In a recent New York Times interview Crawford says,

I wrote “Captive Audience” because I saw that years of deregulation and a wave of mergers had left America with neither competition nor adequate oversight when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Based on how people actually use these connections and how much they are required to pay, we are being gouged: We are all paying too much for services that are both uncompetitive and second-class, and not enough Americans are being served adequately by reasonably priced, world-class services.

This problem isn’t just affecting social equality and fairness, although those effects are important; the middle class is tightly squeezed and poor and rural people are relying on public libraries and McDonald’s for free, inferior Wi-Fi access. Because high-speed Internet access is our century’s version of electrification, it’s also likely affecting our nation’s economic growth.

I wrote “Captive Audience” because we cannot afford to put this problem on the too-hard pile. We are slouching toward the past, and failures of government policy have gotten us in this position…

Crawford’s book works to both challenge policy makers and enrage citizens, hopefully to engender change.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Captive Audience

by Susan P. Crawford

Giveaway ends April 26, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

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I got wind of work in the Bush administration to authorize military tribunals, what they call “military commissions,” to prosecute the people behind 9/11. That was the plan. And I thought that was an astounding development, because this type of justice is a sort of ad hoc sort of trial that has occasionally been held by the United States during or after wartime. These hadn’t been held since World War II. And so, it was a dormant area of law that suddenly might be very much alive. And so I followed that.

Bravin’s book works to track the policies forged at Guantanamo and the consequences these plans will have on the American justice system.

Watch the full interview here, and stay tuned for more updates and interviews on this timely topic!

Daniel Branch—

Many Kenyans will go to the polls on 4 March with a sense of trepidation.  Three of the four elections since 1992 have been accompanied by significant violence; 2002 being the exception.  On each occasion politicians used local grievances over land and inequality to label supporters of rival candidates as ethnic “outsiders”.  Militias were then used to force those same voters from their homes.  Thousands of people were killed in violence around the 1992, 1997 and 2007 elections and tens of thousands more fled.  Some of these supposed “outsiders” never returned to places where their families had lived for decades; many Kenyans endure rather than celebrate elections.

Those of a nervous disposition would have hoped that this would be a straightforward election.  That is (clearly) not the case as the final result is too close to call.  With President Mwai Kibaki retiring after two terms in office, Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the front-runner.  But his lead in the opinion polls is narrow and he will almost certainly not win the outright majority needed to avoid a run-off in to be held in a few weeks’ time.

Odinga’s main rival is Uhuru Kenyatta, who, if successful, faces the prospect of governing the country while mounting his defence at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.  He and his running mate, William Ruto, are accused of orchestrating the violence that followed the 2007 election.  Rather than standing aside, both decided to exercise their right – confirmed recently by the Kenyan courts – to contest the election, apparently in order to gain a position of greater strength vis-à-vis the ICC.  They promise they can run the country and mount their defences in court through the use of technology.

In 2007 the rest of the world barely noticed the election until violence broke out during the suspiciously prolonged counting process.  This time, however, Kenya has held foreign attention for months before voters go to the polls.  The question that nags both foreign and local observers is a simple one: has enough been done over the past five years to avoid a repeat of the violence that lasted for two months from late December 2007 and claimed the lives of nearly 1200 people?

Much has been achieved, most notably independent inquiries into the management of the election and the subsequent violence, a new constitution and an on-going reform of the judiciary.  But it is hard to escape the conclusion that these reforms are not enough to guarantee a peaceful election.  A collective psychosis has therefore gripped many, but by no means all, local and foreign commentators.

Threatening isolation and fearing further instability should Kenyatta win, a whole array of figures, from President Obama and Kofi Annan down to the local diplomatic corps, have felt the need to advise Kenyans on how to vote – most likely to no or ill effect.  Uganda – whose businesses are still waiting for compensation for goods destroyed during the 2007-8 violence – has made contingency plans in case of disruption to vital imports being transported along the routes that connect it to the Indian Ocean.  Foreign investment slowed in 2012 due to fears of insecurity.  Local businesses have been buying dollars in case the Kenyan shilling collapses if violence follows the election.

