemed to his critics) of dramatic variations among individuals as well as about research on the mathematical abilities of men between high-paying (engineering, accounting, law) and women, and again a year later, when the Harvard and low-paying (arts, humanities, foreign languages) faculty of arts and sciences succeeded in getting him departments. Once upon a time, many institutions fired for offenses against academic orthodoxy. To many used published salary scales. It is only one sign of the observers, the whole episode looked like a recurrent faculty’s diminished authority on campus that aca- fantasy or nightmare of the late 1960s, depending on demic salaries now are individually set by what your point of view, in which the tenured equivalent of administrators airily refer to as “the market,” and a people’s court meted out revolutionary justice. frequently kept secret. Yet it’s important to notice just how atypical the Today, a profession exceeded by few others in its events at Harvard were of the way higher education intellectual commitment to egalitarianism inhabits a normally operates today. First, Summers expressed world of ever more elaborate hierarchies. Not long ago, himself with a freedom and openness that few con- most universities had three professorial ranks—assistant, temporary academic administrators would allow associate, and full professor—with a rare endowed chair themselves. The time when presidents of major uni- thrown in. Now even public universities may have three versities were public figures who spoke with some or four categories of endowed, distinguished, and other candor on genuinely controversial issues is long past. super-ranked faculty, each with its own clearly defined Second, the Harvard faculty have, or at least had (they status and perquisites. may have used some of it up), an authority within the university that exists in few other institutions, no matter how eminent their members. Almost invari- ndergraduate education has been one of the ably, trustees hire and fire the people who run large chief casualties of this new order. Overca- universities without much consultation, while fully U pacity and changing demographics mean socialized administrators express in public only the that all but the most prestigious institutions have to most widely shared opinions. admit marginally qualified students simply to keep Faculties are a little less conformist, but, as the Sum- their classrooms full. Virtually any high school grad- mers episode illustrates, not much, despite the bril- uate today who wants to go to college can find a berth liance and idealism of many of their members. Like somewhere. To reduce the chances that these under- administrators, the most successful professors migrate prepared students and their tuition dollars will flunk from institution to institution. Their allegiance is far out, most universities now tie faculty raises and pro- more to a discipline and a group of widely dispersed motions to student evaluations of teaching, thereby colleagues—fellow specialists around the world who encouraging easier courses and less stringent grading. also study population genetics, medieval Islam, or trop- The days when a flagship state university would rou- ical agriculture—than to a particular place. tinely fail a quarter or more of its freshman class in Regular faculty members, a small minority of uni- order to maintain academic standards ended before versity employees, increasingly occupy a world of the last baby boomers graduated in the mid-1980s.

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 35 The Knowledge Race

Even so, about a third of the students who enroll in will the fortunate few or many be selected? (Any deci- universities leave without getting a degree. sion on these questions would definitively settle the The thirst for dollars has also brought the system of issue of whether we currently have overcapacity, under- “publish or perish,” which used to operate only in top capacity, or just the right amount.) Or do we, as tax- research universities, to virtually every institution that payers, donors, or parents, really want to maintain the aspires to national standing. While good teaching may lavish graduate programs and laboratories that attract attract good students, well-publicized research can so many foreign applicants and lead to so many patents bring in the harder currency of grant money and sta- and Nobel Prizes? If so, maybe we should stop com- tus. And if professors are to focus on research, some- plaining quite so loudly about the price tag. In any case, body else must take up the teaching slack. The bulk of merely agreeing that education and research are valu- introductory teaching now falls to graduate students or able doesn’t get us very far. Some informed choices are poorly paid adjuncts—not the former high school long overdue. teachers of old, but frequently holders of Ph.D.’s who The late Reuven Frank, who was president of NBC have failed to find permanent positions amid the mar- News and subsequently a critic of television, once ket glut. Contact with beginning undergraduates has asked his readers whether they could correctly iden- become both less attractive and, for senior faculty, less tify either the main product of a commercial television frequent. network or its customers. Most people, he noted, would say that the product was an array of programs, while the customers were the audience that viewed obody wants to go back to the era of finishing them. But most people would be wrong. The real schools staffed by amateurs, but the new product of the television industry, Frank concluded— N world we have created is dysfunctional in what it sets out to create, what it compulsively meas- ways that we have only begun to recognize. The ures, what it labors single-mindedly to increase—is an National Commission on the Future of Higher Edu- audience. The industry’s customers are advertisers cation tentatively warned of “disturbing signs that who buy access to that audience. many students who do earn degrees have not actually A similar misapprehension surrounds higher edu- mastered the reading, writing, and thinking skills we cation. The real product of major-league universities— expect of college graduates.” Are we really turning what they measure obsessively with yardsticks that out armies of semiliterate college graduates? The range from rankings in U.S. News & World Report to answer is that nobody knows. Standardized national the total size of their research budgets, what they seek tests, along with federal monitoring of institutional and reward most in faculty members, what they tire- quality and changes in financial aid to students, were lessly emphasize in their marketing—is reputation. among the commission’s recommendations. Like so Their customers are parents, government at all levels, many previous commissions on higher education over businesses, donors, and foundations, all of whom the past four decades, however, the group had trouble want different pieces of what has become a hugely reaching agreement on the key questions and, appar- complicated pie. In a world where the bottom line is ently, persuading itself that its proposals had much so elusive, the distinction between appearance and chance of surviving the hostility of the higher educa- reality has no meaning. At bottom, the mark of a great tion lobby. university, more than anything else, is its success in The fact that evaluating universities is so frustrat- gaining and profiting from a reputation for being a ingly difficult suggests that we have only the vaguest great university. idea of what we want from them. Is it primarily under- The power of the new ivory tower endures, like that graduate education? (In that case, we could get rid of of a church, simply because most Americans believe many expensive Ph.D. programs and research facili- whichever of its promises pertain to them. If they ever ties.) If so, exactly what kind of education, and for started to question their faith, a Reformation might be what percentage of the population? By what criteria at hand, but not before. ■

36 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

China’s College Revolution

Students are flocking to China’s campuses, but educating them and finding them jobs are bigger challenges than the government reckoned. As China’s leaders rush to change an old, ungainly sys- tem, they are learning that shaking up is hard to do.

BY SHEILA MELVIN

When a group of Nepalese teachers vis- nation’s rapid economic development, has made China ited Beijing in 1964 to learn from the Chinese educa- an educational frontier, what one American university tion model, Chairman Mao Zedong offered them this president called “the Klondike of higher education,” blunt warning: “The school years are too long, courses and universities the world over are scrambling to form too many, and the method of teaching is by injection partnerships with their Chinese counterparts. Last instead of through the imagination. The method of year’s report by the U.S. National Academies that China examination is to treat candidates as enemies and graduates eight times as many engineers a year as the ambush them. Therefore, I advise you not to entertain United States caused widespread hand-wringing— any blind faith in the Chinese educational system. Do though the figure was later revised downward to two not regard it as a good system. Any drastic change is and a half times. American pundits seized on the fig- difficult, as many people would oppose it.” ure as proof that the United States was losing its lead More than 40 years later, many outsiders are view- in yet another field. From afar, this transformation ing China’s education system—at least at the tertiary looks like more evidence that China is an economic level—with the same apparent credulity as did that juggernaut. But while the vast expansion and raft of long-ago Nepalese delegation. The number of univer- reforms the Chinese government is undertaking will sity students in China has doubled since 2000, to 23 undoubtedly prove beneficial in the long run, drastic million—more matriculants than in any other nation change is, as Mao said, difficult. in the world. This dramatic growth, coupled with the “The story is both frustrating and exciting,”

Sheila Melvin, a writer and journalist, is coauthor, with her husband, explains Fu Jun, executive dean of the School of Gov- Jindong Cai, of Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became ernment at Peking University. “At the macro level Chinese (2004). Her book on Mao Zedong’s continuing influence in China will be published next spring. the picture is very rosy, but at the micro level there are

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 37 The Knowledge Race many problems. This is true of all Chinese society.” In a widely publicized survey released by China Youth Daily (the newspaper of the Communist Youth League) in August, 35 percent of the young respon- dents said they regretted their university experience and did not consider it worth the time and money invested; more than half said that they had learned nothing of use. In mid-June, students with griev- ances against Shengda University staged the largest demonstration on a Chinese campus since 1989, one of several recent protests at the nation’s universities. Seemingly every week, the government announces yet another policy adjustment intended to quiet public opinion and stave off further unrest. Changes to the educational system are particularly difficult to digest in China because education has for so long been the primary path to social and economic advancement. Under the dynastic system, govern- ment officials were recruited and promoted through a rigorous series of examinations that tested their knowledge of the Confucian classics. In theory, even the poor and disenfranchised could sit for this impe- rial exam and rise to the top ranks of officialdom. The odds of such success were long—there was no formal system of public education, so students studied with private tutors or in private academies to which few had access. But the perception of opportunity did much to ensure political stability; the abolition of the exam in 1905 had massive repercussions, and con- tributed to the collapse of the dynastic system a few years later.

hina’s first universities were founded at the turn of the 20th century, and patterned on the CWestern model. Most were built with the involvement of missionaries or other Westerners. Tsinghua University, for example, was established in Beijing in 1911 to prepare Chinese students for advanced studies in the United States. When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, it nation- alized private universities and took control of the entire education system, putting it under the domin- ion, for the most part, of the Ministry of Education. Mao’s policy of “leaning to one side”—that side being the Soviet Union’s—led education officials to remodel

38 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race

The throng at a Beijing job fair includes many college graduates who are finding that their meager education doesn’t qualify them for good jobs.

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 39 The Knowledge Race the system along Soviet lines. Comprehensive uni- in the 21st Century.” Then-president Jiang Zemin called versities were broken apart and reorganized to focus for the creation of 100 world-class universities for the on single disciplines, and liberal education was for- 21st century. saken in favor of ideological indoctrination and nar- The impact of the reforms has, in some areas, row specialization. Tsinghua, for example, was recat- been tremendous. But each reform seems to have egorized as a polytechnic university for engineers; created a new set of problems—and provoked the Chinese president Hu Jintao, a 1965 graduate of its opposition Mao predicted. The most discussed issue Water Conservancy Engineering Department, at the moment is the drastic expansion of university majored in hub hydropower stations. Bureaucracies enrollment, which is transforming China’s social such as the ministries of railways, health, and agri- landscape. culture established separate university systems for “In 1992, about three percent of college-age stu- training their future employees. While a university dents were in college. Now it is 20 percent,” explains education was free and theoretically open to all, so Anne Stevenson-Yang, the president of 6xue.com, an few spaces were available that the system created, in Internet company that provides Chinese students effect, an elite of politically correct cadres to serve the with information about studying overseas. In the socialist state. United States, roughly 40 percent of college-age stu- The entire higher education system was rent asun- dents are enrolled. der when Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in In major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, the pro- 1966. He ignited the movement in part by encourag- portion of senior high school graduates who go on to col- ing students to rebel, and universities soon became lege is now more than half. Soon, almost anyone in battlegrounds in which Red Guard factions fought these cities who wants a university degree will be able to each other in Mao’s name. Professors were publicly get one. The capacity to absorb so many new students humiliated, tortured, even killed, and all formal developed in a remarkably short time. Some universities higher education came to a standstill. Mao finally built entire new suburban campuses in six months. Big- brought an end to the unrest he had created by send- name schools have created satellite campuses—Tsinghua ing millions of students to the countryside, ostensi- has established science parks in five provinces—and a bly to learn from the peasants. number have gone into business, setting up private, for- The system began to function again in a limited profit universities. Cities and other localities, hoping to way in 1973, when schools were reopened to the duti- foster innovative research, have gotten into the game by ful offspring of workers, peasants, and soldiers. But building “university cities” to house new campuses and it was only after Mao’s death in 1976 and the subse- branches. These facilities have vastly improved the liv- quent overthrow of the “Gang of Four” that real ing conditions of many students, who until a decade ago rebuilding began, marked by the revival of the generally lived eight to a room in slumlike conditions, ate National College Entrance Examination at the end of cafeteria food fit for a slop pail, and lost electric power 1977. Of the nearly six million who sat for the exam, at 11 pm. Enhanced conditions have encouraged a much only 278,000 could be accepted. richer campus life, in which students participate in After Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1979, he clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities at venues stressed that the education system required reform to provided by their universities. meet the needs of “socialist modernization.” The first pri- vate university was founded in 1982, and in 1985 the gov- ernment enacted a comprehensive education reform ut if all this sounds a little too good to be true, law, which was followed by another in 1993. Thus decen- it is. The biggest apparently unanticipated tralization began, as Beijing ceded more authority to uni- Bresult of the expansion is the skyrocketing versities, and students were allowed—then required—to unemployment rate among new college graduates. find their own jobs. Yet another reform program came Over the past few years, universities have churned out in 1998, grandly titled “Plan for Revitalizing Education many more graduates—4.13 million this year, as com-

40 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race pared with 1.15 million in 2001—than the job market restructuring of the higher education system since the can absorb. It’s not just that there aren’t enough jobs early 1950s, in what is essentially an abandonment of the for university graduates, but that many graduates are Soviet-style system and a return to the Western model too poorly educated or too inexperienced to qualify for of multidisciplinary universities. Between 1996 and high-skills jobs. That a 22-year-old college graduate 2000, the number of major colleges and universities was with no work experience might have trouble finding a reduced from 387 to 212, a consolidation that authori- decent job would surprise few in America. But in ties hope will increase efficiency and boost competitive- China, where graduates were assigned positions until ness. All public universities operated by other ministries the 1990s, and afterward had their pick of plum jobs were merged into ones overseen by the Ministry of Edu- as elite members of a fast-growing economy, such dif- cation, and that ministry itself delegated considerable ficulty is considered a serious breach of the social con- authority to the provinces, retaining direct supervision tract. Indeed, the situation has caused an uproar. The of just 70 first-tier universities. news media are filled with accounts of college gradu- Naturally, as the provinces have gained more control ates working as security guards, maids, and nan- nies because they can find no other work. A recent THE CHINESE NEWS media are filled wire report by the state- run news agency, Xinhua, with accounts of college graduates working revealed that more than 500 new graduates had as security guards, maids, and nannies. applied for six tradition- ally taboo positions work- ing with the dead at a Beijing funeral home—and a over higher education, they also have been required to quarter of them had master’s degrees. assume more financial responsibility—much of which The rapid growth of the higher education system is has been passed on to the universities and to the students also breeding profiteering. The riots in June, for themselves. Between 1994 and 2006, college tuition instance, came about because students who had not increased from a token amount to an average of $600 to scored high enough on the national exam to get into $1,000 a year. This is a significant investment for aver- Zhengzhou University in Henan Province were age families and a huge burden for poor ones, espe- accepted into its private subsidiary, Shengda Univer- cially in rural areas, where cash income is low. The stu- sity. In China, a private university is considerably less dent loan system is still nascent, so tuition bills are prestigious than a public one, but students at Shengda footed by parents and extended families, with repayment had paid tuition fees five times those of Zhengzhou expected once the student begins working. The release University because they were promised diplomas that of National College Entrance Examination scores each bore only the parent university’s name, a practice qui- July is now followed by a spate of suicides among farm- etly made illegal in 2003. When students received ers who are ashamed that they cannot afford to pay their diplomas and saw that they had been issued by tuition fees for children who are admitted to college. Shengda—and were thus virtually worthless in the But even with increased tuition income, many uni- tight job market—they demanded either new diplomas versities have a hard time meeting expenses. This past or refunds. The university did not respond, so angry summer it was revealed that one university forced its stu- students trashed the campus and then staged protests dents to sell tour packages for a travel agency it had that took police several days to quell. established in order to earn course credits. The univer- The structural, managerial, and financial reforms sity president defended the policy by arguing that any under way can be seen as part and parcel of an acceler- student who couldn’t sell five tour packages wasn’t ready ated effort to decentralize. This includes the biggest for a market economy. While such cases are the excep-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 41 The Knowledge Race

Racing for Knowledge: International Comparisons

25,000 New Science and Engineering Ph.D.’s

United States Foreign Share of 20,000 New U.S. Degrees

15,000 Doctoral

10,000 Germany Master’s

United Kingdom

5,000 China Engineering Bachelor’s Natural sciences Japan South Korea Social/Behavorial sciences

0 1983 1993 2003 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% Source: U.S. National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006 Source: U.S. National Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006

4.0% The United States remains the developed world’s leader in R&D Spending Around the World science and engineering 3.5% (Percentage of GDP) Ph.D.’s (above left).Although foreigners are awarded a high 3.0% proportion of these doctorates (above), about 75 percent of new Ph.D. holders from over- 2.5% seas plan to stay in the United States.While there are many critics of American R&D— 2.0% arguing that too much of it is defense related, for example— 1.5% outlays are substantial relative to those in other nations (left). R&D outlays in the United 1.0% States totaled some $300 bil- lion in 2004.Academic institu- tions performed $42 billion in 0.5% R&D; government and corpora- tions accounted for most of 0% the remainder. an ion da nce and Italy mark India Spain gdom Jap Turkey Brazil China Fra States Pol Cana FinlandSweden AustraliaherlandsKin Germany Den Net SwitzerlandSouth Korea New Zealand United United Russian FederatSource: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Factbook 2006: Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics

42 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race

50%

Who’s Got College? (Percentage of adult population with an associate’s degree or higher) 40% An extensive system of affordable state universities is a key explanation for the relatively high level of postsecondary education in the United States.The chart (right) includes those who have a two- 30% year associate’s degree or its equivalent. In the United States, about a quarter of the adult population holds a bachelor’s degree. In one recent ranking of the world’s universities (below), U.S. institu- tions accounted for 20 of the top 50. 20%

10%

0% ea an Italy and nce China India Spain Kor mark Jap Turkey Pol Fra FinlandSweden Canada Germany AustraliaDen Netherlands SwitzerlandSouth New Zealand United States United Kingdom Sources: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Factbook 2006: Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics; Chinese and Indian data from Center for International Development, Harvard University, Robert J. Barro and Jong-Wha Lee, CID Working Paper No. 42 (2000) The World’s Top 50 Universities 1 Harvard University (U.S.) 26 University of Texas, Austin (U.S.) 2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.) 27 Johns Hopkins University (U.S.) 3 Cambridge University (U.K.) 28 University College London (U.K.) 4 Oxford University (U.K.) 29 University of Toronto (Can.) 5 Stanford University (U.S.) 30 Edinburgh University (U.K.) 6 University of California, Berkeley (U.S.) 31 Kyoto University (Japan) 7 Yale University (U.S.) 32 University of Pennsylvania (U.S.) 8 California Institute of Technology (U.S.) 33 Monash University (Aus.) 9 Princeton University (U.S.) 34 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switz.) 10 École Polytechnique (France) 35 Manchester University and UMIST (U.K.) 11 Duke University (U.S.) 36 University of Michigan (U.S.) 12 London School of Economics (U.K.) 37 University of California, Los Angeles (U.S.) 13 Imperial College London (U.K.) 38 University of British Columbia (Can.) 14 Cornell University (U.S.) 39 Sydney University (Aus.) 15 Beijing University (China) 40 University of New South Wales (Aus.) 16 Tokyo University (Japan) 41 Hong Kong University (Hong Kong) 17 University of California, San Francisco (U.S.) 42 University of California, San Diego (U.S.) 18 University of Chicago (U.S.) 43 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong) 19 Melbourne University (Aus.) 44 Carnegie Mellon University (U.S.) 20 Columbia University (U.S.) 45 Heidelberg University (Ger.) 21 ETH Zurich (Switz.) 46 Northwestern University (U.S.) 22 National University of Singapore (Sing.) 47 Queensland University (Aus.) 23 Australian National University (Aus.) 48 Nanyang University (Sing.) 24 École Normale Supérieure, Paris (France) 49 Bristol University (U.K.) 25 McGill University (Can.) 50 Indian Institute of Technology (India)

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement (Oct. 28, 2005)

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 43 The Knowledge Race tion, the growing gap between the top universities and apparent epidemic of academic fraud, as professors all the others lays bare serious inequities in what is still, falsify or plagiarize their research to gain promotion in theory, a socialist state. or simply to meet societal expectations and political Complaints about how students are accepted to col- goals. This past spring, China suffered embarrass- lege and how and what they are taught have grown con- ment when it was revealed that a state-funded siderably in recent years, and are receiving more gov- microchip research project at Shanghai’s Jiaotong ernment focus given the growing unemployment rate of University had used stolen technology. Critics point college graduates. Critics of the National College out that such fraud is easy to perpetrate and hard to Entrance Examination argue that the three-day detect because China doesn’t have a rigorous peer knowledge-based test—toward which all elementary review system: Academic boards are often composed and high school education is directed—is a poor means of nonexpert officials, and universities are frequently of selecting students who will become the creative and run by administrators whose primary qualification is innovative thinkers China needs for the 21st century. Communist Party loyalty. China’s universities are trying to adapt their curric- Meanwhile, the popularity of university educa- ula and teaching methods to meet the demands of a fast- tion shows no signs of abating: Nearly nine million changing society. They are encouraging a more inte- people sat for the college entrance exam this year, and grated, cross-departmental approach to study that more than 10 million are expected to do so in 2007. includes humanities and science courses, rather than the Graduate school enrollment is also increasing in narrow specialization of years past. Study of a foreign response to the tight job market. As a popular saying language, usually English, is a requirement, and there is goes, “If you go to university, you regret it for four increasing emphasis on learning practical skills, in areas years, but if you don’t, you regret it for life.” such as information technology. Many universities Discontented university students certainly number require students to complete working internships before among a Chinese leader’s worst nightmares; the com- they are granted a diploma. University teachers are munist government has been forced to deal with signif- being urged to move away from rote education that sti- icant student unrest in every decade of its rule except the fles student curiosity. first. In April, the State Council ordered that all further Of course, it is hard for faculty to adjust to new enrollment expansion be suspended immediately. The teaching styles, and many students complain that pro- Ministry of Education has opened a 24-hour hotline to fessors are more interested in using the university as a help students with financial problems. base from which to moonlight or launch private busi- nesses. Professors grouse that students who have been trained to sit quietly in classrooms and prepare for tests t is important to view these growing pains in do not adapt well to more interactive teaching. Employ- the context of the nation’s overall transforma- ers have their complaints as well, noting that many stu- Ition. Reform came late to higher education, and dents drop out of corporate internships after only a few there will be many more bumps in the road. Political weeks, have unrealistic salary expectations, are insuffi- exigencies will undoubtedly prevent some necessary ciently fluent in English, and lack initiative. changes. Even so, China is likely to emerge with a “We aren’t doing as well as the system in the U.S. stronger higher education system and a more broadly in terms of making contributions to knowledge,” Dean educated public. Fu acknowledged. “Unless we learn how to teach stu- “Universities are state-owned enterprises,” says dents how to think critically—this has much to do Dean Fu. “But they are behind the curve in. . . reform. with innovation.” If you are an industrial [state-owned enterprise], Innovation is one of the key goals of China’s cur- you produce a product—it can be tested and sold. But rent five-year plan, and the country’s universities it is difficult to assess our products because we train have come under tremendous pressure to improve human beings. For us to see our problems takes a very and apply their research. This has contributed to an long time.” ■

44 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

The Humboldt Illusion

The German university, once considered the model for the world, has been stirred from years of slumber. But as long as it remains solely a creature of the state, it will not escape its middling status.

BY MITCHELL G. ASH

While the war in Iraq is laying bare the limita- est cultural institution. Names such as Bologna, Paris, tions of American power and political will in military and Oxford, Cambridge, Kraków, Vienna, and Heidelberg have foreign affairs, in higher education and research, America’s stood for excellence in higher education for hundreds of long-established supremacy remains unquestioned. Now, years. When the modern university emerged in the late Europe is moving forcefully to compete with the U.S. uni- 18th and 19th centuries, Göttingen, Berlin, Leipzig, Munich, versity system. and other cities joined this exclusive group, increasing Ger- Education ministers across the continent have promised many’s prominence, and attracting the attention of Amer- to produce a “European higher education area” by 2010 in ican educators. which a cohort of workers educated in compatible degree As the story goes, the modern research university, with programs can carry their skills and knowledge across the its laboratory instruction in the sciences and research sem- continent’s national boundaries as easily as Americans inar in the humanities, was imported from Germany to move from state to state. The European Union’s budget for America in the late 19th century. American universities scientific research, though small, is growing. European gov- subsequently rose in prominence as their German coun- ernments appear finally to understand that higher educa- terparts declined because of dictatorship, war, and the tion and research policy can no longer be left to local or even country’s division during the Cold War. Today, Germany is national governments alone, because knowledge—especially reunified and Europe is expanding peacefully. Is the home- scientific know-how—is key to economic growth in the land of the research university finally poised to return to the global economy. front rank at the head of Europe’s transformation? At the same time, Europe cherishes its traditions, and Positive change clearly is occurring, but it cannot be next to the Catholic Church, the university is Europe’s old- described as a reimportation of German grandeur from America. Nor is it likely to produce a new academic super- Mitchell G. Ash is professor of modern history at the University of Vienna. power capable of competing on equal terms with the Amer- He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Gestalt Psychol- ogy in German Culture, 1890–1967 (1998), and is editor of German Universi- ican research establishment. ties, Past and Future: Crisis or Renewal? (1997). His primary research fields First, some history. The conventional view that the uni- include the relationships among science, politics, society, and culture in German-speaking Europe since 1850. versity was imported from Germany to America is prob-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 45 The Knowledge Race lematic. German universities were already in deep crisis States have no counterparts in Germany. around 1900, just as they were being acclaimed abroad as the Nearly all German universities are public institutions sup- world standard. Contemporaries complained about over- ported primarily by state (Länder) governments. A few pri- crowded lecture halls, seminars, and laboratories. They vate institutions such as the International University in Bre- warned against the danger of an “intellectual proletariat” of men have attracted attention lately, but their size and their unemployable academics, and an “invasion” of foreigners impact on the system as a whole are small. Total enrollment (and Jews), and they worried about an “exodus of research in higher education institutions currently stands at roughly from the university” to industrial laboratories and elsewhere. 1.8 million. Just over 20 percent of Germans now have more It was only then that the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt than 12 years of schooling, a considerably smaller proportion (1767–1835), now celebrated as the founding spirit of the than the comparable figure of nearly 50 percent in the University of Berlin, were published, and that the ideals he United States. expressed during 1809–10, most notably about freedom of teaching and learning and the unity of teaching and research, became the guiding myths of the German university. Even eform is on the agenda in Germany. Universities in 1900, the claim that the German research university was are altering their administrations, trying to coor- informed by Humboldt’s ideals was not entirely true.Amer- R dinate their curricula, and moving gradually to icans and Germans embraced his ideas roughly simultane- open up new sources of revenue. But many Germans are ously. His vision was a utopia in his own time, and it retains ambivalent about these changes, charging that they amount its power today primarily as a utopian counterpoint to the to an “Americanization.” Part of their fear arises from per- realities of mass higher education. ceptions, or misperceptions, of what is going on in the The claim that “the German university” was imported to United States, and part stems from loyalty to what they take the United States is also not quite accurate. American uni- to be the Humboldt tradition. versities are too diverse to be described as products of a Germans decry a loss of “autonomy,” but the real mean- model imported from any single country. Higher education ing of that word is what is in dispute. Until recently, auton- in America has never been oriented exclusively to science and omy in Germany meant that professors enjoyed academic scholarship, as it supposedly is in Germany. Instead, research- freedom and could determine university policy through oriented graduate schools were added onto bachelor’s degree so-called self-administration. In fact, self-administration programs. Moreover, the original cliché focuses on elite pri- was limited because state governments pay almost all the vate universities, while America’s public institutions have freight and appoint the professors. Universities in Ger- always tried to balance broadly accessible undergraduate many continue to be regarded as welfare-state institutions, education and a variety of practical professional training pro- because Germans, like other Europeans, view higher edu- grams with basic and applied research. The roots of Amer- cation as a public and not a private good. ican higher education’s enormous vitality—institutional Policymakers now recognize that German universities openness and diversity, the union of professional training and need more autonomy to advance as research entities, but by academic research in the same institution, and the combi- this they mean increased management flexibility. That is now nation of outstanding research at the upper levels with broad permitted, and the forms it takes are drawn to some extent accessibility at the undergraduate level—are as much home- from American models. Higher education administration is grown as imported from elsewhere. being professionalized, supported in part by a private insti- In Germany today, 100 of the 351 higher education tute funded by the Bertelsmann Foundation. The corre- institutions are properly considered universities. The sponding shift in power within universities from professors rest are specialized in more limited areas such as tech- toward administrators has potential to create widespread nical disciplines, the arts, social work, education, and unease—for example, when the Rektor (president) and the theology. This compares with about 125 research uni- Kanzler (provost), and not the faculty as a whole, decide on versities and some 2,000 other four-year institutions of the distribution of funds or the appointment of professors. higher learning in the United States. The liberal arts and But the single most important factor that determines the two-year community colleges so common in the United reach of change—or, more precisely, its limits—in higher

