The Jig Is Up at the Dog Park

Dog Park by Michael Johnson

(The image of "Dog Park" is available on notecards, t-shirts and other gift items.
The proceeds go to the Land of PureGold Foundation, Inc. to raise money for cancer research in dogs.)

I have lived in New York for years and I still have no idea who my neighbors are... and vice-versa. (One day last year I came home at the same time as my neighbor-- a woman I know only as Asian Businesswoman-- who asked me when I'd moved into the building and when I said "Eight years ago" she nodded curtly, went into her apartment and closed the door.) I am A-okay with that. New York is a lot of work, socially speaking. There are way too many people living here and sometimes it feels like they are all on the same subway car. Also, because of my work, my life is filled with intense interactions about racial and ethnic identity, art, politics, and culture etc. so when I come home I need some space around me to relax. It sounds self-indulgent, and maybe it is, but I often have nothing left for hi-bye-can-you-believe-this-weather with random people. And it has always seemed perfectly mutual.

But then I got a dog.

Now smiling strangers approach me with alarming regularity: I may as well live in Mayberry. For the dog, who assumes that everyone loves him and accepts compliments on his beauty as a matter of course, this is perfectly natural, but I find it disconcerting... Unless I am at the dog park, standing around with the other schmucks who love their dogs too much. At the dog park I will happily engage in mindless small talk about the respective merits of various brands of expensive, premium dog food. At the dog park I am the Noel Coward of boring, dog-related conversations. Of course, it doesn't hurt that my dog is such a joker. He races around acting the fool, trying to get the other dogs to chase him, stealing mittens out of pockets and shoving his snout into the behinds of women I do not know, prompting laughter and apologies.

Dog parks have their own social ecology; relationships are defined by whose dog plays with whose, who remembers to bring water, who pretends not to see when their dog poops at the other end of the park so they can stay seated under the tree, etc. etc. We see each other around the same time every day, watch each others dogs and share responsibility for keeping them safe. So despite my best efforts at amused detachment, I have kind of gotten to know these people.

Kind of.

I don't actually know their names. I think of them as Russian Girl And Her Boyfriend, Guy With A Baseball Cap, Old Guy and Other Old Guy etc. This half-knowing is pleasant. We don't talk about anything important. We tell funny stories, give and take dog advice and take turns watching the dogs run around in a circle. It's nice.

So the other day in the park, as my dog was racing around I wandered over to Middle Aged Hippie With An Androgynous Biracial Child who was chatting with Old Guy about... Middle Eastern politics. Ruh-roh. Old Guy was saying something along the lines of "... those people can't be trusted" (who could he be talking about? ) and Middle Aged Hippie protested, "But...uh, what about the Lebanese, for example?"

And before I could stop myself--or maybe to stop them, I'm not sure-- I piped up and said "I am, actually. Lebanese."

They both looked at me. "Well, " I thought, "The jig is up." When I was a kid I was very jealous of people with darker skin and more initially obvious ethnic differences, because even if it is bad news, they always know where they stand with people right away. With me, especially in neutral-seeming situations like this, there is always a point where my "other-ness" becomes apparent and I can never predict how it'll go.

Middle Aged Hippie asked immediately , "Are you a Muslim or a Christian?"

Here we go.

"I'm Christian. A Maronite Catholic." He nodded as if I'd given the right answer, while Old Guy narrowed his eyes at me and said nothing. I could feel a door closing in him. Before it could get any more awkward Russian Girl strolled up and said, smiling, "Lebanese? My boyfriend is Lebanese."

(I made the mental adjustment; Russian Girl and Her Lebanese Boyfriend)

"Yeah," I said, "We're everywhere."

And then our dogs ran up in a tangle of tongues and legs and our attention shifted to them. I made an effort to smile and drifted away from their conversation, stung. It sounds ridiculous to say but the dog park had seemed almost Utopian, all different breeds running around, having a good time together. And their people, all gathered for the same purpose and united in our love for our pets, seemed like a reflection of this. But I was wrong. The world isn't outside the dog park, the dog park is in the world. And, stupidly, I felt the loss of it.

The Smearing of Rashad Hussain by Marc Lynch

The Smearing of Rashad Hussain

by Marc Lynch

originally published at Foreign Policy magazine

"Rashad Hussain's appointment as the Obama administration's envoy to the Organization of Islamic Countries, part of the broader strategy of outreach to the Muslim world, was as welcome as it was overdue. Hussain, a lawyer who had been working in the White House counsel's office and also working with the NSC on Muslim engagement, seemed an excellent pick. The announcement in Doha showed a renewed sense of urgency about delivering on the promise of Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world. It is good to see a Muslim appointed to such a position. After the failed Christmas bombing most would agree that the task of combatting violent extremism is as urgent a national security priority as ever.

