Catch Christina Greer on NY1 News Tuesday Evening After the State of the Union Address

American Studies and Political Science professor Christina Greer
comments on the inauguration of Mayor Bill De Blasio, January 1, 2014.

American Studies and Political Science professor Christina Greer —who has been a featured commentator on NY1 News throughout the recent mayoral race — will provide analysis on NY1 again this coming Tuesday evening, January 28th, after the State of the Union address.

Tune in on Tuesday evening around 10pm (or just after the President's address wraps up) to catch her stellar commentary, or check out her recent Op-Ed in the New York Times. You can also follow Professor Greer on Twitter @Dr_CMGreer.

Greer is the author of the recent monograph Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Letter in the NY Times on union-busting in Wisconsin

I'm a little reluctant to use the blog for self-promotion, but I can't resist posting a link to the letter from me that the New York Times published today.

This letter came about in a sort of interesting way. I posted something very much like this on my Wall in Facebook right after reading the story about the law in Wisconsin passing, and a bunch of people "liked" it. And I asked myself why only my friends--most (but not all) of whom probably agree with me--should be reading it. So I rewrote it according to the guidelines of a letter to the editor, and sent it in...and they published it!

The lesson is: we all comment on things on Facebook, and we all post links to stories in the newspaper and other places. But sometimes maybe we should try to reach larger audiences, people we don't already know and agree with, by moving things in the other direction--from Facebook into other venues, even "old media" like the newspaper.

Writing from leave,
Professor Glenn Hendler

P.S. Apologies to Dr. Edward Cahill for the fact that the Times listed me as Director of the American studies program. My signature clearly told them that I'm on leave this semester from that position, but they didn't include that detail....

Wikileaks and the Cable Releases

Wikileaks- the website which brought us Collateral Murder, the Afghan War Diaries and the Iraq War Logs today released, according the the New York Times, a "quarter million confidential American diplomatic cables"

The cables could not be posted on the actual website, wikileaks.org, because they were under a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack, an attack on the website in which multiple systems overwhelm the bandwidth of the site, preventing it from being accessed. Instead Wikileaks gave the releases to multiple news sources including the Times which released some of the cables on its website but with some redactions to protect sources or civilians. (I was unable to access the wikileaks site Sunday until around 8pm, and when I could there was no information on the cable releases)

No one quite knows what the effect these releases will have on foreign relations (the cables include everything from intel. on the leader of Libya to a wedding in the Caucus mountains). But this release, and just the existence of the site in general, is a dramatic example illustrating how information is discovered and distributed in the age of the blog.

The cables were reportedly downloaded by an Army Pfc (for those who are not familiar with military ranks, a Private First Class is the second lowest rank) and talks of a possible leak had been going on in Washington for months. The editor-in-chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks Juilian Assange sent to the US government on the 26th asking for any particular redactions they felt would be necessary to protect lives, the response came overnight that if any cables were published it would endanger lives and that possession and distribution of the cables was illegal. The site went ahead with giving the cables to major news outlets, the Times published some of the cables with its own redactions on the 28th.

Wikileaks, internationally based, flew in the face of the US government by distributing these cables, and they became instantly available around the world. This information, though distributed through major news outlets, was collected on an individual level separate from the journalistic tradition, and would have been distributed via the Wikileaks site, an internet site run by a disjointed group reportedly consisting of Chinese dissidents, human rights activists, and former physicists and mathematicians.

The mediation between events and the public becomes smaller and smaller through sites such as wikileaks, the proliferation of blogging, and smartphones that can take and send pictures and video around the world at an instant's notice. Gone is the day of Watergate and the investigative journalism, now the power to reveal information lies in the hands of anyone with a computer and internet connection. Clay Shirky predicted 50 years of chaos surrounding the rise of peer-to-peer technology, and internet-enabled information sharing. Perhaps it will take that long to see the effects of Wikileaks in toto, but in the coming days and weeks we will undoubtedly get a glimpse into what this technology can do.

My American Idol: Journalist David Brooks

Lately, a lot of people have been telling me that the best way to sculpt your ideal life is to find someone who is living it and copy them. My "someone" is and always will be journalist David Brooks.

David Brooks is an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, who has had a long, successful career in journalism. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, a commentator on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer," and has held various positions at The Wall Street Journal. He also authored the books Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense, both excellent accounts of how economic circumstances influence American social behaviors.

Appropriately timed (this is my blog post for the week of Valentine's Day) here are the reasons why I love David Brooks and want to be him:

1. His Writing: Some people just have a way with words. His down-to-earth, worldly voice is both journalistic and academic and his blunt, short sentences have a poetic rhythm that is not normally paired with the political and economic topics on which he writes. His ledes and conclusions leave you with chills, a skill only the best journalists can execute.

2. His Sound Judgment: In an age of "talking heads," I find David Brooks to be one of the most rational commentators of this generation. He is conservative, but frequently supports Obama and other democrats when he thinks they are acting logically, when they are well-prepared, did their research and are acting in the best interests of the American people. He is critical of everyone, regardless of their political affiliation, and holds everyone he analyzes to a higher standard, an expectation to which I think all Americans should hold their politicians and other civic leaders.

3. His Timely News Coverage with a Twist: News is very repetitive - the week of the State of the Union every newspaper, news channel, news Web site and news magazine will cover and comment on it until the story is dead. Brooks knows he has to cover timely news but he ALWAYS finds an angle that it can be looked at that none of the mediums have addressed. Today, for example, he takes the topics of unemployment and Obama's job creation plan, writes about the long term social effects of this unemployment and tight job market and comes to some conclusions you would never think of.

4. His Wide Spectrum of Wisdom: In my opinion, all journalists need to be Leonardo da Vinci-esque renaissance men (and women): they need to possess an unquenchable curiosity about every single tenant of life. Brooks clearly is well-versed in politics and economics, but in his columns he also explores psychology, athletics, food, higher education, urban life, business, science, culture, language and anything else you can think of. He does his research well.

On Tuesdays and Fridays I immediately turn the Times to the last page of the front section to read his columns. I can only hope one day someone will do the same for my writing.