As many of you might have already heard, the Jena Six incident found an odd resonance at Columbia University in NY. A noose was hung outside an African-American professor’s office door on Tuesday morning. The past two days have seen student protests, press conferences, and emotional meetings with university officials. The NYPD hate crimes unit is testing the rope for DNA.

The professor, Madonna G. Constantine, whose specialty is race, racial identity and multiculturalism, stood before protesters at midday and thanked her supporters… “I think we are all pretty much mystified as to why it happened,” said George A. Bonanno, a professor of psychology. “This is an institution that prides itself on having open dialogue about race and fairly progressive ideas.”

At an afternoon news conference, Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, commander of the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, said, “Right now we have no suspects, but we will go down all investigative pathways.” He ruled out any possibility that Professor Constantine had hung the rope herself. link

So amidst the uproar, why has Columbia University refused to turn over security video tape to the police?

Police and students remain baffled as this move only ignites conspiracy theories. Not to further fan the flames here, but the Associated Press, New York Magazine, and that bastion of rational thought, The New York Post, have already named another professor at Columbia involved in a legal tussle with Constantine:

Court records show Constantine filed a defamation lawsuit in May against another professor of psychology and education, Suniya S. Luthar. The one-page filing in Manhattan’s state Supreme Court also accuses Luthar of libel and slander and asks for $100,000 in damages. The single page was signed only by Constantine and does not indicate if she had a lawyer. Luthar declined to discuss the lawsuit. She wouldn’t say if she had spoken with police about the noose. “I think it is an unspeakably ghastly, horrible incident,” she said Thursday.link

Any current of former students at Columbia care to comment on this? Ever had Constantine or Luthar as teachers? This case grows murkier by the day, but no matter the outcome, it’s dismaying to realize we’re so far from ever becoming a race-blind society. Continue reading →

Anticipating joy, a doting mother suffers a horrific tragedy, while on her way to a friend’s house to prepare for Eid:

Radiant, content and at the pinnacle of her life, Syeda Arif held her 2-month-old daughter in her arms as she plucked out a baby bag from the trunk of her Honda.

It was 3 p.m. Tuesday and she had just pulled up to a friend’s home along Sherman Way with her daughter, Ikra, and 5-year-old son, Ayman.

Less than a block away, strangers Armando Gamboa Ayon, a Pacoima teen, and Brian Gilbert Barnes, a porn star and self-proclaimed pot smoker, were taunting each other, zipping west through heavy afternoon traffic on Sherman Way in a show of bravado, pushing the speedometer to 90 mph, police said….

In a chain-reaction crash, Ayon plowed into a parked car, which then slammed into Arif’s, crumpling it like a tin can and crushing her and her son. Her daughter flew out of her hands. [LA Daily News]

I’ve read differing reports which suggest that this was either road rage or a street race. Whatever it was, it was wrong. Ayon stayed, the porn star fled the scene, both have been arrested (the latter turned himself in).

LAPD Detective Bill Butos said the motorists were “cutting each other off, they were jockeying for position. They were tapping on the brakes, one of the vehicles was tapping on the brakes, trying to cause the other vehicle to ram into the vehicle. They cannot point to the other individual and say, well, that person started it.” [KTLA]

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Amarjit Singh is a 56 year old chef at a restaurant called Texas Smokehouse at 34th St. and 2nd Ave. in Manhattan. A few days ago he was preparing for another day at work when someone broke into the kitchen, stole a bunch of knives, and then slashed him as he tried to resist.

Singh ran outside to get help, but didn’t see anybody initially. Instead, what he saw was the same guy who slashed him, stabbing someone else:

Then Singh gazed back up Second Ave. toward the Texas Smokehouse restaurant, where he had been preparing for another long day as a chef when the bare-chested madman came in and grabbed at least four knives from the kitchen.

The madman who had slashed Singh and sent him fleeing down to E. 34th St. was now up at the next corner, repeatedly stabbing a 67-year-old woman outside the Gemini Diner.

Singh instantly made a decision that proved him one of our city’s very best and bravest. This chef from Queens by way of India became New York royalty as he forgot his own wounds and dashed straight back into the mortal danger he had just been so lucky to escape.

The madman looked up from the bloodied woman and rose on seeing the courageous Singh approach. A 25-year-old onlooker named Antionette Brown watched amazed as the madman slowly backed up. He was clutching at least four knives but seemed unnerved by Singh’s uncommon courage and selflessness, as if Evil were being vanquished purely by the power of Good. “He probably saved her life,” Brown later said. (link)

So let me get this straight. The guy was slashed, bleeding profusely, and UNARMED — and he faced down a knife-wielding psycho with four sharp knives? I’m speechless.

(An off-duty police officer later shot the assailant in the stomach after he refused to drop his knives. The woman who was stabbed survived, and was well enough at least to be interviewed by a reporter. And there are some other choice, “Only in New York” details in the New York Daily News Story… Thanks to Rajath Vikram for the tip.) Continue reading →

The question comes up again and again when I talk to friends and colleagues about U.S. foreign policy. The question is most urgent when discussing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but equally valid when the topic is the Indo-U.S. Nuclear deal, or even what is happening right now in Myanmar.

The question is this: is the U.S. acting in ways that are true to the credo of supporting and spreading democracy around the world, or does it merely do this when it is clearly in its own interests? Is present-day U.S. foreign policy governed by a “realist” philosophy (do what you have to do) or an “idealist” one (spread democracy)?

Noah Feldman has a think piece on this in a recent New York Times Magazine, where he gives special attention to the situation in Pakistan. To begin with, this is how Feldman frames the question:

As ideal and slogan, though, the creed of exporting democracy differs from the creed of expanding empire in one important respect: When we fail to follow it, we look hypocritical. An empire that extends itself selectively is just being prudent about its own limitations. A republic that supports democratization selectively is another matter. President Bush’s recent speech to the United Nations, in which he assailed seven repressive regimes, was worthy of applause — but it also opened the door to the fair criticism that he was silent about the dozens of places where the United States colludes with dictators of varying degrees of nastiness. (link)

The obvious examples of “realist” collusion are Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where the U.S. hasn’t pressured for democratization, since in these cases more “democracy” might mean more anti-American Islamists. Regarding Burma/Myanmar, President Bush recently took a strong stance of condemnation, but in Feldman’s view this may not be especially convincing:

The problem is that our support for dictators in some countries tends to undermine our ability to encourage democracy elsewhere, because it sends the message that we may change our tune the moment an immediate interest alters our calculations. The monks of Yangon have put their lives on the line; if our embrace of their cause is conditional on, say, our not needing any favors from the ruling junta this week, why should they trust us? Double standards are not merely hypocritical, but something much worse in international affairs: ineffective. (link)

In Feldman’s analysis, the U.S. support for Pervez Musharraf is a little trickier. Continue reading →