So why does this election seem to matter so much?  There is a flippant and, on one level, accurate response to this question; it doesn’t.  For those of a cynical persuasion, one elite politician with a dubious record in government and a limited commitment to solving the problems of their poorest constituents will replace another, regardless of the result.  The candidates hardly have major differences of opinion over policy and anyone who thinks that a victory for Odinga will solve Kenya’s problems with the ICC is in for a shock.  It will take a lot to budge Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, who have access to enormous wealth and political leverage, if they refuse to go to The Hague, whether Kenyatta is president or not.  The ICC will be a constitutional and judicial leviathan, dominating the political landscape, for years to come.

But that does not really answer the question.  The election does matter.  To insist otherwise is to patronise an electorate that will turn out in great numbers and display euphoria and dismay in equal measure once the final result is announced.  The significance of the election can also be gauged from the international attention that this vote has garnered.  Viewed from abroad, Kenya has not seemed so significant since the end of the Cold War.  Its role in the Africa Union’s peace-building mission to Somalia has placed it on the front-line of global counter-terror operations and its economy is seen as the mainstay of a surging regional bloc encompassing North-Eastern and Eastern Africa.

There is another common and simple answer to the question of why the election matters; it’s ethnicity, stupid.  It is true that voting will, with some exceptions, follow predictable ethnic patterns, but ethnicity makes sense as a strategy for voters and leaders alike.

The voters know that there are not unlimited jobs.  They also understand that land, at least in arable parts of the country, is under pressure for all sorts of reasons and that the state only has a finite amount of money for investment in development projects.  Clubbing together to protect what one holds while trying to work collectively to gain more wealth and influence is hardly irrational.  There may be better strategies for such collective action but ethnicity is what history has bequeathed Kenyans and ethnicity is what they have to work with.

For their part, the politicians are normally wealthy men and women seeking the votes of poor constituents.  Ethnicity provides a mechanism by which politicians can cross sometimes vast chasms of wealth and class to win the votes of individuals with whom they otherwise share little in common.  Kenya’s problem is that those in power have encouraged the divisions between groups to be violent and some of their supporters have followed suit; it is difficult to reverse back down that path.

For better or for worse, ethnicity is the way in which class, inequality and history are debated in Kenya.  Beneath the labels of Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya or Maasai are very different versions of the past and ideas about current and future policies.  One can subject almost any of the great debates in Kenyan politics to such an analysis, but in the interests of brevity take, for instance, devolution.

The subject of fierce debate in the years surrounding independence and in the early 1990s, devolution is a matter of great current significance too.  As well as choosing their member of parliament and the next president, voters will be electing representatives to fill newly empowered county administrations, new county governors and senators to represent the interests of their county in central government.

Many Kikuyu are sceptical about the value of devolution.  To some critics, this is nothing more than Kikuyu ethnic chauvinism.  Two of three presidents, Jomo Kenyatta (1963-78) and the outgoing Mwai Kibaki (2002-13) have been Kikuyu and so the community has been painted as unwilling to tolerate any devolution of significant powers from central to local government.  To be fair, neither president did much to dispel such criticism.  But with Kikuyu – to say nothing of the other major ethnic groups – spread across the country, many feel with good reason that central government is a better guarantor of their property rights and personal security than local authorities controlled by communities who see Kikuyu as an economic and political threat.  To many members of other, more economically marginal communities, such as Mijikenda at the Coast or Somali in the North East, an excessively centralised form of government is blamed for the uneven distribution of economic growth, improvements in living standards and investment in infrastructure.

The ICC and devolution are just two of the enormous issues that confront voters.  Others include strategies for continued economic growth, land reform, police reform, the on-going military intervention in Somalia; incidents of terrorism at home; a Coastal separatist movement; and the management of recently discovered oil and gas reserves.  The next government will (obviously) have tremendous influence over all these matters.  Throw in regional integration and significant fiscal pressure and these are, truly, elections of great significance.

The time available for the next government to attend to any of these issues will, however, be dictated in large part by the conduct of the elections.  Much that is on the agenda will have to be sacrificed if, as with the past five years, time is lost mourning the dead and undergoing prolonged processes of transitional justice without any transition actually taking place.

Those hoping for dramatic change at this election or in the years to come will be disappointed.  Like most of the rest of Africa, Kenya had its Arab Spring – with all its attendant euphoria and disappointments – twenty years ago when the rest of the world was looking elsewhere.  Rather than revolution, a more modest hope for the future is simply for the next election to seem not to matter quite so much.  It doesn’t have to be like this every time, does it?

Daniel Branch is Associate Professor of African History at the University of Warwick.  He is the author of Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2012.