But then, an all-too-familiar script began to play out. A paper-thin but insinuation-heavy hit piece laid out the template for a rapidly unfolding smear campaign: damning him by association for appearances at various events sponsored by Muslim organizations, for being on the "wrong" side of a number of controversial trials of Muslims (as if there were only one legitimate perspective on those hotly contested issues), and of allegedly doctoring the record of comments about Sami al-Arian (see Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's detailed, rigorous analysis of the textual evidence which decisively debunks the charge). The hit piece was quickly picked up by the noise machine and disseminated through a range of right wing blogs and websites, migrating seamlessly to Fox News and Politico, and becoming the fodder for another manufactured scandal of the day. Within days, it has become standard to describe Hussain as a "terrorist sympathizer"... and the hate is flowing. It is no less despicable for being so commonplace.

One irony is that Hussain is actually one of those Muslims who has been speaking out against extremism, forcefully and eloquently, and whose role in Muslim engagement was explicitly focused on building alliances with Muslims around the world to marginalize al-Qaeda. In a Brookings paper published in 2008, Hussain wrote that "[T]he terrorist ideology is advocated by small, fringe groups and rejected by a vast majority of Muslims . . . as American policymakers and leaders have recognized, Islam rejects terrorism." He argued that "there exists a near-unanimous, overwhelmingly accepted view among Islamic scholars rejecting terrorism and the practice of takfir to justify terrorism." He went on to argue that "If the global coalition to stop Al-Qaeda and other terrorists groups is to succeed, it must convince potential terrorists that Islam requires them to reject terrorism." Indeed, he argued, "The most paramount task for the global counterterrorism coalition is to emphasize that engaging in terrorism is antithetical to the shari’ah, or Islamic law." This is not a close call.

That a Muslim who has written so powerfully against extremism and terrorism is nevertheless so casually tarred as a terrorist sympathizer is shameful. It is also strategically dangerous. Those serious about counter-terrorism and combatting violent extremism now mostly understand that such campaigns also have the potential to deal a sharp blow against U.S. efforts to combat violent extremism and to counter al-Qaeda's narrative. It threatens to offer ammunition to al-Qaeda's claim that the U.S. is at war with Islam, not with "extremism", and to sabotage Obama's efforts to establish a new narrative. Hussain's critics know perfectly well that he's not a terrorist and doesn't support terrorism, and probably understand that their campaign against him will have a negative impact on the Muslim community in America and beyond. Evidently they don't care.

Fortunately, the story doesn't end there. The bright spot in this sordid affair has been the willingness of a few national security experts on the hawkish side of the spectrum to stand up in public and denounce the railroading of Hussain. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, wrote a powerful personal defense of Hussein as primarily motivated by civil liberties concerns, not by Islamism. He took that defense on TV, where he had to face the wild-eyed insanity of Frank Gaffney (apparently, memorizing the Quran is evidence of extremism) and to confont head-on the madness of the anti-Islamic post-9/11 fringe. Some other conservative national security experts rose to Gartenstein-Ross's defense -- I'll single out Max Boot and Eli Lake, though they certainly aren't the only ones. For others, well, welcome to the Islamofascist stealth jihad, ya Daveed.

The response of these national security conservatives has been heartening. There's more and more understanding of the importance of disaggregating the challenge, placing al-Qaeda and the jihadist movement as a dangerous but tiny fringe movement rather than lumping together all Islamists or Muslims. Pushing back against this campaign is important just as it was essential to not over-react after Fort Hood or the Christmas bombing. So is the response of the White House, which has stood fast against the smears rather than folding at the first sign of an attack. Hopefully both national-security conservatives and the White House will continue to do so. If sensible people stand up against these contemptible smears, it could send a powerful message that the days of such intimidation and smear campaigns are past. Let's hope."

Joseph Keckler Performance/Artist Talk at New York University

Joseph Keckler by Gian Maria Annovi

NYU's Department of Performance Studies presents the first event in this year's Performance Studies Lecture Forum: JOSEPH KECKLER.

Joseph Keckler is a performance artist, writer, and singer. His work explores the gap between theater and life, establishing unexpected connections between art, identity, and contemporary alienation. In his performances, he fuses story-telling with an elastic, classically trained, and chameleonic three-octave voice to create one-person fantasias which bring the banal to operatic intensity. Keckler’s pieces have been featured on NPR, The Sundance Channel, and Transform.org, and he has performed at HERE, Living Theater, Galapagos Art Space, London’s Duckie, Abron Arts Center, SF MOMA, The Player’s Club, Dixon Place, The Guggenheim, as well as other venues in New York City, nationally, and abroad.

