The Senate has confirmed eight new members nominated by President Bush to sit on the of the National Council on the Humanities, a twenty-six member advisory council to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Eight members will begin their duties immediately while two others will officially join the council in July, 2007. The terms of the new members will not expire until 2012.

Notably, a few historians will join the advisory council. They include: Mary Habeck -- an associate professor of history at Yale University and currently a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is the writer and editor of a number of books focusing on international relations in the past and present;

Wilfred M. McClay -- a history professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a former professor at Georgetown University, Tulane University, and Johns Hopkins University. McClay is also a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the author of "The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America" (1994), which received the Organization of American Historians' 1995 Merle Curti Award for the best book in American intellectual history;

Jay Winik -- a leading public historian who has authored numerous books and articles. His New York Times best-selling book, "1865: The Month that Saved America," is part of the "Modern Classic" series and served as the basis for an Emmy-nominated History Channel special; and

Allen Guelzo -- a professor and director of the Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College. He has written multiple books and essays, including "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" and "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America," both of which won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize.

The other new members of the council are: Jean Bunting III, Jane Marie Doggett, Robert Martin, Manfredi Piccolomini, Kenneth Weinstein, and Jean Bethke Elshtain. These new members bring to the council a wide variety of experiences and knowledge in the humanities. NEH Chair Bruce Cole predicts that, "Their collective wisdom will help guide the Humanities Endowment in the years ahead."

For more detailed profiles of the members, visit

http://www.neh.gov

Should outsiders try to influence the hiring or tenuring of university faculty?
The question arises because, with the radicalization of the American universities, moderate voices have jumped into academic personnel issues. For example, note some controversies just in Middle East studies in 2006:

· Joseph Massad at Columbia: His promotion to associate professor met with public opposition; the forthcoming decision over his tenure will likely spark even more contention.

· Juan Cole at Yale: The University of Michigan historian was on track to New Haven until columnists John Fund, Joel Mowbray, and others brought attention to Mr. Cole's writings, prompting key Yale professors to reject his appointment.

· Kevin Barrett at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: When it became known that he believes the Bush administration perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, his teaching of "Islam: Religion and Culture" spurred a statewide debate.

· Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard: As the anthropologist faces a tenure decision, her 2001 book, Facts on the Ground has been criticized by alumnae and archeologists (William Dever of the University of Arizona calls her scholarship "faulty, misleading and dangerous"; James Davila of St. Andrew's University deems it "daft").

· Wadie Said at Wayne State: Led by StandWithUs.com, critics argue that his appointment to the law school "would dilute academic standards, be detrimental in the classroom and exacerbate problems on campus." Other non-academics, like the Wayne State Middle East Law Students Association, support Mr. Said's appointment.

In addition, Joel Beinin's relocation to the American University in Cairo from his tenured position in history at Stanford (an unusual career move) may be related to the wide criticism of his work.

These developments raise two questions. Firstly, do outsiders have a legitimate role influencing academic personnel decisions? The American Association of University Professors general secretary, Roger Bowen, says absolutely not: "Non-academics and external advocacy groups should not be permitted to intrude in hiring and tenure cases in the academy."

I beg to differ. Educational institutions may appoint whomever they wish, but they cannot expect immunity from public criticism. Precisely because academe offers unique job security, public evaluation of untenured academics has a potentially vital role. The more pre-tenure scrutiny, the better. Organizations like Campus Watch focus precisely on those areas that tenure committees typically miss.

As for tenured faculty, robust public criticism can keep them in line by embarrassing them and hurting their credibility. Juan Cole characterizes senior professors as "sort of like baseball players" whom other teams look at "from time to time, as recruitment prospects." In response, Martin Kramer of the Shalem Center notes that "We don't put baseball players on pedestals, and a whole section of the newspaper relentlessly criticizes their performance. Academics want to have it both ways: lifetime job security, sports-like celebrity, lots of vacation time, and no accountability."

In their insistence on squelching dissent, ironically, Middle East studies academics replicate Middle East dictators, who demand that their regimes be exempt from judgment. But while dictators can lose their jobs, tenured academics effectively cannot, making their errors uniquely consequence-free.

Second, how effective are outside efforts to influence the process? Frank H. Wu, law school dean at Wayne State, predicts that lobbying professors against Wadie Said's appointment could well backfire. Some faculty members, he says, "might be so turned off by the e-mail coming in that they may be persuaded to take a position that they might not have otherwise."

