http://blog.dennisfox.net Political and Personal Observations Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:54:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I expected to be relatively un-busy during my four-month stay in Toronto, but I should have known better. Had I been in blogging mode I would have touched on many things: the course I taught at York University, which focused a critical psychology/anarchist lens on societal institutions; other talks I ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/12/29/toronto-and-back/ As usual during long gaps between postings, I've been busy. Most substantively, I've been getting ready to spend the fall semester at York University in Toronto - drafting a tentative syllabus for the seminar I'll be teaching, devising a list of required/optional/recommended books (and reading a few I hadn't gotten ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/07/21/course-prep-other-things/ On an NPR talk show this morning about the usefulness of tomorrow's Barack Obama-Mahmoud Abbas meeting, Juan Cole was skeptical about progress toward a Palestinian state. One caller went on at length calling Cole an anti-Semite for departing from what seemed to her Israel's obviously justified position about, well, just ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/05/27/more-on-israels-democracyjewishness-conundrum-and-my-own/ Thanks to a Fulbright award, I'll be teaching at York University in Toronto for the fall 2009 semester, doing some other talks, and fitting in some Ontario travel. I've only been to Toronto a few times for conferences, so I'm looking forward to more extensive wandering. My seminar, for graduate students ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/05/11/toronto-course-psychology-and-society-in-critical-perspective/ The American Psychological Association's actions since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington have generated swift responses from psychologists objecting to APA's role as government agent. Although I hadn't been an APA member for some time, in October 2001 Isaac Prilleltensky and I wrote a short statement objecting to ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/05/11/questions-for-apa-on-torture-and-more/ I just got back from a memorial for Hilda Silverman, a Boston-area activist who died a year ago at 69. I knew Hilda as a mainstay of the local Jewish peace community, relentlessly working to change inaccurate perceptions about causes and consequences, determined to challenge even those she worked with ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/04/29/hilda-silverman-memorial-with-sandy-tolan/ I neglected to post anything two weeks ago when Shachaf Polakow of Israel's Anarchists Against the Wall came through Boston on a fund-raising tour. (Since Israel has started arresting rather than simply tear-gassing and shooting Israelis and Palestinians engaged in non-violent anti-Occupation efforts, legal costs have escalated beyond $100,000. If ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/03/04/anarchists-against-the-wall-on-tour-on-theory-in-practice/ Last night I went to hear a panel discussion featuring Noam Chomsky, Stephen Walt, Irene Gendzier, and Duncan Kennedy at Boston University's Law School. The central topic was the US role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. All four panelists are critical of US support for Israel; the moderator told us that ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/03/04/duncan-kennedy-on-gaza/ In other areas of my life, the second edition of my co-edited book Critical Psychology: An Introduction has finally arrived in the mail. The first edition, which I put together with my longtime critpsy collaborator Isaac Prilleltensky, was published in 1997. It's still in print, but Sage, the publisher, finally ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/02/27/second-edition-of-critical-psychology-an-introduction/ 1. An article about today's election on the Jerusalem Post website: In Meretz, veteran politicians hoped [to...] re-energize the party. With a predicted four seats in the Knesset according to the exit polls, [Haim] Oron ... pledged that Meretz would "return to be a central factor in the establishment of a ... http://blog.dennisfox.net/index.php/archives/2009/02/10/selected-quotes-israeli-election-democracy-1920s-history/