46 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race

The University of Berlin, often called the progenitor of the modern university, grew out of the vision of diplomat-philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt. education in Europe is state funding. Real autonomy can many German universities rank at a pretty good middle only come when universities are able to raise money from level internationally, but none is anywhere near the top, multiple sources, and that is not happening. Only in Britain though their strengths in certain fields, such as history and does private revenue account for significant proportions of engineering, are undeniable. Uniformity has its advan- university budgets. One major and increasing source of tages: Degrees have the same value, and real differences in funding outside state budgets in Germany is research money quality need not be discussed openly. from the federal government, the EU, and other public or One reason for the success of American universities, by private sources, but three-fourths or more of university contrast, is their willingness to compete with one another for budgets still comes from the states. Tuition is finally being resources. And for many reasons—not only to buy prestige introduced in Germany, but the amount charged is gener- or get tax deductions—Americans have been extraordinar- ally the equivalent of $600 per semester. At that rate, it will ily willing to give money to their institutions. The availabil- be a long time before student fees provide as much of uni- ity of both government and private resources in America fuels versity budgets as they do in the United States, and the continuous competition among institutions and leads to higher education community worries that opening up new huge salary differences across disciplines, and among pro- revenue streams will lead to corresponding reductions in fessors in similar fields. Could this happen in Germany? state money. Maybe. German universities have introduced “achievement Germans are torn between the goals of uniformity and based salaries” for professors, but base salaries remain sub- competition. German professors are civil servants and in ject to civil service rules, and “achievement” supplements are theory must be treated alike (for example, paid according often not included in the determination of pension benefits. to seniority). As state institutions, universities have to be Significant new state funding is not available for any of this; financed and administered according to similar rules, and existing money is only being redistributed. places must be provided to all qualified students who seek Any serious challenge to American predominance is them. The result, according to available measures, is that not conceivable on the cheap. So where’s the money? Seen

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 47 The Knowledge Race in this light, the current “excellence initiative,” a joint proj- B.S. degrees is illusory. As American accreditation bodies ect of the German federal and state governments, provides and university officials have noted, the structural and con- another example of ambivalence about change. The project tent differences are too great for that. In fact, the new is being trumpeted as a new beginning because it requires bachelor degrees are mainly shortened versions of the spe- universities, for the first time, to compete against one cialized one- or two-subject programs offered in the past, another for support on the basis of specific plans for grad- lacking any general education component. Germans think uate programs or research-oriented “excellence clusters,” that students receive a broad liberal education in high evaluated by peer review. But the total amount involved is school and do not need more of it in college, but that is no the equivalent of $2.4 billion, to be spent by 2011, which is longer true. Specialized elective university-preparatory less than the budget of one top American research univer- courses much like American advanced placement courses sity for one year! Serious German commentators recognize now dominate the last two years of high school. The new that as long as dependence on state financing continues, talk degrees have “Anglo-Saxon” names but will be European of a German Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, or Michigan is in form and content, and may not be easily transferable out- whistling in the dark. side the continent. Despite this limitation, the “Bologna process” could, in time, produce a huge European talent pool of highly mobile, internationally experienced gradu- igher education also has a second purpose— ates ready to take the step up to research-based training. teaching, or the production of qualified partici- The final element of ambivalence about change can be Hpants in the knowledge society. The Bologna summed up in two words: “elite” versus “access.” These Declaration of 1999, which established the goal of the Euro- buzzwords polarize the politics of higher education in Ger- pean Higher Education Area, is not a project of the EU many in ways that would be familiar to Americans. Germans alone, but of the European Cultural Convention, with more take pride in their Nobel Prize winners, but the primary than 50 signatories. Yet Germans are of two minds about focus of German higher education remains on training change in this area, too. Opponents of Bologna warn of a masses of students, and funding per student has long been “farewell to Humboldt,” by which they mean a standardi- insufficient to achieve that goal. Since 1945, several of the zation of curricula that would undermine freedom of teach- best publicly supported higher education systems in the ing and learning, and a separation of undergraduate teach- United States have managed to balance relatively open ing from research. Yet, in the first five years after the Bologna access at the undergraduate level with high-quality research Declaration, 1,900 new bachelor degree programs were at flagship institutions. In Germany, many politicians and approved in Germany, and their content varies widely across academics still regard these two goals as antithetical and institutions. Thus, the process appears to be producing not refuse to invest what it takes to achieve both. standardization, but variety. Departments and programs in some German universi- Germans also worry about the unity of teaching and ties are achieving international standing at the graduate and research, but that has been in doubt in Germany since postdoctoral levels, at the cost of widening separation from 1900. Though many still wish they could make “Hum- their home institutions. The dynamism of such programs boldt” available to all, the division of existing German four- could increase the centrifugal forces pulling high-level to five-year Diplom or Magister programs into two degree research away from mass higher education in Germany. cycles, a bachelor for foundational studies and a master for The best outcome of today’s reforms would be serious the first steps toward research, satisfies a long-standing increases in merit-based research and infrastructure fund- demand from within the German system. It also accords ing, along with changes in university governance that would with the wishes of many students who have little desire to allow increasingly autonomous universities to compete for do academic research. research funds and top students more effectively. It will be The degree names “bachelor” and “master” provoke a challenge to make the benefits of such policies effective for cries of “Americanization.” But the hope that the new whole institutions. But even if reform succeeds, the results three-year European bachelor degrees will be compatible will hardly be enough to make top American institutions fear with the four-year American B.A. or even four- or five-year German competition anytime soon. ■

48 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Tiny at the Top

India has surprised the world by suddenly jumping into the front ranks of emerging economies, but its colleges and universi- ties remain mired in the past, and may be moving backward.

BY PHILIP G. ALTBACH

Mumbai’s venerable Elphinstone College sits versity graduates as their quality. India has the world’s stolidly in a city transformed by India’s economic boom. third-largest system of higher education, with 10.5 million Though Mumbai’s legendary poverty remains painfully students studying at 17,625 institutions. Last year, these insti- apparent, it is home to the thriving Indian stock market, the tutions turned out nearly 700,000 graduates in science Bollywood film industry, and a burgeoning tech sector. and engineering disciplines alone. However, in a recent Even the city’s name (formerly Bombay) is different. Yet opinion survey, human resources managers at multina- when I returned to Elphinstone recently after a 40-year tional companies in India said they would consider hiring absence I found the college barely changed, its extraordinary only 10 to 25 percent of Indian graduates. 19th-century Indo-Islamic-Gothic main buildings lightly Virtually all of the world’s academic systems are renovated, its classrooms and library much as I had left them shaped like a pyramid, with a small, elite sector at the top, long ago. The condition of Elphinstone, one of India’s most a large, relatively unselective middle, and a bottom usu- prestigious colleges, is a telling sign of the state of higher ally composed of vocationally oriented postsecondary education in the world’s largest democracy. Under- institutions. Patterns of funding, government support, investment has led to stagnation. and management necessarily vary for each sector, with Stagnation is no longer a word that people reflexively costs per student in the elite sector much higher. India apply to India. Starting in the early 1990s, the nation rock- long ago chose a pyramid with a very broad bottom and eted to prominence as the world’s second-fastest-growing a miniscule top, and it shows few signs of changing. Its large economy. Moreover, it is growing not mainly by the policy has been to spend little on higher education and standard means of low-wage manufacturing, like China, but spread its money widely, devoting only 0.37 percent of its through the provision of knowledge-intensive services and gross domestic product (GDP) to postsecondary educa- software, with globally recognized homegrown corpora- tion. Only countries such as Japan and South Korea, tions such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services in the where the vast majority of students attend largely unsub- lead. In the coming year, however, these two high-tech sidized private universities, approach India’s low gov- giants will hire thousands of college graduates from abroad. ernment spending levels. China spends 0.50 percent of The problem is not so much the quantity of Indian uni- GDP on colleges and universities, while the United States

Philip G. Altbach is Monan Professor of Higher Education and director spends 1.41 percent and the United Kingdom 1.07 per- of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College. His cent. Even more remarkably, the share of Indian GDP many books include The Struggle to Compete: Building World-Class Uni- versities in Asia and Latin America (forthcoming), of which he is coeditor. devoted to higher education has hardly budged in years.

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 49 The Knowledge Race

As a result of this approach, the entire Indian system tion at best. “Poor facilities, abysmal teaching, no account- strains even to achieve mediocrity. More fatefully, its top tier ability...a caricatural education,” is the summary offered is stuck in a state of arrested development. The absence of by Indian-American academics Devesh Kapur and Sunil a significant group of world-class universities is perhaps the Khilnani. Faculty members, though not badly paid, have lit- most serious impediment to India’s ambition to build a tle power and limited job security, and rarely have a role in sophisticated knowledge-based economy. determining their own curricula. Pedagogy is based on rote learning and “teaching to the exam.” Only about one-third of the nation’s 472,000 academics hold Ph.D.’s. It is taken t the pinnacle of the nation’s higher education for granted that many professors will not show up for class; establishment stand the seven Indian Institutes some supplement their incomes by insisting that students Aof Technology (IITs), which have won fame take their private “coaching classes.” around the world for their prowess in engineering, along As in many other developing countries, moreover, higher with five institutes of management, the All India Insti- education is extremely politicized. Local politicians use col- tute of Medical Sciences, and a handful of schools such leges for patronage, awarding student slots as well as staff as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, focused positions—from janitor to professor—to supporters. Con- on the physical sciences, and the Tata Institute of Social siderations of caste, region, and other factors are common Sciences. But all of these institutes are fairly specialized, in academic appointments and other hires. The institutions lacking a university’s full panoply of research and teach- are riddled with petty politics and low-level corruption. ing programs. And they are small. The seven IITs have A significant part of the higher education system’s woes a total of 30,000 students, about as many as a single state stem from a byzantine structure that stifles diversification university campus in the United States. and innovation. Under the Indian constitution, education Despite their justified renown, the IITs do not appear is mainly the responsibility of India’s 31 states, which pro- near the top of international rankings of universities. (In The vide most of the (scant) funding—though the central gov- Times Higher Education Supplement list shown on page 43, ernment exercises significant regulatory power and funds they rank 50th.) Yet their graduates can compete with the parts of the system directly, including the institutes of tech- best anywhere in the world. Alas, that is precisely what nology. Most of India’s colleges are legally private many choose to do, going abroad to take jobs or pursue institutions, established by religious groups, ethnic or lin- advanced degrees and not returning. The United States guistic communities, charitable trusts, and the like. Only 30 alone is home to an estimated 40,000 IIT alumni, many of percent of them receive government financial support; them highly successful. (Large numbers of engineering most of the rest are “unaided” and must rely on tuition and graduates in every country, including the United States, take other funding sources. Almost all of the colleges are affiliated more lucrative jobs in business management rather than with a university and subject to regulations governing such stay in engineering.) matters as faculty salaries and entrance requirements, Apart from the specialized institutes, there are some out- which has the effect of stifling any healthy competition. In standing master’s- and doctoral-level academic depart- recent years, however, a few of the best colleges have ments in India’s universities, and a few schools have fairly achieved independent legal status, and seven completely high standards—such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University independent private universities have been launched. in New Delhi, one of the few institutions sponsored directly India is not blind to the dire condition of its higher edu- by the central government. (Most public universities are cation. For more than 50 years, official commissions have funded by the state governments.) A small but significant been offering wise reform proposals. The first IIT was born cadre of undergraduate colleges throughout the country has in 1951 in a moment of enlightenment. But very little has developed high standards and attracts excellent students. changed. The challenges have seemed overwhelming, But with few exceptions these places lack state-of-the-art money has been scarce, and political will appears absent. equipment, falling far below international standards. A discouraging reminder of the obstacles to improve- The swollen middle tier of Indian higher education is full ment came this past spring. Even as the blue-ribbon of universities and colleges that provide a mediocre educa- National Knowledge Commission was at work on new

50 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race

These New Delhi medical students were among the many critics who denounced the Indian government’s April 2006 decision to increase quotas for certain disadvantaged groups to 50 percent at elite institutions as a deadly blow against the few bastions of meritocracy in India’s education system. reform proposals, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh uni- a handful of highly visible institutions while doing nothing laterally announced a dramatic change in the country’s to remedy decades of inadequate funding of education at “reservation” policies: At the IITs and other top institu- every level that have left nearly half the Indian population tions, which were already required to set aside 22 percent illiterate. of the seats in each entering class for the former untouch- India is a country of enormous potential, with a huge able caste and other disadvantaged groups, the quota would pool of talented young people who are eager for educa- be increased to 50 percent. In the explosive reaction that fol- tion and the opportunity to participate in the knowledge lowed, two members of the commission resigned, decrying economy. Yet to fulfill its potential, India must develop what one called the “insidious poison” of politicization. It was an elite, internationally competitive higher education all the more discouraging that Singh himself is a former aca- sector even as it greatly improves the general quality of demic and world-class economist who must have known education, from the universities all the way down very well that this step, however laudable the professed through the primary schools. There are few signs that goal of reducing social inequality, would destroy interna- India’s leadership is prepared to take the necessary steps, tional competitiveness at India’s top institutions and deal a and recent events indicate that lately it has even been powerful blow to the fragile meritocratic ethos in Indian moving backward. A visitor to Elphinstone College a higher education. Singh apparently felt compelled to bow decade from now likely will find it, along with the rest of to the left-wing members of his coalition government. Crit- India’s colleges and universities, in much the same sad ics were quick to point out the cynicism of meddling with state of gentle dilapidation and neglect it is in today. ■

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 51 THE WILSON QUARTERLY

Why the Liberal Arts Still Matter

Never has a broad liberal education been more necessary than it is today, and never have colleges and universities done such a poor job of delivering it. Radical measures are needed.

BY MICHAEL LIND

Everyone is in favor of liberal education. and, in the case of Scripture, Hebrew as well). Praise of its benefits is found in countless university What brought all of these different elements together commencement addresses and reports by commissions in the liberal education model was their purpose: train- on higher education. But it seems that nobody can agree ing citizens for public life, whether as rulers or voters. on what liberal education is. Liberal education is, first and foremost, training for cit- For some, liberal education means a general educa- izenship. The idea of a liberal education as a “gentleman’s tion, as opposed to specialized training for a particular education” reflects the fact that, until recent genera- career. For others, it refers to a subject matter—“the tions, citizenship was restricted in practice if not law to humanities” or “the liberal arts.” Still others think of lib- a rich minority of the population in republics and con- eral education in terms of “the classics” or “the great stitutional monarchies. In a democratic republic with books.” universal suffrage, the ideal—difficult as it may be to All of these conceptions of liberal education are realize—is a liberal education for all citizens. right—but each is only partly right. The tradition of lib- Liberal education, in different versions, formed the eral education in Europe and the Americas is a synthe- basis of Western higher education from the Renaissance sis of several elements. Three of these have already been recovery of Greco-Roman culture to the late 19th century. mentioned: nonspecialized general education; an In the last century, however, liberal education as the basis emphasis on a particular set of scholarly disciplines, the for higher education in the United States and other nations humanities; and acquaintance with a canon of classics. has been almost completely demolished by opposing The traditional Western synthesis included two other forces, the most important of which is utilitarianism, with important elements: training in rhetoric and logic, and its demand that universities be centers of practical pro- the study of the languages in which the classics and fessional training. So completely has the tradition been commentary on them were written (Greek and Latin, defeated that most of the defenders of liberal education do not fully understand what they are defending. Michael Lind, the Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foun- The first thing that must be said about liberal edu- dation, is the author of The American Way of Strategy (2006) and What Lincoln Believed (2005). cation is that the word “liberal” is misleading. In this con-

52 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Allegory of the Liberal Arts (1475–95), by Biagio di Antonio

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 53 The Knowledge Race text, “liberal” has nothing to do with political liberalism, art of prettifying falsehood. In modern, democratic or “liberation of the mind” (a false etymology that is societies, rhetoric is often equated with bombast— sometimes given by people who should know better). “mere rhetoric.” But the great theorists of rhetoric, “Liberal arts” is a translation of the Latin term from the Athenian Isocrates to the Romans Cicero and artes liberales. Artes means crafts or skills, and lib- Quintilian, insisted that their ideal was the moral and erales comes from liber, or free man, an individual who patriotic citizen, and manuals of rhetoric subordi- is both politically free, as a citizen with rights, and eco- nated flowery language to clarity of thought. nomically independent, as a member of a wealthy General education. On hearing his son Alexander leisure class. In other words, “liberal arts” originally play the flute, King Philip of Macedon is reported to meant something like “skills of the citizen elite” or have asked, “My son, have you not learned to play the “skills of the ruling class.” Cicero contrasted the artes flute too well?” A governing elite, whether in a repub- quae libero sunt dignae (arts worthy of a free man) lic, a monarchy, or a dictatorship, must know a lot with the artes serviles, the servile arts or lower-class about many subjects but not too much about any par- trades. As the Renaissance humanist Pier Paolo Verg- ticular subject. An aristocrat or general should show erio wrote in “The Character and Studies Befitting a some accomplishment in arts such as poetry, scholar- Free-Born Youth” (1402–03), “We will call those stud- ship, music, and sports, but only as an amateur, not a ies liberal, then, which are worthy of a free man.” professional. Even in modern democracies, the same Once “liberal arts” is understood in its original logic applies. U.S. senators and presidents must know sense as “elite skills,” then the usefulness of elements enough to be well informed about many subjects, of a traditional liberal arts education for a ruling elite from global warming to military strategy to Federal becomes apparent: Reserve policy. But a senator or president who neg- Classical languages. In the last 200 years, as the lected other issues while devoting too much time to study of Greek and Latin declined, its proponents studying one favorite subject would be guilty of dere- often argued that learning these two languages was liction of duty. valuable in itself, or that it provided “mental disci- A focus on the humanities. While the liberally pline.” But such far-fetched arguments were unnec- educated elite could master the basics of any subject, essary for nearly two millennia. In their day, the rela- subjects in the the humanities or liberal arts were of tively unsophisticated Romans needed to read and particular importance in the education of rulers, in understand Greek in order to read most of what was republics and autocracies alike. Studies in these areas, worth reading on subjects from philosophy, medi- according to Romans such as Cicero and Seneca, cine, and military tactics to astronomy and agricul- helped an individual cultivate humanitas, by which is ture. Greek was also the lingua franca of the eastern meant not humanitarianism (although education Mediterranean, shared by the Romans with their sub- might promote understanding of others), but rather jects. Subsequent generations of Europeans and the higher, uniquely “human” faculties of the mind and Americans learned Latin and, sometimes, Greek for character, as opposed to the lower faculties needed by equally practical reasons. peasants and craftsmen, those human beasts of bur- Rhetoric and logic. The members of the ruling den (once again, the class bias of the liberal arts tra- class—whether they were citizens in democratic dition is evident). Athens or republican Rome, or courtiers in a In the Middle Ages, the “seven liberal arts” came to monarchy—were expected to debate issues of public be thought of as the trivium (grammar, dialectic or policy. The Greeks and Romans naturally emphasized logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, rhetoric and logic. Rhetoric helped you persuade the music, geometry, and astronomy)—in essence, literacy voters or the king, while logic permitted you to rip your and numeracy. Renaissance humanists, rebelling opponent’s arguments to shreds. against the logic chopping they associated with Beginning with Plato, philosophers and theolo- medieval Christian Scholasticism, downgraded the gians often railed against rhetoric as the seductive mathematical subjects in favor of their own list of the

54 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race

“humanities,” including grammar, rhetoric, politics, of liberal education is based on the Socratic method is history, and ethics. Mathematics, however, survived as completely incorrect. part of the liberal arts curriculum in the West until the The premodern Western liberal arts curriculum 19th century. served a variety of governing classes quite well for The classics. Like most premodern societies, the two millennia. In colonial America and the early premodern West viewed the past as the source of wis- United States, most colleges were Protestant denom- dom and virtue, not as an outmoded former stage in inational institutions whose curricula would have a history of never-ending progress. Whatever their been familiar to Romans and Renaissance other studies, elite Greeks were expected to be famil- alike. For example, in the 1750s Harvard required iar with Homer and other ancient poets, who were every applicant to be able “extempore to read, con- viewed as sources of knowledge, not just aesthetic strue, and parse Tully [Cicero], Virgil, or such like pleasure. The Romans, and later, the Europeans and common classical authors, and to write Latin in prose, Americans, added Virgil, Horace, and other Latin authors to the canon. ONCE LIBERAL ARTS is understood in Some Christians in the later Roman Empire and its original sense as “elite skills,” its useful- the post-Roman West viewed the pagan classics ness for a ruling elite becomes apparent. with suspicion. But in Catholic and Protestant countries alike, a version of the Greco-Roman gentleman’s education, supple- and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least in mented with liberal doses of Christian ethics and the- the rules of the Prosodia, and to read, construe, and ology, provided the basis of higher education from parse ordinary Greek, as in the New Testament, the Renaissance until the 19th century. Isocrates, or such like, and decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs.” Thomas Jefferson thought that before being admitted to college, students should ’ve said nothing so far about philosophy, for good learn “Greek, Latin, geography, and the higher reason. The founding fathers of liberal education branches of numerical arithmetic.” Iare the Roman statesman and thinker Cicero and The crisis of liberal education began in the late 19th the unjustly neglected Athenian orator Isocrates, a century and continued until the middle of the 20th. contemporary of Plato and Aristotle. Isocrates One by one, the traditional elements of a liberal arts ridiculed the Socratic philosophers for wasting their education came under assault from reformers. Utili- time on metaphysical puzzles instead of educating tarians argued for replacing the study of Greek and virtuous statesmen and citizens. This skepticism Latin with the study of modern languages. Rhetoric toward metaphysical philosophy and theology was was disparaged, on the grounds that it was unscientific shared by the great figures of the Western humanist or undemocratic. General education was challenged by tradition, from Cicero and Seneca to Petrarch, Eras- vocational training for jobs in the new industrial econ- mus, Montaigne, and Hume. It was only in the 20th omy. The subject matter of the traditional humanities century that Americans, influenced by 19th-century was carved up between the “social sciences,” including German thought, began to treat Socrates, Plato, and mathematical economics and political science, and Aristotle, rather than orators such as Isocrates and the “arts” or “fine arts,” which romantics redefined as Cicero and poets such as Homer and Virgil, as the the realm of the nonrational and “creative.” Of the founding fathers of Western civilization. The asser- traditional humanities, only history and philosophy tion, frequently encountered today, that the tradition retained their premodern forms.

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 55 The Knowledge Race

They may not get Plato, but they’ll still get jobs.