Other than exposing the immaturity of professors who would take such a step, this statement completely misses the point. The ivory tower exists at the sufferance of those who subsidize it. Just as Supreme Court justices read the election returns, so professors ultimately cannot ignore the parents, alumni, legislators, and government bureaucrats who pay their salaries. And as those stakeholders increasingly become aware of the professors' failings, they can begin to demand improvements.

(The distinction between private and public universities hardly matters here, as the two overlap considerably. If the University of Michigan derives a mere 8% of its annual budget from state sources, private universities rely heavily on government funding for students, projects, research, overhead, and even fraternities.)

The way ahead is clear: concerned outsiders should track university developments, including personnel decisions, so as to begin the process of redeeming the university, that grand and noble institution temporarily gone astray.

HISTORIAN PROFESSOR HILARY BECKLES has revealed for the first time that he wrote the first edition of his book: The History Of Barbados, "in the midst of endless death threats".

The principal of the University of the West Indies' Cave Hill Campus made this disclosure on Thursday night at the launch of the second edition of the book, which was originally published in 1990.

Beckles told a rapt audience at the Shell suite of the university that for three years he received calls threatening to kill him, to kidnap his children and to blow up his house from people who took issue with his public stance.

"We were told we were manufacturing history; we were told we were racist," stated Beckles, explaining how his position on Barbadian history was received at that time.

He said that on one occasion he received seven death threats in one day, prompting him to call the police and receive an armed escort for a night-time lecture he was giving.

"It is not easy to give a lecture looking at a gun," the professor said wryly.

The ordeal had been worth it, however, he said, for in the end it ushered in a new perspective on local history.

"This is a different time because many of the things we said then, now appear to be common sense."

Beckles' book traces Barbadian history from the time of the Kalinago (Caribs) right up to the 21st century.

In the late 1980s, he was embroiled in public controversy over what he termed the economic disenfranchisement of Barbados' majority black population, fiercely criticising a number of local companies for excluding Blacks from their boardrooms.

In particular, he targeted The Mutual, now Sagicor and in July 1989 sought – and failed – to get a seat on the board in an historic and highly publicised election campaign among policyholders.

The Lamar University Department of History and the Walter Prescott Webb Historical Society will host a reception Tuesday, Nov. 28, honoring history professor Ralph Wooster, who is retiring this semester after a distinguished 52-year career at the university.

The event will be from 3 to 6 p.m. in the Dishman Art Museumat Lamar.

Students, faculty, staff and other well-wishers invited to join in the event,

said History Department Chair John Storey.

Wooster has been a t e a c h e r, scholar and administrator at Lamar and is nationally known as an author and historian.

Regents of The Texas State University System adopted a resolution Nov. 17 honoring him as distinguished professor emeritus of history. The history department conference room in the Archer Building will be named in his honor, said Lamar President James Simmons.

Wooster is "a great Texan who has told the state's story to generations past, present and to come," the regents said in their resolution. "[He has] touched, guided and inspired the intellectual lives of thousands of students, as well as hundreds of thousands of Texas seventh graders who learned the history of this great state by reading his widely adopted 'Texas and Texans.'

"Dr. Wooster, a masterful storyteller, delivered spellbinding lectures that attracted students and scholars alike to Lamar University, earning for himself the reputation for excellence sought by every classroom instructor . . . (his) fairness, goodwill, decency and evenhandedness toward students and colleagues brought him the high regard and respect that today are synonymous with his name."

Additional information about the Nov. 28 reception is available from the Lamar Department of History, at 880-8511.

With inter-Palestinian violence on the rise, and the Bush administration's hands-off approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rashid Khalidi's new history of Palestine calls for a retrospective look into the major decisions -- both within and outside the Middle East -- that sculpted the Palestinian conflict during the last century.

Khalidi, the Edward Said Chair of Arab Studies at Columbia University, asks a simple question: In the wake of the colonial Middle East, why have Palestinians failed to achieve statehood? A cursory look into Palestinian history shows that it's not for a lack of desire. But as their Arab neighbors have gained independence, it remains an elusive goal for the Palestinians.