Please join us on TUESDAY MARCH 2ND, 7-8:30PM to see Joseph Keckler discuss and perform his work.

Located in the Performance Studies Studio at Tisch School of the Arts (721 Broadway, 6th Floor)

FREE. Reception (with free food and drinks!) following talk.

No reservations required for NYU students and faculty.
Non NYU-affiliated folks please RSVP to:
PSLectures@gmail.com

The Performance Studies Lecture Forum is a series of evening events featuring preeminent scholars and practitioners in the fields of art and performance. The events are presented on weekday evenings in the department's studio space, and are designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among artists, students and scholars.

Umami: Food and Art Festival

Diane Borsato, Artifacts in My Mouth (2003)

Umami*: Food and Art Festival is a non-profit, biennale event created in 2008. The festival works in partnership with other organizations in New York City to foster collaborations between artists and food professionals. By approaching food through art, Umami frames it as stimulating and inspiring, a positive approach leading to innovative solutions to some of the national challenges we face today. The festival features events that are interdisciplinary and collaborative, creating an interchange of ideas and stirring debate about the role of food and art in our society, creating long-term collaborative relationships between organizations and individuals from different fields.

Umami encourages art based in everyday life and materials, illustrating that art can be found anywhere and can be produced at any time with the simplest means. The festival’s key objectives are (1) to use food as a common thread to look at and integrate art into daily life and (2) to broaden the horizon of food as an artistic medium.

By encouraging art based in everyday life and materials, we illustrate that art can be found anywhere and can be produced with the simplest means.

In particular, the festival encourages non-commercial, time-based art and encourages artists who work in non-traditional media.

The festival’s location in New York City allows us to take advantage of the city’s unmatched resources as a center for artistic creation as well as culinary production.

* Umami is the fifth taste sensed by the human tongue (in addition to sweet, salty, bitter and sour). Umami is a Japanese word meaning “savory” or “meaty” and applies to a sensation common in meats, cheese and other protein-rich foods or to “earthy” foods such as mushrooms and soy sauce.

Umami 2010 is presented in collaboration with the NY Food Museum.

Umami: Food and Art Festival
300 Mercer St., #9-J
New York, NY 10003

tel: 917.720.5706
web: www.umamifestival.com

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Vanity Fair's Young Hollywood Issue

Vanity Fair's Young Hollywood 2010

Through an unlikely chain of circumstances I ended up with a copy of Vanity Fair's Young Hollywood issue for 2010 (Someone said "I'm finished with this, you want to read it?" And I said, "Sure"). If you know me even a little bit via this blog it would not surprise you to learn that I am not a regular reader of Vanity Fair, a magazine that seems to consist of equal parts worshipful profiles of rich people and sad essays about Stars From Back When There Were Stars. Not my thing. But between novels I will read anything, and faced with a long subway ride I cracked open the magazine.

I was vaguely aware that people were angry about the perceived exclusion of actresses of color from the titular pictorial, which involves ingénues-of-the-moment clustered together like cupcakes in a bakery case (Vanilla cupcakes, as it turns out). But I will admit that I didn't take that criticism too seriously. There are, after all, real people in the world who are actually suffering, and in comparison the "suffering" of young actresses--whose job it is to pretend to be real people-- is not that meaningful to me. People dying from broken limbs in Haiti vs. Actresses not getting their pictures in Vanity Fair? No contest.

But then I looked at the issue. And the longer I looked the angrier I got.

People have focused on the cover but for my money the central pictorial (see above), of a group of young actresses lounging like debutantes mid-Ball, is the telling one. The pictured actresses, Carey Mulligan, Kristen Stewart, Abbie Cornish, Mia Wasikowska, Amanda Seyfried and Rebecca Hall in a double page spread, with Emma Stone, Evan Rachel Wood and Anna Kendrick on the following page, are all lovely, (mostly) talented and... white as notebook paper. Further, they have been styled in pale, ice-cream colored dresses and bathed with diffuse light to create a Gatsby-like dreamworld. It's a perfect realization of the fetishization of wealth and privilege and their conflation with youth and beauty that fascinates publications like Vanity Fair (and Esquire, and the New Yorker...) And hell yes, race and ethnicity are a part of that discourse.