The Anglo-American liberal arts college, founded War II. First, a number of universities made an under- in emulation of Renaissance Italian academies, was graduate liberal arts education a prerequisite for specialized increasingly remodeled along the lines of the new professional training in law, medicine, and other fields. German research university, whose main purpose was Second, the study of Latin and Greek was abandoned in rigorous, original scholarship. Johns Hopkins Uni- favor of study of “the great books” in English translation. versity, founded in 1876, was the first German-style The importance of the first reform was pointed out by research university in the United States. By World the cultural critic Louis Menand in a 2004 lecture, “After the War I, most prestigious universities in the United Liberal Arts.” In the early 1900s, Charles Eliot Norton, the States had rebuilt themselves along German lines. president of Harvard, compelled the university’s profes- Increasingly, that Germanic degree, the Ph.D., became sional schools to accept only applicants with undergradu- a requirement for college teaching. In German fash- ate degrees. “Eliot’s reform, once it had been widely adopted, ion, professors concentrated on research and writing saved the liberal arts,” according to Menand, by making a for their specialist colleagues, rather than on under- generalist liberal arts undergraduate education the pre- graduate teaching. In the new research university, the condition for a specialized professional education. original purpose of higher education—producing well- The other reform that arguably rescued the liberal arts rounded, versatile civic leaders who shared a common from extinction was the replacement of study of the classi- cultural tradition—came to seem anachronistic. cal languages with study of the classics in translation. This reform is associated with President Charles Maynard Hutchins of the University of Chicago, who introduced the he amazing thing is that liberal education survived “Great Books” program in the 1930s. Columbia University at all. It was rescued thanks only to two measures adopted a similar approach at the same time. In addition, T initiated between the late 19th century and World Columbia turned a propagandistic course

56 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 The Knowledge Race instructing U.S. servicemen on Western civilization, whose Today, as so often since the late 19th century, the chief preservation was the supposed goal of the war, into the first danger to liberal education comes not from radical ide- of many “Western Civ” core curriculum programs. Classics ologies but from the utilitarian center, which views the departments dwindled in resources and prestige as other university as the training ground for the U.S. work force. disciplines assumed many of their functions. In its attempt to become the governing philosophy of the As a result of these reforms, by the mid-20th century a modern American university, utilitarianism has new kind of undergraduate liberal arts education had taken advanced in two great waves. The first began with the shape in the United States, one that would have puzzled importation of the model of the German research uni- Thomas Jefferson and Cicero. Rhetoric had been down- versity around 1900. The second, originating after World graded to “composition,” also known derisively as “bonehead War II, started with the growth of government and cor- English,” and logic was encountered, if at all, in math classes. porate funding of university research, combined with the The chief emphasis was no longer on rhetoric and logic, but proliferation of professional schools. on the study of classic and contemporary literature, in Eng- A third wave of utilitarianism may be on its way. lish translation rather than in the original languages. The The economic and technological progress of China and humanities still included history and philosophy. But polit- India already is prompting calls for more emphasis in ical science had torn away the study of politics, while political economy, now called economics, also TRADITIONALISTS AND multi- claimed the status of a social science. This tilted the defi- culturalists in the humanities are fighting nition of the humanities away from the subjects of for a few planks from a ship that has practical concern to states- men and citizens and toward already sunk. the fine or “creative” arts. In the 1950s and ’60s, this new kind of liberal arts education managed to hold the American education on math, science, and technology, menace of vocationalism at bay for a while. In the booming as in the post-Sputnik era of competition with the Soviet post–World War II economy, liberal arts enrollment Union. increased. But by the 1970s and ’80s, a troubled economy Another factor is demand by students and their par- and an uncertain job market pressured students to focus on ents. Most of the jobs being created in the United States career training. At the same time, increased competition for are low-wage, low-prestige service-sector jobs—waiter, admission to selective professional schools inspired a grow- food preparer, retail worker, nursing aide—that do not ing number of undergraduates to follow “pre-professional” require college degrees. In these circumstances, it is tracks. only to be expected that most students going to college In recent decades, debates over humanities curricu- will focus on the high-wage professions rather than the lums and Western Civ courses among multiculturalists, liberal arts, and that they will prefer specialized, pre- postmodernists, and traditionalists have attracted consid- professional undergraduate courses of study that max- erable public attention. But the rival sides are fighting for a imize their chances of admission to elite professional few planks from a ship that has already sunk. By the begin- schools. ning of the 21st century, only three percent of American In an era when business elites and government undergraduates were choosing a liberal arts major. The officials are demanding more scientists and engineers most popular undergraduate majors in the United States to help the United States compete with Asia, while were business (20 percent), education (eight percent), and most students go to college in the hope of obtaining a health care (seven percent). well-paid job, any project to make the liberal arts the

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 57 The Knowledge Race basis of undergraduate education will almost cer- of driving up the fees of professionals by restricting the tainly fail. Insisting on a broad curriculum by means competition. And paying for every American to obtain of distribution requirements for all pre-professional at least two degrees and to enjoy seven or more years of students is probably the most that defenders of liberal higher education would be prohibitively expensive. education can do. What if Charles Eliot Norton was right that liberal gen- eral education should precede specialized professional education—but wrong about the age range? When the his raises the question: Why have liberal educa- modern research university and the modern professional tion in the modern world at all? The argument schools were being introduced in the late 19th century, T for liberal education, from Isocrates and Cicero some American educators argued that the high school onward, has been that the leaders of society, even if they rather than the four-year liberal arts college should be the practice one or another profession, need to be well- site of liberal education. Indeed, that was the course chosen rounded, well-informed generalists if they are to make by the nation that gave us the research university. While sound decisions in public and private life. Even in a most German secondary students today receive an educa- society transformed by science and technology, the need tion that is tilted toward the vocational, the elite high school, for a liberally educated elite remains. or gymnasium, has long served as the equivalent of the Defending liberal education against the excesses of American liberal arts college. College-level liberal arts edu- professionalism in elite schools, then, is a priority. But cation is also offered at the secondary level in many other even if that campaign succeeds, a second question will European countries, and even in a handful of America’s remain: In a democratic republic, isn’t it necessary for all more rigorous high schools. citizens to have at least the basics of a liberal education? At a time when many universities are forced to provide Even if their participation in public life is limited to remedial instruction to high school graduates, the idea of a voting occasionally, citizens cannot adequately perform quality basic liberal arts education in high school may seem that minimal duty unless they have the training in rea- utopian. But consider the social benefits. Because public soning, rhetoric, and fact that in aristocratic and patri- high schools are free, every citizen could obtain the advan- cian republics was needed only by the few. tages of a basic liberal arts education, without the need for Is the democratic dream of a gentleman’s classical wealthy parents, student loans, or scholarships. education for every citizen impossible? Not necessarily. In the late 19th century, before Norton’s reform, it was The century-long takeover of the university campus by possible to go directly to professional schools from second- science, business, and the professions cannot be reversed. ary schools. At many schools, for example, law degrees But the defenders of universal liberal education might were undergraduate degrees. Suppose that this trend had consider retreating to the more defensible ground of sec- continued. If it were possible to go directly from high school ondary education. to law school or medical school, there would undoubtedly As we have seen, the demands of liberal education be more lawyers and doctors from working-class and mid- and professional education were balanced for a few gen- dle-class backgrounds. erations by universities that made an undergraduate Making high school, rather than the four-year college, the degree a requirement for professional education. But this basis of liberal arts education would mark a return to the compromise was already breaking down by the late older Western tradition, in which elite education ended and 20th century, as an increasing number of students who adult life began much earlier. And because high school atten- planned to go on to professional school chose specialized dance is compulsory and universal, the dream of the democ- vocational or pre-professional bachelor’s degrees. ratization of liberal education might be achieved, at least in The two-degree system can also be criticized for con- a rudimentary form, in high school rather than in college. tributing to inequality in the United States. Whatever its Reforms like these can be debated. Of one thing we can legitimate purposes, the requirement of an expensive be certain: Liberal education in some form will survive, as four-year undergraduate degree prior to three or more long as societies need not only leaders but also ordinary cit- years of law school or medical school has had the effect izens who know how to read, write, and reason. ■

58 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Nuclear Power Both Sides

After the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, the United States wrote off the expansion of civilian nuclear power as a dead issue. Now, with oil prices and anxiety about global warming on the rise, this energy source is getting a long second look. Here, advocates on each side of this complex issue make the case for and against nuclear power. The authors continue the debate with rejoinders at the WQ website, www.wilsonquarterly.com.

Nuclear Power Is the Future

BY MAX SCHULZ

In the early morning hours of March 28, As the turbine and reactor at Unit No. 2 turned off, the 1979, a pump that provided cooling water to Unit No. 2 pressure in the nuclear portion of the plant began to build at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station excessively. In such situations, a valve should pop open, suddenly broke down. The 880-megawatt reactor, releasing coolant and thereby relieving the pressure. In this located on an island in the Susquehanna River 10 miles case, the valve did. But it failed to close when the pressure from the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, was oper- decreased. It was stuck. ating at close to full capacity. Worse, according to the federal government’s subse- When the cooling pump failed, the turbine and the quent investigation, “signals available to the operator failed reactor automatically shut off, as they had been pro- to show that the valve was still open.” As a result, “cooling grammed to do. But an entire nuclear power plant water poured out of the stuck-open valve.” As coolant con- doesn’t halt operations as easily as one flips a switch. The tinued to escape, unbeknownst to the engineers in the con- other parts of the plant that are going full-bore have to trol room, the reactor began to overheat. It was melting ramp down, too, in a carefully managed process. The safe down, and, terrifyingly, Three Mile Island’s overseers shutdown of a nuclear plant relies partly on didn’t know it. automation—an elaborate, sophisticated series of com- After that accident 27 years ago, a consensus quickly puters, pumps, valves, and mechanical checks and emerged that nuclear energy was too inherently dangerous balances—and partly on human oversight. for the United States to pursue a future powered by splitting the atom. More than 60 nuclear reactor units at various Max Schulz is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. stages in the permitting and construction pipeline were

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 59 Nuclear Power: Both Sides canceled in the aftermath of Three Mile Island. So complete But such a renaissance is not a sure thing. Legitimate was this rout that not a single new nuclear power plant has questions remain about safety, about the licensing process been ordered since. The disaster at Chernobyl in the Soviet for new reactors, and, most important, about how to han- Union seven years later seemed merely to confirm that dle and where to store spent nuclear fuel. Failure to answer nuclear power was dead. these questions adequately could imperil the nuclear revival The obituaries written for U.S. nuclear power in the so many have proclaimed is nigh. wake of Three Mile Island were, however, premature. True, the industry suffered greatly, but it did not die entirely. In fact, under the radar, nuclear energy produc- he beauty of nuclear fission is its ability to derive so tion has actually expanded. In 2005, the 103 U.S. com- much from so little. The energy density of nuclear mercial nuclear reactors operating in 31 states generated T fuel far exceeds that of any other energy source. As 782 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), three times more power my Manhattan Institute colleague Peter Huber has noted, than in 1979. “A bundle of enriched-uranium fuel rods that could fit into Not every nuclear plant in the pipeline was can- a two-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen would power celled after Three Mile Island. In fact, there are 50 per- [New York City] for a year: furnaces, espresso machines, cent more commercial nuclear reactors in operation subways, streetlights, stock tickers, Times Square, today. More important, massive gains in operating effi- everything—even our cars and taxis, if we could conve- ciency have helped boost nuclear plants’ output. At the niently plug them into the grid.” time of the accident, nuclear facilities ran at about 60 Pound for pound, coal stores twice as much energy as percent of their capacity; they were offline for several wood. Oil packs the same amount of energy that coal does months a year for refueling and maintenance. Today this into half the weight and space. But a gram of uranium 235 work is done in weeks, not months, and plants can run contains as much energy as four tons of coal. This is why at nearly 90 percent of capacity. From 1990 to 2002, splitting the atom was key to inventing the new type of bomb these gains helped add the equivalent of 26 new, that could win World War II. And it is why President standard-sized 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plants to Dwight D. Eisenhower, an early proponent of commercial the U.S. power supply system. nuclear power, could argue that atomic energy might trans- While the United States has been suffering its crisis form medicine, agriculture, and, in particular, electricity gen- of confidence about nuclear energy, much of the rest of eration. It succeeded on all counts. world has shrugged off such anxieties. Today, more than At times, enthusiasm for nuclear power’s potential bor- 300 nuclear reactors produce electricity in nearly 30 dered on the hyperbolic. In 1954, the chairman of the other countries. The vast majority have come online Atomic Energy Commission famously predicted in a speech since Three Mile Island. More than 130 new plants are to science writers, “Our children will enjoy in their homes under construction worldwide. electrical energy too cheap to meter.” Though to this day Now, the United States seems poised to catch up. Today, there remains speculation about whether he was referring we routinely hear about a “renaissance” or “revival” of to nuclear fission or perhaps to something farther off in the nuclear energy. The recognition that nuclear power is vital future, such as fusion power, the “too-cheap-to-meter” to global energy security in the 21st century has been grow- promise has been attached to commercial nuclear power ing for some time. Public opinion on the relative dangers and generation ever since. It is cited frequently by antinuclear benefits of atomic energy is shifting, particularly in the activists as evidence that the technology’s proponents have United States. Opinion polls routinely show that a major- their heads in the clouds. ity of Americans support nuclear energy. That support Just as there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is translated into favorable provisions in the Energy Policy Act no such thing as “too cheap to meter”—though in some of 2005, which specialists claim will facilitate the con- respects nuclear energy isn’t all that far off the mark. The struction of new nuclear plants in the United States. Within generation of electricity from nuclear power entails sig- the next 10 years, we are told, we should see the first new nificant costs. By and large, however, these are capital nuclear power plant in decades get licensed and built. investments having to do with construction and trans-

60 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Nuclear Power: Both Sides mission. Because a plant requires so little uranium to of the growth in U.S. energy demand in the last quarter- generate so much power, once a nuclear plant is built—and century has been met not by oil but by electricity, most the expected life span of a conventional reactor is 40 to 60 notably in the information technology and telecommuni- years, perhaps longer—the price of fuel is close to irrele- cations industries. Today, nearly three of every five dollars vant in figuring the cost of electricity. The nuclear indus- of U.S. gross domestic product come from industries and try boasts of providing some of the cheapest electricity on services that run on electricity. In 1950, just one in five dol- the grid, at an average production cost (after a plant is lars of GDP was dependent on electrical power. built) of less than 1.8 cents per kWh. These costs are close This shift from oil to electricity points to the gradual to 40 percent lower than they were just two decades ago. fulfillment of President George W. Bush’s goal, expressed On its merely pecuniary merits, then, nuclear power in the 2006 State of the Union address, that our nation looks pretty good compared to the alternatives. Electricity “move beyond a petroleum-based economy.” Oil will generated from natural gas can cost anywhere from remain critical to the energy economy for as long as any- three cents per kWh to more than six cents, one can foresee, since the transportation sector depends depending on the market price for gas. Elec- Reactor on it. But as America’s economic growth in the Inter- tricity from renewable energies such as vessel wind, solar, or biomass can cost anywhere Turbine generator from two to six times as much as electricity from nuclear power. Only coal can provide electricity at prices to rival those of nuclear energy, but coal has evident envi- Core conditioning Low-pressure system turbocompressor ronmental drawbacks tied to High-pressure pollution and climate change. turbocompressor Given the economics, it is little wonder that nuclear power has gained a strong Starter foothold in America’s energy econ- blower system omy. Coal accounts for half of all elec- tricity generated in the United States. Nuclear power’s share is about one-fifth, roughly as much electricity as is generated by natural gas. (Worldwide, nuclear power provides 16 percent of all elec- tricity.) Hydropower accounts for about six percent. Fash- ionable but uneconomic renewable energies such as wind and solar power generate less than half of one percent of Pebble-bed reactors, still under development, are fueled by graphite- America’s electricity. encased uranium pebbles (in the reactor vessel at left) rather than rods, reducing waste products as well as the risks of meltdown and proliferation. Total world energy demand is expected to double by 2050. Over the next two decades, global appetites for elec- tricity are expected to increase 75 percent over current lev- net age continues, sparked by electrons dancing along els. Electricity demand is predicted to skyrocket in the wires and fiber-optic cables, it will require ever more United States as well, continuing a recent trend that has massive amounts of electricity. Nuclear power seems a gone largely unnoticed by many pundits and energy indus- promising solution to this need. try observers. Though the news media constantly broadcast The questions about nuclear power, however, are our angst about reliance on petroleum, particularly oil from not merely economic. If they were, there would be little the Middle East, the most significant energy development controversy about whether to split atoms. Since in recent times has been the increasing electrification of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during the Cold War, and America’s amazing economic engine. More than 85 percent particularly in the wake of Three Mile Island and Cher-

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 61 Nuclear Power: Both Sides nobyl, legitimate inquiries into the safety, security, and unfounded. And for all of the nuclear industry’s protestations environmental effects of nuclear energy have dominated about its safety record amassed almost 3,000 years of col- the debate. lective reactor operating experience, that record will mean With regard to the incidents at Three Mile Island and nothing if even one catastrophe occurs. As one industry Chernobyl, these objections don’t quite seem fair. Opponents trade group executive recently acknowledged, “With nuclear of nuclear energy seized on these episodes to argue that energy, an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere.” nuclear power is inherently unsafe, and they found a recep- In truth, every energy source has drawbacks, many tive audience in the United States and Europe. But a closer related to safety. A large pile of coal, left alone, eventually will examination of the two events tells a different story. smolder and combust. Petroleum is highly flammable. God willing, Three Mile Island will be remembered as Windmills kill birds and, arguably, disrupt the Navy’s sonar. the worst nuclear accident in American history. But nobody Hydroelectric dams kill fish, divert rivers, and threaten ecosystems with soil erosion. The question isn’t whether the dangers associated with THE ARGUMENT THAT nuclear power nuclear energy outweigh those from coal or petroleum should be a critical component in dealing or the Grand Coulee Dam. Of course they do. The with climate concerns is quite new. question is whether the enormous benefits derived from nuclear power—which died. Nobody was even injured. Despite the scary-sounding pound for pound outweigh those of any other fuel or energy partial core meltdown that occurred, the nearby community technology—are worth accepting its risks. was never really endangered. The massive concrete con- Critics also cite concerns about the spread of dan- tainment structures that are standard on almost all nuclear gerous nuclear waste that can be used to manufacture reactors did their job and ensured that no radiation leaked. nuclear weapons. But the latest technology research is Chernobyl was different. The 1986 accident spiraled geared toward developing systems that resist prolifera- out of control partly because of human error by the Soviet- tion. China and Russia are expected to join the United trained engineers, but more because of the nuclear plant’s States, France, Canada, Japan, Britain, and other nations tragically flawed design. Many reactors built in the Soviet era, later this year in the Generation IV effort, an interna- as Chernobyl was, did not feature the containment buildings tional consortium explicitly devoted to fostering tech- found at virtually every other facility around the world. A nologies that limit proliferation risks. toxic plume of radioactive fallout drifted across the Soviet Meanwhile, South Africa and China are pioneering the Union, the rest of Europe and Asia, and even as far as North development of smaller, “pebble-bed” reactors that operate America. Hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine and differently from reactors typically found in the United Belarus were forced to relocate permanently. Several States. Pebble-bed reactors use uranium-specked graphite dozen people perished in the first few months after the balls, rather than rods, for fuel. Conventional fuel rod assem- accident. A recent United Nations report suggested that blies must be removed before they are completely used up, as many as 4,000 people will die from radiation-induced but pebble-bed fuel balls burn until they are depleted, less- cancers tied to the disaster. Had Chernobyl been built with ening the chance for trafficking in dangerous nuclear waste. the containment structures standard in nuclear reactors In addition, the Bush administration has proposed a the world over, that tragedy could have been avoided. new method for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Repro- Still, the critics of nuclear power are right: Nuclear power cessing traditionally has entailed recycling the remaining is dangerous. Dealing with radioactive materials entails very uranium from spent fuel rods after removal from a reactor real peril. Concerns about the proliferation of materials, and using it as additional fuel. But the procedure used to sep- technology, and nuclear know-how are by no means arate the uranium for reuse also produces small amounts of

62 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Nuclear Power: Both Sides weapons-grade plutonium. For that reason, President spring signaled his government’s support for expanding Jimmy Carter banned the reuse of spent fuel in the United nuclear energy production. States as a proliferation risk. Today, spent nuclear fuel is Today, it is the global climate change argument that stored on-site at nuclear plants, awaiting final disposal clinches the case in favor of nuclear power. If, as Gore upon the completion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste asserts, combating climate change is our highest priority, and repository in the Nevada desert. if the future of civilization itself is at stake, then nuclear The Bush proposal, however, seeks to develop a prom- power must play a significant and expanded role not just in ising new technology for recycling spent fuel in a manner America’s energy mix but in the world’s. that renders the material suitable for use as nuclear fuel but For all of nuclear energy’s apparent advantages (even not for use in nuclear weapons, thereby eliminating the risk. when weighed against its risks), its renaissance faces several If successful, this technology could not only help make challenges. The chief question is what to do with the waste. nuclear energy safer, but could also extend its benefits to the Political squabbling has pushed back the opening of Yucca far reaches of the globe. Mountain, the disposal facility the Department of Energy began contemplating in 1978, to 2017 at the earliest, and even that date is in doubt. The country’s reactors have accu- he equation skews more decidedly in favor of mulated 55,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in temporary nuclear power with the introduction of the envi- storage, and many are running out of space. Failure to open T ronment as a factor. Electricity generated by nuclear Yucca Mountain or otherwise solve the waste question power plants gives off no emissions: no sulfur, no mercury, could force some reactors to shut down and discourage and, most important, none of the greenhouse gases, such as investors from supporting new nuclear plants. carbon dioxide (CO2), thought to contribute to climate Meanwhile, the nuclear licensing process must be change. improved. Last year’s energy bill streamlined procedures Roughly 700 million metric tons of CO2 emissions are somewhat, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must avoided each year in the United States by generating elec- get serious about processing license applications in a timely tricity from nuclear power rather than some other source. manner. Delays caused by red tape and bureaucratic foot- According to the U.S. Department of Energy, that is nearly dragging could send private investment elsewhere. equivalent to the CO2 released from all U.S. passenger cars. The 21st century will be marked by a near-insatiable The argument that nuclear power should be a critical thirst for energy around the world, particularly in the component in a strategy to deal with concerns about climate large and growing economies of the United States, China, change is quite new. Certainly, it was not anything that and India, and among the large-scale consumers of indus- occurred to Eisenhower when he crafted his Atoms for trial Europe. At the same time, the developing world will Peace message for a postwar era. Nor was it much on the greatly benefit if granted access to cheap, reliable sources radar screen in the 1970s when concerns about global cool- of energy. According to the United Nations, 2.4 billion peo- ing were in vogue. And even those who have raised the ple lack access to modern energy service for cooking and specter of global warming most alarmingly by and large heating. Roughly 1.6 billion—about a quarter of the world’s haven’t embraced the potential of nuclear energy. Former population, including most of sub-Saharan Africa—have vice president Al Gore, who has stated that global warming no access to electricity at all. ultimately is a greater threat than terrorism, pointedly Nuclear power alone is positioned to help meet the refuses to endorse expanded use of nuclear power. world’s burgeoning energy demand and supply electricity Yet some longtime opponents are overcoming their fear to the power-starved areas of the world in a manner that of atomic energy. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of safeguards the environment. It alone can raise standards Greenpeace, recently declared his support for nuclear energy of living on every continent while emitting no pollutants or as “the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can greenhouse gases. It is the best candidate among many to reduce [greenhouse-gas] emissions while continuing to help raise more than a billion people out of darkness and satisfy a growing demand for power.” British prime minis- grinding poverty, and to do so in a way that does no harm, ter Tony Blair, an enduring critic of nuclear power, this but only good. ■

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 63 Nuclear Power: Both Sides Nuclear Is Not the Way

BY BRICE SMITH AND ARJUN MAKHIJANI

Decades after the promise of nuclear global warming. The scarce commodity is money. energy “too cheap to meter” was swamped in a sea of red What will give the biggest bang for the global warm- ink and trampled by the Three Mile Island accident in ing buck? A related question: What other problems 1979, the nuclear power industry is seeking to reinvent may be created in the process of reducing CO2 emis- itself by claiming that it will help save the world from the sions? Any energy source must meet the tests of perils of global warming. It has found an ally in the safety, reliability, and cost. In addition, there are Bush administration, which has spurned the Kyoto Pro- unique problems associated with nuclear energy: the tocol as too costly even as it beats the drum for nuclear potential for nuclear weapons proliferation arising power at home and abroad. Last year, the administration from the fact that developing and using nuclear persuaded Congress to pass an energy bill authorizing power creates the twin byproducts plutonium (in the billions of dollars in potential subsidies for new nuclear spent nuclear fuel) and nuclear know-how. More- power plants. over, an expansion of nuclear power would require a Could nuclear power really help save the world from vast increase in the world’s uranium enrichment what is arguably the worst environmental scourge ever capacity—the very technology that the United States to confront humanity? History suggests the need for two and other countries now desperately want to pre- things: caution about the nuclear industry’s messianic vent Iran from acquiring. While commercial-power proclamations, and careful analysis. reactor fuel cannot be used in a nuclear bomb, com- The technical facts are reasonably clear. In the United mercial enrichment plants can be reconfigured to States, the largest source of carbon dioxide (CO2), the produce weapons-grade uranium. most important greenhouse gas, is the electric power sec- Taken together, cost, proliferation, and accident tor, followed closely by transportation. Together, these risks made the promise of nuclear power as a “mag- sectors accounted for nearly 72 percent of U.S. green- ical” energy source, as Alvin Weinberg, the first direc- house-gas emissions in 2004. Coal, the dirtiest of the fos- tor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, once put it, sil fuels, supplies 50 percent of U.S. electricity. By con- evaporate the first time around. How serious will trast, nuclear power emits far lower levels of CO2, even these risks become if nuclear power has a second when uranium mining, enrichment, and fuel fabrication life? are taken into consideration. The most important consideration is how many nuclear plants would be needed to significantly reduce future CO2 emissions. A 2003 study by t first blush, these facts would seem to sup- researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- port the promoters of nuclear energy. But a nology, The Future of Nuclear Power, considered a ref- A shortage of low- or zero-CO2 sources of erence case in which 1,000 one-gigawatt (GW) energy is not the problem we face in confronting nuclear plants would be in operation around the world by 2050. (A gigawatt is enough electricity to brice smith is an assistant professor of physics at the State University of New York, Cortland, and the author of Insurmountable Risks: The Dan- power a U.S. city of half a million.) Even with such an gers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change (2006). arjun makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environ- increase, however, the proportion of electricity sup- mental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland, and the principal author of plied by nuclear power worldwide would rise only Nuclear Power Deception: U.S. Nuclear Mythology From Electricity “Too Cheap to Meter” to ‘‘Inherently Safe” Reactors (1999). slightly, from about 16 percent in 2000 to about 20

64 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Nuclear Power: Both Sides

Two of the four cooling towers at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant stand idle, reminders of America’s worst nuclear accident,which occurred in April 1979. percent in 2050. As a result, the number of fossil and proliferation are inextricably linked. In order to fuel power plants, and thus the amount of CO2 emis- fuel 2,500 reactors, the world’s uranium enrichment sions, would continue to increase. capacity would need to increase by approximately A more serious effort to limit carbon emissions six times. Just one percent of that capacity could through the use of nuclear power would require a supply enough highly enriched uranium to create larger number of reactors. In Insurmountable Risks: 500 nuclear weapons every year. The Iranian enrich- The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Cli- ment facility at Natanz that has created an interna- mate Change (2006), one of us used the same pro- tional uproar and rumblings of war would, if com- jected growth in electricity demand employed in the pleted, represent less than 0.1 percent of the MIT report to estimate the number of reactors enrichment capacity needed to fuel 2,500 reactors. If required simply to maintain the electricity sector’s the plutonium in the spent fuel discharged from that CO2 emissions at their 2000 levels. Some 2,500 number of reactors each year was separated, it would one-GW nuclear plants would be needed by mid- be enough to make more than 60,000 nuclear bombs, century. To meet that goal, one plant would have to about twice the number in the world’s nuclear arse- come online somewhere in the world every six days nals today. between 2010 and 2050. Proposals to reduce proliferation risks require The largest risk of such an expansion of nuclear intrusive inspections and a consensus that countries power is likely to be the increased potential for pro- will not use commercial technology for weapons pur- liferation of nuclear weapons. It has been known poses even in a crisis. The 1970 Treaty on the Non- since the dawn of the nuclear age that nuclear power Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) gives more

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 65 Nuclear Power: Both Sides than 180 non–nuclear weapon states that are signa- in the early 1980s because of unrecoverable invest- tories the “inalienable right” to nuclear power tech- ments in canceled nuclear power reactors in Wash- nology. It also requires the five recognized nuclear- ington State. The accident and the bond default fig- armed states that are signatories to get rid of their ured significantly among the factors that made Wall weapons, according to a World Court advisory inter- Street skittish about financing more nuclear power pretation of the NPT. Yet the United States and the plants, and that hesitation persists today. other four powers show no signs of moving toward fulfillment of that commitment. Without a clear movement toward disarmament, the desire for at he risk of an accident is very difficult to estimate. least the potential to build nuclear weapons will The calculations rely on estimates of failure where remain widespread, and the acquisition of commer- Tdata are scant; the result is that there are many sub- cial nuclear technology will remain the most attrac- jective factors in such estimates. William D. Ruckelshaus, tive means of keeping that potential alive. No overt the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency move toward nuclear weapons is required. But it is under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, interesting that Brazil opened a commercial uranium cautioned that “risk assessment data can be like the cap- enrichment plant in 2005 and Argentina has tured spy: If you torture it long enough, it will tell you any- announced that it is returning to pursuit of com- thing you want to know.” mercial enrichment. Uncertainties in risk estimates make it much more The Bush administration’s proposed Global difficult for Wall Street to assess the risk that an investment Nuclear Energy Partnership may be accelerating the will go sour. As Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of trend toward national nuclear capability. The pro- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told The New York posal, which the administration is pursuing in coop- Times last year, “The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island eration with Russia, is to have countries with existing taught Wall Street was that a group of NRC-licensed reac- facilities supply fresh fuel to other countries and take tor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion back the spent fuel under international guarantee. asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes.” Essentially, the proposal would void the “inalienable In the nearly 3,000 reactor-years of experience at U.S. right” guarantee for those countries without enrich- nuclear plants, there have been one partial core meltdown ment or plutonium separation technology. and a number of near misses and close calls. By compari- Another unique danger of nuclear power is the son, the total number of reactor-years worldwide if 2,500 potential for a catastrophic accident or well-coordi- reactors were to be built between now and 2050 would be nated terrorist attack to release a large amount of roughly 46,000, assuming a constant rate of growth. Using radiation. Such a release could have severe health the median accident probability derived from the Ameri- and environmental consequences, as the 1986 Cher- can experience, and assuming that future plants will be 10 nobyl accident showed. The accident at Three Mile times safer than today’s, we find a likelihood of better than Island was not a radiological catastrophe of Cher- one chance in two that at least three accidents comparable nobyl’s magnitude because the secondary contain- to the one at Three Mile Island would occur by midcentury. ment (the concrete wall encasing the entire reactor A single severe accident by itself could bring the whole structure) held. But even an accident without a approach of using large numbers of nuclear reactors to a breach of the secondary containment would cost a screeching halt, leaving plans for CO2reduction in disarray. great deal. Finally, there is the difficulty of managing radioactive The Three Mile Island accident was followed by a waste. Building 2,500 reactors by 2050 would lead to rapid escalation of nuclear power plant costs, partly nearly a quadrupling of the average rate at which spent fuel because of necessary new safety rules and partly is generated. Assuming a constant rate of growth, one because of rapidly rising interest rates. The largest repository with the legal capacity of the U.S. government’s bond default in utility history, which was a major Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada would have to come element in the collapse of Chemical Bank, occurred online somewhere in the world every three years. The seri-