In"The Iron Cage," Khalidi argues that since the British took administrative control of Palestine in 1922, Palestinians have been forced to play politics with some of the world's most significant powers. In their uphill battle for statehood, Palestinian leaders have faced not only the British, but the well-organized Zionist movement, and what Khalidi calls the"shark-infested waters of Arab politics." Khalidi visited San Francisco recently during his national book tour, and met me at Union Square to discuss his new book. Liv Leader: Your last book"Resurrecting Empire" was published a year into the war in Iraq. Many of your dismal predictions about the Iraq war have proven true. So why did you choose to write about Palestine when Iraq is on everyone's mind?

Rashid Khalidi: You're right, Iraq is a timely issue. I've been working on"The Iron Cage" for more than 10 years. I actually interrupted this book to work on"Resurrecting Empire" because I just couldn't focus on this issue in the wake of 9-11. I saw that a number of disastrous wars were coming at us and that people were going into them completely, totally and utterly blind. I wrote"Resurrecting Empire" as an attempt to affect the public debate on the Iraq war.

In a way The Iron Cage doesn't fit as well into the current political season as would another book on Iraq. In a way I think it's germane. Our policy in the Middle East is so utterly wrong-headed and our policy on Palestine is a part of it. American policy is not just rooted in the history of American policy towards Palestine since the 1940s, but in the history of great powers policies since the 1920s.

One of the things that has to be looked at is the responsibility of the international community and of the dominant powers, whether Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, and the United States since World War II, to creating this situation. So I think it actually is timely and speaks directly to what I think should be a major issue.

Why is the U.S. so loathed and hated by the people in the Middle East, who actually have nothing against our freedoms, democracy, and love our economic system They are dying to go to Disneyland, but they cannot stand our foreign policy. Could it possibly be that fact that they think that what we do in terms of Palestine is stupid and morally wrong?

One of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's closest advisers said yesterday that he will resign at the end of the year, depriving her of a key sounding board at a time when she is still searching for a new deputy and faces difficult challenges in the Middle East.

Philip D. Zelikow, 52, holds the unassuming title of "counselor," but in many ways he is Rice's intellectual soul mate, and he plays a critical role in formulating policy at the State Department. In his resignation letter, he cited professional and personal obligations, including a need to return to an endowed chair that the University of Virginia has held vacant for four years and to pay "some truly riveting obligations to college bursars" for his children's education.As a sort of minister without portfolio, Zelikow was a one-person think tank for Rice, churning out lengthy and sometimes blunt memos calling for confronting the deteriorating situation in Iraq, overhauling the administration's detainee policies and using the North Korean nuclear crisis to build a new security structure in northeast Asia. He also played an important role in Rice's decisions to strike a nuclear energy deal with India and to offer to join European-led nuclear talks with Iran.

Zelikow proved to be a controversial figure at the State Department and in the administration for his willingness to challenge administration orthodoxy and for his sometimes abrasive approach. But Rice valued his insights and contributions, aides said, even when descriptions of some of his memos began to surface in news reports.

In an interview yesterday, Zelikow said Rice "knew I had done no wrong." At no time, he added, was he quoted reflecting on people's personalities or disclosing private discussions with Rice.

"Philip is a close friend and we will continue to enjoy this friendship in the years ahead," Rice said in a statement. "I appreciate Philip's dedicated service during this time of historical change."...

While Zelikow's name was sometimes floated for open jobs, such as deputy secretary of state, Rice aides said he was not seriously considered for anything but his current post, which did not require Senate confirmation. Zelikow had rubbed some lawmakers the wrong way when he served as executive director of the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Friends said that Zelikow, who was appointed in February 2005, never intended to serve a full four years at the State Department but that he feels bad about leaving Rice before she has selected a deputy. If he did not leave now, he would not be listed in University of Virginia course catalogues for the upcoming semester, which would then delay his return until September.

Once he leaves the government, Zelikow will be able to supplement his salary with consulting projects and by writing books. He said he wants to write scholarly books, not a tell-all on the Bush administration, which is"no doubt a disappointment to my wife."

Asked what his departure means, Zelikow said:"Liberated from this weight, the secretary will soar higher and higher."...

With its celebration of bounty and goodwill, not to mention its endearing lack of commercialization, Thanksgiving may be the most beloved of American holidays.

But is the Thanksgiving Americans celebrate today mere myth-making, resting on ahistorical stereotypes?

Take the fabled turkey, for example. Did it even inhabit eastern Massachusetts in 1621? And the much-venerated Thanksgiving meal: Was it a bountiful celebration of fraternal cooperation or more a series of "backwoods diplomatic encounters" to ease tensions between the new English arrivals and the long-established Algonquian-speaking residents?

