MITPressLog

Homophobia & Gay Marriage in the Muslim world

In 2006, Abdellah Taïa outed himself to the Moroccan press, and thus became the first openly gay man in Morocco - an Islamic country whose law still declares homosexuality a crime, and whose national "don't ask, don't tell" policy had until then been assumed to be inviolable. Now a well-known author living in France, Taïa has written five autobiographical novels about growing up poor and gay in the northern coastal city of Sale. The first (and only) of these to be translated to English is Salvation Army, released earlier this month from Semiotext(e). Taïa's story has reached the AP news wire lately.

Taïa stopped being the only official gay man in Morocco in December 2007, when six men were filmed participating in what was claimed to be a mock gay wedding. The video was posted to YouTube, and its resultant exposure led to a mob destroying of the home of one of its participants, and the Moroccan court of justice sentencing all the ceremony’s participants with jail terms of two to ten months for the crime of homosexuality.

With the uproar over the California Supreme Court’s upholding of the controversial Proposition 8 this week, the issue of gay wedding, “mock” or official, is obviously one that will continue to be a hot-button topic, both within the US and elsewhere.

History lesson, H1N1 version

The spread of H1N1 flu - or swine flu - continues throughout North America. As of this writing, New York City has confirmed 201 cases of the flu, including one fatality, and has closed 30 schools. Closer to our base of operations, Boston has closed four schools, including Boston Latin, the city's largest.

One question that seems to come up repeatedly is the likelihood of future outbreaks, and how severe they're likely to be. To get some historical perspective, we turned to Andrew Price-Smith, who teaches political and environmental science at Colorado College and is the author of The Health of Nations and Contagion and Chaos. The latter book deals in some detail with the 1918 outbreak of H1N1 - the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic - and its destabilizing effects. Andrew's main message was to beware of talking heads who don't know their history. Here's what he sent us:

It is troubling to see the parade of quasi-ignorant MD’s as talking heads on CNN, Fox and other cable news since the H1N1 epidemic began in North America. Getting the history of pandemic influenza wrong seems to be a prerequisite for air time in the USA these days. Few public health historians are ever given air time to discuss the actual historical patterns of the 1918 influenza.  The platitudes offered by the talking heads include the usual (paraphrasing here) “well it’s the end of regular flu season, so we only have to worry about a second wave in the Fall.”

Wrong. Anyone who has ever studied the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic knows that the pandemic took the form of three viral waves with the first appearing in the Spring of 1918 in the USA. (Although I have published Austrian data that suggests the flu may have originated in Vienna and environs in the Spring of 1917). The ‘second’ wave of the pandemic struck Europe and North America in the mid summer of 1918, and the ‘third’ and deadliest wave hit Central Europe in the Fall of 1918.

That pandemic was also generated by an H1N1 variant that exhibited some similarity to the current strain. So, if history serves as a guide, it is reasonable to suggest that we might see another viral wave hit this summer, with greater intensity.

Let’s try to get some real experts in the media to discuss the implications of this emerging virus.

Browsing Our Bookstore Shelves

Technology Review blogger Brad Feld visited the MIT Press Bookstore last week.  He bought (and rated) a handful of computer books he found while browsing the shelves.  Ranked highest (B--not perfect, but we'll take it) on his list is the second edition of A Semantic Web Primer by Grigoris Antoniou and Frand van Harmelen, calling it "much more logical, much better structured (how ironic), and more insightful" than one of the competitive volumes he bought. 

Have you been to the MIT Press Bookstore lately?  If so, we'd love to hear about what books you bought and what you think of them.  Don't worry, we grade on a curve.  

"Poignant, disturbing, and not easily refuted"

That's the verdict on Mark Dowie's book Conservation Refugees by Peter Kareiva. Kareiva is the chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, and his thoughts appear on the Conservancy's blog, Cool Green Science. What makes his judgment more interesting than the average review is that Dowie's book - which he outlines in this Boston Globe piece - focuses on how efforts to establish protected areas for conservation has led to the displacement of millions of indigenous peoples. And many of those areas have been so designated at the urging of NGOs  like the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and...the Nature Conservancy itself.
So Kareiva's engagement with the book amounts to a sort of institutional self-reckoning. Indeed, he begins his post by stating that he is "going to commit conservation heresy and ask out loud: Should the conservation movement be proud of the 108,000 protected areas around the world it has thus far helped establish?"

Not surprisingly, he doesn't recommend blowing up the entire conservation movement or calling a halt to the Nature Conservancy's work, and Dowie - who calls the book "a good guy vs. good guy story" - would hardly advocate that. Indeed, Kareiva thinks that in coming decades, the importance of protected areas will only grow as the earth becomes more crowded in future decades. But he does think that a serious reexamination is warranted. Here's the money quote:

However, for me at least, the rights of people for self-determination take supremacy over any species or biodiversity tally. It is my job as a conservation scientist to find the ways that people can indeed come first and while biodiversity can also be protected.  The traditional protected areas strategy has all too often trampled on people’s rights — which is why that strategy warrants a critical reexamination.

Read the whole thing - it's an admirably honest work of institutional self-assessment, something that always seems, unfortunately, to be in short supply.