Zoe Saldana, who starred in two of the highest-grossing films of the year, Star Trek and Avatar, and Gabouery Sidibe, star of Precious, are notably absent from this image. The objections to their exclusion have rightly focused on the relationship of race to standards of beauty (Advertising Age's Doug Melville referred to Young Hollywood 2010 as the "White issue". Ouch), but I want to tease out another element suggested by this photograph, the relationship of race to social class, or at least its depiction. In an era when actual heiresses are more likely to be found on reality television or in self-released sex tapes, with this pictorial Vanity Fair lovingly recreates a long-past moment when young women from "good" families represented the beauty of privilege (and vice versa). In Evgenia Peretz's cover story on the photo shoot she writes rapturously of Abbie Cornish's "Cupid’s-bow lips... downy-soft cheeks, (and) button nose." And in case we miss the point she elaborates that Cornish, " has those Ivory-soap-girl features we’re so familiar with..." Right. Peretz goes on to describe Rebecca Hall, daughter of English theater director Sir Peter Hall, as having "patrician looks and (a) celebrated pedigree" while Amanda Seyfried has a "full, dewy, wide-eyed loveliness." It becomes clear that Sidibe and Saldana would not have fit into this image because their presence would have undermined the debutante theme by commenting on it, making the uncomfortable historical truth of the relationship between white wealth and racial exploitation all too visible.

I once saw an episode of the old MTV cartoon Beavis and Butthead that describes this dynamic perfectly: They were playing the video for "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club, which is set in the American South on a riverboat. To get around the uncomfortable racial implications of making a pop video in this setting the director mixed black actors, in tailcoats and hoop skirts, among the white ones, thereby promoting them past slavery by creating a world in which it didn't exist. After a significant pause Butthead asked Beavis, "Is this supposed to be the future?"

Annie Leibovitz, Vanity Fair's house photographer since 1983, has shot all the previous pictorials and portraits of "Young Hollywood" and is responsible for creating its tone. A little research shows that the spreads are all similar, if sometimes more diverse in past years. And it turns out that Saldana was featured, along with America Ferrara, in Vanity Fair's "Young Hollywood" spread in 2008, albeit after the gatefold, a point the magazine's defenders raised in the hope of settling the matter.

Young Hollywood 2008

... Except that Kristen Stewart and Amanda Seyfried, two of Vanity Fair's 2010 cover girls also appeared in the magazine in 2008 as part of its Hollywood's New Wave issue (How many times a year does this this freaking magazine salute Hollywood? Nevermind. I don't want to know.) The point is, there isn't really a justification for not including Saldana at least, especially given the success of her recent films.

Seyfried and Stewart, flanking Emma Roberts and Blake Lively,
Hollywood's New Wave, by Mark Seliger

Some of the criticism of the 2010 shoot has been leveled at the actresses pictured, which is unfair. The most salient feature of the job "actress" is to be told what to do: they had no power to influence the theme of this image, except perhaps by refusing to appear in it. (The criticism of their thinness in light of Sidibe's pointed exclusion is also unfair. "Thin" is another job requirement for them and anyway, none of them seem underweight for their height, a victory in an industry that once considered Kate Winslet "plus-sized".) The fact is, they were assembled to portray a scenario that probably has nothing to do with them, except for the fact that the way they look suggests it in this context. It isn't their fault, but they embody the nostalgia for a moment when whiteness, beauty, and power seamlessly flowed together to represent the glamor of wealth. In the imaginary world suggested by this photograph the only brown person possible would be refilling the drinks.

M'onique, Lee Daniels and Gabouery Sidibe, by Annie Leibovitz

Sidibe responded to her exclusion from the pictorial gracefully, saying, "At first I thought, 'Hmm, should I be there?' Then I very quickly got over it. I think if I were a part of that shoot I would have felt a little left out anyway. I would have felt a little like ... whether or not I should have been there. [It] doesn't matter, because I wasn't on it and I'm excited to be mentioned anywhere, and it doesn't matter to me where I'm not mentioned." While she does not appear beside other young actresses, she is pictured with her director Lee Daniels and costar M'onique among the best picture nominees in a portrait titled "The Real Deal". However Saldana does not join Avatar director James Cameron in his portrait, titled "The Visionary", which depicts him alone in profile, staring meaningfully into the future. Right.

Is this supposed to be the future?

Interview: Steven Salaita, Part Two

Steven Salaita

Joseph Shahadi: So you just starting writing a column at PULSE, how did that come about?

Steven Salaita: I had been in contact with M. Shahid Alam, who does lots of good writing around the web, and he suggested that I give it a try. I communicated a bit with the editorial team, all wonderful and very sharp people, and decided to give it a try. I've been very wary of the genre of blogging, but I finally overcame my Luddite tendencies. It was easy in this case, because I had been a regular reader of PULSE.