If you answered "no" to the first question and "yes" to the second - the first Thanksgiving meal more likely incorporated raccoon stew than cranberry sauce - you may think you know where British author and journalist Godfrey Hodgson is taking readers in his new book, "A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First Thanksgiving" published by PublicAffairs.

But in fact, Hodgson's aim is not so much in correcting the historical record as in affectionately exploring the ways a beloved national celebration with strong religious undercurrents has reinvented itself over time.

And indeed, as Hodgson makes clear, Thanksgiving has always expressed "deep religious impulses."

"Christians recognize in it an echo of the breaking of bread that is at the heart of their observance," he writes, "while Jews have often seen it as a kind of seder, in that it commemorates, by a shared meal, a journey toward salvation."

Hodgson, 72, lives in Great Britain and is an associate fellow at Oxford University's Rothermere American Institute. He makes it abundantly clear, both in the book and in person, that he loves Thanksgiving.

"It's a quiet celebration," Hodgson said recently in an interview in New York City to promote the book, "but it's inclusive, and it's been terribly important in American history."...

[Pierre M. Atlas is assistant professor of political science and director of the Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian College. Contact him at patlas@marian.edu.patlas@marian.edu.]


When discussing a controversial issue, what does it mean to be "fair and balanced"?

This question confounds not only journalists but academics as well. What does it mean to bring "balance" into the classroom or into scholarly discourse? Should all perspectives be given equal weight? Do all perspectives deserve equal weight?

As I write this I am attending the 40th annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association. MESA is the premier international academic society for those who study all aspects of the Middle East, its history, peoples, languages and cultures. More than 2,000 scholars are here from around the world, professors and graduate students representing numerous academic disciplines.

Walking through the halls of the conference hotel one hears numerous languages, including French, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Hebrew. MESA is a dynamic and multi-voice organization, and its conference aims at providing a safe space to discuss controversial issues in a scholarly manner.

At least, that's the goal. Given the enormous diversity of its membership and the intensity of the crises in the Middle East today, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the quest for academic "balance" can get lost in the shuffle. And that, of course, begs the question: How do we define academic balance?

At a roundtable discussion on last summer's Israel-Lebanon war, the five panelists, some from Lebanon and some not, expressed nuanced differences when discussing Lebanon's internal politics. But they uniformly condemned Israel's actions in the war as "aggression," and repeatedly referred to Hezbollah's actions as "resistance." Supporters of Israel argue that Hezbollah started the conflict, and thus it bears ultimate blame for the war's costs. But the panelists expressed a view held by many in the Arab world that Israel has a long history of aggression against Lebanon, that it was looking for any excuse to start the war last summer, and that the United States gave it the green light.

One panelist showed pictures of the war's massive destruction: numerous shots of Lebanese neighborhoods flattened like pancakes, bridges blown apart beyond all recognition, and weeping mothers at funerals of civilian Lebanese killed by Israeli bombs. There were no pictures -- or even any mention -- of the hundreds of Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israeli cities. Lebanon suffered the bulk of the war's destruction, and more than 10 Lebanese were killed for every one Israeli. But does that mean that Israeli suffering should be ignored completely?

Most of the audience's questions were sympathetic to the panelists' point of view, but not all. One MESA member asked why there was no Israeli perspective on the panel, and if this disparity was appropriate at an academic conference. He was told that they did not see the need to have an "Israeli apologist" sitting beside them.

I asked why the speakers labeled Israel's attacks on Lebanese cities "aggression," but called Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli cities "resistance." Doesn't that suggest that some civilian deaths are valued less than others? Although I didn't get a direct answer, one panelist made the morally problematic assertion that the quantity of deaths made Israel's actions "worse" than those of Hezbollah.

The five panelists flatly rejected the notion that they should seek "balance" on this issue. They said that, as scholars, what mattered was that they "speak the truth," rather than give equal time to all sides.

But whose truth? Conservative pundits often accuse academia of the "crime" of postmodern thinking -- of denying that basic facts and certainties exist. This, they say, leads to moral relativism.

But "truth" is often multi-faceted, consisting of different and sometimes incompatible perspectives. All of history's totalitarian movements, secular and religious, have begun with people believing that they possessed "the Truth" with a capital T. Scholarly discourse, at its best, articulates and acknowledges different understandings of the truth, and thus serves as an antidote to such absolutist thinking.