66 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Nuclear Power: Both Sides ousness of that challenge is illustrated by the fact that cost improvements, nuclear power is likely to remain an Yucca Mountain itself is years from being operational. Its expensive source of electricity compared to fossil fuels. opening was originally scheduled for 1998. It is now set, at According to the 2003 MIT study and a 2004 study by the earliest, for 2017, and even that target is unlikely to be researchers at the University of Chicago, both of which met. And the U.S. Department of Energy has already advocated the pursuit of nuclear power, electricity from new spent nearly $9 billion on Yucca Mountain—money that nuclear plants is likely to cost between six and seven cents federal law requires nuclear utilities to charge their per kilowatt hour (kWh). By contrast, new coal fired plants ratepayers. In the meantime, the cost of storing spent produce power at about four cents per kWh (without CO2 fuel at the country’s 66 reactor sites has been soaring, and sequestration). Proponents of nuclear power speak of fur- utilities have sued the Energy Department for breach of ther cost improvements, but these remain speculative. contract for not removing their spent fuel. The lack of a Rising interest rates and skepticism on Wall Street, the ulti- repository has become a major stumbling block to the mate underwriter of any nuclear expansion in the United expansion of nuclear power. States, suggest that costs actually could be much higher. Alternatives to repository disposal are unlikely to be fea- Are there any reasonable alternatives that can reduce sible. Reprocessing the spent fuel, as some propose, would CO2 emissions for the same cost? Of the available near- greatly increase the dangers of nuclear power because it term options (i.e., those likely to be available during the next involves the separation of weapons-usable plutonium from 10 years), the two most important in the United States are fission products. While proponents claim that reprocess- an increase in efficiency and an expansion of the develop- ing would greatly reduce the space needed for a reposi- tory, the claim depends largely on the assumption WIND POWER AT favorable sites in the that uranium, which consti- tutes 95 percent of the United States is already cost competitive weight of spent fuel, would be disposed of in shallow with natural gas and new nuclear power. storage facilities of the type used for “low-level” radioac- tive waste, even though it is far too radioactive for such dis- ment of wind power. Efficiency is a no-brainer, since it posal. The authors of the 2003 MIT study argued against comes without any price tag—in fact, it comes with a net reprocessing. Instead, they proposed interim storage of economic gain. So we will assume that any approach would nuclear wastes accompanied by expanded research on a adopt all economical efficiency measures. What about technique called deep borehole disposal. At several thou- supply? sand feet, the boreholes would be deeper than a typical geo- At approximately four to six cents per kWh, wind logic repository, and in concept, each borehole would con- power at favorable sites in the United States is already tain less spent fuel while the great depth would produce competitive with natural gas and new nuclear power. With smaller environmental impacts. But the costs and pitfalls the proper priorities on upgrading the transmission and of this strategy are not yet well understood. distribution infrastructure and changing regulations, wind Committing to a large increase in the rate of waste power could expand rapidly. Without any major changes generation based only on the potential plausibility of a in the existing electricity grid, wind power could generate new waste management strategy such as deep boreholes 15 to 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply—almost the would be to repeat the central error of the past. The con- same fraction as nuclear power now supplies. In other cept of repositories like Yucca Mountain dates back to at words, wind energy can accomplish what nuclear advocates least 1957, but not one spent fuel rod has yet been perma- claim, at a lower cost, and without the proliferation nently disposed of. headaches, so long as the total amount of wind energy is less Even with optimistic but plausible assumptions for than about 20 percent. (Because wind is an intermittent

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 67 Nuclear Power: Both Sides energy source whose availability varies from day to day, nuclear power. And that’s only at current prices. In the boosting wind’s share of the electricity supply in the United future, nuclear power will likely be more expensive than States beyond these levels would require the development promised, while wind and solar costs have been coming of new energy storage facilities.) Wind energy development down steadily and are likely to continue falling. in sensitive or scenic areas is not necessary to achieve this. Yet another non-nuclear route to reducing CO2 emis- The potential wind energy supply in the Midwest, South- sions lies in applying new techniques and technologies to west, and Rocky Mountain states, where the prospect of today’s largest and dirtiest source of electricity. Integrated substantial royalties makes turbines very attractive to farm- gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) plants turn coal into a ers and ranchers, is two-and-a-half times total U.S. elec- gas that can be burned, making it easier to capture coal- tricity generation and 12 times total U.S. nuclear power related pollutants, including toxic metals such as mercury, generation. and, most important, CO2. The captured CO2 can be As for solar power, recent technological break- injected into geologic formations, such as exhausted oil throughs in thin-film solar cells promise to lower costs and gas fields, where it is estimated they can remain for cen- from about $5 or $6 per peak watt today to only $1 to turies or longer. Injection is not an exotic technique; it has $1.50 per peak watt in less than five years. (A peak watt been used as a way to enhance oil recovery since at least 1972. is a measure of output at the peak of sunshine in the And the energy industry has demonstrated the feasibility of summer.) This would put solar in about the same cost sequestering CO2 at both the Sleipner gas fields in the category as wind. But solar has the advantage of low North Sea and the In Salah natural gas fields in Algeria. The transmission and distribution costs, since the units can Sleipner sequestration project began after the imposition of be located right where their output is used. On-site solar a tax on carbon emissions by the Norwegian government, can be put into the same grid as off-site wind in an and the In Salah project was undertaken, in part, to further arrangement called a “distributed grid.” Such a grid can demonstrate the viability of geologic storage of CO2. While reduce the fluctuations associated with each of these the costs of such strategies are more uncertain than those intermittent power sources by capitalizing on the fact of other mitigation options, estimates of the cost of electricity that they often do not fluctuate in tandem. from IGCC plants with carbon sequestration range from 4.2 Still, intermittency remains a challenge. For instance, to 8 cents per kWh. Of course, this technique does not there are many times when the wind falls off after sunset, overcome other disadvantages of coal, such as the destruc- but electricity is still needed. The problem can be overcome tion wrought by surface mining, which can only be mitigated in two ways. The first is to invest in some form of storage. by government regulation. The second is to install capacity that can operate on demand—that is, capacity that is not dependent on the weather. These can be used in complementary fashion. hysics was never an obstacle to nuclear power. In The most immediately available form of storage is theory, fission could be the world’s biggest source pumped hydropower. Wind and solar electricity can be P of electrical power. But the nuclear promise was used to pump water into existing reservoirs, from which defeated by engineering realities that led to high costs, the hydroelectricity could be generated during periods of risk of accidents with consequences for many generations, insufficient sunlight or wind. Also immediately available waste disposal headaches, and, most worrisome of all, a are gas turbines and “combined-cycle” power plants; much increased potential for the proliferation of nuclear these are already in use today. Natural gas is now so weapons. To rely upon nuclear power to combat global expensive as a fuel that it would pay to idle a part of exist- warming would pose risks so severe that they should, by any ing capacity of gas-fired power plants to keep it available sensible accounting, be unacceptable, given that safer alter- for use when electricity generated from the wind and sun natives exist. These alternatives are not cost free. But if our is not available in sufficient amounts. When used children don’t like to look at windmills or solar panels, they together, wind, sun, pumped hydro, and natural gas can can always do away with them. The same cannot be said of provide as large a share of electricity as coal does today nuclear weapons and nuclear waste spread to the far cor- (about 50 percent) for about the same cost as new ners of the world. ■

68 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 In ESSENCE reviews of articles from periodicals and specialized journals here and abroad

Foreign Policy & Defense 69 // Politics & Government 71 // Economics, Labor & Business 74 // Society 76 Press & Media 79 // Religion & Philosophy 80 // Science & Technology 82 // Arts & Letters 85 // Other Nations 88

FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE offered $1 million to release a $28 million shipment of contraband. Significant numbers of government officials are said to have dirty hands. Iraq’s Disappearing Oil Fifteen judges have been murdered after investigating instances of cor- wealth was supposed to pay for the ruption and criminality. THE SOURCE: “How Iraqi Oil Smuggling Greases Violence” by Bilal A. Wahab, in nation’s reconstruction. Instead, it is Insurgents attack Iraqi oil Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2006. breeding violence and corruption pipelines in part to force the govern- and financing the country’s slide ment to rely on trucks—a business In late August, a battle be- toward chaos and civil war. controlled by smugglers, who tween the Iraqi Army and the mili- Corruption in the oil business is usually pay protection money to the tant Shia Mahdi Army diverted the hardly new. The Revolutionary insurgents. Fuel smuggling may attention of pipeline guards in Council of Saddam Hussein’s Baath have cost Iraq between $2.5 and $4 Diwaniya, 100 miles south of Bagh- Party allocated five percent of the billion in 2005 alone, according to dad, and at least 67 people were nation’s oil revenues to a party slush Wahab. Independent specialists killed when a looter flipped on his fund, and oil was controlled by his have said that at the peak of produc- cigarette lighter to check the level of supporters and family. Between 1997 tion, in 1978, Iraq was pumping siphoned gasoline in his jerrycan. and 2003, Saddam’s government 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. Now In a 24-hour period in April in took in more than $8 billion in illicit the figure is estimated to be about Rabiyah, police stopped and confis- oil revenues when oil proceeds were two million barrels and barely hold- cated 1,200 tanker trucks that were supposed to be spent on food and ing steady. About 10 percent of Iraqi smuggling oil across the nearby bor- other humanitarian needs. oil is lost to smuggling. der into Syria. The collapse of Saddam’s govern- Smugglers get a second shot at In the Persian Gulf, near Basra, ment drove smuggling operations Iraq’s oil wealth when the country two Iraqi government ships were underground, Wahab writes. The imports as refined products some of attacked by Iranian naval vessels security vacuum after the invasion the crude oil it originally sent abroad. when they tried to stop a steamer helped the existing smugglers and Iraq’s huge consumer subsidies—it smuggling oil. created new opportunities for crimi- sells diesel fuel at less than three These incidents illustrate the cen- nal gangs. After the Iraqi police cents per gallon to its citizens, even as tral role of oil in a web of corruption seized 400,000 barrels of crude oil diesel fetches at least $1 on the black and criminality that is helping to being illegally shipped to Syria this market—practically invite smugglers destabilize Iraq, according to Bilal A. past April, Dawud al-Baghistani, to ship as much dirt-cheap diesel fuel Wahab, a Kurdish Fulbright fellow head of the Commission on Public and gasoline as they can across the at American University. Iraq’s oil Integrity in Mosul, said he was border to neighboring countries

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where prices are higher. In Iraq, with was the same size as the standard The problem is “stopping power”— the second-largest oil reserves in the NATO cartridge, as well as cheaper the gun’s ability to take an opponent world, ordinary citizens are forced to and lighter. out of a fight immediately. Advocates wait in lines up to 24 hours to fill up But according to Maj. Craig R. of the 9mm argue that although it their gas tanks. Wonson, future operations planner does not do as much damage as the with the First Marine Expeditionary .45, other factors—such as the “neuro- FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE Force in Iraq, one crucial factor was logical effect” of a bullet entering the overlooked in the selection of the body, the pain of a gunshot wound, Not-So-Great 9mm pistol: the weapon’s and skillful shot placement—should effectiveness—or lack thereof—in be sufficient to stop an enemy. Not so, Guns “stopping” an enemy combatant. says Wonson, especially if the enemy THE SOURCE: “Coming Full Circle: Replac- Now, with close-quarter combat has taken drugs such as methamphet- ing the 9mm with the .45 Caliber Pistol” by Maj. Craig R. Wonson, in Marine Corps becoming “the norm” for American amines, as is reportedly the case some- Gazette, July 2006. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Won- times in Iraq. And accurate shot place- son says, the 9mm pistol has been ment is a risky thing to depend on in In 1985, when the U.S. mili- seeing a lot of use, and it is not getting the less-than-ideal conditions of an tary changed its standard sidearm rave reviews. “Recent reports of the actual fight. from the Colt .45 pistol to the Beretta M9’s subpar performance . . . have left Wonson advocates a return to a M9 9mm, the decision seemed Marines with little confidence in the .45. Newer models by other manufac- sound. The .45 had been in service weapon,” he writes. turers are easier to use than the old since 1911, and though it was effective The shortcomings of the 9mm will Colts, and just as effective. Indeed, the in battle, it was also much criticized: not come as news to federal, state, military had to learn this lesson once Its strong recoil made it difficult for and local law enforcement agencies. before: The switch to the .45 in 1911 inexperienced shooters to manage, it Many of them once used the 9mm came after smaller-caliber pistols was too large for small hands, it was but switched to larger-caliber failed to do the job in battle. tricky to clean, and its single-action sidearms, including the .45, after inci- firing mechanism was a safety hazard. dents such as a disastrous 1986 FBI FOREIGN POLICY & DEFENSE Not only was the M9 easier and safer shootout in Miami in which suspects to use, it also held twice as many suffered multiple gunshot wounds Saving Sanctions rounds, and its 9mm ammunition but were still able to kill two agents. THE SOURCE:“Making Sanctions Humane and Effective” by Uli Cremer, in Internationale Politik, Summer 2006.

Today’s liberals express far less confidence in the efficacy of international sanctions than did Woodrow Wilson, who said in 1919 that “a nation boycotted is a nation in sight of surrender.” Sanctions are only as effective as the political will to implement them, writes Uli Cremer, the former foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s Green Party, and many existing and aspiring trading The safer, cheaper, and lighter Beretta pistol, chosen 20 years ago over the clunky Colt .45 for partners of sanctioned countries are military use, often fails to stop enemies in close-quarter-combat conditions such as those in Iraq. weak reeds indeed.

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The United States money is not siphoned off indulged in “sanctions to the politically well- excess” in the 1990s, EXCERPT connected. In Iraq, where Cremer says, and the rest of the nation’s own oil sales the world was happy to were used to finance a UN capitalize on America’s ac- Evangelical compensation fund tions. When Congress pro- between 1992 and 2000, a hibited U.S. firms from Foreign Policy committee plowed through doing business with Iran in Evangelical power is here to stay . . . and those 2.6 million applications 1993, French, Russian, concerned about U.S. foreign policy would do well to and reduced valid claims to Malaysian, and Chinese reach out. As more evangelical leaders acquire only one percent of the companies seized the firsthand experience in foreign policy, they are likely requests, but “political opportunity. to provide something now sadly lacking in the world approvals” increased final Unilateral sanctions are of U.S. foreign policy: a trusted group of experts, well payouts above the original almost always ineffective, versed in the nuances and dilemmas of the figures. Such massive cor- but even multinational international situation, who are able to persuade ruption would have to be actions work no more than large numbers of Americans to support the complex eliminated and the process half the time, according to and counterintuitive policies that are sometimes made transparent for the research cited by Cremer. necessary in this wicked and frustrating—or, dare initiative to succeed. Every relevant nation must one say it, fallen—world. Since 1945, the UN has be on board. Even then, imposed sanctions on a sanctions often hurt the —WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, a senior rogue’s gallery of regimes, wrong people—the weak fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, including ones in Angola, within the sanctioned in Foreign Affairs (Sept.–Oct. 2006) Cambodia, Liberia, Libya, nation, as well as nearby Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, trading partners. When the United Fund” of about $20 billion, and South Africa. Now Iran, with its Nations imposed sanctions on underwritten by annual contributions vast oil wealth, is on the agenda Yugoslavia in the 1990s, neighboring from all UN members, to compensate unless it suspends moves toward Romania claimed that it suffered $10 legitimate trading partners and oth- developing nuclear weapons capabil- billion in damages. ers and remove the economic impera- ity. Cremer argues that sanctions will Cremer advocates a “United tive to cheat. He also calls for scruti- work only if the UN first takes steps Nations Sanctions Compensation nizing claims and ensuring that the to head off the likely economic fallout.

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT atonement. He thought the Holy Trinity “hocus pocus,” and the God of the Old Testament to be “cruel, Founding Skeptic vindictive, capricious, and unjust.” In his day, he was as popular philosopher and moral leader, but among the clergy as atheist Mada- THE SOURCE: “Jefferson the Skeptic” by Brooke Allen, in The Hudson Review, Sum- he described Christianity as “our lyn Murray O’Hair was after she mer 2006. particular superstition” and won her case against prayer in pub- rejected the Immaculate lic schools in 1963. Thomas Jefferson was no Conception; Jesus’ deification, mir- Yet when Jefferson sat down to Christian, writes critic Brooke acles, resurrection, and ascension; write the Declaration of Indepen- Allen. He revered Jesus Christ as a plus the Eucharist, original sin, and dence, he cited the “Laws of Nature

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and of Nature’s God” in its first sen- a matter which lies solely between POLITICS & GOVERNMENT tence and ended with the assertion man and his God. . . . I contem- of “a firm Reliance on the Pro- plate with sovereign reverence Smart and tection of Divine Providence.” that act of the whole American Smarter Jefferson said just enough good people which declared that their THE SOURCE: “Presidential IQ, Openness, things about religion for the Moral legislature should ‘make no law Intellectual Brilliance, and Leadership: Esti- Majority and throngs of born-again respecting an establishment of mates and Correlations for 42 U.S. Chief Executives” by Dean Keith Simonton, in Christians to cite him in support of religion, or prohibiting the free Political Psychology, August 2006. their claim that America was exercise thereof,’ thus building a founded as a Christian nation. For- wall of separation between Anybody who has ever mer Speaker of the House Newt Church and State.” been to an American high school Gingrich even included the Jeffer- Jefferson’s phrase “upon the knows that intelligence doesn’t son Memorial on his Christian tour altar of God” actually came as part always equal success either in the of the District of Columbia, where of a “characteristically Jeffersonian adolescent world or in life. A new he pointed out on the inner dome explosion against priests and cler- study of the intelligence quotients the inscription, “I have sworn upon gymen,” Allen writes. Mocking the (IQs) of the 42 U.S. presidents is clergy in his presidential campaign similarly confounding. Our in 1800, Jefferson said they all smartest president, John Quincy Jefferson tried harder hoped to have their own sect en- Adams, was defeated after only than any other Found- shrined as the established church. one term and spent the rest of his ing Father to remove But he said he had sworn eternal life in the House of Represen- religion definitively hostility upon the “altar of God” to tatives. Our dullest, Ulysses S. from the political life of religious tyrants who jockeyed for Grant, according to the study, won the new nation. power and money. the Civil War. Other religious-sounding invo- Dean Keith Simonton, a cations, such as the phrase “Laws of psychologist at the University of the altar of God eternal hostility Nature and of Nature’s God” in the California, Davis, estimated the against every form of tyranny over Declaration of Independence, were IQs of the presidents based on the mind of man.” standard language used, not by their writings, early developmen- Reconciling Jefferson’s words conventional Christians, but by tal milestones, openness to ideas, with his beliefs requires context, deists in the 18th century. The dec- and other traits generally associ- writes Allen, author of several laration’s phrase “firm Reliance on ated with intelligence. Simonton books, including Moral Minority: the Protection of Divine Provi- also drew on previous studies by Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. dence” was added by Congress. other researchers. Biographical When Jefferson’s polite nods to the Allen says that the efforts of profiles of each president, prevailing religious beliefs of his modern political figures to establish stripped of identifying factors, day are examined in situ, they that Thomas Jefferson was a good were prepared, and traits such as reveal his views to be consistent Christian who really didn’t mean ‘‘inventive,” ‘‘curious,’’ and “sophis- and supportive of a strict “wall of what he said about the separation ticated” were assessed. Missing separation between Church and of church and state are flimsy and values were imputed using State” (in Jefferson’s own phrase). smack of desperation. standard statistical techniques. Jefferson introduced the “wall “Jefferson,” Allen writes, “tried All the presidents scored at least of separation” concept in a letter harder than any other Founding 130, in the top 2.2 percent of the to a committee of the Danbury Father to remove religion defin- population. The average IQ is 100. Baptist Association in 1802: itively from the political life of the Simonton found that John “Believing with you that religion is new nation.” Quincy Adams, son of President

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Presidential Smarts entice five percent of their residents to move downtown. In Vancouver, John Quincy Adams Thomas Jefferson John F. Kennedy Bill Clinton the figure is 20 percent and rising, according to Alan Ehrenhalt, execu- tive editor of Governing. But condo- ization is beginning to generate a backlash. The hundreds of green IQ: 175 IQ: 160 IQ: 159.8 IQ: 159 Jimmy Carter Woodrow Wilson Theodore Roosevelt Chester A.Arthur Abraham Lincoln glass towers that have sprung up on less than five square miles have shut out commercial development. Crit- ics are beginning to use the dreaded “R” word, according to Ehrenhalt. Vancouver, they fear, is in danger of IQ: 156.8 IQ: 155.2 IQ: 153 IQ: 152.3 IQ: 150 becoming a resort, a Waikiki or All 42 presidents have had IQs in the top two percent of the population; above,some of the smartest. Miami Beach, with mild winters— and an inadequate tax base. John Adams and the nation’s sixth intellect may be more a liability The transformation began president, had an estimated IQ than an asset. . . . His strengths quietly in the summer of 1991 as of 175. Other top scorers were most likely lie elsewhere.” recession moved across North Thomas Jefferson, 160; James America and flattened the market Madison, 160; John F. Kennedy, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT for office space in Vancouver. With- 159.8; and Bill Clinton, 159. The out fanfare, the city council enacted lowest, Grant, scored 130 on a Waikiki, North a zoning change—just to see if the measurement of his IQ. Next low- market would respond—that loos- THE SOURCE: “Extreme Makeover” by est was President George W. Bush, Alan Ehrenhalt, in Governing, July 2006. ened up limits on apartments in at 138.5. commercial areas. “Overnight, we Simonton writes that although Most cities would kill to have got these huge condo towers,” says a George W. Bush’s estimated IQ is Vancouver’s problems. Exquisitely city council member. Fifteen years below average when compared to set near both mountains and the sea, later, nearly one in five residents of those of other chief executives, he the Canadian city is dominated by a Canada’s third-largest city lives in is “certainly smart enough to be glamorous downtown full of one of the slender high-rise towers president of the United States.” residential apartments, bustling in the downtown center. And these Bush’s scores were dragged down with pedestrian traffic, and pop- newcomers include members of that by his lack of “openness”—to aes- ulated by people with money to urban endangered species, the fam- thetics, feelings, actions, ideas, spend. Municipalities in the United ily with young children. and values—and something called States consider themselves lucky to The “Living First” program has “integrative complexity,” a gauge of worked too well, some people in the ability to integrate multiple Vancouver are saying. Developers perspectives on an issue into a Vancouver may be in seized the chance, making a return coherent point of view. danger of becoming a on investment in condominiums Simonton acknowledges that resort, a Waikiki or that has been five times as high as intellect is not by any means the Miami Beach, with mild the return on office space. And only predictor of good presidential winters—and an inade- though business has not fled central leadership, but says that, “the con- quate tax base. Vancouver, the percentage of clusion remains, however tentative metro-area jobs located there keeps at this point in time, that Bush’s shrinking.

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The residential boom runs the No American city is close to lost commercial and office space, no risk of squeezing hard-pressed cities Vancouver on the downtown-living new office buildings have been financially. Commercial properties, front, Ehrenhalt writes, but there is started on the World Trade Center which currently account for 40 per- a shift in the residential direction. site, while nearby commercial space cent of Vancouver’s tax base, are Census figures show that down- is rapidly going condo. Even in St. taxed at a higher rate than residen- town populations in major U.S. Louis, the office vacancy rate is very tial properties, and require less in cities increased by about 10 percent low because so much office space city services. As the balance tips in the 1990s after decades of has gone residential. If it can hap- toward condos, the burden on busi- decline. Since 2000, Philadelphia’s pen in St. Louis, it can probably ness grows, potentially driving com- central-city population has grown happen anywhere. So it is likely mercial uses out of the city. Vancou- even as office space stagnated and that the “Vancouver question”— ver’s planners have imposed what the number of office and profes- keeping a balance between amounts to a moratorium on resi- sional jobs declined. In New York commercial and residential uses— dential construction while they fig- City, where the local government’s could well be a sleeper issue Ameri- ure out how to attract more office primary commitment after the Sep- can cities never thought they would projects. tember 11 attacks was to restore the have to face.

ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS the big-city commodity markets. Futures markets served an eco- nomic need. As the production and distribution of commodities such as Trading in Dreams corn and oil grew to national and international scale in the late 19th

THE SOURCE: “Contemplating Delivery: tract today to deliver wheat or some century, the need for new risk-man- Futures Trading and the Problem of Com- other commodity at a certain price agement tools grew too. Futures modity Exchange in the United States, in the future. In the 1870s, however, allowed farmers and the many 1875–1905” by Jonathan Ira Levy, in Ameri- can Historical Review, April 2006. traders in the United States and other players in the complex new abroad began using a technique marketplaces to protect themselves Nothing epitomizes global called “setting off” that allowed against price fluctuations and other capitalism more than the world’s contracts to be bought and sold risks. One midwestern grain eleva- burgeoning futures markets, where even though no goods actually tor owner explained to a trillions of dollars ride on everything changed hands, notes Jonathan Ira congressional committee in 1892 from tomorrow’s interest rates to Levy, a graduate student in history that he might have 100,000 next year’s price for a bushel of at the University of Chicago. In bushels of wheat to sell on a day wheat. This trade in the ephemeral 1888, for example, American farm- when buyers around the country seems dubious to many people even ers produced 415 million bushels of demanded only 75,000. The ability today, and at its birth more than a wheat, but U.S. traders handled to sell a futures contract for the century ago it seemed downright futures contracts for perhaps 25,000 remaining bushels helped scandalous, requiring the help of a 25,000 trillion bushels. By then, keep him afloat financially. Harvard philosopher and the U.S. the action had expanded from the The title of those House hearings, Supreme Court to ensure its survival trading pits of organized markets “Fictitious Dealings in Agricultural in the United States. such as the Chicago Board of Trade Products,” gives a sense of the public Trade in commodity futures has to informal “bucket shops,” mostly reaction to the new futures trading. a long history; it involves nothing in rural America, where ordinary It wasn’t just that the exchanges more complex than signing a con- folk could wager on movements in encouraged speculation—indeed,

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A Chicago bucket shop, where the masses could wager against prices telegraphed from commodities trading floors, when it was raided by police in 1906. they couldn’t survive without it—but thinking, James had leaned on once again common in the devel- that they trafficked in pure abstrac- financial metaphors, noting that oped world, and many newly capital- tions rather than actual goods. bank notes themselves have value ist countries make it a high priority Agrarian populists in particular chiefly because we believe they do. to create them. But without ade- raged against the hocus-pocus of Without citing James, Holmes quate regulatory mechanisms and financial wizards who had the power followed a similar line of thought in customs—or philosophers to justify to influence what prices midwestern upholding organized futures their existence—most have expired. farmers could get for their crops. But markets: However incorporeal the federal legislation that would have contracts, the futures trade had posi- ECONOMICS, LABOR & BUSINESS destroyed the pits was narrowly tive practical consequences; “specu- defeated in 1892. That left the mat- lation of this kind by competent men Dying for Taxes ter in the hands of the courts. is the self-adjustment of society to THE SOURCE: “Toying With Death and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes the probable.” The casually operated Taxes: Some Lessons From Down Under” by Jr. wrote the decisive opinion for the bucket shops, however, were another Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, in The Economists’ Voice, June 2006. U.S. Supreme Court in 1905. Just a matter, and the Court shut them year before, his friend, the philoso- down. A curious thing happened in pher William James, had published The American experience was 1979 as Australia prepared to a key essay in the evolution of prag- atypical. As trade in commodities repeal its estate tax. During the matist philosophical thought in expanded during the late 19th cen- final week the tax was in effect, the which he argued that thoughts could tury, futures markets sprang up in death rate declined. When the tax be as “real” as things if they had con- other countries, Levy notes, but was eliminated, the rate rose. sequences in the world. Earlier in his most did not survive. Today, they are The U.S. congressional calendar

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this year has been con- that everybody whose sumed by efforts to repeal death was “postponed” the American estate tax, EXCERPT from June to July would or as its opponents say, have been required to pay the death tax. The tax is the tax. no small matter, having Best of Times “Over half of those accounted for $25 billion who would have paid the in revenue in 2005. The economic situation during the past 20 years estate tax in its last week Could the Grim Reaper has been unprecedented in the history of the world. of operation managed to possibly be kept on hold You will find no other 20-year period in which prices avoid doing so,” Gans and to save on taxes? And have been as stable—relatively speaking—in which Leigh write. could an estate tax repeal there has been as little variability in price levels, in Popular medical writ- create an unpleasant sur- which inflation has been so well-controlled, and in ing is full of anecdotes of prise for the U.S. Treasury which output has gone up as regularly. You hear all patients who temporarily by slashing projected rev- this talk about economic difficulties, when the fact is cheated death—staying enues during the final we are at the absolute peak of prosperity in the alive for a festival, a wed- days of taxation? history of the world. Never before have so many peo- ding, or a birthday. De- As its ongoing Ameri- ple had as much as they do today. spite these examples, can counterpart has however, a huge scientific already done, the Aus- —MILTON FRIEDMAN, Nobel Prize–winning study of cancer victims tralian campaign to economist, in Imprimis (July 2006) from 1989 to 2000 found repeal the tax took years, no evidence of any ability according to Joshua Gans and lesser rates for some legacies great- to time one’s death to stay alive for Andrew Leigh, of the University of er than $100,000. On July 1, the important holidays such as Melbourne and the Australian tax was zero. Death certificates Thanksgiving or Christmas. Tax- National University, respectively. showed that about five percent averse Australians are apparently About nine percent of Australian fewer people died during the tax’s an exception to this finding. Even estates were large enough to owe last week than during that period in the super-rich, the authors write, the tax. On June 30, 1979, estates previous years, and that the death cannot postpone death forever, but of $1 million (Australian) or more rate rose a similar amount the next some may be able to stay alive long paid 27.9 percent in taxes, with week. The researchers assumed enough to avoid the estate tax.