Joseph Shahadi: Why wary of blogging? Just Luddite tendencies or other reservations about the format?

Steven Salaita: A bit of both. I guess I have a bit of a fuddy-duddy attitude about writing. (Self-awareness is the first step to recovery, right?) So many blogs, even political blogs, are silly, attenuated, hasty, and ill considered. But then again, so is much of the journalism and commentary in corporate newspapers. I like to write and to read things that are carefully considered, supported, provocative. Some blogs do this well--Vs the Pomegranate, for instance--but the majority of them stink. I've realized, though, that the problem is in the act of writing and not in the format itself, for almost all genres of writing are riddled with unreadable shit.

Joseph Shahadi: Ha. Nice save Steve. Of course I agree with you. It was hard to decide to do a blog for that reason.

Steven Salaita: Yes, I can see that. But there's no doubt that blogs have changed the media landscape tremendously and they do offer people access to audiences that they wouldn't have had in the past. This seems to me an extremely important benefit.

Joseph Shahadi: I think a lot of mainstream media people read the blogs to take the temperature of the culture. So it’s a way to influence the larger conversation. But coming from academe getting the tone right is tough. Too academic and no one reads, too colloquial and you get the wrong sort of attention. Have you found it challenging in the pieces you are doing for PULSE?

Steven Salaita: Very tough. Lots of academics, even in the humanities, don't know how to write for general audiences. I get ribbed by friends and family all the time for my fancy talk. Let Orwell be our guide, I suppose.

George Orwell

Joseph Shahadi: Hey, I like that. "Let Orwell Be Our Guide". I think we just settled on the wording for my first tattoo.

Steven Salaita: Then again, Christopher Hitchens has used Orwell as his guide and look where it's gotten him.

Joseph Shahadi: ...To the bottom of a bottle of Vodka?

Steven Salaita: So far I've only done two (articles for PULSE) so it's been all good. But I am having trouble evolving into the idea of writing as part of a routine and not based on extemporaneous inspiration. That's the best thing about being part of a multi-author blog. I can be as apathetic as I want.

Joseph Shahadi: Speaking of Hitchens, lets talk about the new Euro-Atheists a minute. Part of their shtick seems to be presenting themselves as wholly rational.

Steven Salaita: I like that you use the word "shtick." It accurately describes much of what they're peddling. Actually, they're atheists who proselytize, which is funny enough, but we can talk about that later. Their idea of rationality isn't detached from history, but they pretend it is. That's their main problem. They adhere to a form of smug non-belief that comes directly from an enlightenment concept of modernity that has been terribly violent. They want to consign all violence to the religious, though. In so doing, they gloss over tons of history.

Christopher Hitchens

Joseph Shahadi: I think they are part and parcel of the current anti-immigrant, orientalist, Islamophobic hysteria that has swept Europe. But because they assume this faux- objective stance they insulate themselves from the same sort of critique that, say, the Italian food-purists get. Richard Dawkins doesn't even bother to hide his Islamophobia anymore...

Steven Salaita: No, he doesn't. And Sam Harris never tried to hide it in the first place. I saw him on TV once and thought he was remarkably stupid for somebody whose argument boils down to the belief in his own intellectual superiority (because, you know, he thinks God doesn't exist and all). Then there's Hitchens, who argues that religion leads to all kinds of irrational support for war and violence. Yes, that would be the same Hitchens that supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and is an ardent backer of American military exceptionalism. I mean, the guy disproves his own core argument. If the atheists are too damn dense to figure out that all of Hitchens's arguments about religion and war apply to his own points of view then they're not nearly as smart as Dawkins thinks they are.

Joseph Shahadi: My issue is not atheism per se but rather people who use it to 1) rewrite European history 2) cast Muslims as savage, backwards bad guys who will ruin "western civilization" unless they are stopped... and that pretty much describes all of the guys we have been talking about.

Steven Salaita: Exactly. Same here. I don't really care about anybody's level of belief or disbelief. It's not something that should really matter when it comes to working out social, political, and economic issues. (But) the atheism they promote, I'd like to add, is inherently violent, because they have an idea of moving away from religion that would erase the peoplehood of indigenous communities around the world. It's all colonial retread in the end. And boring, to boot. It's been done a million times before, by better writers.

Joseph Shahadi: We are both Arab Christians-- a population that seems to be invisible in popular discourse. There are lots of issues around that but could you talk about how Islamophobia implicates us too because of the racialization of Islam? For me, the solidarity I feel with Muslims is partly based on a general commitment to social justice and partly because Islamophobia effects me directly as an Arab. Do you feel similarly?