I sat stunned as the panelists asserted that there was only "one truth" to the Lebanon conflict. In that moment, my MESA colleagues sounded more like the conservative attackers of academia than the progressive, postmodern thinkers they thought themselves to be.

Violence and lawlessness in Iraq is “dismantling” the country’s higher education system and creating a climate of terror on campuses, according to Iraqi professors who attended the Middle East Studies Association’s conference Sunday.

“The students are disappointed in America and they say it now openly, even on the television: ‘Bring back Saddam and we will apologize and he will restore order to the country,’” said Dr. Saad Jawad, professor of political science at Baghdad University.

The professors spoke on one of dozens of panels throughout the three-day conference, which featured Middle East scholars from the United States and around the world.

Speaking to a crowded conference room, the Iraqi professors’ bleak picture of a life under siege brought some in the audience to tears. Since the U.S. invasion in 2003, they said, thousands of Iraqi professors have fled the country. More than 200 have been assassinated and the rest live in fear of saying anything that might offend any number of groups, all suspected of murder and mayhem in Iraq. When asked who was behind the killings, the professors’ list was long: Sunnis, Shias, radical Islamists, Americans, Iranians, Israelis, Kuwaitis.

“The problems in Iraq are bigger than I can express,” said Dr. Taher Al Bakaa, the former minister of higher education in Iraq, now a visiting scholar at Harvard University. Hundreds of scholars have applied to come to the United States, but only a small percentage are accepted, according to the Scholars at Risk Network, a group that helps threatened professors.

Conference organizer Dr. Dina Rizk Khoury, associate professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University, says the panel was one of the weekend’s most critical. Talking about Baghdad University, she calls the situation in Iraq a “systematic attempt to dismantle what was once the premier institute of higher education in the Arab world.” Khoury says academic freedom in the country has fallen victim to anarchy.

Jawad, who had arrived in Boston three days earlier, said his classes are cancelled so frequently, he has taught only twice since the semester began in October. When not working, he rarely leaves his house. He said a death threat posted on his office door makes him afraid to go outside with his family in case an attempt is made on his life. Earlier in the month, his colleague, Jassim al-Asadi, dean of administration and economics at Baghdad University, was gunned down with his family in their car. Many of Jawad’s students have had relatives and friends killed, including one young male doctoral student whose father was gunned down in his doorway.

“Nobody knows the reason,” Jawad said. “I am depressed.”

Despite widespread reports of a brewing sectarian war between Shias and Sunnis, Jawad says students on campus are growing tired of the religious radicals and beginning to protest against them.

The professors put some of the blame on the radicals, but directed most of their ire towards the failed U.S. occupation. Bakaa, who was also president of Iraq’s second largest university, Al Mustansiriyah University, from 2003 to 2004, said he had received almost no additional funding for academic life since the occupation. Buildings destroyed during the first Gulf War were rebuilt in two months under Saddam’s regime, yet the Americans have repaired nothing, he said. When professors are threatened or killed, there is never any investigation.

“Iraqi professors are being killed by everyone, and nobody has told us if any killers have been caught. Nothing has been done,” Jawad said. “One U.S. soldier was kidnapped and Baghdad is on full alert, but the killing of an Iraqi professor? Nothing happens.”

The professors said the problems began with attacks against scientists suspected of doing “weapons of mass destruction” research. Later, professors who had joined Saddam’s Baath Party were targeted. Now, roaming mafia groups have joined in and are kidnapping professors for ransom.

"For me," says Nathaniel Philbrick, "Thanksgiving has always been the best, most fun family holiday."

Mr. Philbrick is a resident of Nantucket and the author of such acclaimed histories as "In the Heart of the Sea," the National Book Award-winning story of the whaleship Essex. His latest effort, "Mayflower," was released in May and immediately jumped to the New York Times bestseller list, where it spent more than four months. His life is settling down now after a three-month tour that took him from coast to coast promoting his book. This fall, he's finding time to reflect on the powerful connection "Mayflower" made with American readers, and how this project has changed his perspective on the holiday that harks back to the popular story of Pilgrims and Wampanoags who feasted together in the autumn of 1621.

"I think that with this book," Mr. Philbrick says, "this is going to be a different Thanksgiving for me. It's been an emotional year - I'm still working this book over in my mind, and this Thanksgiving, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens."