SOCIETY helped American cooks balance the culinary refinement they sought with the rustic provisions available in the New World. Cooking Up America Regional differences already had appeared. New England tilted

THE SOURCE: “Cuisine and National Iden- settlers began to make real money toward Old Country tastes, using its tity in the Early Republic” by James E. and the British began to ship afford- farms to grow vegetables and fruit, McWilliams, in Historically Speaking, May–June, 2006. able luxuries to the colonies. High to keep livestock for beef and dairy, on the colonists’ shopping lists were and to cultivate as much English The first consumer rev- stoves, cooking tools, tables, chairs, wheat, rye, and oats as the size of olution in America probably and English cookbooks. State-of- their family-based work force would

occurred around 1730, when the the-art imported kitchen products allow. BUNTING password: Archive

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The Deep South, by contrast, SOCIETY cally, than men, and whites have nearly abandoned traditional more than nonwhites. Intimate British fare, according to James E. The Lonelier friendships between neighbors McWilliams, an assistant professor and fellow participants in civic of history at Texas State University, Crowd activities have declined the most. San Marcos. Growing rice with a The authors say that their labor force of slaves, southerners THE SOURCE:“Social Isolation in America: research may have detected another Changes in Core Discussion Networks Over were much more likely to eat rice or Two Decades” by Miller McPherson, Lynn trend. “Shifts in work, geographic, peanuts along with local game and Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, and and recreational patterns” and “Trends in Civic Association Activity in Four Native American and African- Democracies: The Special Case of Women in increasing use of the Internet may American crops such as Indian and the United States” by Robert Andersen, James be leading to the development of Curtis, and Edward Grabb, in American Guinea corn. Sociological Review, June 2006. larger, less localized groups of A growing American hunger for friends than in the past, when rum and molasses from Barbados in When it comes time to strong, tightly interconnected net- the early 18th century spurred let down their hair and talk, Amer- works were more the norm. culinary cross-fertilization among icans have fewer people to confide Similar social forces may be the colonies. Ships that started out in than they did just a generation responsible for the purported trading only rum and molasses ago. The number of people the decline in civic engagement in the began to carry foods. Okra appeared average person would consider United States. Sociologists Robert in Rhode Island, New England cod going to for advice fell from about Andersen, James Curtis, and went to the middle colonies, Virginia three to two between 1985 and ham was available in South Carolina. 2004. Almost half the population As the Revolution approached, now says they can discuss impor- Women have more the culinary repertoire of the colo- tant topics with only one other confidantes than men, nial cook was abruptly truncated person or no one at all. and whites more than not only by embargoes but by a The greatest change has come in nonwhites. Intimate sense that proper American food the decline in intimates outside the friendships between should be different from that of family circle. Twenty years ago, 80 neighbors and fellow Europe, frugal and unpretentious percent of Americans who re- civic participants have rather than refined. sponded to the national General declined the most. Patrick Henry once condemned Social Survey had at least one confi- Thomas Jefferson for his love of fine dante who was not a relative. By French food instead of “native vict- 2004, that number had fallen to 57 Edward Grabb, of, respectively, uals.” Increasingly, the elevation of percent, according to sociologists McMaster University, the Univer- the simple American over the fancy Miller McPherson and Lynn Smith- sity of Waterloo, and the Univer- European became a defining Ameri- Lovin, of the University of Arizona sity of Western Ontario, all in can feature in food as well as in and Duke University, respectively, Canada, studied civic activity in manners, dress, and leisure pur- and Matthew E. Brashears, a Ph.D. the Netherlands, Great Britain, suits. In the election campaign of candidate at Arizona. The number Canada, and the United States. 1840, William Henry Harrison of people who depend totally on They found a decline only in delivered the coup de grâce to his their spouse has doubled, to not America—and, significantly, only opponent, President Martin Van quite 10 percent. among women. While the lessen- Buren, by charging that Van Buren’s Better-educated and younger ing of civic involvement in the tastes ran not to real American food, people have larger “discussion net- United States has been blamed on but to soup à la reine and pâté de works” than others. Women have television watching and the fading foie gras. slightly more confidantes, statisti- of the more selfless World War II

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generation, the authors “thrifty food plan,” a nutri- note that the same fac- tionally adequate but bare- tors are at work in the EXCERPT bones diet, adjusted for other three countries. family size. Because the decrease in It’s hard for Eberstadt civic involvement is lim- Ah! Old Age to believe that all the social ited to women, Andersen spending of the last three and colleagues suggest I am old and I feel and look old. . . . Ever since I decades has failed to that the “greater de- have inhabited old age ...I have looked and listened, budge the poor out of con- mands” on American mostly in vain, for news of what it is like for other ditions in which “everyday women’s free time may people who inhabit it as I do. Naturally, I’m interested living implied choosing be responsible. Women’s in its well-known depredations, the physical and between an adequate diet child-care duties have mental ones that people in their forties and fifties so of the most economical increased in the United publicly dread. . . . The pills and sticks, the shrieking sort and some other neces- States, while declining in hearing aids and dental weaponry, the tricks for sity,” as Orshansky put it. Canada and the Nether- countering the loss of names and threads and Although statistics show lands, for example. “The glasses and for circumventing insomnia, the visits to that some groups, such as larger time commitment the back shop. But that’s not all. I have a fond hope the elderly and African American women now that there may be new kinds of time and new kinds Americans, are better off make to paid work, com- of pleasure, perhaps even new kinds of vitality, and now than they were in bined with their in- that though we forget and muddle and fail to hear 1973, the official poverty creased time for child things, there may be moments when we understand rate has bobbed steadily care, could be the princi- what’s going on for the first time. above 11.1 percent for 32 pal explanation behind consecutive years. Last the decline in civic asso- —JANE MILLER, author and poet, year, 37 million Americans ciation activity of Ameri- in Raritan (Summer 2006) were classified as poor. cans,” the authors say. Year after year, the was failing to lift the downtrodden. number has stubbornly failed to SOCIETY The annual announcement of the fall—even as the nation’s per capita number of Americans living in income rose 60 percent, the per- The Poverty absolute poverty—now defined as centage of working-age people with less than $19,806 a year for a family jobs went up by six points, the pro- Conundrum of four—has turned into a political portion of Americans with a high circus. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demog- school diploma increased 24 points, THE SOURCE: “The Mismeasure of Poverty” by Nicholas Eberstadt, in Policy rapher at the American Enterprise and government spending on the Review, Aug.–Sept. 2006. Institute, writes that the poverty rate poor tripled. By 2001, more than has become “an ever less faithful and half of all poverty-level homes had When the Census Bureau reliable measure with each passing cable television and two or more reported in August that the U.S. year.” TV sets. One in four households poverty rate essentially held steady The statistic is a relic of the John- had a personal computer, and by at 12.6 percent of the population in son administration’s War on Poverty. 2003, nearly three out of four 2005 instead of rising, as it had Developed in 1965 by Mollie poverty-level households had some every year since 2000, the Bush Orshansky, an economist at the sort of motor vehicle. And yet, with administration hailed the news, Social Security Administration, it is nearly every increase in statistical while Democrats charged that it set at roughly three times the cost of well-being, the poverty rate has proved once again that the economy the Agriculture Department’s gone up. “Something is badly

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amiss,” Eberstadt writes. How can this be? Are poor Amer- Eberstadt notes that criticizing A very different picture emerges icans sinking deeper and deeper into the official poverty measure is some- when government researchers ask debt? Eberstadt says the more likely times taken as proof of indifference people about what they spend explanation is something econ- to the poor. To say that Americans rather than about their income. omists call “transitory variance.” are incontestably better off “is not to Household expenditures for the Nine out of 10 people are poor only assert that material progress for poorest fifth of the population have temporarily. Like other people, they America’s poverty population has increased greatly since 1973, even base their consumer behavior on the been satisfactory, much less opti- accounting for inflation. In 1960, long, not the short, term, and they mal,” he says. the poorest quarter of the popula- spend accordingly. “Transitory vari- The nation’s official measure tion spent 12 percent more than ance” better fits the growing discrep- of poverty is biased, flawed, and their annual income; by 2002, the ancy between spending and income inconsistent with almost every other poorest fifth were spending double because year-to-year income varia- gauge of well-being, he writes. It fails their reported annual income. bility is rising. the test of common sense.

PRESS & MEDIA European news media, including the special concern with fairness in these countries after decades of communist egalitarianism. But Covering Corruption Grigorescu thinks the decisive fac- tor was the role of the European orescu, a political scientist at Loyola Union. It’s no mystery why. The THE SOURCE: “The Corruption Eruption University in Chicago. About seven Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, in East-Central Europe: The Increased Salience of Corruption and the Role of Inter- percent of the region’s print and and Slovakia were all slated to join governmental Organizations” by Alexandru broadcast news stories in 2004 that the EU in 2004; Bulgaria and Grigorescu, in East European Politics and Societies, Summer 2006. were included in his study dealt with Romania will enter in 2007. corruption. And there has been In part because of fears of a con- Corruption is drawing action: tougher prison sentences for tagion effect introduced by new more news media attention around bribery in the Czech Republic, civil members, the EU has zealously pro- the world than it did only a couple service reform in Poland, and many moted anticorruption efforts. Its of decades ago, but in no region has other measures. High officials annual country progress reports there been so radical an increase as accused of illicit activities in Bulgaria have been especially effective in in east-central Europe. Between and Slovakia have lost their jobs. drawing attention to the problem, 1996 and 2004, the number of sto- Yet Grigorescu isn’t about to Grigorescu says, and it made mem- ries on political and economic cor- rhapsodize about the glories of a bership contingent on certain ruption rose seven-fold in the free press. News media coverage of systemic reforms. About 80 percent region’s six countries. corruption in other parts of the of the region’s news stories on cor- “Today all of the major newspa- world has not increased since the ruption mentioned the EU. pers from the area run, on a regular mid-1990s, even in areas where the With the region’s accession to the basis, multiple stories about every- problem is more severe, such as Union now nearly complete, Grigor- day corrupt practices, high-level East Asia and Latin America. Nor escu worries that the EU will take corruption scandals, or governmen- has there been much change in its eye off the ball, and that the news tal and non-governmental declara- global media, such as The New York media will consequently lose inter- tions regarding the fight against Times. A few local factors explain est. The region’s track record—a corruption,” writes Alexandru Grig- the performance of the east-central score of only 3.8 on Transparency

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International’s 10-point corruption pieces to the brutal cursor scale—is hardly sterling, and surveys of newspaper editors. One show that little more than a third of is disgust with published its people express confidence in their pundits, and the second is national governments. A public that celebrity, according to perceives its government as ineffec- Douglas A. Borer, associ- tive and riddled with corruption, ate professor of defense Grigorescu writes, is a public ripe for analysis at the Naval Post- arguments that the weaknesses of graduate School in Mon- democracy itself are the problem. terey, California. The chances of making it into PRESS & MEDIA one of the —The “We do not usually acknowledge unsolicited manuscripts, New York Times, The Wash- but we want you to know that we tore yours into tiny Democracy in ington Post, The Christian pieces. Yours sincerely, The Op-Ed Page.” Science Monitor, and The Wall newspapers have to cede much of a Sentence Street Journal—are only their space to advertisements that

THE SOURCE:“Rejected by The New York somewhat better than the odds of pay the bills. Avoid long Times? Why Academics Struggle to Get Pub- winning the Powerball lottery. definitions. “We know that use of lished in National Newspapers” by Douglas Even so, some intrepid scholar that ever-loaded term ‘democracy’ A. Borer, in International Studies Perspectives, Aug. 2006. breaks the barrier every week. in a journal article entails a com- Academics must speed up, mitment of four or more pages of Nothing is quite as grat- tighten up, and keep trying, Borer literature review in order to dodge ifying to the Ph.D.-animated ego as writes. Get an idea and deliver a the finely honed machetes of peer hearing the phrase, “I loved your finished product in 24 to 36 reviewers,” Borer writes. “In an op-ed in the paper.” Two impulses hours. Keep even the most op-ed you can explain democracy spur academics to submit opinion profound topics to 700 words— in a sentence.”

RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY According to Michael J. Perry, a professor of law at Emory Univer- sity, the three documents that make up what is informally called the Why Be Reasonable? International Bill of Rights—the Universal Declaration of Human “in which the opponents and Rights (1948), the International THE SOURCE: “The Morality of Human Rights: A Problem for Nonbelievers?” by victims of murderous regimes and Covenant on Civil and Political Michael J. Perry, in Commonweal, July 14, civil wars can raise their voices Rights (1966), and the 2006. against violence, repression, and International Covenant on Though the 20th century persecution.” But on what authority Economic, Social, and Cultural witnessed some of the worst does that language rest? If human Rights (1966)—are “famously instances of man’s inhumanity to rights, as some have suggested, have silent” on the question of why we man, it also saw the birth of the their foundation only in religious should live our lives in a way that human rights movement. As teachings, how long, as the Polish respects human dignity. Perry says German philosopher Jürgen Haber- poet Czeslaw Milosz asked, “can that “a number of contemporary mas has noted, the language of they stay afloat if the bottom is thinkers have tried to provide a human rights is now the only one taken out?” nonreligious ground for the moral-

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ity of human rights,” notably the face of monumental horrors sociological factors quite separate Ronald Dworkin, Martha Nuss- such as Auschwitz, the world cannot from religious beliefs. baum, and John Finnis, but falter afford simply to appeal to the better Even so, the top five nations on at the point of justification. Finnis, nature of evildoers, waiting for them the United Nations’ Human Devel- a Catholic thinker who nevertheless to adopt good behavior. opment Index—Norway, Sweden, looks for a nonreligious basis of Perry appreciates the ability of Australia, Canada, and the Nether- morality, is reduced to arguing that nonbelievers to carry on with “the lands—are all in the top 25 in pro- it is “unreasonable for those who important work of ‘changing the portion of nonbelievers. Between 64 value their own well-being to inten- world,’ ” yet he questions how long and 85 percent of Swedes and 19 to tionally harm the well-being of secular societies can sustain their 30 percent of Canadians say there is other human beings,” says Perry. “bedrock conviction” that “the Other no God. The other countries are in Leaving aside the fact that some possesses inherent dignity and truly between. The bottom 50 countries people don’t care about being rea- is inviolable.” on the human development index sonable, it’s easy to imagine circum- lack statistically significant levels of stances in which one’s self or one’s RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY atheism. child were threatened and the only Zuckerman does not count the recourse was to harm another Religious countries, such as North Korea and person. Vietnam, where atheism has been In a 1993 address to the World Dysfunction imposed. But nations where citizens Conference on Human Rights, U.S. have abandoned religion by choice secretary of state Warren Chris- THE SOURCE: “Is Faith Good for Us?” by tend to fare well on measures of well- Phil Zuckerman, in Free Inquiry, topher made the case for human Aug.–Sept. 2006. being such as life expectancy, literacy, rights by arguing that “states with income, and education, while highly the worst human-rights records When Jerry Falwell religious states do poorly. tend also to be the world’s blamed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Less religious countries have aggressors,” and sources of instabil- New York and Washington on the lowest infant mortality rates in ity. True, says Perry, but self-interest Americans’ lack of piety, he spoke the world, religious countries the isn’t enough to motivate the United for many religious conservatives highest. Among the 40 poorest States or other powers to promote who believe that the failure to place countries in the world, all but strongly what one scholar calls “the God at the center of national life is one—Vietnam—are deemed reli- human rights of foreigners.” responsible for crime, poverty, dis- gious. Two separate studies of Philosopher Richard Rorty ease, and warfare. non-African countries show that believes that the whole quest for a To the contrary, Phil Zuckerman, most nations with the highest secular justification is misguided. If an associate professor of sociology rates of homicide are religious, Westerners are “trying to get every- at Pitzer College, writes that “the while those with the lowest rates one to be more like us,” says Rorty, most secular countries—those with are generally not. “it would be better to say: Here is the highest proportion of atheists The exception to the trend is sui- what we in the West look like as a and agnostics—are among the most cide; people who are religiously result of ceasing to hold slaves, stable, peaceful, free, wealthy, and observant tend to be less likely to beginning to educate women, sepa- healthy societies.” The presence of kill themselves than others. rating church and state, and so on.” atheists and agnostics doesn’t cause “Belief in God may provide com- In other words, lead by example. a country to be better off, he says, fort to the individual believer, but, at But Perry believes that such nor does the presence of religiosity the societal level, its results do not “pragmatism gives you nothing to plunge a nation into chaos. The compare at all favorably with fall back on, no recourse and no sol- well-being of a nation is caused by [those] of the more secular soci- ace, if you fail to swing the deal.” In political, historical, economic, and eties,” Zuckerman writes.

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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY his successors? Schönberg rejected the notion that any of the 12 familiar tones ought to be more dominant— one might also say pleasing to the The Music of the Spheres ear—than any other, and his work opened the way for experimentation resents time.” Plotting the positions of with the spaces between tones, which THE SOURCE: “The Geometry of Musical Chords” by Dmitri Tymoczko, and “Explor- those tones, he says, and their internal the Tonnetz cannot describe. ing Musical Space” by Julian Hook, in relations to one another reveals some- Tymoczko’s solution is to create a Science, July 7, 2006. thing fundamental about the new kind of musical map, one based Discoveries by the ancient structure of music. Hugo Riemann on a geometric shape called an Greek philosopher Pythagoras (1849–1919) invented one such map, orbifold. (c. 569–c. 475 bc) forged an unbreak- called a Tonnetz, based on the work of To mimic the structure of an able link between music and mathe- mathematician Leonard Euler. The octave, each half of Tymoczko’s map matics. Pythagoras showed is a reversed mirror of the that a string two feet long other, with a half-twist in would vibrate with a certain the middle; this is easiest to tone, and that a string half visualize in two-note chords, as long would yield a tone in which the pathway an octave higher. Further resembles a Möbius strip. divisions, into fifths, thirds, Traveling 12 notes in any and quarters, unlocked the direction brings one back to 12 tones—C, D, E, etc., the original tone, as the map along with intervening loops back upon itself. As sharps and flats—that additional notes are added, make up the 12 notes in an and the chords become octave, the basis for West- more complex, the map ern music. Given how long expands into multiple this system has been in dimensions, creating a uni- place, says Julian Hook, a fied framework for all possi- music professor at Indiana ble chord progressions. University’s Jacobs School In this prism-shaped segment of musical space, known as an orbifold, Although the relation- of Music, “it is perhaps sur- notes (represented by dots) are shown along with their related tones. ships of perfect fifths and prising that our understanding of the Tonnetz is a two-dimensional model thirds lie within Tymoczko’s orbifold mathematical structure of the spaces of a musical piece showing the links map—and retain their geometric in which musical phenomena operate between individual notes and chords: structures—infinite spaces within the remains fragmentary.” Now Dmitri Perfect fifths get linked diagonally, 12 tones now emerge, made up of Tymoczko, a music theorist at Prince- major thirds vertically, and minor subtones, or fractions, of the intervals ton University, has developed a way of thirds horizontally. A section of a between the notes. Notes from music viewing those spaces that may reveal Beethoven string quartet, perhaps not that sounds jarringly dissonant, some of their mysteries. surprisingly, yields a Tonnetz with an tellingly, are clustered in very tight Hook points out that a conven- elegant geometric structure, like the spaces in the corners of Tymoczko’s tional musical score is itself a kind of honeycomb of a bee. orbifolds. Major chords, on the other “graph whose vertical axis represents What of modern composers, such hand, lie toward the center, allowing pitch and whose horizontal axis rep- as Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) and them efficient linking with minor

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keys and inverted chords. Many com- SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY at their site, a few will click on posers exploit such connections to one of the accompanying adver- inject counterpoint into their Splog Alert tisements. Each click sends a few compositions. cents into the splogger’s bank Using the orbifold map, says THE SOURCE: “Spam + Blogs = Trouble” by account. And since any one splog- Tymoczko, it is possible to track com- Charles C. Mann, in Wired, Sept. 2006. ger can run thousands of splogs, mon chord progressions in classical the scam can apparently be rather music and see that they lie along a With all the hype sur- lucrative. One splog partnership predictable trajectory. He can discern, rounding the rapidly expanding blo- claimed $71,136.89 in earnings for instance, how certain chords— gosphere, a world where anybody from August to October 2005. C, D-flat, E-flat—and chords closely can write interminably on anything, To be sure, Google and its related to them define the music of it may come as a surprise that some- search engine peers are rushing Schubert, Wagner, and Debussy. “My thing far less familiar or friendly is to fight off the splogs, teaching geometric models show us that there growing even faster: the splogo- their search engines to distin- are important strands of commonal- sphere. guish between legitimate blogs ity running through the last thousand Splogs are sand in the machine and spam. It’s a tricky business; years of music,” Tymoczko says, that of the Internet, and they could computers just aren’t as good as previously went unrecognized. cripple the online world, warns people are at recognizing junk. Tymoczko also believes that his sys- Charles C. Mann, a science jour- For every tweak Google makes in tem is invaluable for studying the nalist. A splog (from “spam blog”) its search algorithms, the music of non-Western cultures, which is a bogus blog website containing sploggers tweak back, with a pro- frequently employ tones and pitches nothing but gibberish and adver- tracted “Google dance” the result. off the 12-tone scale. The orbifold tisements. The gibberish is full of More ominous possibilities are map might even open up new tonal keywords carefully selected to raised by other techniques splog- possibilities for contemporary com- lure users of search engines such gers employ to snare Web surfers, posers to explore, though with no as Google and Yahoo. such as using robo-software to guarantee that they will inspire listen- Sploggers work on the princi- implant links to their sites in the able music. ple that once Web surfers arrive comment sections of legitimate

light, you cannot see details. You would need diverse EXCERPT eyes if you wished to be equally penetrating and sensitive. You would need to have eyes like the box jellyfish, To See or To Think with its 16 light-sensitive eyes and eight acute camera- like eyes—all 24 eyes hanging down on stalks. Cats have iridescent tapeta in their eyes for gather- However, you would also need a brain. ing the palest traces of light; but all that gathered scat- But maybe that is not possible; maybe, in fact, the tery light in their eyes, then, prevents cats from brainlessness of the box jellyfish is a direct consequence perceiving fine details. And hawks detect details, but of its tremendous powers of sight. Perhaps neither the since they do not have tapeta for collecting flickers, animal nor the prophet has been invented who could they must depend on the sun to boom down obvious process so thorough a vision. light for them to see by. Your blessing is your curse and your curse is your blessing. Because you see details, —AMY LEACH, an Evanston, Illinois-based writer, you cannot see hints of light; because you see hints of in A Public Space (Summer 2006)

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blogs. “Great point,” the fake lead sional’s credo, which venerates the might read. “For more on this How did it happen that management consultant, for exam- issue, click here.” Some heavily manual work, given its ple, who can swoop into different trafficked blogs, such as Insta- intrinsic richness, companies and whip under- pundit and Talking Points Memo, became so devalued? performing divisions into shape. don’t allow readers to post their Craftsmanship means dwelling on own responses to their sites’ one task for a long time to get it articles, in part to evade the the University of Virginia. It is time right. In management-speak, that sploggers. to reconsider an ideal that has fallen culture is called “ingrown.” By con- That represents a grave out of favor: manual competence. trast, the roving consultant has wound, since interactivity and Skills that require the ability to soaring freedom. user-generated content are key perfect something concrete are Yet thousands of years ago, Aris- attractions of the blogosphere. derided as “jobs of the past.” While totle recognized the weaknesses of But it’s not just the interminable manufacturing jobs have flowed the virtual as opposed to the con- talkers who may be affected, away from America like lava down crete. Lack of experience diminishes Mann notes. The whole promise a steep slope, manual work has our power to take a comprehensive of the emerging vision of what’s not. If a deck needs to be built, or view of the facts, the philosopher called Web 2.0 is that people in a car repaired, the Chinese are no said. Those who dwell in intimate their professional and personal help. They are in China. And one association with nature and its phe- lives will be able to interact, of the surest paths to a good living nomena are better able to lay down share, and learn from others is the manual trades, although principles of wide and coherent using new technologies on the that is not the main reason to usefulness. Internet. A plague of splogs could pursue them, Crawford writes. How did it happen that manual strangle this possibility. At the The principal reason to develop work, given its intrinsic richness, moment, however, splogs are not manual competence is intrinsic cognitively, socially, and psychically, much more than an annoyance, satisfaction. became so devalued? Crawford and one that savvy Web surfers As a teenager Crawford worked attributes the decline to “scientific can surely dodge. as an electrician, and after attend- management,” the discipline that ing college he started a small firm. arose in the last century to boost the SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY “In those years I never ceased to efficiency of factories. He quotes take pleasure in the moment, at the Frederick Winslow Taylor, an early In Praise of end of a job, when I would flip the evangelist of workplace efficiency, switch. ‘And there was light.’ It was who called for managers to gather Competence an experience of agency and com- all the knowledge possessed by petence. The effects of my work workmen and then classify it and THE SOURCE: “Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew B. Crawford, in The New Atlantis, were visible for all to see, so my reduce it to minute rules. “All possi- Summer 2006. competence was real for others as ble brain work should be removed well; it had a social currency. The from the shop and centered in the The 21st-century rat race well-founded pride of the trades- planning or lay-out department,” requires every warm body to go to man is far from the gratuitous ‘self- Taylor wrote. This made it possible college and from there to the cubi- esteem’ that educators would to hire workers who were less cles where workers begin their impart to students, as though by skilled and less expensive. career-long glide through the sup- magic.” With the degradation of manual posedly crystalline air of the infor- Craftsmanship means learning labor on the factory floor, the mation economy, writes Matthew B. to do one thing really well. It is the decline accelerated. Now Crawford Crawford, a postdoctoral fellow at opposite of the modern profes- sees a similar trend in office work,

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as more people are employed as dis- sea of clerkdom.” manual trade. Tomorrow’s seminators, rather than originators, By all means, go to college, craftsman will be less damaged and of information. The rising tide of Crawford advises young people. But quite possibly better paid than the “knowledge work,” he says, will not in the summers, and for life, many legions of cubicle-dwelling tenders lift all boats. “More likely is a rising would be well advised to pursue a of information systems.

