Winter 2002

COLUMBIA

Political REVIEW Vol. I, No. 3

Winter 2002

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Victim or Hoax?

Daniel Immerwahr and Jaime Sneider face off.

INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Diplomatic Stalemate

By Amba Datta ACTIVISM

WEF Blowback

By Rebecca Weber Dishonest Statesman

By Ben Wheeler Defending Profiling

By Matt Continetti

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Columbia Political Review

WINTER 2002

Student Trip to Washington, D.C. COLUMBIA/BARNARD & CORNELL STUDENT LOBBY DAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C. April 9-10, 2002 We invite you to attend the annual Columbia/Barnard & Cornell Student Lobby Day in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, April 10, 2002. Participants will take a bus to Washington for a day of meetings with Members of Congress or their staff. The trip includes a breakfast briefing with guest speakers who are recent Columbia alumni working on Capitol Hill. This is a great opportunity to support the federal student aid programs and to learn about the legislative process.

A bus will depart from 116th Street & Broadway at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9, and depart Washington, D.C., at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday. All meals and lodging are provided. For more information, please e-mail SL758@columbia.edu or call 854-1116. To register, please e-mail SL758@columbia.edu with your name, e-mail address, hometown address, and school.

Attacking Iraq Should the next target of the U.S. War on Terrorism be Saddam Hussein?

PANEL DISCUSSION SPONSORED BY THE COLUMBIA POLITICAL UNION Monday, March 4, 2002, at 7 p.m.

Satow Room, 5th Floor of Lerner Hall

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WINTER 2002

Columbia Political Review

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Volume I, Number 3 Winter 2002

OF

CONTENTS Features

Positions & Partisans BEN WHEELER

4

Kissinger s Guilt

MATT CONTINETTI

5

In Defense of Racial Profiling

JEFFREY CHUBAK

6

Public Accounting

Words, Wit, & Wisdom 13

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

14

BOOK REVIEW

15

PERSONAL ESSAY

16

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

University Chaplain Jewelnel Davis told an audience that the time for social and poltical action is now.

Is There a Case Against Mumia?

Mumia s treatment in the judicial system warrants a re-examination of the death penalty.

DANIEL

7

JAIME SNEIDER

7

The Free Mumia movement is subject to rumor and innuendo, and it ignores Mumia s guilt.

REBECCA WEBER

10

The Columbia Counter-Summit Neo-liberal economics and undemocratic institutions drew protesters to New York in response to the World Economic Forum.

AMBA DATTA

11

India and Pakistan: Endgame in Kashmir Without mediation, India and Pakistan must examine the root causes of their conflict and show each other good intentions to end the stalemate over Kashmir.

IMMERWAHR

Ben Letzler debunks Richard Posner s Public Intellectuals.

Tallie Lieberman recalls her trip with Birthright Israel.

Adam B. Kushner talks with an outspoken media advocacy organization.

THE COLUMBIA POLITICAL REVIEW STAFF Publisher: JAIME SNEIDER is a Columbia College senior majoring in history.

Managing Editor: ADAM B. KUSHNER is a Columbia College junior majoring in ancient studies.

Senior Editor: AMBA DATTA is a Columbia College junior majoring in history and concentrating in economics.

Business Manager: ROB SALITERMAN is a Columbia College sophomore.

Layout and Design Editor: DANIEL WEINSTEIN is a Columbia College sophomore.

Staff Writers: JARROD STUARD is a Columbia College first-year.

REBECCA WEBER is a Columbia College first-year.

Contributors: JEFFREY CHUBAK is a Columbia College sophomore.

MATT CONTINETTI is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.

JEWELNEL DAVIS is the University Chaplain.

JULIA FUMA is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science.

DANIEL IMMERWAHR is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and philosophy.

BEN LETZLER is a Columbia College senior majoring in history and concentrating in mathematics.

TALLIE LIEBERMAN is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.

BEN WHEELER is a CC 02 winter graduate who majored in history and computer science.

Cover Artist: HENRY YAO is a Columbia College senior majoring in mathematics.

Illustrators: BETH MIHALICK a Barnard College sophomore.

ROSS MCSWEENEY is a Columbia College senior majoring in philosophy.

CPU General Manager: YONI APPELBAUM is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.

The Columbia Political Review is the magazine of the Columbia Political Union, a non-partisan student organization seeking to enhance involvement in the political process and to foster political discourse. The CPU does not endorse the ideas contained herein; their worth is for our readers to determine. The Review welcomes letters to the editor. They should be sent to cpureview@columbia.edu and should not exceed 400 words.

Letters for publication must include the author s name, contact information, and Columbia affiliation. The Review reserves the right to edit content. The Review is paid for with a generous grant from the President s and Provost s Student Initiative Fund.

COLUMBIA

TABLE

Political REVIEW

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Columbia Political Review

REGARDING HENRY

WINTER 2002

By Ben Wheeler

In his capacity as a diplomat and public figure, Henry Kissinger lied to the press, ignored human-rights abuses, and disavowed accountability.

K

issinger lied. But if you find it hard to get worked up about this news, you are not alone. It is a familiar cycle: our government airs revelations about foreign policy abuses only once those policies have already run their course. Meanwhile, as with Bush-Powell foreign policy today, there is no way to know the nature of the new round of abuses currently underway. In our political culture, we are doomed never to reckon with the present.

This winter, the public finally obtained in full a crucial document from the years Henry Kissinger served as secretary of state. We now know exactly what was said in a meeting among Kissinger, President Ford, and President Suharto, dictator of Indonesia, on December 6, 1975 the day before Indonesia invaded East Timor.

Only the latest in a long list of revelations, this decades-old record proves once and for all that Suharto began the invasion knowing he had the full approval of the White House.

It is an account quite contrary to the story Kissinger has told in public, at least ever since that meeting took place. Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia, he told a New York audience in 1995. And in a 1999 radio interview, he explained that Timor was mentioned only when We were told at the airport as we left Jakarta that either that day or the next day they intended to take East Timor.

Actually, thanks to the independent National Security Archive at George Washington University, which works tirelessly for declassification, we now know that Timor was discussed at length that day. Suharto complained to Ford and Kissinger that the left-leaning former Portuguese colony of East Timor had declared independence unilaterally and that therefore we want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action. Ford assured him that We will understand and will not press you on the issue.

We understand the problem and the intentions you have.

And what advice did Kissinger the Nobel peace prize laureate offer the commander of a notoriously brutal military, 80% of whose funding came from the United States? He merely cautioned that it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly and that it would be better if it were done after we returned to the United States. The public appearance of the invasion merited lecturing Suharto. Its actual impact on the Timorese did not.

And by all accounts, the bloodbath that ensued met Kissinger s criteria: Suharto waited for Ford and Kissinger to return home, and he succeeded quickly, killing 60,000-100,000 in the first year and, by the State Department s own count, leaving 300,000 in relocation camps run by the Indonesian military.

When challenged to account for East Timor s destruction under his watch, Kissinger pleads good intentions. What most people who deal with government don't understand is [the] overwhelming experiences of being in high office, he explained in New York while promoting his book Diplomacy which, like all of his

memoirs, omits Timor completely. Maybe, regrettably, we weren t ever thinking about Timor.

But other documents suggest that if Kissinger is guilty of a sin with respect to Timor, it is not benign neglect. When the invasion began, Kissinger s top legal advisor made the mistake of observing that military funds for Indonesia would have to be cut off because of a U.S. law that restricted the aid to defensive purposes. When Kissinger found out that this fact had been committed to paper, he was furious.

I was told...that there was a legal requirement to do it, pleaded one assistant in a transcript released several years ago. I know what the law is, Kissinger barked, moaning that the Timor thing, that will leak in three months, and it will come out that Kissinger overruled his pristine bureaucrats and violated the law. And even though the occupation was barely ten days old, he asserted that No one who has worked with me in the last two years could not know what my view would be on Timor.

When Kissinger is away from the public eye, it seems, his language changes sharply. Nowhere in Kissinger s secret conversations is his office too overwhelmed by the problems of the world to form a specific policy on Timor. He is, in fact, thinking about Timor just not about the expendable Timorese people. Neither do the laws passed by Congress matter to the real Kissinger, unless it might be discovered that he was conspiring to break them.