Beginning with Jess Bravin‘s The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, the topic of prisoner treatment takes center-stage, and Bravin, a Wall Street Journal Supreme Court correspondent who has covered the Guantanamo Bay prison camp since its inception, reports on the legal, political, and moral issues that have stood in the way of justice. Listen to Bravin with government prosecutor Lt. Col. Stuart Couch earlier this week on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Susan Crawford‘s many interviews have included the Diane Rehm and Bill Moyers shows for discussions about her new book, Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age.  Why are we paying so much for Internet and why does corporate profit pitted against public interest leave the United States so far behind the rest of the world in global communications?

Council on Foreign Relations fellow Joshua Kurlantzick returns to the Yale University Press list with Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline of Representative Government, addressing a set of new and disturbing trends: democracies around the world are losing ground, middle class support of democracy has waned, and autocracies are on the rise. Read Kurlantzick‘s “Expert Brief” about the current elections in Kenya.

Learning from the past is an insightful approach to addressing today’s problems: Patrick Murphy and Ray Coye‘s Mutiny and Its Bounty: Leadership Lessons from the Age of Discovery explores how great seafaring captains like Columbus and Magellan not only quelled mutinies but also built upon such incidents to strengthen their enterprises, and what business and leadership tactics today’s organizations can learn. Surprisingly, the authors find mutiny may be a force for good in an organization, paving the way to more collaborative leadership and stronger commitment to shared goals and values. In a similar vein, historian Geoffrey Parker looks back into the tumult of the 1600s to investigate the cause of such widespread revolution, famine, war, and chaos that occurred worldwide in Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. He connects the disorder to climate change, leaving us with the question of how we will respond to the changes of our own time.

And March celebrates Women’s History Month. We recently covered NBCC Award-winning authors Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar‘s classic text, The Madwoman in the Attic, and later this month we’ll publish the paperback edition of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, by professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, and revisit important events in the news that have drawn our attention to the timely picture of politics, race, and gender in American culture.

Keep reading along for all the latest Yale University Press news and updates!

The report attributes the deficiencies to the failure of the state legislature to enforce the guidelines. The State Board of Education disregarded the legislature’s mandate to development content-specific curriculum. The broad outlines adopted by the State Board of Education provide little guidance for what should be taught or how it should be taught. Teachers with no professional training in teaching Bible must therefore rely on what they have learned in popular culture and from their own religious background to develop a curriculum.

These teachers often come from conservative Protestant Christian backgrounds. In fact, some school districts have not assigned the courses to teachers; rather, they recruited ministers to teach courses. The sectarian bias is reflected in the material chosen.  Many schools taught the material provided by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which Chancey describes as replete with “shoddy research, factual errors and plagiarism” is designed to encourage students to adopt a conservative Protestant beliefs.  The sectarian bias of the materials is reinforced by the choice of conservative Protestant translation of the Bible, which translation choice is driven less by concern for historical accuracy and more of a concern to conform scripture to a particular theology.

In addition to a promoting conservative Protestant Christianity, the materials promote a negative and historically inaccurate view of Judaism, pseudoscience, and the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Although no material the report found that no material was explicitly anti-Semitic, it depicted Jews in the Bible as parochial and self-righteous,  advocated a super-cessionism—the belief that god replaces  Jews with Christians as His chosen people—and regards the Hebrew Scripture as little more than a collection of prophecies for the coming of Jesus Christ.

The material presents the Bible as having legitimate scientific authority. Evolution is denigrated as a mere theory and alternative creationist theories as suggested as legitimate alternative material. The report describes one chart used by Amarillo ISD entitled “Racial origins Traced from Noah,” which identifies the origin of the human races with the three sons of Noah. This theory, which identifies the progenitor of the “African race” as Ham, Noah’s stupid and disgraced son, was used to justify slavery.  A slideshow used by Ector Count IDS, entitled “Moses and the Red Sea Crossing: Truth or Fiction” includes the claim: “Sad to say mainstream anti-God media do not portray these true facts in the light of faith. But prefer to sceptically [sic] doubt such archaeological proofs of the veracity & historicity of the Biblical account, one of the most accurate history books in the world.”