ARTS & LETTERS same enervating forces that have killed so many small urban centers across the United States. Columbus is beginning to consider the The Limits of Architecture unthinkable: Should it tear down some buildings designed by the

THE SOURCE:“Goodbye Columbus” by started in 1942 in his hometown, nation’s leading architects to keep Philip Nobel, in Metropolis, July 2006, and Columbus, Indiana, population its downtown alive? “Columbus Explored” by John King, in 39,000. Over the next six decades, When Eliel Saarinen’s First Dwell, July–Aug. 2006. Columbus was transformed into an Christian Church was commis- J. Irwin Miller of Cummins outdoor museum of Modernist sioned in 1940, it was only the first Engine Company was a civic- design that is listed among the top of what would become more than minded industrialist who believed six American cities in architectural 60 architecturally significant build- that uplifting architecture could distinction. Now, however, its ings in town. Saarinen’s son, Eero, make the world a better place. He downtown is suffering from the returned two decades later to build

Eero Saarinen’s 1964 North Christian Church,with a soaring 192-foot spire,is one of the most distinctive and influential church buildings in America.

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the even more striking hexagonal the passage of history with the pas- North Christian Church, topped by Columbus’s Modernist sion of literature.” one of the most famous spires in jewels have not saved As the 21st century begins, he America. I. M. Pei designed the observes, military spending far out- the city from the ills public library, whose plaza is domi- strips expenditures on health, edu- that beset other Ameri- nated by sculptor Henry Moore’s cation, and development. The needs Large Arch. William Rawn can cities. of women, the elderly, and the conceived Fire Station No. 6 as an young are left unaddressed. The abstract takeoff on a barn, Richard funereal pomp,” according to King. environment is under siege. And Meier built a school, and the list An enclosed shopping mall by terror is met with terror, while its goes on: Harry Weese, Cesar Pelli, Cesar Pelli also faces the redevelop- root causes remain untended. Kevin Roche, James Polshek, ment commission’s scrutiny. In a Images have collapsed space and Charles Gwathmey, John Johansen, city with so much, there has been pulverized time, and we humans are Robert Venturi, Gunnar Birkerts, no outcry. Columbus architect in danger of becoming “cheerful Edward Larrabee Barnes, and John Nolan Bingham observes that robots amusing ourselves to death.” Carl Warnecke—almost a complete “there are only a few buildings that These realities “should move us roll call of Modernist stars. will last a truly long time.” to affirm that language is the foun- But Columbus’s masterful, if dation of culture, the door of experi- small, buildings have not saved the ARTS & LETTERS ence, the roof of the imagination, city from the fate of many similar the basement of memory, the bed- towns across the country, according A Novel Approach chamber of love, and, above all, the to Philip Nobel, an architectural window open to the air of doubt, writer. Washington Street, the main to History uncertainty, and questioning.” That drag, is dotted with empty “air of doubt” that writers stir is why, storefronts. A restaurant once noted THE SOURCE: “In Praise of the Novel” by though “considered politically feeble Carlos Fuentes, in Critical Inquiry, in guidebooks is shuttered. The Summer 2006. and unimportant,” they are perse- retail lifeblood of the city has cuted by totalitarian regimes. drained away to the Wal-Mart and What the world needs now Yes, Cervantes wrote as a man of other “big box” stores on the is novels. Mexican writer Carlos his times, but what perhaps made outskirts. The dense city center sur- Fuentes—himself the author of him great—Don Quixote was rounded by small single-family numerous works of fiction—points recently voted the best novel of all houses does not have enough stores to the impact of Miguel Cervantes’s time by 100 writers from around the to attract much street life, and the Don Quixote de la Mancha when it world—is that he transcended them. downtown has an “8 to 5 existence,” appeared in 1605, in an age in He wrote as an inhabitant of “the Tom Vujovich, president of the city’s which Cervantes’s native Spain was house of world literature,” which is redevelopment commission, told an aging empire on the verge of capacious enough to hold the tradi- John King, the urban design critic breakdown. tions from which great works of liter- for The San Francisco Chronicle. “As Cervantes responded to the ature spring as well as those they Now, a redevelopment commis- degraded society of his time with create. sion is debating whether the town the triumph of the critical imagina- We in the modern era need to needs all its showcase buildings. tion,” writes Fuentes, we citizens of shore up this house, according to Number one on the endangered list the world today “face a degraded Fuentes, to ensure our very survival. is the Kevin Roche post office from society and must reflect upon it as it “Humankind will prevail, and it will 1970. It occupies an entire block off seeps into our lives, surrounds us, prevail because, in spite of the acci- the main street, and, despite its and even casts us upon the dents of history, the novel tells us provenance, is a “leaden exercise in perennial situation of responding to that art restores the life in us that

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was disregarded by the haste of his- Row. Such books prop up old etc.—but what was fatal to it “was tory. Literature makes real what his- stereotypes and prejudices, he says, simply that it was too easy a target tory forgot. And because history has but they aren’t being met with bet- for satire.” Bly himself—a been what was, literature will offer ter books “that examine contempo- shambling bear of a man who what history has not always been. rary relationships and gender roles strummed a lute and wore colorful That is why we will never witness— without panic, dread, or shame.” vests—cut an unfortunately comic bar universal catastrophe—the end This dearth is particularly evident figure, and many misconstrued his of history.” in the men’s department. book and the men’s seminars he In Iron John: A Book About conducted to mean that “contem- ARTS & LETTERS Men, which is structured on an porary men need to somehow allegorical interpretation of a Ger- return to nature, re-create tribal R.I.P., Iron John man fairytale, Bly argues that con- ceremonies, or otherwise fetishize temporary American men are what they have lost.” Yet the affir- THE SOURCE: “Remembering Iron John” sorely lacking nurturing fathers, mation and hope Bly offered to by Jess Row, in Slate, Aug. 8, 2006. meaningful mentors, self-respect, men set numbly adrift in the and “most of all,” Row says, “the post–World War II industrial A lack of irony is what ability to cultivate their inner economy were real, as were his killed Iron John, poet Robert Bly’s resources—as Socrates said, to optimism, his generosity, and his call to arms for a men’s movement know themselves.” Though reviled fearless reliance on poetry. published in 1990. It’s been largely by many feminists, Row writes, The value of his message is lost reduced to a joke, and that’s too Bly supports the women’s in the post-Seinfeld landscape. bad, says Jess Row, a writer and movement, as long as both sexes “Irony, and the fear of ridicule, English professor at the College of acknowledge that men’s and have, in a way, made any serious New Jersey. women’s inner needs are different. discussion of men’s emotional lives Recent books such as Caitlin The book has its share of impossible,” writes Row. The Flanagan’s To Hell With All That: flaws—myopia, a failure to grapple sensitive-man ethos Bly espoused Loving and Loathing Your Inner with Freud, overgeneralizations, is now the butt of advertising cam- Housewife and Harvey paigns and wisecracks. Mansfield’s Manliness The resulting repression criticize modern domestic EXCERPT means that “we still lack life and argue that our a basic vocabulary for, culture’s attempts to press say, the experience of a for gender equality have Museum Leadership 101 stay-at-home father, or produced unhappiness the difference (from a and social breakdown. I was appointed director [of New York’s man’s point of view) “Flanagan and Mansfield Metropolitan Museum of Art] in May of 1977 and I between flirtation and are united in nostalgia for would have to say it’s a different world, to the point harassment at work. If a kind of Douglas Sirk that, knowing everything I know, were I offered the we don’t find a way of version of the ’50s, with- job again I’m not sure I would take it. . . . It has emulating Bly’s generos- out the irony, in which become bureaucratized and legalized, with a paralyz- ity of spirit and willing- men provided, led, ing near-zero risk-tolerance level, and . . . financial ness to risk truth-telling, fought, and defended, and issues dominate everything we do. we’re going to remain women cultivated, stuck with recycled argu- nurtured, healed, and —PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, director of the Metro- ments and archetypes, willingly acquiesced to politan Museum of Art, in The New Criterion (Sept. 2006) lacking a language that men’s desires,” writes applies to our own era.”

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OTHER NATIONS That’s not surprising. Juries acquit about 15 to 20 percent of defendants, judges about 1 percent. Not-guilty verdicts are new in the country, where If Found Innocent, the Soviet system convicted virtually 100 percent of the accused. Try, Try Again But an acquittal can be only the beginning of the story. Both convic- ulation. And when it comes to juries, tions and acquittals can be appealed. THE SOURCES:“Trust In Public Institutions in Russia: The Lowest in the World” by a post-Soviet innovation, typical Rus- In 2005 the Russian Supreme Court Vladimir Shlapentokh, in Communist and sians appear not to trust even one overturned 49 percent of the acquit- Post-Communist Studies, June 2006, and “Not Guilty Until the Supreme Court Finds another. The nation’s experience with tals that were appealed, compared You Guilty: A Reflection on Jury Trials in jury trials has triggered controversy with only 14.5 percent of the guilty Russia” by Kristi O’Malley, in Demokratizat- and criticism. The recurring theme verdicts. siya, Winter 2006. during academic and judicial confer- A Russian told O’Malley that pros- The typical Russian today ences, and in the news media, is that ecutors often appeal and re-appeal an is almost as suspicious as was Stalin, the Russian people are not “mature acquittal “until they get what they who mistrusted peasants, bureau- enough” for jury trials and too many want.” That’s a mistake, she believes. crats, officers, allies, agents, and his criminals are escaping punishment. She argues that the Supreme Court own wife—for a start. No Russian In 1993, when jury trials were first should stop overturning so many institution commands even a moder- permitted, under the new Russian acquittals and reform the haphazard ate level of trust from more than half constitution, a total of two were held. lower court procedures that open the of the population. Russians have the By 2004, the number had jumped to door to numerous appeals. Jury lowest level of confidence in their 1,000. In some regions more than 60 acquittals send “a message to the social institutions in the world, percent of all defendants now demand authorities that there are some uses of according to Michigan State Univer- jury trials, writes Kristi O’Malley, a state power that people are not will- sity sociologist Vladimir Shlapentokh. Washington lawyer who has worked ing to tolerate.” Russia’s courts, for example, enjoy on judicial reform efforts in Russia for the trust of only 15 percent of the pop- the U.S. Justice Department. OTHER NATIONS David and Goliath in Africa

THE SOURCE: “West Africa Versus the United States on Cotton Subsidies: How, Why, and What Next?” by Elinor Lynn Heinisch, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, June 2006.

When three impoverished African countries took on American cotton producers in 2003, charging that subsidized U.S. cotton was flood- ing the market and reducing the price Jurors hear a 1994 double homicide case in one of Russia’s first jury trials.Jurors are more likely to of their main export, it was a find defendants not guiltythan judges are,and acquittals are often overturned bythe Supreme Court. watershed event in international

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trade relations, according to Elinor African nations. Cotton producers OTHER NATIONS Lynn Heinisch, a press officer with there are not subsidized, and govern- the aid organization CARE. It proved ment intervention in cotton markets The 1.3-Million- that politically and economically has been cut back, leaving farmers’ weak countries can effectively incomes to rise and fall with world Person Gap challenge farm subsidies in the prices. THE SOURCE: “Voodoo Demographics” by world’s strongest nations. The Africans became the public Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Cotton is the most important face of an immensely complicated Michael L. Wise, in Azure, Summer 2006. export crop of Burkina Faso, Mali, world trade issue. For the first time, Israeli and Palestinian leaders and Benin, the world’s 4th-, 10th-, an African head of state testified sing from the same score on only one and 16th-poorest countries. Farmers before the U.S. House of Represent- topic: demographics. The rapidly in landlocked Burkina Faso, located atives International Relations Sub- growing Palestinian population could to the north of Ghana, can grow cot- committee on Africa. President eventually overwhelm Israeli Jews by ton at a cost of 21 cents per pound, Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali and sheer force of numbers. As the late working plots of two to three acres by President Blaise Compaoré of Burk- Yasir Arafat said, “The womb of the hand and relying on rain for irri- ina Faso published an op-ed piece in Palestinian woman will defeat the gation. The cost of cotton production The New York Times. Officials of all Zionists.” for U.S. farmers is between 68 and 80 three countries flew to Geneva, But the numbers behind the cents per pound. where the WTO was meeting, and Palestinian “demographic time Simple arithmetic would suggest spoke elsewhere in Europe. They bomb” are inflated, contend Bennett that the African farmers would put the enlisted allies in international agen- Zimmerman, a former strategy con- Americans out of business, but Amer- cies and charities. At one point, the sultant with Bain & Company, histo- ica’s 30,000 cotton farms claim to WTO director-general broke from rian Roberta Seid, and Michael L. provide some 440,000 jobs, and the “conventional neutrality” to say that Wise, a specialist in mathematical cotton lobby is an important political the African complaints had merit, modeling. The actual Palestinian player in Washington. The U.S. according to Heinisch. The cotton Arab population is only 2.5 million— government spends $3.9 billion a year campaign paid off in March 2005, not the 3.8 million reported by the on subsidies to American cotton farm- when the WTO ruled in favor of Palestinian Authority. Palestinians are ers, Heinisch writes, paying many pro- Brazil—and its African allies—and nowhere close to outnumbering ducers the difference between the the United States announced it Israel’s 5.5 million Jews, even if the market price—currently hovering a bit would move to comply. Israeli Arab population of more than above 50 cents per pound—and a “tar- Brazil, seizing the possibility that a a million is included. get price” of 72 cents per pound. revived Doha round of trade talks The 1.3-million-person gap began The Africans took their complaints might permanently level the playing to open up in 1997, when the Pales- about the subsidies to the World Trade field for international cotton produc- tinians conducted their only census, Organization (WTO), piggybacking ers, put off its demand for $3 billion say the authors. In one dramatic leap, on a cotton-related unfair trade prac- in damages from the United States. the official Palestinian population tice case brought by vastly richer Bra- Now that the trade negotiations jumped by 30 percent. The new fig- zil. (Few developing countries have the have collapsed, it remains to be seen ure was achieved by double-counting legal or financial resources to bring a whether Brazil’s African supporters 210,000 Arabs who lived in Jerus- case on their own.) They contended will try to wrest more from the U.S. alem—they had already been counted that subsidies caused U.S. farmers to Department of Agriculture than the in Israel’s census—and by adding at produce more cotton than they would $7 million “cotton improvement pro- least 325,000 Palestinians who were otherwise grow, sell it at an artificially gram” offered. It is a paltry substitute, living outside the Palestinian Author- low price, and undermine the liveli- the Africans have said, for fair prices ity’s territory, including many residing hoods of farmers in the three West in the global free market. overseas. Since then, the Palestinian

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Authority has routinely increased its tered over the squandering of so and helps support 4,500 more. It population estimates by 4.75 percent much public money on something has had positive effects on such annually, based on high 1997 so irrelevant and exclusive. But occupations as translation, library estimates of growth and immigration today, Bilbao, Spain, is known services, and handicrafts, and has rates. In fact, Palestinian birthrates throughout the world for its increased the demand for knowl- have dropped. The Palestinian Min- “Guggenheim effect.” edge of foreign languages, tourism istry of Health recorded 308,000 Bilbao provides an ideal labo- packaging, advertising, mar- fewer births than were expected ratory for the study of the effects keting, film, and business between 1997 and the end of 2003. of “signature architecture” on a management. And it’s a dirty little secret that more city. Unlike London, Madrid, or Plaza notes that signature Palestinians are leaving the West New York, where museums and architecture, even by celebrity Bank and Gaza than are moving in, cultural attractions are launched architects, is no guarantee that thanks to Palestinian-incited violence, almost as frequently as computer expensive high culture can turn the authors argue. upgrades, Bilbao changed only around a stagnating city. Bilbao Demographic projections need one major thing in 1997: it was fortunate in getting Gehry’s not be demographic destiny, the opened a spectacular Guggenheim most acclaimed building. “It must authors say. It’s even possible that museum. Noted, if at all, for its be remembered that it could also Israeli Jews could increase their pollution and past Basque have failed,” Plaza writes. Even the share of the population in Israel most noted architects have their and the West Bank. Palestinian fer- “off” buildings. The new Santiago tility rates are falling while Jewish Bilbao’s success still Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee rates (already the highest in the depends on razzle- Art Museum has not attracted as advanced industrial world) are ris- dazzle shows to many visitors as first projected. ing, and there’s always the possibil- complement the The Royal Armouries Museum in ity of a fresh influx of Jews from architecture. Leeds, England, which expected abroad akin to the unexpected 1.3 million annual visitors, has had arrival of one million Soviet Jews. fewer than 200,000. Palestine’s millions remain a chal- separatist activity, Bilbao was Rare for Europe, the Guggen- lenge to Israel, the authors allow, but transformed by the inauguration heim has adopted market-oriented the “Arab demographic time bomb is, of Frank O. Gehry’s building, con- budgeting aimed at making the in many crucial respects, a dud.” sidered a masterpiece of 20th- museum staff more efficient and century architecture. Yet many of sensitive to customers’ tastes. Sev- OTHER NATIONS its original critics have questioned enty percent of operating costs whether it has performed the must be covered by museum The Guggenheim hoped-for economic miracle. revenues and 30 percent by the Beatriz Plaza, an economist at Basque government. To raise the Effect University of the Basque Country necessary funds, the museum has

THE SOURCE: “The Return on Investment in Bilbao, reports that the staged blockbuster exhibitions. of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao” by Beat- museum paid for itself in nine Bilbao should not be “uncrit- riz Plaza, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, June 2006. years, a world record. When it ically replicated elsewhere,” Plaza opened, tourism increased imme- cautions, because the risks were When a decaying industrial diately. The number of hotel stays high, and success even now city in the Basque country decided rose by 61,742 a month, Plaza depends on the curators’ coming in the 1990s to spend the equiva- writes, producing an “extra” up with new razzle-dazzle shows lent of about $200 million on a 740,000 hotel stays a year. The to complement the architecture modern art museum, critics sput- museum has generated 907 jobs, and keep the public coming.

90 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2006 Also in this issue:

David Lindley on string theory’s tangle CURRENT

Eric Weinberger on the murder that transfixed Holland BOOKS Aviya Kushner reviews of new and noteworthy nonfiction on Isaac Bashevis Singer

Victor Navasky on I. F. Stone Old Master, New Mimic

Roy Reed on white Reviewed by Paul Maliszewski Southerners in the In August 1937, Abraham Bredius meer’s windows are often civil rights age I WAS VERMEER: produced a masterpiece. Bredius, the foremost ornate and thrown open The Rise and Fall of Lauren F. Winner expert on Dutch painting, examined a picture to the day, with figures the Twentieth on evangelical for a lawyer who said he represented a young mirrored in the glass. Century’s youth woman from a wealthy Dutch family that had Light reflects off a bowl’s Greatest Forger. fallen on hard times. Two days later, Bredius lip or the beads of a pearl By Frank Wynne. David Macaulay declared that he’d discovered a painting by Jan necklace, and glows from Bloomsbury USA. on anatomical 276 pp. $24.95 correctness Vermeer (1632–75): “This magnificent piece . . . within his human sub- has come to light—may the Lord be thanked— jects. In the forgery, just the corner of a win- from the darkness where it has lain for many dow is visible, and the only light is drab. years, unsullied, exactly as it left the artist’s stu- The Emmaus wasn’t a knockoff by a dio.” With a brief letter of authentication and, lesser-known 17th-century artist or a stu- later, a scholarly article, Bredius transformed dent of the master. Not more than a few some paint and a roughly mounted rectangle of weeks old when Bredius inspected it, the canvas into a national treasure. painting was the handiwork of Dutch artist But Bredius was wrong. The Supper at Han van Meegeren (1889–1947). While still Emmaus, as the painting came to be known, a student, van Meegeren won a prestigious was a forgery, and not a crafty one. It depicts national art prize, but the rewards for being Jesus after his resurrection breaking bread the year’s best young Dutch painter were with two disciples while a serving woman modest. He turned to forgery for fast profits holding a pitcher stands to the side. The fig- and out of frustration with his contem- ures are lumpy and ill formed, their clothes poraries, whose abstractions and experi- concealing what the forger couldn’t render. ments he thought pointless, decadent, and The space behind Jesus is unadorned, dull. By painting in the guise of more whereas in Vermeer’s finest work, maps, famous artists, he became a shameless tapestries, and paintings hang from the success. walls, and individually rendered tiles— The story of van Meegeren has been told usually Delftware, a product of the painter’s before, in several out-of-print biographies hometown—decorate the baseboards. Ver- and scholarly works of art history. Frank

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Han van Meegeren, jailed in Holland after World War II as a traitor for selling masterpieces by Dutch artist Jan Vermeer to the Nazis, tried to prove that he had forged the paintings by creating another “Vermeer”for his captors: The Young Christ Teaching in the Temple.

Wynne, a London-based journalist and the Eng- alone, in which her “sensuous lip” quivers. Van lish translator of Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Meegeren and others speak in so many Elementary Particles, adds little to those unsourced passages of dialogue that one wonders accounts of the forger’s fizzy rise and ignomin- whether Wynne has purchased liveliness of plot ious fall, and he only cursorily considers the and character at the expense of solid history. His uncomfortable questions about the art world eagerness to embellish what is already dramatic raised by a forger’s achievements. What makes leads him to overreach, not unlike Bredius and one painting—or one painter—more valuable his expert colleagues. than another? Are such determinations rational, or arbitrary and faddish? Wynne treats such he Supper at Emmaus is larger than most questions as brief pauses in a brisk page-turner. works by Vermeer, about whom so little is He has his story to tell. T known that one writer called him “the Reading this easily digested, only occasionally sphinx of Delft.” Its subject matter bears only a thoughtful historical reenactment is rather like glancing resemblance to his better-known, watching the actors at Colonial Williamsburg, or achingly detailed domestic scenes—the milkmaid the weekend warriors who band together to with a pitcher, the noblewoman writing a letter, replay the Battle of Gettysburg. In a typical pas- the woman standing before a window as daylight sage, Wynne describes a domestic argument shines in upon her. Vermeer’s oeuvre includes between the painter and his wife when they were few religious subjects, but Bredius and other

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prominent critics had long supposed that the for treason—for selling a national treasure to artist, who converted to Catholicism so that he the enemy. Six weeks in custody sufficed to and his wife-to-be could marry, painted other extract his confession: He was Vermeer. Few religious works now unknown to us. people believed him—nobody, after all, likes Those critics further speculated that there must being fooled—until he forged one last Vermeer have been a transitional period between Vermeer’s for the authorities. Convicted of lesser fraud early canvases, which tend to be larger, more charges and sentenced to a year in prison, he romantic, and clearly influenced by Caravaggio, died in 1947, before serving a day. and his smaller, more placid later works. With so few paintings credited to Vermeer—in Bredius’s an Meegeren’s patrons were not rich, day there were roughly 50; today there are only 35, uninformed collectors, people with all and even that number is thought to be padded V the money in the world and no taste. with forgeries—the critics believed that the paint- Rather, they represented major museums, gal- ings of his middle period were lost, casualties of leries, and private collections. Wynne speculates, time and the neglect into which Vermeer’s work correctly, that nationalism and wartime anxiety fell for nearly two centuries after his death. fueled the intense bidding for the fakes. As the Van Meegeren’s success in passing off his world came undone, the least the Dutch could do Emmaus, for which he received 520,000 was preserve their cultural heritage. To seal the guilders, the equivalent today of about $4.7 deals, the forger relied million, encouraged him to continue forging. on the art world’s overly During the next few years he rushed off six cozy network of buyers, Van Meegeren understood, more Vermeers, including The Last Supper, critics, and museum as other forgers do, that which fetched 1.6 million guilders, and three curators. That world, the stamp of authenticity other religious canvases, which sold for a com- like all small worlds, can trump art. bined 4.2 million guilders—extraordinary protects its own. After sums of money for any artist, in any age, but van Meegeren’s decep- all the more jaw dropping when set against the tions were made plain, few people sought to widespread deprivation in Europe during press charges. Most didn’t want to acknowledge World War II. publicly that they’d been duped. Others simply Van Meegeren’s later forgeries piggybacked refused to accept the truth. One critic insisted on his earlier work. He copied himself, creat- that van Meegeren was a boastful liar, and prided ing paintings that resembled his own fakes himself on having rescued the fakes from being more than original Vermeers. Critics dutifully destroyed, as Dutch law dictates. called attention to the striking way in which Van Meegeren understood, as other forgers each latest discovery was so much like The do, that the stamp of authenticity can trump art. Supper at Emmaus. In all, van Meegeren is The proof, however spurious and cobbled believed to have painted 11 Vermeers, three together, that a painting is by Vermeer (or any canvases in the style of Frans Hals, and a cou- other name-brand artist) is at least as important ple mimicking Pieter de Hooch. as the quality of the work. It was enough for the Through a web of intermediaries, van forger to create a plausible resemblance to Ver- Meegeren sold Christ with the Woman Taken meer. Van Meegeren’s early forgeries crassly com- in Adultery, his sloppiest Vermeer by far, to bined elements of authentic paintings, cut-and- Hermann Göring for the price of 1.65 million paste style, into pastiches. While he eventually guilders and the return of hundreds of Dutch became an accomplished mimic, he was never a old masters looted by the Nazis. After the war, great painter. But he didn’t need to be, for a van Meegeren was arrested and imprisoned painting’s market value derives not just from the

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quality of the individual canvas but largely from at, because no one dared look closely. the reputation of its putative creator. Today the The forger’s story may be read as an enduring art world is not appreciably different. Wynne fable about the art world. A modern-day Aesop concludes with an object lesson: In 2004, casino might cast the tale with a wily crow and selfish developer Steve Wynn paid $30 million at auc- foxes: One day, the crow set the foxes fighting for tion for a Vermeer that is far from the artist’s control of an apple. The apple, the crow swore, best—and one not all experts agree is authentic. was unlike any other in the world, and the foxes Everyone wanted van Meegeren’s forgeries to chose to believe him. But the apple was really be masterpieces. The buyers and curators wanted nothing special, and the crow, in the end, was desperately to acquire a Vermeer for their collec- found out and driven from the forest for its lies. tions. The critics wanted, no less desperately, to But what of the foxes that desired blindly and claim responsibility for adding one more work to wildly, and so were fooled? Should not they too Vermeer’s all-too-slim catalogue raisonné. And learn a moral from such a story? experts such as Bredius wanted to confirm their pet theories. Pride and self-regard colored judg- Paul Maliszewski’s writing has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, and The Paris Review. He is currently completing a collection of ment, and no one truly saw what he was looking essays about the varieties of faking.