Kissinger had no ill will towards Timor, but the fate of a few unruly natives was nothing next to the strategic importance of Suharto s anti-communist regime, especially after the loss of the Vietnam War. Whether or not each of us accepts this logic depends essentially on our views of the Cold War. Soviet imperialism certainly posed a threat, but was support for right-wing dictatorships the only answer? Were these regimes really better for the people of the world, or just for extending the power of the United States at great cost to human life?

In any case, there are many who see Kissinger as one of the great war criminals. Evidence that he broke specific American and international laws is clear and readily available; indeed he is currently being sought for questioning by judges in Argentina, Chile, and France, which he fled after being served a court summons. The issue, however, has yet to be taken seriously in mainstream discourse. Why does the mounting legal case against a father of American postwar foreign policy not merit attention from our journalistic and academic leaders?

As long as students continue to be taught that our nation s foreign policy has been wrought of good intentions and innocent blundering rather than the need for power and control, little will change.

Just as the better part of the Kissinger period will never be declassified, neither will much of the Bush-Powell period and all we will have are occasional moments of insight punctuating long periods of pleasant fictions. v

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Columbia Political Review

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THE BEST TIME FOR BLIND JUSTICE?

By Matt Continetti

With airport security at the forefront of the civil liberties debate, there has never been a better time to reassess the fear of racial profiling.

T

he battle over racial profiling is spilling over into the war on terror, and that puts us all at great risk. The Reverend Al Sharpton first brought up the issue of racial profiling in light of the September 11 terrorist attacks, saying, If you profile a young black man in baggy jeans, those terrorists still get on the plane.

Sharpton had a point: profiling black Americans would do little to stop militant Islamic terrorism. But he neglected to ask whether paying extra attention to individuals who fit the profile of the typical al-Qaeda agent would thwart potential hijackings.

Ironically, Sharpton s critique suggests that he does not so much have a problem with racial profiling, but merely with the profiling of blacks.

Indeed, the utterance was one of those few instances where Sharpton was speaking for the larger African-American community.

In a Gallup poll taken in October, 71% of black respondents said they supported racial profiling in order to prevent terrorism.

Which raises the question, why is profiling some groups bad, but others tolerable?

Columnist Michael Kinsley provided an answer in the Washington Post on September 30. If racial profiling means anything specific at all, wrote Kinsley, it means rational discrimination: racial discrimination with a non-racist rationale. The question is: when is it okay?

Kinsley s answer: almost never. Racial discrimination is wrong no matter what the rationale, he concluded. Though it s hard to argue that helping to avoid another September 11 is not worth the imposition, which is pretty small: inconvenience and embarrassment.

But the Council on IslamicAmerican Relations (CAIR), America s largest Muslim lobbying organization, disagrees. Nihad Awad, CAIR s executive director, testified to Congress last January that while physical attacks [against Arabs and/or Muslims] declined significantly one month after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, cases of discrimination and profiling are on the rise.

Discrimination and profiling are more pernicious [than assault], added Mr. Awad, as they reflect deeply held prejudices that do not easily come to light Profiling is also an ineffective tool of law enforcement that provides a false sense of security and diverts resources and attention away from more useful procedures.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. Profiling is an extremely effective tool of law enforcement that allows investigators to narrow the pool of suspects and thereby achieve better results. It is ridiculous to suggest that someone who is given extra attention before boarding a plane has somehow suffered more than a victim of physical assault.

Criticisms of profiling are based on the false assumption that all groups of people commit crime at the same rate. In the case of international terrorism, for example, these critics would charge that Congressman John Dingell is just as likely to commit an act of terror than a Muslim male of Arab descent.

The statistical evidence, however, doesn t confirm these criticisms. For instance, the members of Mohammed Atta s Hamburg cell, who plotted the deadliest terrorist attack in history, were all male, all Muslim, and all Arab. With a few exceptions namely the help of sub-saharan African Muslims in Kenya and Tanzania the same rule applies for those who bombed the U.S.S. Cole, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Khobar towers complex, and others.

There is nothing inherently racist in pointing this out: it is, after all, the truth. The September 11 hijackers were not sixty-year olds from Denmark. And if they had been, it would be appropriate to more closely question Scandinavian geriatrics before allowing them to board airplanes.

A limited profiling system, called CAPPS (Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System), has been in place since 1994, but pressure from CAIR and other Arab-Muslim lobbying groups keeps the system from including a passenger s nationality, ethnicity, or religion. Instead, CAPPS looks at whether a passenger has paid in cash or bought a one-way ticket.

In fact, CAPPS flagged two of the September 11 hijackers after they paid for their doomed flight to the Pentagon in cash. But in part because of CAIR s eagerness to file for damages at the slightest provocation, the hijackers weren t even interviewed by the authorities.

According to the National Review s Rich Lowry, If ethnicity and national origin were among the CAPPS criteria, all of the September 11 hijackers would have been flagged. And if security was allowed to interview those flagged by CAPPS, authorities might have wondered why groups of five young men fitting the profile of al-Qaeda terrorists, many with expired visas and some with spotty legal records, were carrying box cutters on their person. In other words, the attack could have been prevented.

There is no excuse for offensive language, physical assaults, or stereotyping directed against Arabs and Muslims. But fighting a war on terrorism requires us to address the nature of our enemy frankly.

And our enemy is militant Islam, as embodied in transnational organizations like al-Qaeda: groups whose members are almost all Arab and 100% Muslim by definition.

In these perilous times, clear-thinking and exacting judgment not fuzzy racial pieties of the kumbaya variety will lead to better security for everyone. And that includes Al Sharpton and Nihad Awad. v

Statistically, perpetrators of terrorism tend to be members of certain ethnic groups.

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Columbia Political Review

ENRON BEHIND THE VEIL

WINTER 2002

By Jeffrey Chubak

Lax application of accounting standards and distorted projections could spell disaster for any company, or even market.

I

n 1997, Korean accounting classes exploded in size when, in the wake of the Southeast Asian financial crisis, people began demanding better, more uniform accounting standards everywhere. When analysts looked closely at many of the companies in South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia, they could not make sense of the firms because there were no unified balance sheets. It was impossible to see all of the sub-units of companies clearly divided neatly into assets and liabilities, not to mention all the offbook assets and liabilities.

The economic crisis revealed that America s Big Five accounting firms which had been retained to keep the books for most of the Southeast Asian corporations failed to react appropriately to the financial troubles they found in the books of the big Asian financial houses.

The main reason for this lapse, according to The New York Times, was that the Big Five firms did not apply the same detailed accounting rules and standards in Asia that they used in the United States. This was because most of the big accounting firms moved into Asia by taking over local accounting firms, whose clients insisted on employing weaker local rules. While poor auditing did not cause the Asian crisis, better auditing would have detected its problems sooner and lessened its severity.

The global reaction showed that the financial markets make snap judgments about whether a country is living by its rules (though they often reserve judgment until the first signs of substantial unprofitability). They reward countries where accounting is transparent and crush countries where accounting is not, as in the case of Southeast Asia.

Enron s sudden collapse showed us that the financial markets apply the same rules on the microcosmic level; they crush companies whose accounting is not transparent. At Enron, the executives failed to produce honest books and records, and outside auditors like Arthur Anderson failed to apply the same detailed accounting standards the industry normally uses. To get a pass with Arthur Anderson, Enron paid huge fees for the firm s auditing and consulting services. In return for the windfalls, Anderson allowed Enron to get away with creative accounting; accountants took advantage of the rules to favorably portray the figures in Enron s accounting reports. The massive conglomerate also ran over national and state regulators by throwing money at politicians. Kenneth Lay, the former CEO of Enron, for example, is a longtime friend of President

Bush, and has always been one of Bush s top contributors. Enron has also contributed to the campaign accounts of 71 current senators and 188 current members of the House.

Ultimately, however, the failure of Enron rests upon creative accounting practices. The Enron collapse does not speak to any faltering of the industry it led. Questionable accounting practices and undisclosed financial arrangements could lead to the collapse of any major corporation. In the market, transparency is essential to lure potential investors; adequate information allows the investors to assess the risk and viability of their investment. Investors cannot accurately measure corporations without the guarantee of an honest financial picture. In Enron s case, when the truth finally emerged, investors lost their confidence and withdrew their money quickly, sinking the company into the red. On a macroeconomic scale, when a dishonest picture is revealed in all of its guile, investors panic and sell all of their assets very quickly. Soon enough, an entire market can fall apart, just like in the Southeast Asian financial crisis.

