Religion in Public Life

I have struggled over the past few days to understand the furor over the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. It seems to be getting more press over here in Germany, but a fair amount in the USA as well. Now it appears that the Danish embassy in Syria has been set on fire, and lots of Muslims have been vehemently protesting in the streets of many cities. The whole issue is tricky for many of us on the Progressive Left, especially Christians, because while we strongly support the freedom of expression, it is also painful to see deeply-held religious views so blatantly disrespected. Frankly, I have to admit that my first response was probably like that of most American citizens: What is wrong with free expression? Why do Muslims in the Middle East have to try to censor newspapers in Europe? And the images themselves don't seem so bad to my eyes, even imagining an equivalent satire of the Christian religion. We can't try to enforce one religious group's views of what constitutes blasphemy in a secular and pluralistic society, now can we?

But the more I thought about it, I realized that I really don't understand at all the worldview of many (most?) Muslims that causes them to take such offense. I just live in such a radically different world that I could not comprehend why depicting a religious figure could be so bad. As a Christian, I am so accustomed to seeing depictions of Jesus (and even God in some cartoons) that I think nothing of it. Maybe I need to imagine something completely different that would make me feel just as offended. Like, for example, when hate-mongers picket liberal churches or pastors with signs reading "God hates fags" (sic). To me, even typing those words seems almost like blasphemy. If a newspaper, Christian or secular, had printed a news story announcing those words as fact, I would have felt extremely offended, because to me one of the non-negotiable central tenets of my Christian faith is that God loves EVERYBODY. I would probably go protest in the streets and boycott any newspaper that proclaimed as a supposed matter of fact that God hates gay people, or anybody for that matter.

Perhaps the most helpful brief commentary on this issue is a brief diary posted by scorponic at dailykos. As someone who has watched the whole thing unfold in Denmark, scorponic points out the larger context of the developing controversy. Those of us on the Progressive Left may just wish this whole mess to go away--and, indeed, it is just adding fuel to the fire for right-wing extremists in both Western and Middle Eastern countries. But I think we can't ignore it entirely. It is hard to fully support (or oppose) either side in this controversy, but I hope that perhaps some voices of tolerance and mutual understanding can begin to edge us away from the horrid "clash of civilizations" rhetoric that events like this seem to enable.

On a completely different subject, if you haven't seen Bono's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, they are powerful and well worth reading.

Three Links of the Day

In a desperate attempt to keep this blog looking fresh despite the brief shelf life of my last post, I hereby present my three links of the day, gleaned from some of my favorite websites (commondreams, huffingtonpost, dailykos, etc.):

1. Is there a golden thread linking the GOP-Abramoff scandal with ripping off American Indians? Even if the connections to Abramoff turn out to be thin--note that I'm not suggesting they are, and I certainly support pursuing this case further--it is worthwhile just to learn about this huge class action lawsuit involving gross federal mismanagement of Indian trust lands. U.S. citizens, in particular, should be educating themselves about this issue, if we care even a tiny bit about rectifying in some small way the huge injustices perpetrated against Indians in our nation's history. I have to plead guilty myself to not knowing enough about this whole mess before, even though I have an interest in federal land law and American Indian history.

2. On the lighter (?) side...you knew there were researchers studying everything imaginable, right? Well, take a look at this news report on a fascinating study based on brain scans and detailed questionnaires. Apparently, people with strong partisan political views are often incapable of fairly evaluating information that contracticts their pre-existing biases--and their (should I say, our?) cerebral "reward centers" became stimulated when they simply rejected the discordant information. Kind of like drug addicts, they note. (Other researchers at the same conference apparently found a correlation between Republican partisanship and holding implicit negative views about Black people...hmmmm....I guess many of the great political ad-makers and campaign strategists probably knew that already.) Denial of information that does not fit a preconceived worldview seems to be a particularly salient problem nowadays.

3. Continuing the theme of how people deny information that does not fit their worldview, I wonder if one issue that most Americans, Republican and Democrat, have a hard time re-examining is 9/11. I have checked in from time to time on the growing, but still relatively marginal, movement to radically revise the official account of what happened on 9/11. Every time I delve into this world, I have a hard time dismissing the arguments put forward by some of these people, who are often derided as "conspiracy theorists." The thing is, not all of their arguments are wacko, and in fact, there seems to be substantial evidence supporting the alternative scenarios. What am I talking about, you ask? Take a look at this website, which is among the most thoroughly researched and thoughtful that I've seen--and even includes some peer reviewed papers by scientists, engineers, and other scholars. I admire their bravery and dogged pursuit of wherever the evidence seems to lead them, even if it conflicts with the stories most of us believe in order to avoid having to confront the worst scenarios. I have no idea, really, if these people are on to something. But it certainly seems worth keeping an open mind.