Strung Out Reviewed by David Lindley

Until just over two decades ago, string tion: Elementary particles— THE TROUBLE theory was an esoteric branch of mathematical electrons, photons, quarks, and WITH PHYSICS: physics that held the attention of only a handful of their numerous cousins—are The Rise of String maverick researchers. For their efforts, these pio- not pointlike objects but Theory,the Fall of a neers endured a mixture of puzzlement and derision “strings” of energy forming Science,and What Comes Next. from their colleagues, and had trouble finding posi- tiny, wiggly loops. If a stringy tions at academic institutions where they could pur- loop vibrates one way, it mani- By Lee Smolin. Houghton Mifflin. sue their quirky endeavors. But nowadays, it’s hard to fests itself as an electron. If it 392 pp. $26 land a job in a high-powered department of theoret- shimmies some other way, it NOTEVEN WRONG: ical physics if you don’t do string theory. looks like a quark. Wacky as The Failure of String Aficionados claim that string theory provides this idea may sound, there are Theory and the the foundation for a “theory of everything”—a good reasons why physicists so Search for Unity in harmonious unification of all of fundamental fervently embraced it. Smolin, Physical Law. physics. To the contrary, declare Lee Smolin, a the more elegant writer, is far By Peter Woit. Basic. physicist at Canada’s Perimeter Institute, and better at conveying the concep- 291 pp. $26.95 Peter Woit, a mathematician at Columbia Uni- tual import of physical theorizing with a mini- versity, string theory has thus far explained mum of technical detail. Neither book, though, is exactly nothing. But Smolin and Woit offer con- easy reading for the uninitiated. flicting recommendations on how to restore san- To put it very briefly, what turned interest in ity to theoretical physics, suggesting that string string theory from an oddball enthusiasm to a theory’s dominance does not yet face a wholly mainstream occupation was a twofold realiza- persuasive challenge. tion that came in 1984. That’s when two of the The essence of string theory is a literal asser- early string pioneers, John Schwarz of Caltech

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and Michael Green, who was based in London, the only answer is no answer at all. It just hap- published a paper showing that just a handful pens to be that way. of possible string theories were free of mathe- matical inconsistencies that plagued tradi- he concern that string theory might lead tional particle-based models, and also had suf- physicists into a rarefied regime beyond ficient capacity (the number and variety of T the reach of experimental scrutiny is not internal vibrations, roughly speaking) to entirely new. John Horgan, in his book The End accommodate all the known elementary parti- of Science (1996), adverted to this danger, and, if I cles and their interactions. There was one little may be immodest, so did I in my 1993 book The difficulty: The systems these theories described End of Physics. (And perhaps I should add that existed only in 10 dimensions. Woit makes a brief reference to my book, in Since we live in a world that has but three which he misstates one of its arguments.) dimensions of space and one of time, that last But Smolin and Woit go much further, argu- point might seem to be a deal breaker, but so ing that by making string theory infinitely mal- appealing were the other virtues of string theory leable, theorists have now consciously put their that physicists found a solution. The “extra” work beyond the reach of any conceivable experi- dimensions, they proposed, could be wrapped up mental test. Even so, they continue to declare so tight that we couldn’t see them. In effect, what that string theory is the only game in town. we thought of as points in our world were tiny Ambitious young six-dimensional structures. A little bizarre, to be researchers must either sure, but not impossible. worship at the altar of By making string theory It even seemed possible, in those heady early string theory or risk infinitely malleable, days, that mathematical reasoning alone might accusations of heresy Smolin and Woit argue, the- select one unique string theory to play the role of for trying out alterna- orists have now consciously a theory of everything. That utopian dream, alas, tive theoretical strate- put their work beyond the quickly faded. Not only were several distinct gies (putting them- reach of any conceivable string theories plausible candidates, but for each selves, as Smolin points experimental test. theory, the wrapping up of the extra dimensions out, where the string could happen in an enormous number of differ- theorists themselves ent ways, with no obvious reason to choose one were not so long ago). over another. In the early 1990s, a new proposal If their assessment of these ills is broadly the emerged: String theories were not, after all, fun- same, however, Smolin and Woit differ on how a damental, but rather the numerous manifesta- way forward may be found. Woit has the nar- tions of a still-deeper mathematical system rower perspective. A mathematician by training dubbed M-theory (the M standing for mystery, and inclination, he is peeved, evidently, at the murk, mother of all, or something similarly sloppy way in which physicists have made use of clever). Trouble is, no one has yet proved that M- mathematics, and thinks that if physicists per- theory exists, or, if it does, what it looks like. suaded themselves to think more rigorously— And the multiplicity of possible string theories more like real mathematicians, that is—they has forced physicists to a desperate resort. could reason their way out of trouble. Enthusiasts now declare blithely that an almost That’s almost the opposite of Smolin’s diagno- unimaginably large number of universes exists, sis. He has a deep knowledge of the history of each with its own implementation of string the- physics, and understands that physicists have ory. If you ask why the universe we live in hap- always been a little cavalier in their use of mathe- pens to look the way it does, with its particular matics. He focuses instead on the conceptual complement of elementary particles and forces, puzzles that physicists face, and emphasizes, as

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Woit does not, that string theory from the outset enormously adept at intricate calculation but possessed serious deficiencies in its ability to don’t seem to think much about the larger mean- address certain crucial issues. ing of their ingenious manipulations. Seers are Advocates of string theory have always always in short supply, and the technical touted, as one of its chief virtues, its prediction demands of mastering string theory are such that of the existence of a particle known as the gravi- would-be researchers of a more philosophical ton, which had been hypothesized earlier as a stripe can rarely meet the price of entry. key element in efforts aiming to unite general Both authors plead for universities and grant- relativity, Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, with ing agencies to consciously find room, every now quantum mechanics. But as Smolin makes clear, and then, for the mavericks and eccentrics who a genuine theory of everything must do more might bring much-needed new ideas into the than merely possess a graviton. The most pro- excessively closed world of theoretical physics. foundly new aspect of general relativity was the Fat chance, unfortunately, was my instant reac- way it transformed space-time into a dynamic tion, given the way the scientific world, like aca- quantity. That is, the presence of mass causes demia in general, rewards careerism more than space-time to become curved, and as matter brilliance. moves around, the shape of space-time changes On the other hand, as Smolin suggests, the in response. String theory captures none of this. true originals have always had to find their own It exists in a static geometry only, and no one has paths. Think of Einstein, hatching his most bril- any idea, Smolin says, whether it can be adapted liant ideas in the patent office in Bern. As for to live in space-times that shift and flow as Ein- string theory, it’s likely to unravel only when its stein requires. practitioners begin to get bored with their lack of The problem with string mania, Smolin con- progress. Like the old Soviet Union, it will have cludes, is that it suits the wrong kind of mental- to collapse from within. The publication of these ity. He makes a nice distinction between scien- two books is a hopeful sign that theoretical tific seers—people such as Einstein and Niels physics may have entered its Gorbachev era. Bohr, his heroes, who deeply pondered the work- ing of nature and were by no means brilliant David Lindley is the author, most recently, of Degrees Kelvin: A Tale of Genius, Invention, and Tragedy (2004), and is at work on a mathematicians—and craftspeople, who are history of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

The Perils of Going Dutch Reviewed by Eric Weinberger

“First of all you have to say there is It would surely pain the MURDER IN provocation, and the guilty one is the one who carefully apolitical Zidane, a AMSTERDAM: does the provoking. The response is to always non-practicing Muslim born to The Death of punish the reaction, but if I react, something has Algerian immigrants, to be Theo van Gogh happened.” So said the French soccer hero Zine- drawn into the aftermath of and the Limits dine Zidane on why he head-butted an Italian the 2004 murder, in Amster- of Tolerance. opponent during the World Cup final, offering an dam, of the Dutch filmmaker By Ian Buruma. Penguin. 266 pages. $24.95 apology that expressed no regret for his action, and provocateur Theo van which he saw as the defense of his honor against Gogh. But we should note the similar cause-and- the Italian’s insults. effect reasoning offered by van Gogh’s killer, a

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young Dutch Muslim (and son of Moroccan tion to his homeland, almost as if it had become a immigrants) named Mohammed Bouyeri. It is new country after a long absence. the calculus of an unpitying absolutist: There is Murder in Amsterdam is a tabloid title, and provocation, demanding a crushing response. Buruma presents himself as something of the Bouyeri killed van Gogh and drove into hiding gentleman sleuth or boulevardier moving about his Somali-born collaborator, the Dutch activist in Amsterdam, The Hague, and other Dutch Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for the insult they supposedly towns, consuming many cups of tea and coffee as dealt to Islam in producing an 11-minute film he carefully draws out his subjects: an excitable called Submission. The film, which aired once on Iranian-Dutch law professor who, like Hirsi Ali, Dutch television, showed Muslim women with is sometimes called an “Enlightenment funda- words from the Qu’ran projected onto their bare mentalist”; an anti-Semitic Islamic fundamental- skin as they recalled beatings and rapes by male ist yet law-abiding Dutch history teacher; other relatives. This was the “provocation.” Language is Muslim immigrants and immigrant children, met not with language but physical violence, the many of whom are well educated; and various underclass signal to the rest of us that often Dutch public figures, some of whom call them- means we have not been paying attention. selves the “Friends of Theo.” It makes for Van Gogh’s murder was the most shocking event in Holland in recent years, more shocking, even, than the killing two and a half years earlier of the man who might be dubbed his predecessor in provocation, the gadfly and dandy Pim For- tuyn (about whom van Gogh made a film). For- tuyn was shot in Hilversum days before national elections that made his eponymous party one of the largest in Parliament. Fortuyn campaigned against immigration, by which he meant Muslim immigration, and his contempt for Islam was personal: As a gay man, he despised its homo- phobia and its efforts to undermine traditional Dutch tolerance. To much of the country’s relief, it was a white animal-rights activist (though a Theo van Gogh, left, directs a film about the murder of Dutch poli- Muslim sympathizer) who killed Fortuyn. But tician Pim Fortuyn, two months before he himself was killed by a with the ritual murder of van Gogh—shot, Muslim extremist for producing the controversial film Submission. stabbed, his throat cut—by a Muslim, Dutch postwar multiculturalism seemed on the brink of suspenseful reading, and Buruma’s investigations collapse. reveal van Gogh to be more complex than either caricature or his enemies would have us believe. ow Ian Buruma has stepped onto the Buruma’s book is notable for its calm nar- scene. Many of his longtime readers will rative informed by a total immersion in Dutch N not know he is Dutch, but will associate language and culture. The analysis isn’t as excep- him with Japan, China, Britain, and, more tional; many of the book’s insights into the radi- broadly, Europe and the clash of East and West— calization of Dutch Islamic youth, for instance, the subjects of his many noteworthy books and can also be found in public pamphlets produced essays. But there is no more prominent writer in by the Dutch intelligence service. Perhaps English who is also Dutch to the bone, and we Buruma recognizes that his knowledge of Islam are fortunate that Buruma has turned his atten- is limited. Instead, he elaborates an idea of

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Dutchness, a cultural identity he seems to find, to Enlightenment: that it “strips away culture, some degree, in everybody he encounters: not and leaves only the human individual.” Hirsi just obvious “natives” but also the émigré Hirsi Ali’s interest is the individual; Bouyeri’s, Islam. Ali and van Gogh’s Dutch-born murderer. What the two share is the ease with which they “Dutchness,” for Buruma, has many facets: an dispose of the first part of each proposition: obsession with Holland’s moral failures during culture. On Buruma’s evidence, Hirsi Ali, for all World War II (all political discussions start with her perfect assimilation and perfect Dutch, is or ultimately come back to the war, if only to use hardly more involved in the Netherlands than it as a glib analogy or invocation), sanctimonious Bouyeri. moralism, and “a willful lack of delicacy” born of Lucid as he is, Buruma runs up against his “the idea that tact is a form of hypocrisy.” And own Dutch wall. Evidently it is difficult for this there is Dutch irony, which, as Buruma notes, Dutchman to imagine compatriots so uninter- can be used as “an escape from any blame” or ested in the Dutch character and its mainte- “license for irresponsibility.” He means that you nance. Fortuyn as well as the “native” Dutch can say the most offensive things but hasten to with whom Buruma converses express “yearn- add that you’re kidding. Van Gogh’s brand of ings”—a word that appears frequently—for irony, however, seems “something that may never really have existed.” to have been closer in Buruma is more clear-eyed and unsentimental spirit to that dictum than they are, but at the end of the book, he Like other Europeans, the famously adopted by departs from his customary measured tones. Dutch have never made it Evelyn Waugh: “Never Pointing to the innocent Dutch habit of dress- easy for outsiders to feel apologize, never ing up in the national color, orange, for soccer at home. explain.” games, with clogs and brass bands and other Bouyeri appears to gear, Buruma exclaims that this celebration of embody few of the an “invented country,” like Bouyeri’s violent above traits, except perhaps the moralism, which fantasy, contains the “seeds of destruction.” But I would argue is no longer particularly Dutch. what seeds, and what destruction? The thing Still, Buruma searches for his essential Dutch- about the orange men is that they are in on the ness, and finds it in one of Bouyeri’s Internet rav- joke, which, along with the carnival spirit, is as ings, in which he proclaims that the “knights of much a Dutch trait as any. Islam” will emerge from Holland’s soil. Buruma In 1975, when Buruma was leaving the calls this a “very Dutch delusion of grandeur,” Netherlands, I was a child recently arrived in that of the Netherlands as the “world’s moral bea- The Hague, the city where he grew up and con.” But the national aspect of Bouyeri’s vision where I would too. More precisely, I grew up in seems fairly unimportant, certainly to him. the “plush extension” of Wassenaar, where Rather, Bouyeri appears to have learned to stop Theo van Gogh, 10 years my senior, was raised thinking of the Netherlands altogether; his mind two streets away, in a house that Buruma visits dwells instead in stateless, unworldly Islam. to chat with Theo’s parents. Buruma’s portrait of the “Wassenaar brat” who, as an adult, still o some of the Dutch, then, nationality came home to do his laundry hits close to is only a placeholder. A Dutch prison home. But, if anything, I probably had more in T imam tells Buruma that “if you get rid common with the young Mohammed Bouyeri. of tradition, you still have Islam,” or, to clarify, Of course, the fate of a young man who is white “Culture is made by human beings. But Islam and middle class, if neither truly American nor remains.” This is eerily akin to what that enemy truly Dutch, is preferable to that of the dark- of Islam, Hirsi Ali, says, enthusiastically, of the skinned son of a dishwasher, “neither Dutch

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nor Moroccan,” as one of Bouyeri’s contempo- pean religion. raries described people like himself. Theo van Gogh knew “the dangers of violent Like other Europeans, the Dutch have never religious passions,” Buruma writes, but still made it easy for outsiders to feel at home. acted “as though they held no consequences for What might once have appeared, to them, any- him.” Yet there was charm in the way Theo way, to be generous—inviting huge numbers of spoke his obscene, unruly mind and then tot- foreign workers to a safe land where they could tered off on his bicycle. His kind of insouciant provide for their families—now can seem more candor is another victim of the age, and per- like using, but heedless using. For decades, haps the most poignant aspect of “Dutchness” European countries carried on as if they could that now appears lost. avoid the consequences if those workers stayed, which of course they did. Now, as French Eric Weinberger teaches expository writing at Harvard Uni- versity and has reviewed books for The Boston Globe, The New York scholar Olivier Roy has noted, Islam is a Euro- Times, and other publications.

IN BRIEF Though many Americans graduate from col- ARTS & LETTERS lege without having read him, Singer (1904–91) A Life in Translation is widely considered both a major writer of fic- tion and an important chronicler of European My father likes to tell Jewish life, especially the vanished world of the ISAAC B.SINGER: two stories about the writer A Life. shtetl, the village of the pious and usually poor. Isaac Bashevis Singer. In the He emigrated to the United States from Poland By Florence Noiville. first, Singer is speaking to a Translated by Catherine in 1935 but persisted writing in Yiddish, even group of students in New York Temerson. Farrar, Straus, after most Yiddish speakers were killed in the & Giroux. 192 pp. $23 City. Just as a shoemaker Holocaust. thinks of life in terms of shoes, he says, so a In America, Singer lived for years in the writer thinks of it in terms of writing. To Singer, shadow of his older, successful-writer brother, God was, of course, a writer. “And what is God’s Israel Joshua Singer, and eked out a living as a book?” my father remembers Singer saying to the freelance journalist and contributor to the Yiddish stunned students. “Life itself. And one thing you newspaper The Jewish Daily Forward. He didn’t have to admit about God’s book. It’s interesting. publish major work until he was 40, but from You always want to know what happens next.” then on his production was startling. In all he In my father’s second story, the 65-year-old published 14 novels, 16 children’s books, 10 works Singer is glimpsed at a Holocaust memorial serv- of nonfiction, two plays, and several hundred sto- ice on Earth Day, in 1970. He is sitting silently in ries. His major works include The Family Moskat the back, listening to survivors talk. Both of my (1950), which was his first novel published in father’s versions of Singer—the man who couldn’t English, as well as The Magician of Lublin (1960), stop thinking about God, and the writer who The Manor (1967), The Estate (1969), and Shosha remained curious all his life—emerge in journal- (1978). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Liter- ist and Le Monde literary critic Florence Noiville’s ature in 1978. The film musical Yentl is based on lovely and often disturbing take on the life of this one of his short stories. master of the tale. As Noiville reveals in her first sentence, Singer

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disdained biographies as a means of understand- ing a writer. Perhaps Noiville means to signal, Long, Strange Trip by this admission, that her attempt to bring Sing- How did a 2,448-mile-long er to life will lead to many dead ends. A scant highway across some of the ROUTE 66: Iconography of the 120,000 of Poland’s three million Jews survived country’s most unforgiving and American Highway. the Holocaust. Sixty years later, Noiville searches sparsely populated territory By Arthur Krim. for the house where Singer was born, in Leoncin, become the road Americans Center for American 20 miles northwest of Warsaw; all that remains think of when they dream of Places. 220 pp. $35 on the spot is an orchard. The section of Warsaw really going somewhere? to which the Singer family relocated, memorial- That’s the question geographer Arthur Krim ized in his books as the place where the thieves, takes up in a book that is neither traditional road the pimps, and the prostitutes were never too far guide nor comprehensive history, but an account from the virtuous, is gone too. of the real-world origins of Route 66 and its No one, Noiville discovers, wants to live on development into a national symbol of demo- the street named after Singer in the town of cratic freedom, boundless promise, and his birth. Anti-Semitism runs deep. But a lot westward-rolling self-exploration. of people hated Singer the man as well. He Following the pattern of Alan Trachtenberg’s left a five-year-old son in Poland and didn’t Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol (1965), Krim see him again for 20 years. He lovingly de- begins by examining the “idea” of Route 66 in its scribed his mother in prose—but didn’t write many prefigurations, from Native American foot- to her for a decade. He thrived on juggling the paths to emigrant wagon trails to 19th-century attentions of numerous women, and appar- railroads. Then he describes the “fact” of the ently demanded total devotion from his asso- road, its physical presence as a series of two-lane ciates. Saul Bellow launched Singer’s career in regional auto trails across Illinois, Missouri, English with a beautiful translation of the Kansas, Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, New short story “Gimpel the Fool,” published in Mexico, Arizona, and California that became a Partisan Review in 1953, but Singer failed to single highway when the federal system of num- acknowledge this debt. Other Yiddish writers bered routes was established in 1925. Finally, despised him, possibly because he alone man- Krim turns to the symbolic importance of the aged to have an illustrious career in the road, as reflected in such disparate cultural arti- English-speaking world. There is plenty of facts as John Steinbeck’s Dust Bowl novel The grumbling, too, that Singer’s work in English Grapes of Wrath and a 2000 billboard advertise- has been sanitized from the Yiddish original. ment for Kmart’s Route 66 clothing line. I grew up hearing my father read Singer’s In that third, and longest, section of the book, magnificent short stories aloud. Whatever his we learn just how large Route 66 has loomed in personal shortcomings, Singer clearly loved the American imagination. Bobby Troup, dis- every one of his characters. Noiville’s book, charged from the Marines after World War II, translated from the French by Catherine made a seven-day trip with his wife to Los Ange- Temerson, is eloquent, funny, and moving: a les in February 1946, following U.S. 66 all the tribute to the art and importance of translation way from St. Louis to California. By April, Nat and to the life of Singer, who reached so many Cole’s trio had recorded three different versions through devoted translators. And as Singer of Troup’s “(Get Your Kicks On) Route Sixty-Six!,” might say, a translation of a life may be as close the postwar anthem that effectively changed the as one human being can get to understanding name of 66 from “highway” to “route” (always another. pronounced with an eastern inflection: “root”). In —Aviya Kushner the 1969 biker film Easy Rider, an acid-dropping

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work on a national network of high-speed, limited-access freeways that, in just a few decades, bypassed U.S. Highway 66 or supplanted it entirely. Long stretches of its origi- nal roadbed were obliterated, and much of what remained was in disrepair. In 1985, it was decom- missioned as a federal route. For younger readers, Krim’s history might assume too much familiarity with a road that was, for much of the last century, the route to the promised land of California. But for those who remember Bobby Troup’s near-perfect rhyme of “Winona” and “Arizona,” Route 66 is a fascinating account of the real people and real events that built a fabled road in our minds. —Eric Jones On a stretch of U.S. Highway 66, an expanse of Arizona sky above a lone Texaco gas station beckons cross-country travelers in 1947. HISTORY Captain America played by Peter Fonda crossed American Iconoclast the Colorado River into California on the U.S. 66/I-40 bridge, as his own father, Henry Fonda, After half a century in ALLGOVERNMENTS had done playing Oklahoma migrant Tom Joad journalism, I. F. (Izzy) Stone— LIE! in the 1940 film adaptation of The Grapes of one-man band, self-described The Life and Times Wrath. The road has meant a good deal to real- Jeffersonian Marxist, investiga- of Rebel Journalist life capitalists too: In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul tive reader, patriotic subverter I.F.Stone. Allen founded Micro-Soft (later de-hyphenated) of the official line, merciless By Myra MacPherson. in an Albuquerque office building on U.S. High- monitor of the mainstream Scribner. 564 pp. $35 way 66. media, early Holocaust exposer—had graduated And just how did Route 66 come by its magi- from pariah to prophet: When he sold his 19- cally incantatory double sixes? In 1925, a plan- year-old political newsletter, I. F. Stone’s Weekly, ning committee of state highway engineers desig- to The New York Review of Books in 1971, its cir- nated the route U.S. Highway 60, one of nine culation was 70,000, astonishing for a publica- transcontinental roadways whose route number tion of its kind. ended in zero. But Kentucky governor William J. Blind without his Coke-bottle glasses and deaf Fields, stung by the absence of a national “zero” without his hearing aid until an operation late in route through his own state, successfully lobbied life, I. F. (born Isador Feinstein) Stone (1907–89) Washington for a U.S. 60 across Kentucky. To knew how to read and listen between the lines. maintain a cross-country tourist route from He was ahead of the herd on pointing out the Chicago to L.A. identified by a single number, contradictions posed by McCarthyism to a demo- highway officials from Illinois, Missouri, and cratic society. Even as J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Oklahoma agreed in 1926 to give up their cov- spent thousands of man-hours tracking and eted zero, and adopted—for reasons shrouded in reading him, he counter-investigated, exposing mystery—the number 66. the follies, illegalities, and excesses of the FBI With enactment of the Interstate and Defense director and his Bureau. Vociferously opposed to Highway Program 30 years later, states set to totalitarians (although he was a little late in dis-

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covering that Stalin was one), this man, who personal anecdotes and the requisite historical blasted the Soviet Union for rejecting the Mar- context. shall Plan and eventually became a severe critic Her impressive book, 16 years in the making, of Soviet repression, was falsely accused by his draws on but goes far beyond the two previous critics of following the party line, or worse. Stone volumes: Andrew Patner’s invaluable col- Izzy denounced the Kennedy administration’s lection of interviews recorded in 1984, and invasion of the Bay of Pigs, which he regarded as Robert C. Cottrell’s updated doctoral thesis, pub- illegal and unwise, and its conduct during the lished in 1992 as Izzy. She generously credits D. Cuban Missile Crisis, which he saw as reckless. D. Guttenplan, whose own unpublished biogra- After JFK’s assassination, he warned his readers, phy of Izzy is much anticipated, with putting the “Think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy lie to the allegations of those who tried, a few as an apostle of peace.” In contrast to his journalis- years ago, to argue that he was some sort of tic brethren who accepted the Johnson administra- Soviet agent. Izzy once famously said, “I have so tion’s invocation of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin episode much fun I ought to be arrested.” All Gover- as an excuse for American nments Lie! makes everlastingly clear that the engagement in Vietnam, Izzy last thing I. F. Stone would ever be arrested for is highlighted the antiwar serving as anybody’s agent but his own. remarks of senators Wayne —Victor Navasky Morse and Ernst Gruening in the bold-faced boxes featured The South’s Hard in his newsletter. All of this and much more Swallow Negroes know their may be found in Myra Mac- THERE GOES MY Pherson’s All Governments place and are happy with EVERYTHING: Journalist I. F.Stone at his desk in 1968 Lie! The book acknowledges segregation. White Southerners Izzy the iconoclast’s minor They have no desire to vote in the Age of Civil shortcomings and vanities even as it celebrates or take part in political affairs. Rights,1945–1975. and captures his prescience, his independence, Integrating schools and By Jason Sokol. Knopf. 433 pp. $27.95 his moral perspective (“He had no master but his public accommodations will conscience”), his humor, and his gift for the apt lead to mongrelization of the races. phrase. (The Washington Post, he said, was excit- The civil rights movement is a communist ing to read “because you never know on which plot and a threat to the freedoms of white people. page you will find a front-page story.”) God is a segregationist. He says so in the Like Plutarch, who illuminated his subjects by Bible. devoting chapters to parallel lives (Alcibiades and If you were a white person living in the South Coriolanus, Demosthenes and Cicero, etc.), before the world turned upside down in the MacPherson punctuates her affectionate portrait 1960s, you probably believed every one of those of Izzy, the quintessential outsider, denied admis- statements. You probably believed them if you sion to the Overseas Writers group, by periodi- were a white Northerner, too, but that’s another cally contrasting him with fellow journalist Wal- story. Jason Sokol, a young historian at Cornell ter Lippmann, who dined regularly at the White University, is concerned with white Southerners, House. But MacPherson, a former reporter for and he is determined that we not forget how far The Washington Post, tells Stone’s story primarily the South had to go to expel the poison of racism. through his journalism (for PM, The Nation, The Here is but a sample of how deep the poison New York Post, his newsletter, and The New York ran and how casually it was accommodated by Review of Books), supplemented by revealing otherwise-decent people. A white woman who