It should come as no surprise that some corporations manage their earnings in order keep their stock price healthy. Unfortunately, though, investigations only come after executives have sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock at the top of the market often at the expense of their employees and investors. In the past, Enron has jusBETH MIHALICK tified its ambiguous financial statements by arguing that it would lose its competitive advantage if it told everybody exactly what it was doing. But there are responsibilities that a company incurs when it goes public.

If a company agrees to accept the money of private investors, it owes those investors clear and detailed accounting statements.

The Enron case shows that the public cannot trust companies to determine what information should fairly be withheld for competitive purposes and what should be revealed. That ought to be the job of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which requires strict regulations and enforces harsh penalties for violating them.

Under the Clinton administration, SEC chairman Arthur Levitt tried to regulate accounting reports, but he met the fierce resistance of politicians and businesses. Now Levitt s efforts have been justified.

If the SEC under Bush-appointee Harvey Pitt does not move swiftly to punish creative accounting and demand transparency, the U.S. might experience a financial meltdown, just like Southeast Asia did in 1997. v

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Columbia Political Review

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Is There a Case Against Mumia?

The conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal Mumiacs have turned their backs is a travesty of the judicial process. on evidence of Abu-Jamal s guilt.

T

BY DANIEL IMMERWAHR

HE CASE OF MUMIA Abu-Jamal is a flash point in the debate within the United States about the death penalty. Convicted for the murder of white police officer Daniel Faulkner, Abu-Jamal, a black journalist and political activist, currently waits on death row in Pennsylvania. The Fraternal Order of Police and Faulkner s widow call for his swift execution. On the other side of the issue, many anti-death penalty activists have seized onto the case as a core point of debate in their campaign to end capital punishment. While it is naturally dangerous for any one case to stand in for a complex politicized issue, Abu-Jamal s case serves its role very well by exhibiting clearly many of the problems that anti-death penalty activists have found with the administration of capital punishment in this country. Not only was his trial inadequate and grossly so, but his conviction provides an illustration of many of the systematic problems with capital punishment in the United States in general.

It is useful to rehearse some of the inadequacies in Abu-Jamal s conviction. The witness testimony of cab driver Robert Chobert gives an example of some the concerns Abu-Jamal s advocates have had with the trial. In his first conversation with police, Chobert claimed, according to the police report, that Faulkner s shooter, whom he identified as a black man with dreadlocks, shot Faulkner and then apparently ran away.

Abu-Jamal was found four feet away from Faulkner, suffering from his own gunshot wound. In his next police interview, Chobert said that the shooter, wearing a light tan shirt and jeans, started running, ran 30-35 steps, and then fell. Abu-Jamal was found dressed in dark clothing.

Three days later in a reinterview, Chobert said that the shooter s shirt was dark gray, and that the shooter only ran the length of a car before falling. Finally, in his court testimony, Chobert testified to seeing the shooter walking, not running, ten feet before falling. The discrepancies in Chobert s accounts of the shooter s locomotion and this is the real cause for concern were not mentioned to the jury. Nor was the jury told that Chobert was on probation for arson-for-hire and was driving a suspended cab the night of the killing (although he was never given any trouble about this), thus giving him adequate incentive to cooperate with the police. McGill, the prosecutor, admits telling Chobert that he would see what he could do to get Chobert s license back, but says that this only happened after Chobert testified.

Another of the three prosecution eyewitnesses was a prostitute named Cynthia White. Like Chobert, White s story changed considerably between her initial report, her police interview, and her testimony, particularly with regard to when the shots were fired. Although the defense pointed to these discrepancies, which it did not do in Chobert s case, Judge Sabo blocked testimony from another witness who might have put White s slippages into perspective. Veronica Jones, another prostitute in the area heard but did not see the shooting. She claims that police locked her up for five hours on no charges, and then pressed her to say that she had seen Abu-Jamal do it intentionally. When Jones began to make this testimony in court, the prosecuting attorney cut her off with objections. In a bench conference, Abu-Jamal s attorney told Judge Sabo that Jones was going to testify that police had offered her a deal: to let Continued on Page 8

H

BY JAIME SNEIDER

UNDREDS OF POLITICAL leaders, professors, and activists hail Mumia Abu-Jamal s case as the pinnacle example of the death penalty s injustice. Indeed, armies of upper middle-class college students, armed with misinformation and witty chants like Free Mumia, often obscure what exactly landed Abu-Jamal on death row in the first place: the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

During the last year, lobbying efforts for Abu-Jamal appear to have wavered, his cause largely confined to the meetings of fringe political movements and Rage Against the Machine concerts. Even members of Columbia s universally cherished International Socialist Organization seemingly preoccupied with the anti-war movement have all but forgotten the infamous cop killer.

After 20 years of re-examination and numerous failed appeals, however, Abu-Jamal once again made headlines when U.S. District Judge William Yohn ordered prosecutors to conduct a new sentencing hearing.

Though Mumiacs are rejoicing, one cannot help but think their celebratory gestures are the upshot of yet another misunderstanding on their part.

The mid-December decision neither cast doubt on Abu-Jamal s guilt nor abridged a new panel of jurors from affirming the death penalty. In fact, if Pennsylvania state attorneys decide against carrying out another hearing within 180 days of the judge s order, Abu-Jamal s sentence will only be commuted to life in prison.

THE PREVAILING IGNORANCE surrounding this case cannot be understated.

Conspiracy theories and rash judgments render thoughtful discourse virtually impossible. The national coordinator of Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jeff Mackler, told Reuters upon news of Judge Yohn s decision, If they give him a life sentence without bail, that s totally unacceptable to us. One might expect a mere Mumiac foot soldier to confuse parole with bail, but a slip up of this magnitude by a key activist suggests a less-than-keen understanding of the criminal justice system.

Never did the need for an additional sentencing hearing compose a part of their battle cry. The fact is Abu-Jamal s brigades of spokesmen built their case against the death penalty on his declarations of innocence.

Mark Taylor of the Princeton Theological Seminary accurately summarized the position of his supporters in a 1998 statement of the Academics for Mumia Abu-Jamal, calling for a retrial based on growing evidence supporting his long-standing claims of innocence.

Judge Yohn s 272-page opinion might seem complex at first glance.

He cites a reasonable likelihood that the jury believed it was precluded from considering any mitigating circumstance that had not been found unanimously to exist as the sole basis for his decision. Perhaps a testament to the meticulousness of the American legal system, Yohn arrived at this conclusion in the absence of any proof a member of the jury believed this to be the case. He relied simply on the doubtful possibility jurors were confused because the court had not instructed them specifically that unanimity was unnecessary in compiling a list of mitigating circumstances.

Nevertheless, a racially mixed jury unanimously agreed on AbuJamal s guilt for Faulkner s murder, and then unanimously handed down Continued on Page 9

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Columbia Political Review

Immerwahr, from page 7 her walk the streets in exchange for her testimony. Further, Jones was to testify that police told her they had struck the same deal with Cynthia White. Judge Sabo barred this testimony as irrelevant, and what little Jones had already said about coercion was stricken from the record.

WHY THEN, WAS ABU-JAMAL S trial so bad, and why was the evidence I have mentioned not heard in the trial? First, like many on trial for capital offenses, Abu-Jamal received a courtappointed attorney. Anthony Jackson, his attorney, was granted a laughably small budget: $150 apiece for expert witnesses and investiga-

ROSS MCSWEENEY

tors. Jackson s pleas for more funds or additional support were denied, and his investigator quit after interviewing only two witnesses due to insufficient funds.

Another problem was with the judge in the case, Albert Sabo a member of the Fraternal Order of Police before he took the bench, and a notoriously pro-prosecution and pro-death penalty judge. Sabo s hostile attitude toward Abu-Jamal was exacerbated by Abu-Jamal s demand, in the face of what he saw to be poor representation by the state, to represent himself in court, with Jackson acting only as a back-up attorney. After a few courtroom conflicts between Sabo and Abu-Jamal, the cause of which is in dispute, Sabo effectively barred Abu-Jamal from examining witnesses or representing himself, and pushed Abu-Jamal s erstwhile and woefully unprepared lawyer Jackson back into the fray. Without time, resources, or a

functional lawyer-client relationship, Jackson and Abu-Jamal floundered about, and AbuJamal was quickly convicted without having had a chance to present much of the above evidence in court. Terri Maurer-Carter, the stenographer during the original trial, has since filled out the picture further by filing an affidavit concerning Judge Sabo s bias, claiming that she heard Judge Sabo tell a colleague during a recess: I m going to help them [the jury] fry the nigger.