The material also describes the Founding Fathers as conservative Protestants who sought to establish a Christian nation. Belton ISD, for example, passes out to its student a pamphlet titled “One Nation Under God” that begins “The United States was founded on the principles of liberty in the Holy Bible and the reverence of the Founding Fathers” and later follows with, “Would you like to place your trust in Jesus Christ and receive Him as your Savior from Sin?’” Authentic quotes from the Founding Fathers are divested of context, distorting their original meaning and set alongside fake quotations. The effect of this teaching, Chancey laments, is particularly pernicious because, aside from it historical inaccuracy, “figure[s] prominently in attempts by some to guarantee a privileged position in the public square for their own religious beliefs above those of others.”

Chancey concludes that the majority of the courses violates the constitution and fall far short of accepted academic standards. The courses do not encourage students to engage critically with the Bible and the literature it influenced. Instead, they exhort students to adopt a conservative Protestant beliefs on the basis of wildly inaccurate, disingenuous, and biased material.

The report can be accessed here. Mark Chancey is associate professor of religious studies at SMU who, aside from pursuing an interest in American civil liberties and public education, is also a New Testament scholar. He recently co-authored with Eric M. Meyers,  Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, a book length-study of archaeology in Palestine from the fourth century B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E., published by Yale University Press.

The New York Times said it was perhaps the largest inaugural crowd ever, at least the largest in decades. Four years ago at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration, the full length of the National Mall for the first time was opened to accommodate the crowds of people. There was a sense of anticipation as a worldwide audience paid attention on televisions, radios and computer screens when the 44th president took office of the United States. Former President Clinton told the Times, “This is a time when we’re clearly making a new beginning.”

For the audience watching abroad concerned about foreign policy, Obama had made it clear he would break from the Bush administration’s approach to the Middle East. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama articulated an agenda with Iran focused on “personal diplomacy,” declaring he would talk “without preconditions.” This was a sharp turn from the old diplomatic approach, and with a new president, perhaps there was potential to change the United States’ relationship with Iran that had long been tense.

In A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, newly available in paperback, Trita Parsi sheds light on the diplomatic relationship between Iran and the U.S. to show us what was at stake for the new president in this diplomatic quagmire, what was possible, and how that came to be. Compiled from leaked documents, candid interviews and insightful research, Parsi details the difficulties both governments encountered in mending the breach and argues that there is a way out.

Parsi’s account zooms out to give us context on the situation between Washington and Tehran Obama inherited as he first stepped into office. While the political rhetoric during the Bush administration labeled Iran as a member of the “axis of evil,” Parsi complicates the issue by emphasizing missed opportunities, bringing to light an astounding offer in 2003 in which Iran offered concessions that would seem far-fetched today. If Obama was going to change the tone, he would have to negotiate resistance at home, in Iran and its neighbors. The sense was Obama could make a move, but if it failed there were no more chances – a single roll of the dice.

While both Iran and the U.S. made gestures toward a better relationship, world events complicated matters as the 2009 Iranian elections changed the international state of affairs. The delicate balance had shifted and found the U.S. government with fewer diplomatic options. “Washington is facing an unprecedented situation in the region where its own position has weakened;” writes Parsi. “Its interests and those of its close regional allies are diverging, and, though it has not become an irrelevant superpower, its leadership is increasingly questioned and disregarded.”

Parsi seeks to point to the yet unexplored possibilities for diplomacy, insisting that the possibilities are not exhausted. “Despite the inherent difficulties and struggles,” he argues, “sustained diplomacy is the only policy that remains largely unexplored and that has a likelihood of achieving results amounting to more than simply kicking the can down the road.”

In Parsi’s account, time has entrenched the tense relationship between Iran and the U.S., rendering it all but tradition. Yet there is hope for real improvement. While time has worked to solidify this state of affairs, for Parsi, slow perseverance is the key to change.  “Success will come only if diplomats put a premium on patience and long-term progress rather than on quick fixes aimed at appeasing skeptical and impatient domestic political constituencies, whether in Tehran or in Washington.”

William C. Carter is obsessed with Marcel Proust. He has published two biographies of the man, Marcel Proust: A Life and Proust in Love, and has been called “Proust’s definitive biographer,” by Yale’s own Harold Bloom. He’s co-produced a Proust documentary: “Marcel Proust: A Writer’s Life.” He even maintains a blog, Proust Ink, “devoted to studying and celebrating the life and works of Marcel Proust while enjoying what he calls ‘the revealing smile of art.’” So it seems only fitting that Carter would have something momentous planned to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of Proust’s most famous and acclaimed work, À la recherche du temps perdu (or in English: In Search of Lost Time.)