Steven Salaita: I feel exactly the same way and think you express some of these complexities eloquently. If we think about Islam entailing cultural norms in addition to religious obligations, then we are profoundly engaged with the cultures of Islam, which is a wonderful benefit to being an Arab Christian. I often wonder if it's possible for other communities to feel a deep belonging in two different religions the way I do (this is coming from somebody who's not at all religious, by the way). I suppose it's not unheard of, but it definitely seems rare.

Joseph Shahadi: Yes, that's it exactly. Perfect.

Steven Salaita: It also seems to me that in Islamophobia we get such a conflation of Arab culture with Muslim communities that it's impossible for anybody who is Arab not to be effected by it, whether they are Druze, Christian, Bahai, Jewish, whatever.

Joseph Shahadi: Yes, yes. It is in our self-interest to oppose Islamophobia.

Steven Salaita: A lot of folks also conceptualize Islam as the material articulation of Arab backwardness, or conversely view Arab backwardness as evidence of a dysfunctional Islam.

Joseph Shahadi: Which is ridiculous if you know even a little bit about the history of Arab and/or Islamic scientific innovations... But that's just it: most people in the west don't know even a little bit about it.

Steven Salaita: Yep. It behooves us to try our best to keep a broad view of all religious and political phenomena. But when religion is held up by imperialists and scoundrels as the basis of regional and civilizational conflict, this is what you get.

Joseph Shahadi: That seems like a great way to end. Steve, thank you so much for doing this. It was great talking with you.

Steven Salaita: Thanks, brother. Likewise. Let's do it again sometime, okay, if only for kicks. I enjoy the hell out of your insights.

Joseph Shahadi: Right back you. And definitely, yes.

Steven Salaita: Okay, salamat.

Joseph Shahadi: Talk soon. Good night.

Interview: Steven Salaita, Part One

I first met Steven Salaita in February of '09 when he spoke at Alwan. He talked about his book of political essays, The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims and the Poverty of Liberal Thought, which I subsequently reviewed for Electronic Intifada. I love the book and I wrote, " (it) is a worthy contribution to a tradition of works by Arab American essayists, a distinguished company that includes Joseph Massad, Elmaz Abinder, Diana Abu-Jaber, Edward Said and others." The topic and theme of The Uncultured Wars, the disappointing track record of US liberals in regard to orientalism and Islamophobia, is timely... but even if you have no special interest in Arab and Muslim issues this book has a lot to offer in its deconstruction of the many forms of white/western authority. An astute critic, Steve is the definition of a public intellectual in Saidean terms: That is, one whose mission is to advance human freedom and knowledge. He chatted with me via Skype from his home in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Joseph Shahadi: One of the things I really love about your book (and the reason I went to hear you speak at Alwan in the first place) is that you went after some sacred cows in critiquing US liberals, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Moore, Michael Lerner and Katha Pollitt among others... Why did you decide to write about liberals at a moment when we are living with an ongoing legacy of very bad things courtesy of the US Right?

Steven Salaita: Mostly because US liberals, to be frank, had been annoying me for some time in terms of their approach not only to Arabs and Muslims but to the global south more broadly. By reading their work closely, it became clear that many US liberals are part of the same apparatus that produces the very bad things they like to attribute solely to the right. If political thinkers just sit around criticizing and piling on the right, then we miss some really important ways to analyze empire, economics, race, and so forth.

Joseph Shahadi: I agree with you but let me play the devil’s advocate for a moment...

Steven Salaita: Please do.

Joseph Shahadi: What would you say to someone who argues that the US Right is more dangerous to Arabs and Muslims (and the Global South more broadly) than the Left because of their trademarked brand of religion ‘n guns?

The "attack Christians", if you will.

... As opposed to liberals who are well intentioned, if not always perfect in terms of execution (no pun intended).

Steven Salaita: I would say that these "attack Christians" are indeed dangerous to Arabs and Muslims, but only in a distinct, limited sense. Let me try to draw out what I mean: Yes, (for example) it's much more likely that a Christian Zionist will support a policy that is genocidal vis-à-vis the Palestinians, say. But if we limit our critique to that Christian Zionist, we will also miss all types of other useful points of analysis. For instance, people get bombed in other parts of the world--Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, etc.--because the US government is beholden to the interests of a very small financial elite, not to liberals, and not to "the people," whatever that means.

This reality is much more dangerous to those who are colonized or otherwise oppressed.

Joseph Shahadi: What are some of the liberal parallels to that Christian Zionist?