Under Pennsylvania law, the judge during the original trial has the option of hearing all post-conviction pleas. Although many of the complaints with the original trial were with Judge Sabo himself, the judge did not recuse himself, and came out of semi-retirement in 1995 to rule on whether a rehearing was necessary. In this hearing, Veronica Jones, brought in to testify again on Abu-Jamal s behalf, was actually arrested in the courtroom for an old out-of-state warrant. At the same hearing, William Singletary, an eyewitness, testified that he had seen the whole thing, that Abu-Jamal was not the shooter, and that police tore up his original statement and forced him to sign a new statement, which they dictated to him. In spite of this, Judge Sabo ruled no rehearing necessary, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the decision.

Since the 1995 hearing, another important piece of evidence yet to be heard in court has arisen. In a 1999 affidavit, Arnold Beverly claimed that he killed Faulkner at the behest of the mob and corrupt police officers. According to Abu-Jamal s new lawyers, Beverly s confession passed a polygraph exam administered by the head of the Psychology Department at Boise State University. Judge William Yohn specifically rejected the admission of the Beverly confession as evidence, based on a time-limit technicality introduced in an anti-terrorism bill passed after the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing.

THE FACTS LISTED ABOVE are not to be taken as conclusive proof of Abu-Jamal s innocence. It is surely possible that, were Abu-Jamal to receive a new trial, the evidence unheard in trial that I have recounted would come under sharp criticism. But we simply cannot know the reliability of evidence until it is heard in a court of law. Similarly, we cannot know whether AbuJamal is innocent or guilty until he receives a fair trial. It is a grave thing to execute someone, and unconscionable to do so without even hearing most of the evidence suggesting reasonable doubt.

Even supporters of the death penalty who believe that Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner should support a retrial, even if they believe it would only result in Abu-Jamal s reconviction, but this

WINTER 2002

time on just grounds. But for many, myself included, Abu-Jamal s case speaks to a much larger context: one of systematic racism within the criminal justice system, particularly with respect to the death penalty. In Pennsylvania, about 70% of the state s death row inmates were either African American or Hispanic, and about 90% of Philadelphia s death row inmates are racial minorities. 90% of those on Pennsylvania s death row got there with courtappointed or pro bono lawyers. In general, black people convicted of killing white people are 19 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white people convicted of killing black people. Furthermore, a recent study conducted by Prof. James Liebman of Columbia Law School found that almost seven out of 10 capital cases admitted of serious, reversible error. The study found egregiously incompetent defense lawyers, prosecutorial misconduct, and faulty instructions to the jurors to make up the bulk of these errors. Seven percent of those retried were exonerated.

So what should we do now? Although much has been made of Judge William Yohn s recent order that Abu-Jamal be resentenced, Abu-Jamal s case is still in need of serious reconsideration. Yohn s decision, while certainly a boon to Abu-Jamal and his supporters,

When the accused can be sentenced to death despite questionable evidence, we should rethink capital punishment. avoided the issue entirely; Yohn made his decision based on his belief that the jury received faulty instructions on how to decide whether to impose the death penalty, not on the grounds that Abu-Jamal s conviction was unfair. Even if his death sentence is overturned, Abu-Jamal will remain convicted and imprisoned for murder, and evidence not heard in his original trial will remain unheard; Abu-Jamal s lawyers have nearly exhausted possible appeals for a retrial.

Although it is not clear what can be done for Mumia Abu-Jamal within the confines of the justice system, his case calls for a serious reappraisal of any institution with the capability of executing a person with such a flagrant lack of due process. Illinois governor George Ryan, after seeing 13 Illinois death row inmates exonerated, declared a moratorium on executions in the state two years ago. Cases like those of Mumia Abu-Jamal should elicit additional scrutiny of the death penalty, and cause us to consider opposing it altogether. v

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Sneider, from page 7

a sentence of death. It weighed two mitigating circumstances against one another, deciding the latter was of greater weight: the first that AbuJamal had no prior record, and the second that he had killed an officer of the law.

ABU-JAMAL S GUILT IS nothing shy of clear-cut, his punishment nothing less than fair, and the use of the death penalty, in this case, without even the hint of practical flaw. I harbor no delusions about my ability to correct all myths, lies, and mistruths promulgated by Abu-Jamal s followers. Never has there been a more suitable occasion to observe that falsity is espoused and embraced with greater ease than truth. It is only on this note that I venture to outline the case against Abu-Jamal, so that readers may decide for themselves whether his supporters have been entirely forthcoming.

No fewer than five eyewitnesses to Faulkner s homicide have identified AbuJamal. Michael Scanlan recounted the murder in horrid detail, describing the gunman as 5 10 and weighing about 160 or 170 pounds. He also correctly noted that Abu-Jamal had a beard and was wearing a black hat, dark pants, and a brightly colored sweater.

Cabdriver Robert Chobert also identified Mumia Abu-Jamal and testified to his guilt.

Mumiacs theorize prosecutors offered to have Chobert s suspended driver s license reinstated in return for his fraudulent testimony. Ten years later, it still had not been. Minor inconsistencies in his description, such as the color of AbuJamal s clothes, have been blown out of proportion. In a traumatic situation, it is not uncommon for witnesses to remember only a few key features about the shooter. Chobert s testimony was accurate and consistent with regards to these elements, which are ignored by Mumiacs.

Abu-Jamal supporters have made similar assertions about prostitute Cynthia White, speculating that police offered to turn a blind eye to her illicit behavior if she agreed to lie on the stand. The fact that she was not picked up in the months prior to her testimony has been cited as evidence of such an arrangement. But this had more to do with her incarceration in Massachusetts than the police in Philadelphia.

And when defense attorneys, hoping his testimony would exonerate their client, called Robert Harkins to the stand more than a decade later, he confirmed the eyewitness testimony provided in the original trial and identified Abu-Jamal.

Of course, there are two other witnesses who hold the answers to a number of important questions but have refused to testify: Mumia Abu-Jamal and his brother, William Cook. For

Columbia Political Review

starters, the prosecution might ask, why was Abu-Jamal in possession of a .38-caliber gun with five empty rounds matching those found in Officer Faulkner? Indeed, despite a lot of hogwash to the contrary, every ballistics expert, including Abu-Jamal s own, has confirmed the spent bullets came from Abu-Jamal s gun, which he held at the crime scene.

If this amalgam of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence all presented to the jury were not enough to prove Abu-Jamal s guilt definitively, his various confessions should put any doubt to rest. Though perhaps there might be reason to question the testimony of two policeman who waited several months before reporting one of Abu-Jamal s series of admissions, a hospital security guard reported one within 24 hours. Several people even heard Abu-Jamal yell, I shot the motherfucker, and I hope the motherfucker dies.

Other myths employed create the illusion of an unfair trial by lying about the amount of money allocated to Abu-Jamal s court appointed attorney to mount a defense. A number of Mumiacs put the figure at a measly $150 even though he received more than $13,000 in 1982 (or $24,300 in today s dollars). That figure does not even include the extra $1,300 Judge Sabo allocated specifically for forensic experts and investigators, and the money Abu-Jamal raised privately. The total did, it is worth noting, surpass the average amount allocated in a Pennsylvania homicide case at the time.

More recently, it has become fashionable among anti-death penalty activists to argue that a phantom shooter identified as Arnold Beverly shot Faulkner and fled the scene as part of a mob conspiracy. One of Abu-Jamal s attorneys, Dan Williams, called the Beverly theory a patently outrageous story in his book Executing Justice. Neither Abu-Jamal, his brother nor the multitude of eyewitnesses seemed to have noticed Beverly, but Mumiacs are still convinced. Lie detector tests on Beverly have had mixed results, but cannot be considered conclusive because they were conducted by the defense. When such tests are done privately, frequently defense attorneys allow a subject to practice, which can make lying unnoticeable. Additionally, they rarely test for personality altering drugs that can skew the results.

Abu Jamal s supporters have even ludicrously said time and again that he was abridged of his constitutional right to defend himself. Though reasons cited in defense of this claim vary, the predominant explanation involves the racism of Judge Sabo. As any legal expert will say, however, disruptive courtroom behavior might be cause to remove a defendant during his trial. Abu-Jamal was ejected five times, in one instance after sparking a courtroom fistfight involving his followers. In addi-

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tion, he refused to enter a plea or to say whether he wanted to exercise his constitutional right to a jury. He also had a number of outbursts, calling the judge a black-robed conspirator, bastard, executioner, and hangman. In one other instance, he shouted, I don t give a damn what you think. You go to hell.