While Carter recognizes the merits and incredible scope of C.K. Scott Moncrieff’s original English translation, he also realizes that this and further revisions have taken the text a little too far from Proust’s original intentions and artistry. This new, centennial edition will work to correct these misconceptions, allowing readers to fully appreciate what is regarded as the greatest novel in all of French literature.

This March, Yale University Press will reissue Carter’s Marcel Proust: A Life with a new preface by the author, followed by the new edition of Swann’s Way (the first volume of À la recherche du temps perdu) in November to celebrate the text’s original publication in November 1913.

This new edition is sure to engage new readers and brilliant fanatics of Proust alike!

He concludes by saying of Dimoula: “She is now the world’s poet.”

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it.

In general, this focus was applauded by the President’s audience and by journalists. People seem to understand that something needs to be done and that change is long overdue. So why has nothing happened?

This is the question asked by Dieter Helm in his new book: The Carbon Crunch: How We’re Getting Climate Change Wrong – and How to Fix It. Helm begins his book by laying out the steps that have been taken to solve this crisis, most of which revolve around capping emissions in developed countries rather than working to find new alternatives. He also confronts the prevailing idea that eventually fossil fuels will run out, and humans will be forced to turn to renewable sources. Instead, Helm explains, “we have more than enough to fry the planet.” These measures and ideologies have not worked, despite media hype and general acceptance of the issue. The Carbon Crunch goes on to suggest economically sustainable and effective solutions to this ever-growing problem. Helm writes:

There are choices. That is what economics is all about – allocating scarce resources. It’s a reality that too many politicians (and many green NGOs and green parties) ignore. Economic illiteracy is at the heart of the climate change problem, and although it can be solved, it won’t be if we go on wasting so much money to so little effect.

The exhibition Matisse: In Search of True Painting explores Matisse’s practice of producing pairs of paintings, and the ways in which this practice influenced his development as artist.  Academically trained, Matisse learned composition and technique by copying older master paintings. This practice was not considered an empty, rote exercise but rather a valuable way of analyzing another work of art. Through the rigorous, painstaking practice of copying another work of art, art students experimented with different techniques, many of which they would later appropriate and modify in the production of original works. For Matisse, however, the practice of copying proved especially important in his development as an artist because it supplied the conceptual and methodological basis for his work with repeated images.

Throughout his 50-year career, Matisse repeated images in order to compare the effects of different techniques and to measure his progress as an artist. This practice is most evident in his pairs of paintings, or “doubles,” that he began while in art school in the late 1890s. Each pair consists of two canvasses of the same dimensions depicting the same subject, but employing different techniques. At first, Matisse would produce one painting in the style of a contemporary artist—his favorites included Cezanne,  Gauguin, van Gogh, and Signac. For example, in a pair of paintings each entitled Madame Matisse in the Olive Garden, Matisse paints one landscape with broad, Expressionist strokes and the other painting with the sharp, defined brushstrokes of Divisionists.

Although lauded by some for his “chameleon-like versatility,” many critics, concerned that this new generation of French artists was merely copying previous generations in superficial and meaningless ways, criticized Matisse for his obvious indebtedness to other artists. Matisse, then and even in his old age, never shied away from acknowledging the influence of others on his own style. In an early interview, the young artist said, “I have never avoided the influence of others…I believe that the personality of the artist develops and asserts itself through the struggle it has to go through when pitted against the personalities. If the fight is fatal and the personality succumbs, it is a matter of destiny.” As Matisse’s own artistic vision developed, his early eclecticism transformed into a new, innovative style of painting.

This progression from young artist—brazenly, if purposefully, borrowing from disparate sources—to mature artist with a coherent and unique style is apparent in his later pairs, in which the styles are never entirely indebted to another artist. We see this, for example, in The Piano, which evinces a harsh geometric abstraction, and The Music Lesson, which evinces gentle and immediate naturalism. Looking back on this period, a mature Matisse spoke of this juxtaposition of geometric abstraction and naturalism as “a will to rhythmic abstraction [that] was battling with my natural innate desire for rich, warm, generous colors and forms.”

Matisse: In Search of True Painting is organized and currently on view by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit runs through March 17, 2013, and is accompanied by a catalogue distributed by Yale University Press.