Steven Salaita: Lots of liberals support Israel. They sound nice about it, and give some B.S. overtures about a vague "two-state solution" here and there, but in the end their loyalty is to Israel as an ethnocentric state. They may disagree with Christian Zionists on every other issue (unlikely), but on this issue they are in basic agreement. That's why liberal Zionist organizations work with Christian Zionists and cater to them. So, if you're a Palestinian living under Israeli occupation, does it matter whether your oppression is being supported by a liberal or a religious zealot? Of course not. The Palestinian needs the boot to be removed from her neck.

The point, anyway, is that if we care about justice we need to criticize anybody who is facilitating injustice, regardless of political orientation, party, religion, or nationality.

Joseph Shahadi: The reason I ask about your practice of questioning the liberal left is that it seems that the Democrats are so busy in-fighting that they cannot present a united front against the Conservative movement, which gets nuttier by the day... So I want to be clear: you are suggesting that it is always better to hold even your putative friends accountable for their racism, ethnocentrism etc. even when the conservative right is more or less unified in their antipathy for you/us?

Steven Salaita: Well, now that you put it this way... yes. This isn't a universal rule, I don't suppose, but in the end when my putative friends are working and profiting from the same system that my explicit enemy exploits, then it’s the system I have to attack. I'm not interested in rowing with one paddle. Anyway, if we take your metaphor (a good one, by the way) to its logical conclusion then I'd say that in the end my putative friends would take the side of my enemy when push comes to shove. My friends are those who care about other human beings more than they do about preserving the trappings of some benign-sounding ideology.

Joseph Shahadi: That is a great summary of the main theme of your book.

Steven Salaita: Thank you.

Joseph Shahadi: Of course Palestine/Israel is a perfect example of this push-comes- to-shove phenomenon, so is Palestine a limit-case for you in re: to "First World" racism/colonialism/imperialism?

Steven Salaita: I try not to limit myself to Palestine as a continual litmus-test, but it just happens to be the issue by which people's real commitments are exposed. I remember when I was at UW-Whitewater a few years ago. A group of activists brought a divestment resolution to the faculty senate. It was quite a good resolution, too.

Now, the folks in Wisconsin--the academics, anyway--fancy themselves proudly progressive, and in many ways they are. When the resolution came to the senate, I showed up in support of it, of course. It was a no-brainer to me. Israel is breaking tons of international laws and mistreating people. It is therefore in accordance with the university's mission statement to divest from companies that aid and abet such human rights abuses. Yet when I got there, I saw half my department--loud progressives, all--speaking against the resolution. One of the activists, Mohammed Abed, told one of them, who had said he's against the occupation, "If you're really against the occupation, then why don't you do something about

it?"

This question, needless to say, went unanswered.

This is one of many cases in which people's stated viewpoints don't at all match what they're actually willing to do when the time comes to act, even in completely tepid and nonviolent ways.

Joseph Shahadi: I have also found this to be so.

Steven Salaita: Yes, it happens all the time. That's why I never believe the poll numbers liberal Zionists and some misguided Palestine activists like to cite about support for a resolution to the conflict.

Joseph Shahadi: When you and I met I was a guest correspondent at Racialicous. I'd been a regular commenter and was invited to contribute articles. Despite the fact that the site covered a wide range of racial and ethnic struggles (macro and micro) from all over the world, at a certain point I became uncomfortable with the overwhelming silence about Israel… And I wasn’t alone in that feeling. But when any of the Arab or Muslim members of the community brought it up we were loudly shouted down by 1) Aggressive male Zionists who suddenly overran various threads and made it impossible to continue…

Steven Salaita: [nodding vigorously]

Joseph Shahadi: …and/or 2) passive aggressive female Zionists who announced suddenly that they "Didn't feel safe"... my least favorite way to control a conversation...

Needless to say these tactics worked. Every. Single. Time.

So I suggested that the commenting policy on the site be amended to include a statement of support for Palestine, or at least to provide a check on Zionist bullying that prevented any real discussion of the issue. The commenting policy at Racialicious is comprehensive, going beyond even "racial" categories and encompassing things like LGBT friendly language, which I totally support as a necessary corrective to establish ethical guidelines for conversation. So it's not as if what I suggested was unprecedented.

And they said no. Flat out.

Steven Salaita: That's a shame. I'm actually finishing up a book on what I think is the same topic: how Zionism has entered into the spaces of convivial multicultural dialogue. So to criticize Zionism--an ethnonationalist movement, for fuck sake--is somehow to be apportioned into some bizarre radical stance that is outside the boundaries of respectability. But such a move is ultimately problematic, possibly dangerous. It relies on a conflation of Zionism with Jewish culture. It's never good when an ethnic/religious culture is conflated with the actions of a nation-state, particularly one as aggressive as Israel.