ABU-JAMAL S DEFENDERS HAVE resorted to outlandish conspiracy theories and plots to explain away the simple truth that Abu-Jamal is guilty and received a fair trial. His appeals process was likewise fair, his civil liberties all the while protected with the utmost respect for the Constitution. Indeed, there are obvious reasons why no fewer than eleven justices have upheld the jury s decision to hand down a guilty verdict and death sentence since the 1982 trial.

ROSS MCSWEENEY

What makes this case peculiar is not evidence of Abu-Jamal s innocence, but that death penalty activists would embrace it as a symbol of their cause. His indisputable guilt implies either his defenders are willfully ignorant of the facts surrounding this case or embrace a perverse sense of justice that simultaneously excuses the murder of a Philadelphia police officer and condemns the imprisonment of his killer.

The issue of whether the state may morally terminate a criminal s life neither depends on the case of Abu-Jamal nor can be discussed with activists who have long ago sacrificed truth for the sake of a political agenda.

Mumiacs pursue their cause independent of guilt, fairness, or equality that is to say, by any means necessary. v

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The Columbia Counter-Summit

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should be able to employ the concept of comparative advantage and produce goods more expediently, to the benefit of the consumer.

As the reams of protesters in Seattle, Genoa, and New York can attest, however, the situation is not so cut and dry. Many feel that labor in developed countries is threatened by free trade because corporations can easily find shockingly inexpensive labor in developing Y EBECCA EBER countries. Human-rights issues arise when corHE W ORLD ECONOMIC F ORUM, an stuff was about the Zapatista movement. There porations employ cheap labor where neither annual conference that combines dis- was a lot of stuff about the labor movement and child labor nor working conditions are regulatcussions and parties, brought to its relation to the war in Afghanistan. There was ed. For environmentalists, the World Trade Manhattan a diverse and elite group of one about Citigroup. There was some basic Organization is especially noxious because it politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities. stuff about what is the WTO and what is prohibits countries from using protectionist Protesters, of course, followed in their wake. GATT kind of an alphabet soup. measures such as tariffs, even if other countries Students and activists flowed in from all parts Protesters came to voice their opposition are using the tariffs punitively (for violation of of the world to voice their opposition to the to various topics. I m here to protest the WEF, environmental policy, for example). murky and diffuse phenomenon of globaliza- which is basically a cocktail party for the richThe International Monetary Fund also tion. est white males on the planet, explained Tony draws radicals ire. The role of the IMF is to act A group of Columbia students from Young, who traveled from Iowa. He added that as a lender of last resort for developing counStudents for Global Justice, an ad hoc group institutions that enforce neoliberal economic tries who cannot make payments on their loans. under the Columbia Student Solidarity Network policies, such as the World Trade Organization, The IMF loans, however, often come with some (CSSN), collaborated with Berkeley students to protect corporate interests at the expense of conditionality stipulating the borrowing organize a counter-summit to the WEF. They working people, indigenous people, and the country adopt some particular policy. The IMF planned the counter-summit, they say, to edu- environment. demands that inflation be brought under conWhen Young refers to neoliberal eco- trol, and doing this often involves reducing cate people about the repercussions of what they call neoliberal economics. The ramifica- nomic policies, he is describing the current pre- state spending, especially on food subsidies and tions of globalization are wide other programs. ranging, they say. The summit s Given the power wielded by attendees said that some of the the WTO and the IMF, protesters most important topics included commonly complain about the environmental degradation, ecolack of democratic representation nomic inequality (within and in international organizations. between nations), lack of demo I m protesting the fact that a lot cratic representation in internaof these organizations are very tional organizations, human-rights elitist organizations that are the concerns, and labor issues. shaping the future and the whole Globalization is a really world. They are coming together large topic. I like to describe it as to discuss ways to open up maran octopus with multiple arms, kets with very little accountabilisaid Luís Fernández, who traveled ty, remarked Fernández, a visitfrom Tempe, Arizona to participate ing protester. in the counter-summit and in the Mike Furchtgott, CC 05, protests. who attended the protest on Saturday morning, echoed MICHAEL CASTLEMAN, AN organizFernández s remarks, You ve er of the counter-summit, which heard the phrase no taxation withtook place on the Barnard and out representation. A lot of protestROSS MCSWEENEY Columbia campuses, explains the ers think that these organizations whole system that this institution represents vailing school of thought in international eco- shouldn t have a whole lot of power or responbased on greed and profit over humanity we nomics, which emphasizes the importance of sibility without accountability. Furchtgott confeel is not a sustainable system, is not a good international institutions in helping countries ceded that there are benefits to free trade, but system, except for the few people who benefit. and individuals seek long-term mutual gains at the same time, I think that workers rights The counter-summit consisted of 55 work- from trade. The idea that countries can benefit groups and environmental issues groups should shops and two plenary sessions over two days. from trade stems from the economic concept of have more of a voice.

Ginger Gentile, president of CSSN, the blanket comparative advantage, which says that states organization for left-leaning groups on campus, can maximize profits by enhancing their most NOT SURPRISINGLY, ONE OF the more prevalent explained that two of the most popular work- efficient industries at the lowest cost, and selling protests this year was against the war on terrorshops at the summit provided medical and legal the efficiently produced products inexpensively ism, which protesters argue is a product of globtraining for protesters, but the majority of the relative to other states. By eliminating tariffs al economic conditions. It is no longer possible workshops did not deal with protesting. Some and other protectionist measures, countries to talk about globalization without talking about

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the war, said Michael Letwin, from New York Labor Against War, at the first plenary session.

He pointed to the U.S. policies that led to the funding of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan at the end of the Cold War, explaining that the blowback of these policies is something we had to pay for. Letwin argued that it is ironic that Nine-eleven has led to an intensification of these policies. The U.S. government is using our sorrow and our grief as a pretext to take these policies to an even greater level.

Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban

Planning at Columbia, also spoke at the plenary about the effects of September 11 on the antiglobalization movement. It s a very strange argument that we re having now, said Marcuse.

The reaction to terrorism has been support for globalization. He repeatedly described the postSeptember 11 world as representing a skewed form of globalization, one that doesn t include support for an international court of law, the Kyoto accord, or an equitable division of resources among the world s peoples and countries.

India and Pakistan: Endgame in Kashmir

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BY AMBA DATTA

on India and Pakistan these days is like perusing a long list of insults and accusations.

First, India demanded that Pakistan stop harboring leaders of cross border terrorist groups; then India alleged that terrorists based in Pakistan masterminded the December 13 attack on its Parliament; Pakistan came back with its own claims that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl s killers were in contact with members of the Indian government.

Following the allegations about Pearl s kidnappers, Pakistan was, according to reports, going to ask its neighbor to give up any criminals taking refuge in India. Recent news about Pearl s kidnappers means that that list may never be delivered. But, in an ironic twist, India s very own Home Minister, L.K. Advani, was considered a likely candidate for inclusion on the list Pakistan was drawing up, according to Indian news site Tehelka.com.

Playing this absurd game of creating most wanted lists is unlikely to strike at the heart of the animosity the question of who owns Kashmir that is causing the largest buildup of troops on the Indo-Pak border in thirty years. To Kashmir belongs the dubious distinction of being the flashpoint of regional tensions similar to ones in Northern Ireland or the Middle East that are mired in political and religious ideologies.

A recent speech by Pakistan s President General Pervez Musharraf said that the armed conflict in Kashmir was a product of an indigenous freedom movement fighting against India s oppression. The speech sparked anger in EADING MEDIA REPORTS

New Delhi, which accuses Pakistan of financing militants in the region. Kashmir is ours, said Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, They will never get it.

India bars the possibility of negotiation at the present moment, but faith in Pakistan s efforts to clamp down on militant groups to achieve peace would be foolish as well. Leaders of Hizbul Mujahideen, a group that Pakistan outlawed after New Delhi blamed it for the attack on the Indian Parliament, made a statement from Kashmir, for instance, that indicates the continuation of their militant efforts in the region, even after September 11.

LONG KNOWN FOR ITS natural beauty, Kashmir has been at the heart of a conflict that has claimed the lives of ten thousands of soldiers, civilians, and border fighters, from the two countries (India and Pakistan) formed after the partition of the British Raj s Indian empire at independence in 1947.