50 Top Women in Book Publishing

The cover story of this month's Book Business honors the 50 leading women who are helping to shape the book publishing industry.  Each woman also has shared her best tip for succeeding in book publishing.

We are delighted, but not surprised, to report that MIT Press Director, Ellen W. Faran, has made the list!  Her tip: " Cultivate your ‘helicopter vision’—the ability to zoom easily up and down in order to get the right perspective on a single title, a group of titles, an imprint, or the entire publishing enterprise, as needed."

The whole list can be found here. 

May Podcasts

In our May podcast, Virtualpolitik author Elizabeth Losh talks with Chris Gondek about the government's digital rhetoric.  Chris also sorts out the scientific facts about emotional intelligence with Richard D. Roberts, coauthor of What We Know About Emotional Intelligence.   

To listen to this, or any of our other recent interviews, visit our podcast page. 

World Policy Journal Nominated for Utne Award

World Policy Journal  has been nominated for the prestigious 2009 Utne Independent Press Award, which recognizes publications exhibiting "gutsy", in-depth, and dynamic writing and reporting.

Judging is based on issues published in 2008. Winners will be announced at a celebration in Boulder, Colorado, during the Magazine Publishers of America's Independent Magazine Group conference (May 17-19) and published in the July-August issue of the Utne Reader.

 

Celebrate Fresh Pond

Saturday is Fresh Pond Day. For those outside the metropolitan Boston are or unfamiliar with Fresh Pond, it's a natural lake, a Cambridge reservoir, and that city's largest open space.

Still not sure why it's so special worthy of the attention? Fear not — Jill Sinclair explains it all for you. As she details in Fresh Pond: The History of a Cambridge Landscape, the pond — perhaps because it's a natural oasis in a small, dense city that has its share of urban grit — has inspired both fierce loyalty and fierce debate — about the shape of its landscape, the relation of commerce to conservation, and so on.

Here is a taste of Jill's exploration of why the pond inspires the loyalty it does:

It is striking how often Fresh Pond has featured in memoirs and diaries, poems, and drawings: from the myriad reminiscences of nineteenth-century Harvard students who sailed and feasted there, to fond sketches by the young Winslow Homer, to affectionate reminiscences by Catholic schoolgirls who were for a time educated on the shores, and to late twentieth-century pop songs about the adjacent parkway. Fresh Pond emerges from recent history as emblematic of nature, of the past, of memories of childhood and friendship; it is a place viewed with great affection, with a special link to individuals: it is frequently “dear” Fresh Pond...Its location for so long on the periphery, close enough to be known and visited, but not part of the town, has also contributed to the pond’s appeal. It led to its reputation as a retreat and a refuge for the ill, the old, the poor, and the persecuted, and as a haven for the wealthy—and for endangered local wildlife...Today it represents for many the rural character that has otherwise been lost to Cambridge.

So if you're near Cambridge, come by the Pond on Saturday and celebrate this beautiful, multifaceted urban artifact. A list of events is here; more on Jill's book is here.

Blog, Washington edition

OK, we admit, the Washington connection is a little weak in one of our two items. But DC is the home of the Chronicle of Higher Education, in whose Buildings and Grounds blog Scott Carlson expounds today on Vaclav Smil's latest book. As Scott (quite correctly) writes, "who could resist a book with a title like Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years?" He finds it especially relevant to a certain unfolding health event:

A portion of Mr. Smil’s book is especially interesting in light of current events: Of the many catastrophes discussed in the book, one seems to unsettle Mr. Smil more than others: the possibility of an influenza pandemic. “The likelihood of another influenza pandemic during the next 50 years is virtually 100 percent,” Mr. Smil writes, “but quantifying probabilities of mild, moderate or severe events remains largely a matter of speculation because we simply do not know how pathonogenic a new virus will be and what age categories it will preferentially attack.”

Carlson's ultimate judgment is that Global Catastophes is "a book that raises very real possibilities for the future that are both horrifying and yet exhilarating for the challenges they pose."

On a rather lighter note, artnet news brings word of a "Fluxus connection to the White House." Fluxus is the pioneering "intermedia" group that started in the 1960s. One of its founders was Dick Higgins, whose daughter, Hannah Higgins, who's the wife of Joe Reinstein, deputy social security in the Obama Administration. She's also the author of The Grid Book (which is not, despte what artnet says, to be published later this year, but is out now).

Part of the artnews brief metions that Hannah and her family are moving from Chicago - where she previously taught at the University of Illinois - to Washington. Perhaps the most newsworthy tidbit for politics watchers concerns a particular family member: "a Portuguese water dog named Austin, who is slated for a puppy playdate with Bo, the Obama family’s recently adopted First Dog."

Celebrate Indie Book Day

According to the IndieBound website, May 1st has been declared "Buy Indie Day".  The idea is simple: buy a book at an independent bookstore near you.  Any book.  Any independent bookstore. 

They have a great comment section where you can leave a note and describe what you've bought and where you've bought it.  You can RSVP, invite friends and discuss with other indie shoppers on Buy Indie Day's Facebook page, and find an indie bookstore near you on the Indie Store Finder map. If you happen to pick up a MIT Press title, we'd love to hear about it too.  

Happy Shopping!  Happy Reading!