"Mayflower" shines a historian's light on the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth. It also places the early adventures of the settlers in the context of a larger story that most of us weren't taught in school - the tenuous peace between settlers and Native Americans that lasted for two generations before disintegrating, in the 1670s, into what was arguably the bloodiest conflict in our nation's history, King Philip's War.

Author describes an unadorned first Thanksgiving

Following are excerpts from Nantucket author Nathaniel Philbrick's book, "Mayflower," an account of the voyage of the Mayflower, the settlement of Plymouth Colony and the savage conflict known as King Philip's War that ended years of relative peace between colonists and natives.

"We do not know the exact date of the celebration we now call the First Thanksgiving, but it was probably in late September or early October, soon after their crop of corn, squash, beans, barley, and peas had been harvested. It was also a time during which Plymouth Harbor played host to a tremendous number of migrating birds, particularly ducks and geese, and Bradford ordered four men to go out "fowling." It took only a few hours for Plymouth's hunters to kill enough ducks and geese to feed the settlement for a week. Now that they had "gathered the fruit of our labors," Bradford declared it time to "rejoice together ... after a more special manner."

The term Thanksgiving, first applied in the 19th century, was not used by the Pilgrims themselves. For the Pilgrims a thanksgiving was a time of spiritual devotion. Since just about everything the Pilgrims did had religious overtones, there was certainly much about the gathering in the fall of 1621 that would have made it a proper Puritan Thanksgiving. But as Winslow's description makes clear, there was also much about the gathering that was similar to a traditional English harvest festival - a secular celebration that dated back to the Middle Ages in which villagers ate, drank, and played games.

Countless Victorian-era engravings notwithstanding, the Pilgrims did not spend the day sitting around a long table draped with a white linen doth, clasping each other's hands in prayer as a few curious Indians looked on. Instead of an English affair, the First Thanksgiving soon became an overwhelmingly Native celebration when Massasoit and a hundred Pokanokets (more than twice the entire English population of Plymouth) arrived at the settlement with five freshly killed deer. Even if all the Pilgrims' furniture was brought out into the sunshine, most of the celebrants stood, squatted, or sat on the ground as they clustered around outdoor fires, where the deer and birds turned on wooden spits and where pottages - stews into which varieties of meats and vegetables were thrown - simmered invitingly.

In addition to ducks and deer, there was, according to Bradford, a "good store of wild turkeys" in the fall of 1621. Turkeys were by no means a novelty to the Pilgrims. When the conquistadors arrived in Mexico in the sixteenth century, they discovered that the Indians of Central America possessed domesticated turkeys as well as gold. The birds were imported to Spain as early as the 1520s, and by the 1540s they had reached England. By 1575, the domesticated Central American turkey had become a fixture at English Christmases. The wild turkeys of New England were bigger and much faster than the birds the Pilgrims had known in Europe and were often pursued in winter when they could be tracked in the snow.

The Pilgrims may have also added fish to their meal of birds and deer. In fall, striped bass, bluefish, and cod were abundant. Perhaps most important to the Pilgrims was that with a recently harvested barley crop, it was now possible to brew beer. Alas, the Pilgrims were without pumpkin pies or cranberry sauce. There were also no forks, which did not appear at Plymouth until the last decades of the seventeenth century. The Pilgrims ate with their fingers and their knives....

Curtis Cate, an American biographer who chronicled the lives of several well-known European writers, among them Nietzsche, George Sand and André Malraux, died in Paris on Thursday. He was 82 and had lived in Paris for most of his life.

The cause was melanoma, his brother, Benjamin, said.

Mr. Cate’s most recent book, “Friedrich Nietzsche,” was published in the United States last year by the Overlook Press. Reviewing the biography in The New York Times Book Review, William T. Vollmann called it “a warmly intelligent introduction to Nietzsche.” He added, “Between the lines I sense a sincere sadness and discomfort about what became of Nietzsche, whom the author so clearly reveres.”

Curtis Wilson Cate was born in Paris on May 22, 1924, to transplanted American parents. From 1943 to 1946, he served in Europe with the United States Army.

Mr. Cate earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard in 1947. This was followed by a master’s degree in Russian from the École des Langues Orientales in Paris and a master’s degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford.

Frontpage Interview's guest today is KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. With a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, he specializes in 20th century U.S. political, constitutional, and diplomatic history. He writes a blog, Durham-in-Wonderland, which offers comments and analysis about the Duke/Nifong case.