The stipulations of the Indian Independence Act of 1947 divided British India along religious lines as part of an agreement between the Congress Party and the Moslem League. The predominantly Moslem regions of the old Indian empire became the core of the new Moslem state of Pakistan while the Hindu majority areas became a part of secular India.

But while the split may have been seemed straightforward on paper, the resettlement of the subcontinent resulted in a bloodbath that may have claimed as many as a million lives.

In August 1947, the rulers of the princely states of the Indian empire were left to decide which newly created nation to join. Jammu and

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The counter-summit drew about 1,200 people. Interestingly, despite the Lerner Hall venue, few Columbia students attended the summit. The majority were not from Columbia. People came from really far away.

Oregon, Chicago, Arizona, California, says Ginger Gentile, an organizer. She added that the counter-summit helped draw people to the protest on Saturday, and it gave people an education. It was more of an incentive, because to come out just for a day of going to protests is not very cost-effective. v

Kashmir was a Moslem majority state, but its Hindu leader Maharajah Hari Singh decided to forestall any commitment to either nation, until tribesmen from Pakistan s northwest frontier, provoked by reports of violence in the region, invaded the region later that year. The Maharajah appealed for help to India and signed an agreement called the Instrument of Accession, which left the state under India s control. But Maharajah Hari Singh signed the agreement with a promise from India that it would hold a plebiscite in the region later by submitting the question of Kashmi s ownership to the Kashmiris themselves.

Indian troops were airlifted into Srinagar, capital of the region, but the question of whether they entered before after the Maharajah signed the Instrument of Accession is still being disputed. Pakistan claims that the Maharajah was pressured to sign the agreement and that he signed it after Indian troops had already entered the region. India maintains that whatever the timing of the agreement the Maharajah s appeal for help validates India s claim to Jammu and Kashmir.

The 1947-1948 war between India and Pakistan ended in 1949 with the drawing of a cease-fire line and Pakistan s occupation of approximately one third of Kashmir. The United Nations ruled that both India and Pakistan should withdraw troops from Jammu and Kashmir while India should hold a plebiscite to determine whether the region s people wanted to be a part of India or Pakistan.

That plebiscite was never held, however, because India argued it would only do so if Pakistan withdrew troops from the area and Pakistan refused to do so.

Both countries traded arguments about Kashmir s ownership into the 1970s. Pakistan maintained that the UN resolutions bound India to hold a plebiscite. On the other hand, India claimed that the 1972 Simla agreement, which, among other things, established bilateral relations between the two countries on the issue of Kashmir, precluded any need to obey the UN s injunctions. Since 1949, India and

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Pakistan have gone to war twice, in 1965 and in 1971, with the latter conflict being fought predominantly over Bangladesh. Insurgency movements in Indian-controlled Kashmir gathered force after 1989. Many of these movements for independence were originally sparked by the indigenous peoples of Kashmir. But since the 90s, the movements have been expanded and fought by militants that India claims are armed and trained by Pakistan.

EFFORTS AT RESTORING PEACE between the two countries may be hindered by the fact that India and Pakistan have very different approaches to creating peace. India used to advocate normalizing relations with Pakistan by withdrawing troops from the border and instituting open commercial relations. In the light of improved everyday relations and with cooler heads, India thought that a solution to the Kashmir problem might emerge naturally, a situation which would also prove favorable to India in terms of Kashmir s fate.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has often advocated wrestling with the problem of Kashmir immediately. Again, Pakistan stands to gain from this strategy of tackling the problem head-on or internationalizing the situation with an outside power mediating between India and Pakistan. Kashmiri citizens might be more likely to vote to become a part of Pakistan with a plebiscite when tensions are running high.

Wherever Kashmir belongs, it is difficult to see how, at this juncture in time, Pakistan and India could normalize relations before confronting the root cause of their tensions.

The plebiscite idea, which might seem the ready and easy option, actually presents numerous difficulties as well. The movement for a free Kashmir would make a third option one of an independent state instead of a province belonging to either India or Pakistan a warranted possibility on a plebiscite. But this option would be unlikely to gain support from either nation claiming Kashmir as its own. India shies away from holding a plebiscite because the prospect of self-determination for Kashmir might have implications for other provinces within India, like Nagaland, that have agitated for separate states. The provisions of a plebiscite would have to be enforced; any choice by Kashmiris would be bound to spark war. The question is what country would volunteer to enforce the region s decision on ownership? It s a role that the U.S., despite its stake in the region now, would be unlikely to welcome.

Whatever happens to the forgotten plebiscite though, it is clear that India s opposition to peace talks stems from the sentiment among India s leadership that its past attempts

BETH MIHALICK

at peace have been returned by Pakistani aggression on the border. The 1999 conflict in the Kargil sector, which lies northeast of Srinagar in Kashmir, for instance, is behind much of the present government s animosity towards Pakistan. The ground conflict was the largest since the 1971 war. International pressure eventually prompted Pakistan to back down from support for the infiltrators.

Referring recently to a visit to Lahore he made a few months prior to Kargil, Vajpayee said, underscoring his current unwillingness to hold talks, I had gone to Lahore with a message of goodwill but in return we got Kargil.

The specter of Kargil may simply serve as a handy excuse for India to justify its hawkish sentiments towards Pakistan, but Vajpayee s rhetoric is continually laced with references to the conflict. Pakistan must demonstrate in the coming weeks that it will not respond to India s peace overtures like it did in Kargil.

THE MEDIA HAS OFTEN portrayed the nuclear issue as another significant dimension to the power struggle on the subcontinent that makes the situation even more murky. Although many interpret nukes as a factor that will make the situation more dicey, the presence of nuclear arsenals on both sides may actually hinder conflict.

Indian Minister of Defence George Fernandes ruled out the possibility of nuclear war in an interview in January with Calcutta s newspaper, the Statesman, even as he sounded confident of the Indian army s superiority.

Ultimately, Fernandes may not have the last word, but his statements do indicate that nuclear weapons may act as a mutual deterrent.

Faced by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, leaders of both countries may be more apt to step back from full-scale engagement.

Nuclear weapons, however, do play a very significant role in internationalizing any tensions between India and Pakistan. Events that could have been easily dismissed by outside powers as bickering between confirmed enemies have now been cast in a new light by the nuclear capabilities of both countries. Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has indicated that India will not welcome mediation by an outside power. It seems unlikely, however, that India will be able maintain its stance of opposition to talks for too long; there is nothing like glaring self-interest for the U.S. justify its demands for peace in the region. So long as both India and Pakistan realize that an effective examination of their problems goes beyond an exchange of accused criminals, there may be a chance for lasting peace. v

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Why We Can t Wait These comments are adapted from a Sukkoth address given at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

REMARKS BY UNIVERSITY CHAPLAIN JEWELNEL DAVIS The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.

One is the myth of time. It is the notion that time can solve the problem of racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community, Why don t you slow up? Stop pushing things so fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray, in a hundred years the problem will work itself out.

There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, Wait on time.

(Words from Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, the last Sunday Sermon Preached by Dr. King)

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his year we will commemorate the 34th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On September 11, a new revolution began as we in America faced evil beyond our imagination. Our blanket of security was snatched away and we faced the chilling and naked realities of death, destruction and terror. Our vulnerability as a nation exceeded our worst fears; public servants were murdered by the hundreds, families were left broken, children were left without parents, clouds of sacred ash blackened the air, doctors were left without patients, our national economy was shocked, our souls were troubled, our illusions incinerated. In our changed world Dr. King s legacy and prophecy is even more imperative. September 11 shocked us with the truth; time s up there is no more time to wait time is up!

There are many challenges that face us as neighborhood, local, state, regional, national and international communities. The urgency and weight of these challenges for a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious, international community are very real for us at Columbia University. We do not reflect the world; we lead it. It is our privilege to model a community where reason is the guide and understanding is the goal. It is our opportunity to demonstrate the value of vigorous debate, candid exploration and respectful interrogation of ideas; we must be a global marketplace of reason and ideas.

Nothing short of evil is stalking us. Evil is stalking our neighborhoods; children are waking up every morning in every neighborhood in this city without hope for their future. Evil is stalking our streets; women and men are walking the streets of this city every day without hope of finding a job that pays a living wage so that they can raise their children to become engaged, responsible and respected citizens. Evil is stalking our society; men and women are running around this city without hope of securing for their children an education that is unfettered by obstacles to learning. Evil is stalking our world; terrorism, violence, despair are setting nation against nation, community against community, faith against faith, citizen against citizen, neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend.