Joseph Shahadi: And/or there is a cultivated ignorance on the topic as in, "well I don't know enough about it to offer an opinion..." What's to know?

Steven Salaita: I think that rationale is a stand-in for fear, or at least it is very often. The best way to lose one's liberal base of support is to criticize Israel too strongly. Or, hell, to criticize it at all.

Joseph Shahadi: There is a vague notion that Zionism IS Judaism, which is ridiculous. That's like saying communism is the same as Cuban ethnic identities: one is a political philosophy and the other is a religious and ethnic identity...

Steven Salaita: Exactly. But that's where ethnonationalism leads us. Ultimately, it's about who acts and how he or she acts. Any asshole can sound like a humanist.

Joseph Shahadi: I left Racialicious because they wouldn't commit one way or another--I said "If you support Israel at the expense of Palestine you ought to say so... you have a lot of Arab and Muslim readers who should know where you stand" But they refused... And then after I left the editor told me they were planning to ban me anyway. Like, "You can't quit, you’re fired!" Since the pieces I wrote for them on a whole range of topics were popular, while the aforementioned Zionists contributed nothing to the community beyond obstruction, and violated its decorum with impunity, the only real justification for asking me to leave was my open support of Palestine.

Steven Salaita: Being banned for opposing Zionism. We should start a club. We could get thousands of members in a day, unfortunately. I don't generally read Racialicious, mainly because I followed a debate there once about Zionism and came away disappointed. But there is an important broader issue here, and that's how Zionist activists have so effectively positioned Zionism and Israel as proper objects of multicultural decorum. In many ways, we can say that Zionists have colonized multiculturalism, and so in spaces that celebrate racial diversity and such, there's very often an ostensible "Jewish" presence that in reality is a Zionist presence. At the very least there isn't often any type of Palestinian presence.

Joseph Shahadi: Have you experienced any lasting professional consequences for being outspoken? About Palestine, or anything?

Steven Salaita: No I don't think I’ve dealt with any negative professional consequences. I've been lucky. I work hard. I say what I need to say. My colleagues generally leave me be, and I afford them the same courtesy. I can make lots of guesses about repercussions (on the job market, for instance), but I have no evidence to prove my suspicions.

Joseph Shahadi: One of my oldest friends, a black guy who is a journalist, had a difficult period professionally about ten years ago. He was stuck and he couldn't figure out why. So I asked

him, do you think any of the resistance you are experiencing is racial? And he said, "I try not to think about that question because there is nothing I can do about it. I can’t be less black."

Steven Salaita: That's true. I try not to think about it. I guess we just try to control what we can control. The problem is that these realities compel people to be silent about all sorts of terrible things in the world. Academe has always been that way, though. People of color are denied tenure all the time because their work isn't "rigorous" or "theoretical" enough, a coded way of saying that they're too interested in producing writing that matters.

Joseph Shahadi: And God forbid, you try to cross campus without your ID visible or get into your office after hours...

Steven Salaita: (pause)… Sorry, got my cat crawling all over my keyboard.

Joseph Shahadi: Ha. My dog is So Profoundly Asleep at my feet. He could not be less interested in this conversation.

Steven Salaita: Aaah, Rocket. I know him from your blog. My cat isn't so cerebral right now.

Joseph Shahadi: Yes, Rocket is very famous.

Have you had any blowback from your book? You go after some pretty big names...

Steven Salaita: No, I haven't. People ask me that often, expecting that the answer will be "yes." I thought for sure I'd get some blowback. I think I haven't for two main reasons: the liberal-left that I criticize seems to be obsessed with the far right and pretty much blows off what they consider to be the fringe left (though I honestly don't know where I belong on this political spectrum); and because very few people, all things considered, have read it. It's not the sort of title that ends up at the local Borders.

Joseph Shahadi: Well, let's try to change that. ATTENTION: IF YOU ARE WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE GO AND READ STEVE'S BOOK THE UNCULTURED WARS, THANK YOU.

Steven Salaita: Ha! And give the poor bastard some blowback already.

Joseph Shahadi: Exactly, we want to see you trying to get a word in edgewise on Hardball.

Steven Salaita: I'm sure Rachel Maddow would adore me.

Joseph Shahadi: If you get to go on Maddow I am your roadie. I called it.

Steven Salaita: It's yours.

Joseph Shahadi: I'll go on ahead of you and say stuff like "Steve needs a mineral water!"

Steven Salaita: And eucalyptus tea. (I don't know what that is, but it seems like something a media celebrity should drink.)

Joseph Shahadi: Exactly.

END PART ONE