FP: KC Johnson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Johnson: Thank you for speaking with me.

FP: Kindly summarize briefly for our readers what this case involving the three Lacrosse students is about.

Johnson: This is the story of how a case virtually devoid of evidence, constructed upon a tissue of procedural irregularities, nonetheless has lurched forward. At a March team party at an off-campus house rented by three lacrosse captains, one captain hired two exotic dancers to perform. After leaving the party, which ended sourly, an African-American dancer with a criminal record and a history of false allegations (including an unpursued claim that three men raped her a decade ago) claimed to have been raped to prevent being involuntarily committed at Durham Access Center. After going through multiple stories, the accuser eventually settled on a claim of a violent gang rape by three players (with three others, who were never charged or in any way identified, serving as accomplices). The rape, she alleged, lasted a half hour; and at least two of her attackers, who she said didn't wear condoms, ejaculated.

Although the second dancer contradicted her account in virtually every way; the team captains gave statements to police, without their lawyers present, denying the allegations and voluntarily turned over to police DNA samples and their e-mail account passwords; and although the team captains offered to take lie detector tests (an offer the police spurned); and no DNA matches of any sort between any player and the accuser's DNA appeared; and although an original photo line-up of the players found the accuser unable to identify her alleged attackers, D.A. Mike Nifong eventually indicted three players, including one, Reade Seligmann, whose attorney produced a videotape of him more than a mile away, at an ATM machine, at the time of the alleged crime.

FP: Let's talk about District Attorney Mike Nifong's conduct. What is your angle on it and why has the legal community and most of the media been so quiet about it?

Johnson: Nifong's conduct in this case is the most unethical of any district attorney I have ever seen; I cannot recall a case in the last 15-20 years in which this many procedural violations were known at this stage of the process.

This is a man who violated multiple provisions of the North Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct simply to get a case. His most damaging violation was ordering the Durham Police not to follow their own procedures in the line-up that resulted in the identification of the three players charged. The procedures required five filler photos per every suspect; Nifong told police to confine the line-up to suspects—members of the lacrosse team.

The media, of course, were not initially quiet: led by the New York Times, early coverage all but had the players tried and convicted. The case fit into a comfortable narrative for a liberal media elite of out-of-control wealthy white athletes violating a poor African-American woman. As the case has collapsed, most media—with the crucial exception of the Raleigh News & Observer and CBS's 60 Minutes—abandoned interest in the affair, rather than revisiting their early flawed reporting. The New York Times, meanwhile, published a widely ridiculed August article that read more like a public relations piece for Nifong than a piece of journalism. The article contained four out-and-out errors of fact, all of which tilted the story in favor of the prosecution, and all of which the Times refused to correct.

FP: What has been the overall reaction of the Duke faculty and administration? What is your take on it?

Johnson: In the first week of the investigation (March 16-23), Duke administrators actively assisted the state. Without informing President Richard Brodhead, administrators demanded from the captains a candid account of the evening's events, allegedly citing a non-existent "student-faculty" privilege to encourage the captains to disclose any criminal activity. Multiple sources told me that Coach Mike Pressler, apparently acting on orders from above, instructed the other players not to tell their parents about the police inquiry. Meanwhile, Dean Sue Wasiolek arranged for a local lawyer, Wes Covington, to act as a "facilitator" in arranging for a group meeting with police.

After Nifong began his publicity barrage on March 27, faculty leftists became involved. Houston Baker, a professor of English and Afro-American Studies, issued a public letter denouncing the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us" and demanding the "immediate dismissals" of "the team itself and its players." Then, on April 6, 88 members of Duke's arts and sciences faculty signed a public statement saying "thank you" to campus demonstrators who had distributed a "wanted" poster of the lacrosse players and publicly branded the players "rapists." To date, not a single member of what has become known as the "Group of 88" has retracted his or her signature or publicly criticized Nifong's procedural violations.

(I started my blog as a response to the Group of 88's statement, which I considered a betrayal of the signatories' duties as faculty members, and only expanded to the case itself as the magnitude of Nifong's procedural misconduct became clear.)