Liberties and freedoms that we cherish are being reconsidered and compromised. Humanity as we know it is at risk. Evil is stalking us!

We have heard the cries and the misery of God s people and many of us have not stood up with the courage of Dr. King. We have not sacrificed our anxieties, our confusions and our fears. We have not stretched beyond our comfort. We have let our need for personal success distort our minds and trap our energy. Our moral compass has been defective; it has not consistently guided us toward the demands of God s love.

We hear often that ours is a complicated world and we live in a complex city. Every day each of us is pressed and is challenged by nearly every social problem known to humanity. Every day we face another example of the inequitable distribution of resources. Every day we benefit from that lack of equity. Every day we participate in structures, work in institutions, enjoy opportunities, use resources and perpetuate systems that humiliate our brothers and our sisters, degrade our mothers and our fathers, and destroy our sons and our daughters, destroy our children.

Every day we face another example of the inevitable consequences of our participation in a society that has decided that some men will never have a job and some women will never have a home.

We participate in a society that has decided that some children will never have enough to eat; some children will never see a doctor; some children will never experience physical, emotional, economic and spiritual security. Some of us will enjoy the liberty of our civil rights; others will be denied even their God-given rights. Some of us will stretch up to our most daring dreams; others will be forced down into their worst nightmares. God have mercy on each of us.

Isaiah has a word for us. Come let us reach an understanding! Come let us reason together. Come let us reach an understanding. We have heard the cries and the misery of God s people and many of us here have not stood up with the courage of our faith, the courage of our foremothers and the courage of forefathers.

Many of us have not stood up with the radical courage of Isaiah. We have not moved with even the trembling courage of lesser prophets; strong men and responsible women. We have not cried out with courage for the liberation of all God s children some of us have not even dared to whisper Let God s children go!

My sisters and my brothers of conscious and good will, the Bible tells us that in the labors of dedicated workers, their hunger urges them on. We need to get hungry we need to get hungry for justice. We need to get thirsty we need to get thirsty for justice.

We need to get working, challenging ourselves and one another to assume our responsibilities individually, institutionally and collectively to participate in creating the world that faith requires. A world where every child of God lives free from the assaults of economic, educational, racial, ethnic, sexual, social and political inequalities.

Wait on time? The time is now in the words of Dr. King, The time is always ripe to do right! Wait on time? Time s up!

God be with each of us.

January 28, 2002

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Dick Posner, Poseur, Pedant In Public Intellectuals, Judge Richard Posner arraigns his colleagues on charges of glib inaccuracy, only to prove himself guilty from the bench.

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BOOK REVIEW BY BEN LETZLER

ichard Posner, federal judge and law professor at Chicago, is the most cited legal theorist working. He is also one of America s most celebrated and outspoken polymaths, prolific like a Saintsbury, a Sainte-Beuve, or a Tom Clancy. Judge Posner is frequently controversial, but his latest study, Public Intellectuals: A Study in Decline (Harvard University Press; 408 pp.; $29.95), is singularly cheeky: it attacks many of the men and women who would review it, and it has the gall to rank them.

Posner has pretensions to social scientific rigor. He offers putatively precise definitions of what constitutes a public intellectual and quantitative, pseudo-economistic, theoretical and empirical analysis to systematically flesh out the first comprehensive study of the breed, who today make slapdash prognostications to mass media and are immune to the consequences of being wrong because they enjoy academic tenure. His now-infamous Table 5.3 lists the top hundred most influential public intellectuals in America, which, to judge from his explanation of his methodology, was apparently assembled from an intern s afternoon on Google.com and Lexis/Nexis. As for the rigor in general, Gertrude Himmelfarb points out in Commentary that Posner gets circulation numbers, among other things, wrong for major policy journals. David Brooks reveals in The New York Times that the volume is blithely filled out with the author s old book reviews.

William Grimes, writing in the same, points out that Andre Malraux might have scored higher in Judge Posner s Google search rankings if the latter hadn t searched for Andre Malreaux.

This author can add only that, on page 3, author Garry Gary Wills sheds an r.

How to explain a sloppy polemic from an academic press, against sloppy academic polemics, a book from an eminent controversialist and stylist that is frequently just embarrassing? One passage suggests an answer: We Feinschmeckers, writes Posner, have to live with vulgarity in popular culture, the sight of overweight middle-aged men wearing shorts and baseball caps, weak coffee and the blare of the television set in every airport waiting lounge. It is doubtful that the public-intellectual market is a more debilitating or less intractable feature of contemporary American culture than these other affronts to the fastidious.

Posner doesn t suffer fools lightly, and much has been said in the reviews about how Public Intellectuals is a screed against people Posner doesn t like, some of whom have even disagreed with him in print. Indeed, this factor call it the petulant rage thesis is necessary to making Posner s project intelligibile. He is not a sentimentalist; as a leading member of the law-and-economics school, he earnestly advocates such unconventional public policy as open markets for infants and legalized prostitution as an alternative to marriage. He explicitly dismisses nostalgists in his text. Yet his book, from its title onward, predicates itself on a past golden age of quality commentary, when public intellectuals, because they had no academic sinecures and had to be right to earn their bread, said smart, incisive things when, in other words, giants roamed the

earth. [W]e think of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century, writes a beaming Posner, such as John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Max Weber, Arthur Koestler, Edmund Wilson, and George Orwell.

It is revealing that Posner juxtaposes Bertrand Russell, a philosopher, a mathematician, and an earl, with Arthur Koestler, the author of bestselling novels, now-and-then plagiarist, and sometime adventurer in Soviet Kazakhstan. Posner posits a nebulous decline, but then as now, the timely popularizer and amateur (Koestler), outsells the eternal thinker (Russell). Judge Posner does not appreciate the multifarious mediocrity of past public intellectual work. There is no longer accountability, he argues, but he does not substantiate in any satisfying way that accountability once existed. The young George Kennan believed that America should turn from democracy to authoritarianism, and he is still read in poli-sci classes as the father of containing communism. Joe Kennedy publicly expressed his admiration for Hitler, and his son became President of the United States.

This is only to mention some remembered names. Others are half-forgotten. These erstwhile celebrity ephemera, similar in staying power to many names on Posner s Table 5.3, suggest that he might better have studied how public intellectuals have gotten better. Walter Lippmann never had the audience of Joe McCarthy s ardent friend Walter Winchell (whose name even gets an exasperated mention in Cole Porter s Let s Fly Away ). One of Father Coughlin s xenophobic radio addresses reached a broader public than Edmund Wilson s assembled output. While Orwell struggled to retain the support of his small band of reluctant backers at the Left Book Club, millions read the stories molded by the Daily Mail s Lord Northcliffe: communist nun rapings in Spain, encouragement not to worry about a rearmed Wehrmacht. If Posner has read Homage to Catalonia, he betrays no knowledge of that book s damning look at the sorry state of badly written, badly argued, morally dubious public intellectual work in Orwell s time.

Posner complains that exciting, controversial public intellectuals sell big, but things have been that way for a long time, certainly throughout the 20th century, which experienced the purported decline. We have our share of blockheaded, loudmouthed pundits, but American discourse today, unlike 50 years ago, is free from theories of national character, racial difference, and organic world history, among other things. Posner pays no heed to this. Instead, he turns educated readers into homines economici, making the philosopher s presumption that the reading public wants Truth and the accountant s presumption that they shop for the Truest, stances that have rightly been attacked as quietly anti-intellectual. Concluding his diatribe against his enemies (colleagues), he anticlimaxes with the suggestion that academics compile their public intellectual work each year so they can be held accountable it. Posner, like Harold Bloom, infuriates: he is too brilliant and prolific to ignore, yet almost too lazy to read with profit. He should try picking up How to Read and Why. v

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Winter on Birthright Birthright Israel is more than just another jingoistic leadership program with an institutional agenda.

ESSAY BY TALLIE LIEBERMAN

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hen I first began scheming to steal an all-expenses-paid trip to the land of milk and honey, I was prepared to snooze through a propaganda-wrought organized tour of Israel, to stomach ideological spoon-feeding, in order to claim my bounty of visiting friends and family on zero coin.