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headed the Dallas County, Alabama, chamber need to have their story told again. It is the others of commerce told an interviewer in 1952, “I’d who deserve to be memorialized. These were not say this is a nigger heaven. . . . The niggers evil people, as evil is generally conceived. It was know their place and seem to keep in their their very ordinariness that made their poison so place. They’re the friendly sort around here. If toxic. If millions of people could pray in church they are hungry, they will come and tell you, every Sunday and live side by side with millions and there is not a person who wouldn’t feed of other people they believed to be inferior and clothe a nigger.” beings, that can only mean that a great sickness Sokol naturally devotes much space to the was among them. The astonishing thing is that netherworld of Alabama and Mississippi, but he the sickness prevailed through so many genera- also reminds us that the upper South, from Vir- tions without destroying the society. ginia to Arkansas, produced politicians willing to Look closely and you can still find signs of a exploit the racism of the white majority. He does lingering fever—on both sides of the Mason- not rely on some collective memory to remind us Dixon Line. how widespread such thinking was, but presents —Roy Reed his evidence—oral histories from libraries and universities across the South, books and articles on the civil rights era, and a paper trail of appar- Never Enough Numbers The great appeal of sta- ently thousands of records left from the period— HISTORICALSTA- so relentlessly that it almost appears as if he fears tistics is that they tell stories. TISTICS OFTHE not being taken seriously. He means to let no Consider these numbers from UNITED STATES: skeptic get away unpersuaded. the latest Historical Statistics Millennial Edition. A young white Southerner reading this book of the United States: Edited by Susan B. today may be tempted to think, “Those attitudes • From 1960 to 1995, the Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. could not have been pinned on me,” but Sokol number of students attending Haines, Alan L. Olm- produces several polls from the 1950s and ’60s Catholic schools (elementary stead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. Cam- demonstrating that a vast, embarrassing majority and secondary) dropped more bridge Univ. Press. of white Southerners certainly did harbor such than 50 percent, from 5.25 mil- 4,489 pp. $825 ($990, beginning in Nov.) thoughts. As late as 1968, a poll in North lion to 2.49 million. In those Carolina found that more than three-quarters of same years, membership in Catholic congrega- the state’s whites believed that “whites work tions increased 43 percent, from 42.1 million to harder than Negroes” and 58 percent believed 60.3 million. that “Negroes are happier than whites.” • Since 1900, U.S. farmers have more than The history Sokol chronicles is not all bleak. tripled wheat production per acre to 40 bushels He goes to pains to find the open-minded in 1997, up from 12. For corn, the gains have been exceptions and the born-and-bred segregation- even larger—127 bushels per acre in 1997 versus ists who slowly—or, in rare cases, abruptly— 28 in 1900. But in the previous century, crop changed their minds. He makes clear that yields barely improved at all. In 1800, wheat those people helped the civil rights movement yields were 15 bushels per acre and corn yields 25 accomplish as much as it did. There were the bushels per acre. small bands of newspaper editors, educators, • In 1890, the average U.S. tariff on all church leaders, and others who were simply imports was almost 30 percent. On those blessed with inquiring minds and a sense of imports on which tariffs were actually levied morality that finally weighed heavier on their (some goods weren’t subject to any tariffs), it was consciences than the beliefs they had inherited. about 45 percent. These rates typified the 19th But the whites who did the right thing do not century. By 2000, the average tariff was 1.6 per-

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cent, and, on dutiable items, 4.8 percent. the statistics are eye opening. For example, from • From the end of the Civil War to 1900, 1945 to 1995, the number of guns per capita Americans experienced persistent deflation. nearly tripled, from 35 per 100 people to 92. But From 1865 to 1900, the overall drop in prices was the share of homes with a gun decreased, from 48 percent, or about 1.4 percent annually. The 49 percent in 1959 (the earliest year for which price of wheat dropped from $2.16 a bushel to data are provided) to 40 percent in 1996. Appar- about 70 cents. ently, guns are like TVs: People who have them Now ponder the stories in those numbers. have more of them. Catholics have traditionally run the nation’s Omissions? Well, yes. Public-opinion polling largest sectarian school system; its decline sug- data are almost entirely absent. And there’s noth- gests that, despite an apparent religious revival, ing on sex (though statistics do exist). But the the influence of religious schools is waning. The set’s biggest defect is its price—$825, rising to wheat and corn numbers indicate that technol- $990 in November. Statistics fanatics will proba- ogy (better seeds and more fertilizers, pesticides, bly be able to find copies at many libraries. Uni- and tractors) explains the 20th century’s explo- versities and colleges likely will buy the online sion of food produc- version for their faculties and students. Still, here tion; previously, the are a couple of better ideas for the publisher: The new Historical Statistics expansion of farmland How about a one-volume abridged edition at of the United States is a five- was the main cause. $75? Or a CD-ROM of the full set for $250? volume monster, reflecting High tariffs in the 19th —Robert J. Samuelson the wealth of data that have century contradict the notion that free trade appeared since 1970. CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS aided America’s early economic growth— A House Divided though it may aid economic growth now. Econo- mists sometimes express fears about deflation, Thomas Mann and Nor- THE BROKEN but modest deflation historically has not been man Ornstein, two of political BRANCH: crippling. The economy was four times larger in Washington’s most astute and How Congress Is 1900 than in 1865. prolific observers, have been Failing America and How to Get It This is the first edition of Historical Statistics involved with congressional Back on Track. since 1975. The Census Bureau, which had pub- reform efforts for decades. By Thomas E. Mann and lished the three earlier editions beginning in Now they have reached a point Norman J. Ornstein. 1949, didn’t receive sufficient congressional fund- of utter dismay about Con- Oxford Univ. Press. ing to continue doing so. In 1995, a group of gress. The Broken Branch is a 272 pp. $26 scholars headed by economic historians (and well-documented explanation of their wife and husband) Susan Carter and Richard frustration. Sutch of the University of California, Riverside, Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Insti- took up the job. In the end, 83 scholars contrib- tution, and Ornstein, a resident scholar at the uted their tables and time in return for a copy of American Enterprise Institute, have two chief the finished product. complaints: Members of Congress no longer have The new edition is a monster—five volumes, a sense of loyalty to the institution and its consti- versus two for the 1975 edition. But that’s under- tutional responsibilities, and majority-party lead- standable. By some estimates, more than four- ers violate all standards of openness, fairness, fifths of the scholarly historical data series have and decency to ram through their agendas, with appeared since 1970. New topics include poverty, the result being shoddy, ideology-driven policies. American Indians, and the Confederacy. Many of Moderates in both parties, who might bridge the

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partisan divide, are a vanishing breed because if they are given proper guidance from leaders districts are growing more politically and ideo- “intent on shaking up the existing party system.” logically homogeneous. In this regard, they foresee the possibility of a Unfortunately, the best the authors can do is presidential candidate emerging in the next elec- recommend that America return Congress to tion, Teddy Roosevelt fashion, “to build a political Democratic control, though they admit that center where none now exists.” In a book devoted Democrats may not do things any differently. to restoring Congress’s self-image and independ- Notwithstanding this partisan solution, they con- ence, a president seems a peculiar savior— cede that the legislative branch’s current problems especially a TR type. He barely got along with his have their roots in 40 consecutive years of Demo- more conservative party leaders in Congress and cratic rule in the House, or at least in the last had a tendency to bypass them altogether, using decade of that rule in the 1980s and early ’90s, executive orders. when “cracks in the institution began to show.” In the end, The Broken Branch offers few real- But Mann and Ornstein leave no doubt that the istic prescriptions for Congress other than closer open fissure today is primarily the responsibility adherence to the rules (known as “regular of the Republican revolutionaries who came to order”), greater institutional loyalty, and more power in 1995 under Newt Gingrich. deliberation. The authors are vague about how While in the minority, the authors contend, these admirable goals are to be achieved without Gingrich and his firebrands launched an aggres- replacing members of Congress with apolitical sive campaign to discredit Congress and its lead- philosopher-kings or sending them all to a cul- ers as corrupt. Once in power, the Republicans tural re-education camp. They never grapple ruled with near-total disregard for the Democra- with the central reality of Congress: Its members tic minority’s right to participate in the legislative are re-election seekers whose primary loyalty is process. And since the election of George W. not to their party, president, or institution, but to Bush in 2000, they say, congressional Republi- their constituents. Their parties keep them in cans have been little more than presidential office with generous servings of pork and plenty handmaidens. Expressing shock that Speaker of of time off to spend with their constituents— the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) announced meaning less time in Washington for deliberation proudly “that his primary responsibility...was and oversight. Changing that reality would to pass the president’s legislative program,” they require voters to insist that their representatives take Republicans to task for distorting the ignore their parochial interests and work full Speaker’s role as a neutral House officer, “above time on the national interest. Now that would be normal party politics.” Yet in 1992, when Mann a paradigm shift. and Ornstein issued the first report of their —Don Wolfensberger Renewing Congress Project, they called for strengthening the Speaker’s powers as party RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY leader (though it’s clear from the report that they were not contemplating a Republican Speaker). Sanctity for Sale The authors do not point to some past “golden Every summer, a few age” as a model to resurrect; nor do they offer a SELLING yet-to-be-tried ideal that is in any way practica- tourists in Jerusalem fall prey JERUSALEM: ble. Committee government gave us arrogant and to something psychiatrists call Relics,Replicas, autocratic chairmen, while today’s party govern- Jerusalem syndrome. Over- Theme Parks. ment can produce haughty, hammer-handed whelmed by the sight of the By Annabel Jane Whar- leaders. Voters, Mann and Ornstein conclude, are actual holy city, they become ton. Univ. of Chicago Press. 272 pp. $32.50 the only ones who can mend the broken branch, convinced they are biblical fig-

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ures and wander the streets prophesying, often commerce. The Knights Templar, an order of wrapped in white sheets from their hotel beds. military monks based in Christian Jerusalem, Jerusalem authorities and paramedics take these may have been the first to build replicas of the episodes in stride: They know they live in a city Jerusalem “temple”—the Holy Sepulcher, the whose daily reality pales beside its existence in structure traditionally considered to house the world’s imagination. Christ’s tomb—in Paris and London. When How Jerusalem came to belong as much to its Jerusalem came under Muslim rule, the Fran- visitors as to its residents intrigues Annabel Jane ciscan order encouraged the construction in Wharton, a professor of art history at Duke France and Italy of sacred mountains, actual University. Jerusalem, she points out, didn’t mountains reconfigured into detailed become the pinnacle of world sanctity without landscapes that reproduced the experience of the church’s active “selling” of that status traveling to the Holy Land. A trip to one of throughout the centuries. (Though Jerusalem is these could earn a pilgrim the same plenary holy to three religions, the book treats its role in indulgence, or remission of sins, as a visit to Judaism and Islam only in passing.) And selling the real thing, which was then relatively Jerusalem, in her account, has been accom- inaccessible. plished not by devious or unscrupulous means This drift toward copies, Wharton argues, but by the production mimicked the rise of negotiable currency and of a long series of credit. In today’s electronic, postmodern age, in material objects—from which money is virtual, concrete souvenirs or Today, purportedly authen- relics to postcards to experiences of Jerusalem have yielded to “the tic pieces of the True Cross Bible theme parks— progressive abstraction or commodification of and Jesus’ crown of thorns that allow believers to sacred space.” As examples, Wharton cites Mel are hawked on eBay. experience Jerusalem Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ and vicariously. It’s won- places such as the Holy Land Experience theme derful terrain for an art park in Orlando, Florida, where visitors can historian, especially “experience” the events and characters of the one interested, as Wharton is, in authority, Gospel in roughly the style of Disney World. authenticity, and fakery. Who would guess that One may quibble with these definitions— the Vatican collections contain the alleged fore- what makes a movie rendition of the Passion skin of Jesus? Or that even today purportedly more abstract than, say, a medieval passion authentic pieces of the True Cross and Jesus’ play?—but the real problem with Wharton’s crown of thorns are hawked on eBay? argument is that it seems overly schematic, or But Wharton doesn’t pursue such themes worse, simply beside the point. People pay for far; she has a broader and odder argument to their pilgrimages today with credit cards make. The evolving nature of these surrogate instead of gold coins, but their religious objects over two millennia, she contends, impulses—to stand on holy ground, to take shows curious parallels to the development of away a piece for themselves—appear consistent the global economy in the same period. In late from age to age. If believers have so utterly antiquity and the early Middle Ages, when the embraced postmodern abstraction, then why, world ran on a gift-and-barter economy and as Wharton reports, would the official website profit and usury were considered sins, believers for The Passion of the Christ offer fans the trafficked in relics of saints and pieces of the opportunity to buy their very own concrete True Cross. These could not be legitimately object, a replica of one of the iron nails used in bought or sold but only given as gifts. Later, the the movie’s crucifixion scene? Crusades spurred international contact and —Amy E. Schwartz

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Sandler’s conclusion—that people in the God’s Children modern world are lonely and isolated, and that Add Lauren Sandler’s RIGHTEOUS: loneliness brings people to religion—is not Righteous to the growing Dispatches From the especially innovative. People have been spin- stack of books that attempt to Evangelical Youth ning variations on this functionalist theme for explain American evangelical- Movement. centuries. Then Sandler makes a less predict- ism. Sandler’s particular By Lauren Sandler. able move: She turns her scrutiny on herself Viking. 254 pp. $24.95 interest is young evangelicals, and her own community. Secularists “can’t a population she believes is growing even find the words to express why life is prodigiously. She calls this cohort the “Disciple worth living,” she writes. In Sandler’s account, Generation.” To belong, you’ve got to be age 15 they have left the task of meaning making to to 35, and “equally obsessed with Christ and the likes of Rick Warren, the California pastor with culture as a means to an Evangelical end.” who wrote the best-selling manifesto The Sandler makes the rounds through young evan- Purpose-Driven Life, and novelist Tim gelicals’ subculture across the country, attend- LaHaye, coauthor of the apocalyptic Left ing Christian rock concerts, talking to pastors Behind series. If those on the secular left want about their cruciform tattoos, wandering the to prevent America’s takeover by fundamental- halls at Patrick Henry College (a Purcellville, ists, they must do a better job of articulating a Virginia, conservative Christian college vision of the good life that is compelling and founded in 2000 for students who were home- humane: “It is time for our own secular Great schooled), and interviewing biology teachers Awakening,” Sandler writes. who endorse intelligent design. At a Colorado Perhaps she ought to give us a sequel in Springs megachurch, Sandler finds fervent Air which, instead of describing a community she Force cadets who view the conflict in Iraq as a perceives as inimical, she uses her journalistic holy war of the end times. Over coffeecake in a skills to paint pictures of secular folks who are Seattle kitchen, she listens to a young wife and living that good life, and does a little evangel- mother explain her belief in “wifely submis- izing for the values she believes are under sion”—the idea, drawn from Ephesians 5:22, threat. that wives should submit to their husbands “as —Lauren F. Winner to the Lord.” Sandler is a skilled reporter whose work has Party til the Cows appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and Elle, but here she writes as a secular prophet too, and Come Home her book is something of a secularist’s cri de If a parent sincerely coeur. She is baffled by the religious, philo- believes that everyone is RUMSPRINGA: To Be or Not sophical, and political choices that members of bound for either eternal par- to Be Amish. the “Disciple Generation” make. How can kids adise or eternal damnation, By Tom Shachtman. whose moms burned their bras at Equal Rights what could be worse than a North Point. 286 pp. $25 Amendment marches grow up to embrace child’s selecting the wrong “wifely submission”? How can college students destination? The threat is doubly harrowing who’ve read Locke and Rousseau proclaim that for the Old Order Amish, for whom the sepa- the Bible is the inerrant word of God? And ration from a wayward child is as real in this more than baffled, she is fearful. “There is a life as it will be in the next. Amish adolescents tyranny over the hearts and minds of this gen- who walk away from their faith do so literally, eration,” she writes, and everyone, religious and abandoning the drab attire and buggies of secular, should be concerned. their communities for the fashionable dress

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Amish teenagers taste life outside the strictures of their religion during rumspringa, a period of worldly experience that their elders condone, as shown here in the 2002 documentary Devil’s Playground. Afterward, the vast majority of Amish youth return to the church.

and fast cars of the open society. Many of the uneven but enlightening study of the practice. seemingly excessive strictures in the unwrit- While their elders sleep, hundreds of Amish ten rulebook, or ordnung, adhered to by the teenagers travel back roads by buggy and the 200,000 Plain People concentrated in Indi- occasional recently purchased car, using cell ana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are designed to phones pulled from beneath aprons to find bind families together. It’s hard to get far the farm where festivities will be held. “A good from home when your buggy can travel only party is when there’s, like, 200 kids there,” 10 miles before your horses need to rest. one reveler explains, “really loud music, and How then to explain rumspringa? This everybody’s drinking and smoking and having “running around” time is a culturally a great old time.” Couples wander into the endorsed opportunity for Amish offspring in dark pasture to hook up, while Amish drug their teens and early twenties to taste as much dealers sell marijuana, cocaine, and crystal forbidden fruit—alcohol, sex, fast cars—as methamphetamine. The party ends when it’s they like, without leaving the faith. Most don’t time for the hosts to milk the cows. even leave home. Rumspringa participants Shachtman and several colleagues spent can be baptized as soon as they turn 16, or can more than 400 hours interviewing teenagers dabble with experimentation indefinitely. The and Amish leaders for this book and the 2002 practice, which emerged when Anabaptists documentary Devil’s Playground. Though took to farming in pluralist 18th-century Shachtman ably records rumspringa’s Pennsylvania, is essentially an institutional- excesses in both projects, he aims to provide a ized period of apostasy, a rush of experience sympathetic portrait of confused adolescents preceding the determination to reject the faced with a decision between religious order wider world and join the church permanently. and worldly freedom. The reporting is anec- Consider a typical weekend party described dotal and the pace often slack, but the conver- in Rumspringa, journalist Tom Shachtman’s sations do reveal subjects who find their lib-

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erty unsettling. A young Lancaster County, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY Pennsylvania, farmer considers a new life but wonders, “If it isn’t any better out there, why The Body Sketchers would I leave?” Between 80 and 90 percent of Amish With the notable excep- HUMAN ANATOMY: teenagers choose not to leave the order. The tion of the work of Leonardo From the deck is stacked—their schooling ends after da Vinci, anatomical illustration Renaissance to the Digital Age. age 14, they are pressured to avoid socializing has generally been a collabora- with their mainstream peers, and, as Shacht- tive effort. There is the anat- By Benjamin A. Rifkin, Michael J. Ackerman, man notes, “the experiences they have on the omist who dissects the bodies and Judith Folkenberg. outside are usually shallow, most of them and at least one artist who, Abrams. 343 pp. $29.95 involving minor excursions into sex, drugs, working with the anatomist, his ATLAS OF and rapid transport.” Few gain the imagina- notes, and sometimes his HUMAN ANATOMY tive tools needed for radical self-reinvention; sketches, illustrates the findings. AND SURGERY: for most, the choice is between being an Since illustration is by definition The Complete Coloured Plates of Amish day laborer or a partying factory an editorial process—things are 1831–1854. worker. left out, subdued, or empha- By Jean Baptiste Base pleasures, fleetingly encountered, are sized for clarity or impact—it is M. Bourgery and no match for the safety of familiar commu- an ideal tool for the anatomist Nicolas Henri Jacob. Taschen. 714 pp. $200 nity, the support of parents, and the promise who wishes not only to record of salvation. Says one young man, “It’s in the what has been observed but also to teach it. Over back of my mind every day: If I don’t change the past 500 years, these partnerships between my ways I might not get to Heaven.” In the artists and anatomists have produced many works end, for most who grow up Amish, the God both useful and occasionally even magnificent, and they know is better than the devil they don’t. Human Anatomy: From the Renaissance to the —Aaron Mesh Digital Age offers an enjoyable look at them.

Credits: Cover, p. 29, Veer.com; p. 13, © Private Collection/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library; p. 17, © SEF/Art Resource; p. 23, Reuters/Claro Cortes IV; p. 27, Jean Vincent/AFP/Getty Images; p. 31, © Phil Schermeister/Corbis, all rights reserved; pp. 38–39, © Wilson Chu/Reuters/Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 47, Berlin University, Berlin (colored engraving), Ger- man School, (19th century)/Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France, Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridge- man Art Library International; p. 51, AP Photo/Gurinder Osan; p. 53, © Rèunion des Musèes Nationaux/Art Resource; p. 56, © Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 61, Jenny Weil, Pebble-Bed Design Returns, in IEEE Spectrum, November 2001, p. 37–40; p. 65, Reuters/Tim Shaffer/Files; p. 70, © David H. Wells/Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 73, All images public domain, from http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hist/; p. 75, DN-0002971, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society; p. 80, © The New Yorker Collection, 2000 J. B. Handels- man, from cartoonbank.com, all rights reserved; p. 82, Courtesy of Dmitri Tymoczko; p. 85, © Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University; p. 88, Gennady Popov, © TASS/Sovfoto, www.sov- foto.com; p. 92, George Rodger/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 97, AP Photos/Arie Kievit/Hol- landse Hoogte; p. 101, © Andreas Feininger/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images; p. 102, © Bettmann/Corbis, all rights reserved; p. 108, © Lucy Walker, Courtesy of Stick Figure Produc- tions; p. 112, Woodrow Wilson House, a National Trust Historic Site, Washington, D.C.

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Art historian Benjamin Rifkin’s insightful duced at all, is a fitting tribute to Bourgery, whose overview of anatomical works, from Andreas work never received the recognition he felt it Vesalius and Jan Stefan van Kalkar’s The Fabric of deserved. The original work was without doubt a the Human Body (1543) to Anatomy, Descriptive tour de force, and so, appropriately, is this new and Surgical (1858) by Henry Gray and Henry edition. Vandyke Carter, is largely given over to brief biog- —David Macaulay raphies of the anatomists and portfolios of their plates. In the closing chapter, biomedical engineer Michael Ackerman considers the present and Gray Matters future of anatomical illustration. With the latest In Nobel Second Nature, SECOND NATURE: scanning technology, it is no longer necessary to Prize–winning neuroscientist Brain Science create the illusion of three-dimensionality or to Gerald Edelman proposes what and Human suffer inaccuracies of placement or relative dimen- he calls “brain-based epistemol- Knowledge. sion. And yet one cannot help but mourn the loss ogy,” which aims at solving the By Gerald M. Edelman. of images created by informed human observation mystery of how we acquire Yale Univ. Press. 203 pp. $24 rather than digital data sets. The book’s only disap- knowledge by grounding it in pointment, aside from its wee format, is the inclu- an understanding of how the brain works. sion at the end of “illustrations” from the New Edelman’s title is, in part, meant “to call attention Atlas of Human Anatomy (2000). They may be to the fact that our thoughts often float free of our accurate. They may be the way of the future. But realistic descriptions of nature,” even as he sets out they also suggest, by their lack of subtlety and gar- to explore how the mind and the body interact. He ish colors, that we are made of plastic. favors the idea that the brain and mind are unified, Still, all is not lost. That eclectic publishing but has little patience with the claim that the brain is house, Taschen, has released a truly extraordinary a computer. Fortunately for the general reader, his volume, Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery. explanations of brain function are accessible, but- Where the Abrams book serves as a handy guide to tressed by concrete examples and metaphors. possible journeys through the art of anatomy, the Edelman suggests that thanks to the recent Taschen publication is the Grand Tour itself. Its development of instruments capable of measuring 714 pages contain all the plates from the eight vol- brain structure within millimeters and brain activ- umes produced by French anatomist Jean Baptiste ity within milliseconds, perceptions, thoughts, Marc Bourgery (1797–1849) and his primary artis- memories, willed acts, and other mind matters tic accomplice, Nicolas Henri Jacob (1782–1871). traditionally considered private and impenetrable The original plates were printed using lithogra- to scientific scrutiny now can be correlated with phy, a technique that allows both remarkable brain activity. Our consciousness (a “first-person detail and a lifelike softness when practiced by affair” displaying intentionality, reflecting beliefs artists of Jacob’s caliber. His illustrations are so and desires, etc.), our creativity, even our value successful in capturing both the procedures and systems, have a basis in brain function. the sense of human life that the surgical plates— The author describes three unifying insights showing, for example, how to remove a leg step by that correlate mind matters with brain activity. step, so to speak—are not for the squeamish. On First, even distant neurons will establish meaning- the other hand, the illustrations of specimens ful connections (circuits) if their firing patterns are observed through the microscope are worth the synchronized: “Neurons that fire together wire journey all by themselves, and the book’s double together.” Second, experience can either strengthen foldouts take your breath away. or weaken synapses (neuronal connections). Edel- The care with which this book has been pro- man uses the analogy of a police officer stationed at duced, not to mention the fact that it was pro- a synapse who either facilitates or reduces the traf-

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fic from one neuron to another. The result of these tory powers of neuroscience, Edelman acknowl- first two phenomena is that some neural circuits edges the pitfalls in attempting to explain all end up being favored over others. aspects of mind in neurological terms. Indeed, Finally, there is reentry, the continued signaling culture—not biology—is the primary determinant from one brain region to another and back again of the brain’s evolution, and has been since the along massively parallel nerve fibers. Since reentry emergence of language, he notes. isn’t an easy concept to grasp, Edelman again resorts In light of Edelman’s enthusiasm for a brain- to analogy, with particular adeptness: “Consider a based epistemology, I was surprised to learn that hypothetical string quartet made up of willful musi- he considers Sigmund Freud “the key expositor of cians. Each plays his or her own tune with different the effects of unconscious processes on behavior.” rhythm. Now connect the bodies of all the players Such adulation ignores how slightly Freud’s con- with very fine threads (many of them to all body ception of the unconscious, with its emphasis on parts). As each player moves, he or she will uncon- sexuality and aggression, resembles the cognitive sciously send waves of movement to the others. In a unconscious studied by neuroscientists. More short time, the rhythm and to some extent the important, as Edelman concedes, Freud’s grasp of melodies will become more coherent. The dynamics biology was poor, and he perhaps made too much will continue, leading to new coherent output. of certain brain activities, such as dreams. Dreams Something like this also occurs in jazz improvisa- may simply result from the state of consciousness tion, of course without the threads!” Reentry allows that occurs during rapid eye movement sleep. for distant nerve cells to influence one another: Despite these minor quibbles, Second Nature is “Memory, imaging, and thought itself all depend on well worth reading. It serves as a bridge between the brain ‘speaking to itself.’ ” the traditionally separate camps of “hard” science Edelman concedes that neurological explana- and the humanities. Readers without at least some tions for consciousness and other aspects of mind familiarity with brain science will likely find the are not currently available, but he is confident that going difficult at certain points. Nonetheless, Edel- they will be soon. Meanwhile, he is comfortable man has achieved his goal of producing a provoca- going out on a limb: “All of our mental life . . . is tive exploration of “how we come to know the based on the structure and dynamics of our brain.” world and ourselves.” Despite this cheeky optimism about the explana- —Richard Restak

CONTRIBUTORS

■ Eric Jones is a travel writer and weekly newspaper in Chattanooga, Live, Work, and Love, published last household mover. His most recent book Tennessee. month. is New Hampshire Curiosities (2006). ■ Victor Navasky is publisher emeritus ■ Robert J. Samuelson is a columnist ■ Aviya Kushner covers books for The of The Nation and director of the for Newsweek and The Washington Post. Jerusalem Post. She is at work on And George Delacorte Center for Magazine ■ Amy E. Schwartz is a contributing There Was Evening, And There Was Journalism at Columbia University. editor of The Wilson Quarterly. Morning, a book about the experience of ■ Roy Reed was born and raised in reading the Bible in English for the first Arkansas and covered the civil rights ■ Lauren F. Winner, a visiting lecturer time after reading it in Hebrew all her life. movement for The New York Times at Duke Divinity School, is the author of ■ David Macaulay has been explaining during the 1960s. He is the author of Girl Meets God: A Memoir (2002). things in books for more than 30 years. Faubus: The Life and Times of an ■ Don Wolfensberger is director of the He is currently at work on his own American Prodigal (1997). Congress Project at the Wilson Center, exploration of the human body, The ■ Richard Restak has written 18 former staff director of the House Rules Way We Work. books on the human brain, including Committee, and author of Congress and ■ Aaron Mesh is a news editor and The Naked Brain: How the Emerging the People: Deliberative Democracy on movie critic for The Pulse, an alternative Neurosociety Is Changing How We Trial (2000).

Autumn 2006 ■ Wilson Quarterly 111 PORTRAIT

Woodrow Wilson, ca. 1916

A Slice of Woodrow Wilson

Solemn pronouncements in this sesquicentennial year of Wilson took up golf in his forties, and found himself Woodrow Wilson’s birth may help clinch his reputation as grappling with the same demons that plague all duffers. a cold fish, but no one gets to the White House without “I come away from my game every time I play wondering some spark and fire. One Wilsonian passion was sports. why Nature made me so stubbornly awkward,” he wrote While a student at Princeton, Wilson was president of the to a friend. But neither war nor an average score of about baseball association despite his mother’s pleas that he 115 deterred him from logging more rounds in office than abandon the distraction. As a professor, he helped coach any other president. He played almost daily until 1918. the Wesleyan and Princeton football teams and was Golf, the stress-prone Wilson wrote, “is the only thing known to play a formidable game of tennis. that really diverts me and gets me ‘out of myself.’ ”

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