Opposing Alito from a Christian Perspective

We seem to be reaching crunch time for the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not clear that opponents will muster enough votes to filibuster the nomination, but I think they should try. And we should push them from the grassroots. (If we won't filibuster the far-right extremist Alito, then who would we filibuster?) I've been disappointed by the lack of visible Christian opposition to Alito. While leading figures on the Christian Right scarcely conceal their delight with the nomination (see here for one example), we need to get the message out there that Alito is a VERY BAD nominee from a Christian point of view.

Now I'm not saying that faithful Christianity should in any way determine who should be appointed to a secular office like the U.S. Supreme Court. On the contrary, I am very worried about eroding the bedrock principle of separating church and state that has served both so well in U.S. history. I'm really speaking to my fellow Christians out there, imploring us all to stop thinking of Alito as someone who would uphold or defend Christian values on the Court. I often get that impression from the support he receives from self-proclaimed Christian organizations.

The reality is, Alito has repeatedly demonstrated his contempt for the values I hold dear, which stem from my Christian faith. For example, one of the bedrock values of Christianity, in my view, is the equality of all people in the world in the eyes of God, regardless of race, sex, etc. Yet Alito has ruled many times against civil rights measures on such issues as voting rights and job discrimination. If we want to create a society with Christian values, we should not be eroding basic protections of equal rights for everyone. For another example, take the Family and Medical Leave Act, which defends "family values" at the practical level by making it possible for women to bear children without suffering employment discrimination. Yet Alito apparently opposed compelling states to enforce it. You can basically go down the list of issues--environmental protection, people power vs. corporate power, regulating the possession of dangerous machine guns, etc.--and find Alito on the WRONG side from a Christian perspective.

My point is that anyone who supports Alito's confirmation because of his "Christian values" might want to rethink such a position to avoid being swindled by Alito's far right, extremist promoters. Yet many people will stick with Alito because of his position on a single issue such as abortion. Yet the Gospel of Christ is about far, far more than abortion, and we cannot let that one issue blind us to the much larger scary realities about Alito's record. Even abortion is not as clear cut of an issue as many Christians might think. While probably all Christians have some misgivings about abortion and want there to be fewer abortions performed, not all of us think that we should (or even could) accomplish that by banning it. (For a compelling, heartfelt commentary on this subject, see the recent blog by my friend Tess over at Arch Words.) Would Jesus want us to dedicate our energy to overturning Roe v. Wade? I'm not so sure. Based on my reading of the Bible, I'm almost certain that Jesus would be standing out there defending the poor, the marginalized, and pushing for equal rights for all. And I'm pretty sure that would often put him at odds with Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Note: I got some of my information about Alito's positions on various issues from this website.

Thomas Frank Replies!

Readers of this blog may remember a few months ago when ambivalent_maybe brought to our attention an academic paper by a Princeton political scientist that supposedly refuted Thomas Frank's recent book, What's the Matter with Kansas? At the time, I commented that the paper seemed both analytically suspect (especially in its contorted definition of the "white working class") and completely missed Frank's overall point. I was happy to discover that Thomas Frank himself has produced a witty and devastating rejoinder along the same lines, but much more comprehensive and enjoyable to read. Check it out!

Thanks to the DonkeyRising blog for directing me to Frank's response...you can look at DonkeyRising to find more links relating to this debate. Personally, despite my occasional affection for number crunching, I prefer Frank's more holistic analysis that resonates with the real world out there.

The Access Principle

I just finished reading John Willinsky's wonderful new book, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (MIT Press, 2006[yes, this book is so new it isn't even supposed to be published yet!]). As a professor at the University of British Columbia, Willinsky has become a leading advocate of opening up scholarly journals to free access on the internet.

In readable and lively prose, Willinsky reveals a great deal about the recent history of the academic journal publishing industry. He explains how mergers have resulted in market concentration, and how that market power has resulted in an exponential increase in journal prices--far outpacing inflation--that has crippled university library budgets everywhere. With telling anecdotes and hard data, he makes his case that for-profit publishing with controlled access is becoming increasingly absurd and inefficient in the internet age. For example, he cites a study (Bergstrom 2001) in the discipline of economics (an apt choice!), which found that commercially published academic journals averaged $1,660 per year in subscription costs while nonprofit academic journals averaged only $180. (So much for efficiency and "consumer benefits" from private markets!) Yet those nonprofit journals occupied the top six positions in the index of most influential journals in economics, and 15 of the top 20. Willinsky asks: "[H]ow can a market bear such price differences between commercial and association titles that are so unrelated to quality? How, in this world of consumer savvy, can you sell a product that is more than nine times as expensive as an equally good if not better alternative?" (p. 20)

How, indeed! This insanity is reminiscent of so many arenas these days, which are being wrecked by supposedly well-educated elites, drunk on the hard liquor of privatization, trusting everything to "market forces" (even when the enormous power wielded by large corporations distorts such a concept beyond recognition), and the commodification of everything in sight. One thinks, for example, of the new wave of "free trade"--the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and its supporters (such as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative)--whose perverse logic is that foreign private companies should be able to run (read: U.S. companies can out-compete poorer countries in running) just about everything in society: schools, libraries, water systems, health care, etc. Forget whether any of these sectors actually function at all like "free market", or whether they are essential components of a free, democratic society. Or basic human needs. (Hey, if you can't find the money to pay higher prices for water, or education, or health care, maybe that means you don't really "need" it!) Or whether governments want to be able to regulate them at some point in the future. Okay, enough of my side rant, now back to the book...