As I laboriously filled out the registration forms for the Birthright Gift, I was faced with moral indecision in the form of a catch question: How often have you been to Israel since you were 12 years old? How could I pretend that I had never been to Israel before? How could I imply that my mother is anything but Israeli? I chose the route of the righteous Greater than 10 times in the hopes that Charles Bronfman would accept me nonetheless and grant me his monetary miracle.

Six weeks later, I got word that I had received the gift and would be shipping off to Israel within a month. Soon, I was packing hiking gear and American gifts within one pregnant suitcase and rushing to meet my group at JFK one of the 35 falling under different religious denominations and cultural leanings.

Nothing about the group I encountered at the Lufthansa desk reflected stereotypical Jewish-American affiliation. I met granolachewing blond Rastafarian mountain bikers, cadets from Washington State, one Russian-American immigrant who rejected showering, a Persian alcoholic-shopaholic from San Francisco, and a woman with a beard who had been living in her van for three months. With this first impression, my well-cultivated image of a pseudo-United Synagogue Youth trip dominated by sing-a-longs and bonfires fast faded.

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, my group was welcomed by our Israeli counterparts students and soldiers between the ages of 20 and 26 who were equally enthused to receive an all-expenses-paid tour of their country, as we were to join them on it. This carefully selected group of 20 Americans, five Israeli Americans, and 10 Israelis, while transparently manufactured to effect the perfect Israeli-American Encounter, bonded instantaneously. We spent our ten full days and nights together exchanging fraternity and army jokes, common love for Zeppelin and Dylan, and secretly venturing to the nightclubs of Jerusalem and Eilat in violation of the strict Birthright rules that protected us.

Every peaceful herd, however, has its black sheep. Ours happened to be the very woman with the beard who lived in her van for three months whom I had met in the airport; she had innumerable bones to pick with Birthright, with Israel, and with humanity at large.

She made her political opinions concerning the occupation of the territories loudly known to the group by interrupting the guide s every description of the sites we were touring. One site in particular incited her fury a gate in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem where a battle in the Six-Day War had been fought. Here she raised her voice to

a high pitch, demanding to know when it would please our guides to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How exactly had this vocal vagabond been selected to receive the Birthright gift? Our guides responded to her spitting claims in an amazingly conciliatory manner and planned a political forum, in order to address these and other concerns.

During the debate, group members vocalized their multifarious political beliefs.

There were those Americans who disagreed wholeheartedly with Israel s existence as a Jewish state, who would never move there voluntarily, and who felt no responsibility to protecting the nation. Of this group, a few vehemently believed in the Palestinian claim to Israel and vowed to defend it. Once again, in the face of such anti-Israel rhetoric, the Birthright group leaders and guides remained remarkably silent, tactfully not interjecting their political stance, choosing instead to facilitate the flow of discussion among members of the group.

There were those Israelis and Americans who believed in the peace process only with a Palestinian nation that would accept Israel s firm existence and the right of Israelis to live without fear of suicide bombings.

As discussion intensified and the hour grew later, I began to note some rather dramatic differences in the ways in which the Israelis and Americans approached the debate. The Israelis spoke with depressed resignation about the unfortunate and unpleasant reality of needing to serve in the army, of not wanting to occupy the territories, but of not seeing any other way in which to protect their families against certain attack.

The Americans, on both ends of the political spectrum, spoke with great passion about causes and ideals, but mentioned few ways in which Israel could achieve them. The vivacious and idealistic enthusiasm of the Americans lacked the practical but worn stoicism of the Israelis.

During this debate, I questioned the right of Americans to advise Israel on foreign policy measures when we, as a nation, have no hand in enacting them. We send no soldiers to protect their borders none to help establish order in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, we charitably produce ideals in a vacuum for tired, near-fatalistic soldiers to execute.

By the end of the discussion, I realized that the questions churning in my mind were the exact reason for my being there. Our group coordinators had subtly facilitated a natural awakening to the connections and fundamental distinctions among an eclectic sampling of Jews from across the globe. This trip that was originally meant to be a free lift to Israel instead resulted in grounding me with a familiarity and acceptance of the vastly different nature of the modern Jewish experience. v

Beyond clichés and politics, the Birthright Israel trip is about identity and self-exploration.

PAGE 16

Columbia Political Review

WINTER 2002

Questions for Steve Rendall Steve Rendall is the Senior Analyst for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a media watchdog group.

INTERVIEW BY ADAM B. KUSHNER

K

ushner: FAIR is a small nonprofit media watchdog group battling major corporate media organizations on their coverage. How do editors, producers, and ombudsmen react when you tell them they re wrong?

Rendall: It depends on the editor and the producer. We get very good reviews from some. John Martin from ABC contacted us and said that our issue on the Gulf War granted that s 10 years ago was a great service to journalists. He added that he didn t agree with everything in it but that he very much enjoyed it. Sometimes we have phones hung up on us. But the more that we re able to get readers of our magazine, Extra, listeners to our radio show, Counterspin, and readers of our online mail listserv to contact media outlets and realize that the concerns that FAIR has are not just ours, the more we get results. I m sure some have less than a rosy picture of FAIR. I m sure a lot of them think we have a political agenda, but we think they do, too. We have been arguing for years that centrism is an ideology. It s not a place out in hyperspace with no point of view it s an ideology more powerful than left or right because of its currency and its influence in establishment policy and news-making.

Kushner: If news management doesn t have such a rosy picture of FAIR, what do the reporters and writers on the ground think of it?

Rendall: You have reporters who think we re just complainers and marginal gadflies, but others who recognize the ideals of journalism that we put forth that journalism exists to question authority and to monitor power.

This is the difference between FAIR and a lot of the right-wing media groups: we re pro-journalism. We think that we exist in order to defend hard-nosed journalism, and that makes us different from a lot of the right-wing groups, who, in our view, hate journalism. They want to applaud journalism that says nice things about conservatives or the right or Republicans and they want to silence any journalism that doesn t do that. Anything positive about a leftist or a liberal or a Democrat is, of course, wrong. FAIR calls for a broad, rollicking debate, and we ask for journalists to ask tough questions of those in power no matter where they come from.

Kushner: Does that happen on the left, too?

Rendall: I m sure you can find them. The left is in a unique position in American media. In the mainstream media the media that tells you that it s objective and middle-of-the-road the left doesn t exist. The left usually is represented by a stand-in somebody who is a hair s breath to the left of center: a Michael Kinsley, an Al Hunt, even a Sam Donaldson. Those people stand in for the left, while the right and its various mass movements the Christian

Coalition, the Conservative Political Action Committee are represented by authentic spokespersons. People like William F. Buckley, Pat Buchanan, Paul Gigot, I could go on and on.

Kushner: Which raises an interesting question. In terms of the American political spectrum, are the mainstream news organizations the big three networks and the major newspapers a hair to the right, a hair to the left, or do they embody the centrist ideology you discussed?

Rendall: When it comes to the big money issues, when it comes to NAFTA, national health care, taxation, welfare, the press is right of center. The biggest bias in the American mass media is a procorporate bias. With that pro-corporate bias, they come from a centrist point of view. This can be clearly demonstrated by the spectrum of debate you see on most of the networks, on cable news, and the op-ed pages of newspapers. You see people that are slightly to the left of center, like Anthony Lewis debating people that are bona fide movement conservatives like William Safire. Safire is looked up to by the Christian Coalition, the National Conservative Political Action Committee, whereas if you go to traditional left constituencies groups like the United Auto Workers, Greenpeace, National Organization for Women and you ask them does Tony Lewis represent your movement? they d laugh at you. Same thing if you go to television and look at the people who the right likes to label as leftists. The idea that Dan Rather carries some authority in the UAW or in NOW or Greenpeace is laughable. The people who do, people like Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, they don t appear in the national media with any sort of regularity the way that bona fide, legitimate spokespersons for conservative movements do.

Kushner: What s FAIR s greatest success story?

Rendall: That s a great question because we just celebrated our 15th birthday and a lot people ask us, You ve been around for 15 years. Has the media improved? And in fact, the opposite is true.

Since FAIR s been around in 1986, the media has been concentrated into fewer corporate hands with less tolerance for dissent. It s become even more jingoistic and sloganeering during wartime than it was when we started. So why don t we just fold the tent? FAIR s biggest success is that it has been at the vanguard with a couple of other groups in building a movement for media democracy. It s still nascent, but it s got hundreds of thousands of followers now. People are starting to see media not as being just a neutral conduit but being a real ideological player in public policy and public life in general.

That s where FAIR s greatest success is. v