As Brodhead failed to resist his faculty's assault on due process, his actions, whether intended or not, fortified a public image of guilt. On March 25, in an unprecedented move, the president cancelled (at the last minute) the lacrosse team's game against Georgetown, citing underage drinking at the party. Then, on April 5, Brodhead demanded Pressler's resignation, cancelled the lacrosse season, and issued a statement anchored by a lament on the evils of rape—at a time when the players were firmly denying any sexual contact, much less rape. These moves enjoyed enthusiastic support from Board of Trustees chairman Robert Steel. The president later issued a statement urging a trial, on the grounds that it would give the accused players an opportunity to be "proved innocent," in effect turning on its head 220 years of American constitutional history.

Based on the actions and statements of both the faculty and administration, a fair-minded neutral observer could only conclude that Duke's administrators and most outspoken professors believed that a rape occurred.

FP: Expand for us a bit on how this case intersects with political motivations.

Johnson: In Nifong's case, the political motivation was straightforward. An appointed district attorney, he was running in the May Democratic primary against two challengers: a well-known white woman, Freda Black, whom he had fired as an assistant district attorney in one of his first acts in office; and a weak black candidate, Keith Bishop. The party's electorate was about evenly divided between white and black voters.

Black was much better known than Nifong (she had helped prosecute a high-profile murder case in 2003), and in mid-February, she seemed on the verge of putting the race away. Nifong started having trouble raising money—he attracted only $1150 in contributions for all March—and, to keep his candidacy alive, he loaned his campaign nearly $30,000. (A lifetime bureaucrat whose wife is a "victims' rights" advocate, Nifong isn't personally wealthy.)

Then came the lacrosse allegation. Nifong took control of the police investigation, gave over 50 interviews that highlighted (in misleading fashion) an alleged racial motive for the alleged crime, and soared in polls. He captured the primary by 881 votes, thanks to robust showings in black precincts.

In the fall campaign, two unaffiliated candidates ran against him: with minimal support from the white community, Nifong again squeaked through, with less than 50%, thanks to overwhelming backing in black precincts. By the fall, he had abandoned all pretences that his motives were anything other than political, stating at one point that his trying the case would address Durham's "underlying divisions," and wildly claiming that his critics considered his prosecution "a threat to their sense of entitlement and that they do not trust a jury of Durham citizens to decide" the case.

FP: How do you think the Duke/Nifong case will turn out? Crystallize for us the main lessons we must all draw from it.

Johnson: Legally, the outcome of the case very much depends on the judge, Osmond Smith. Any judge with integrity would have to suppress the procedurally improper line-up ordered by Nifong and then used to indict the three players; without the results from that line-up, Nifong has no case. There are two other key decisions the judge could make: (1) He could grant a defense motion to force Nifong's recusal from the case, which in effect would dismiss the charges, since it's inconceivable any other prosecutor would try this case; or (2) he could grant a motion for a change of venue, which would effectively ensure an acquittal, since Nifong has constructed his whole case around appealing to biases with Durham's community.

There are myriad lessons we should draw from events of this case, including the following:

Rape law needs modification. Until the 1970s, rape law was far too friendly to the defendant; now it is the reverse. Nifong has done many unethical things in this case, but he has been correct in one assertion: under North Carolina law, a jury can convict solely on the testimony of the accuser and her identifying her alleged assailants. That means that, as a matter of law, Reade Seligmann could be convicted—even Seligmann has electronic and physical evidence that can definitely prove his innocence (he's on videotape a mile away at the time of the alleged crime).

Duke, as an institution, has revealed a hollow moral core. Seven months into a case of what might be the highest-profile example of prosecutorial misconduct in the last decade, two Duke law professors and two Duke arts and sciences professors have publicly criticized Nifong. Meanwhile, Group of 88 members continues to defend their actions, even to the point of making demonstrably false public assertions about the players. Meanwhile, Brodhead has shown himself unwilling or unable to lead the institution, allowing what amounts to a "separate-but-equal" system to be established in Durham, under which Duke students are second-class citizens.

The silence of North Carolina's political and legal establishment regarding Nifong's misconduct is stunning.

The media needs to reconsider how it covers rape cases. To a greater extent than any crime other than child abuse, a presumption of guilt exists.

The next time the NAACP speaks up on behalf of standard procedure in a criminal justice case, the media should ask why the organization betrayed 70 years of its principles on criminal justice issues to give Nifong a pass in this case.

In Durham, North Carolina, a robust constituency exists for the politics of revenge and prosecutorial misconduct.

FP: KC Johnson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Johnson: Thank you for speaking with me.