So what exactly do commercial academic journal publishers--and here, let me name names: the big three are Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer--do to justify these outrageous journal prices? Almost all of the substantive work to produce academic journals is done by scholars themselves: most of all, researching and writing the articles, but also refereeing them, serving on the editorial board, and editing the journal itself. Besides printing costs (which the internet is calling into question), Willinsky concludes that the only thing the private companies really provide is "marketing" (do academic journals need "marketing"?)

Oh, but what about quality control: copy-editing, proof-reading, etc.? Don't the publishing companies provide some kind of expertise in these areas? Please, spare me that one. I speak from personal experience here. I have published two academic articles now, in journals owned by two of the "big three" listed above. In both cases, the scholarly editorial people were great and the commercial publishers were terrible. I was quite aware that I would be responsible for making sure my manuscripts were printed correctly. Exactly as one of Willinsky's informants points out is often the case, not only did I receive little real help in correcting mistakes in my text, but I actually had to expend significant effort to keep the publishing companies from introducing new errors! In one case, despite all my efforts, the publisher managed to misprint one of the footnotes (we in the academic world live and die citing sources, you know!) and the journal had to issue a correction in the next issue. In the second case, the publisher did so many terrible things to my text--"correcting" punctuation and stylistic usage inside quotations from historical sources (scholars agree that is a bad thing to do!), changing my narrative text to reflect scientific abbreviations ("5 min" instead of "five minutes", etc.--that we had to take the manuscript through an extra set of page proofs, thus delaying the publication and causing me--and them!--lots of extra work. So much for the efficiency and quality control offered by commercial publishers.

I shouldn't leave a misleading impression of Willinsky's book, however. It is less a diatribe against commercial publishers, and more an extended argument for the possibilities that internet publication offers for making scholarly results available to the public. To be sure, he justifiably excoriates publishers for increasing journal costs so much that libraries have to cancel subscriptions (thus setting in motion a viscious cycle), a phenomenon to which universities in poorer countries are especially vulnerable. (He opens the book with the poignant story of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, which had to cut its journal subscriptions down to five--yes, FIVE!--in the recent past.) Yet he also manages to maintain a measured tone and even praises the huge publishing houses for instances when they have opened up their journals to public access. His overriding goal is to push for open, public access to scholarship, however that is achieved.

It is a curious thing that academic journals are so hard to obtain outside of universities and research institutes, considering how widely they are available on the internet. Yet shouldn't we want to circulate our scholarship to anyone in the public who is interested? (For many public institutions, it is part of their mandate!) I remember running into this problem personally, when I wanted to share an academic article I'd read with a person outside of academia. But I couldn't just send a link to a website, because no one without institutional access could read it! We have effectively allowed a wall to be put up between academics who can read scholarly journals, and everyone else who has to either pay for the privilege or travel to a state university library in person (that is, if that state university library hasn't had to cancel the subscription due to escalating journal prices!)

But how, you may wonder, will journals pay for themselves if everyone can read them free on-line? Willinsky discusses many different possibilities, and you really should read the book if you want to find out more (this posting has gone on long enough already!). One possibility I found attractive was that research university libraries would fund a cooperative venture (possibly a free rider problem there, but wouldn't peer pressure take care of that?) to place scholarly journals on-line with free access to the whole world. Willinksy himself has been involved with team efforts to create software that will allow authors, referees, and editors to communicate with one another one-line without all the overhead of a physical editorial office.

I really do think that everyone in the academic world (and many more besides) would benefit from reading this book. It is about issues that cut to the heart of the scholarly life. If nothing else, you can learn about where JSTOR came from, how self-archiving works, and numerous other nuts and bolts details that touch all of us who are, or want to be, publishing academics. At the most practical level, this book can teach you things that will help your academic reputation: did you know, for example, that people who publish in open-access journals have their work cited--by academics, not just members of the public--more often than people who publish work in journals of equal quality that are closed access?

For members of the general public, Willinsky's book might prompt such outraged questions as: "You mean, public money pays for this research, and then we have to pay some huge commercial publisher to read the results?" I hope that Willinsky's book encourages both scholars and members of the public to re-examine the relationship between scholarly publication and democracy in the internet age.