Stanford University Press Blog

The Democratic presidential primary is forcing the country to pay attention to its own sexism and racism, bigotries we have swept under the rug for years. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, Gloria Steinem called sexism “the most restricting force in American life,” reinforced by NYTimes columnist Bob Hubert’s statement, “if there was ever a story that deserved more coverage by the news media, it’s the dark persistence of misogyny in America.” A San Francisco Chronicle op-ed has declared that “the race is now about race,” and the question of whether we are more misogynistic or more racist suddenly becomes of the utmost importance.

In The Difference “Difference” Makes, Deborah Rhode argues that “a central problem for American women is the lack of consensus that there is a significant problem. Gender inequalities in leadership opportunities are pervasive; perceptions of inequality are not.” It will be interesting to see how Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, propelled as it is by her husband’s career, influences this balance: her candidacy is bringing attention to institutionalized and individual misogynies, but her extraordinary chance at becoming President could be used to further dismiss the real obstacles that most women face in assuming leadership.

Despite the 1990s movement, exemplified by Tiger Woods and examined in Making Multiracials by Kimberly DaCosta, to create widespread recognition of multiracial and multiethnic identities, Barack Obama is identified, and appears to self-identify, as African-American. At the same time, he is a figure of potential reconciliation, presenting himself as a symbol that we can all move beyond black and white. Like Clinton, Obama’s position as a political leader is a challenge to the way American society conceives of its minority groups (discussed by Stephen Steinberg in Race Relations).

New Pathways to Fighting Poverty

 Author David Grusky is looking to further strengthen the fight against poverty with the new magazine Pathways. Grusky, a professor of Sociology at Stanford and founding director of its Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality, serves as editor of the magazine. This role is not new to Grusky, as he has edited several books for Stanford University Press including Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics with Stephen L. Morgan and Gary S. Fields (2006) and Poverty and Inequality with Ravi Kanbur (2006), in addition to co-authoring Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men with Maria Charles (2004).  All of his titles have been tremendous additions to SUP’s Studies in Social Inequality series.

Describing the goals of Pathways, Grusky says, "It provides new trend data detailing how some types of inequality are taking off, others are declining, and yet others are stable. It describes which interventions are working and which aren't. And it brings to the public new research that is changing how we understand the sources of and solutions to poverty and inequality."

The magazine has had quite the auspicious, and timely, beginning with its inaugural issue featuring essays from this year's top Democratic presidential nominees: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. The candidates discuss their policies on reducing poverty and revitalizing the economy, discussions that dovetail nicely with the upcoming February 5 primary elections.

Pathways has received press in our area with articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and Stanford News Service. The magazine is published four times a year and is free to readers courtesy of the Elfenworks Foundation.

Némirovsky's Anti-Semitic Scandal

A recent article by Ruth Franklin of The New Republic seeks to shed light on the anti-Semitic controversy surrounding Suite Française author Irène Némirovsky, who died at Auschwitz 60 years before the English translation of her novel hit the New York Times bestseller list. Upon its U.S. release, Suite Française drew comparisons to The Diary of Anne Frank as another great Jewish literary work that was able to survive the trauma of the Holocaust.


Franklin sees this as a false media spin considering Némirovsky’s anti-Semitic past, despite her Russian-Jewish lineage. Franklin cites Jonathan Weiss’s biography Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works (2006) to reinforce this argument, referencing its examples of the author’s closeness with right-wing political circles and publishers. Némirovsky was able to establish a profitable career through writings that depicted Jews in ugly racial stereotypes. When the threat of arrest and deportation became clearer, Némirovsky appealed to her right-wing contacts, contending that she was not one of “the undesirable foreigners” of France. Her husband even championed her anti-Semitic writings in the hopes of gaining protection. Franklin says, “As Weiss’s important and prodigiously researched biography makes clear, Némirovsky was the very definition of a self-hating Jew.”

Franklin analyzes the anti-Semitism found in new, recent translations of Némirovsky’s other works, including David Golder and The Ball, and challenges some critics’ argument that Némirovsky’s characters were representations of how she saw Jews. “…She seems to not have wondered whether there was more to Jewish life than what she saw, or whether what she saw was any different from what the racists and the anti-Semites were seeing.”

It is undeniable that Némirovsky’s death—which occurred not long after her arrest in 1942—was tragic. This fact, coupled with her literary displays of anti-Semitism, brings up questions of how to now approach Suite Française and its uncertain position amongst other literary works born out of the Holocaust. Examining her personal history, as Weiss has done in his thorough biography, may be the first step in answering those questions.

A masterpiece of Kabbalah

This week’s Stanford Report profiles the Zohar project: a collaboration between Stanford University Press and the Pritzker Foundation to bring the fundamental body of Kabbalah literature to the English-speaking world.

Daniel Matt has completed four of a projected dozen volumes of the Zohar’s unique combination of biblical commentary, mysticism, and myth. As the Report describes, the origins of this text are a puzzle: Matt believes that “75 to 80 percent comes from [Castilian Jew] Moses [ben Shem Tov de León], who died in 1305,” although Moses claimed that he was merely translating a second-century manuscript. “‘It matches no Aramaic dialect in the world… it’s amazing.’ Matt said. And the most amazing thing, he adds, is its crazy, invented language that revels in the sounds of strange words.”

The Zohar also reaches some controversial conclusions about the nature of God. In Matt’s words, the Zohar concludes that “humans actualize God by living ethically and spiritually. Human holy actions fulfill God.”

The Report’s article links to some excerpts from Volume IV of the Zohar; additional commentary and excerpts from Volume I can be found on the SUP Zohar page, along with the original Aramaic text Matt’s translation is based upon. You can also sign up to be kept appraised of new developments related to the Zohar.

Ailing Suharto Draws Attention to Indonesia

With former Indonesian President Suharto in unstable condition after suffering multiple organ failure earlier this month, many wonder if he will pass away without penalization for the war atrocities and financial corruption that ran rampant during his rule of Indonesia from 1967-1998. Some speculate that foreign nations—particularly the U.S.—are hesitant to bring him to justice to avoid tense international relations.

The origins of that hesitation may be found in Bradley R. Simpson’s Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968  (forthcoming March 2008), the first comprehensive history of Indonesia-U.S. relations. Simpson examines how and why the U.S. supported the military regime of General Suharto, a crucial juncture in modern Indonesian history that shaped the country's trajectory and is now reflected in the nation's current tenuous transition into democracy.

Other Stanford University Press titles dig further into modern Indonesian history. Edward Aspinall's Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia (2005) chronicles the struggles and success of everyday citizens fighting authoritarianism while M. C. Ricklefs's A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200, Third Edition (2002) looks at the nation's history with a broader perspective.

The Final Decision

This week, the Supreme Court once again revisited the question of the death penalty, this time to determine if the method used by most states, lethal injection, is cruel and unusual.

Dead Certainty by Jennifer Culbert, recently released by Stanford University Press, examines the history of Supreme Court death penalty cases, providing a solid background for understanding the debate currently taking place in the Court. Culbert focuses not on the ethical and moral issues surrounding the death penalty, but rather looks at the Supreme Court’s decisions in these cases to understand how the Justices understand judgment. She finds that the death penalty began to be questioned when the Supreme Court started looking for an external, objective truth to justify each death sentence, as opposed to trusting a jury to weigh the idiosyncrasies of each individual case.

The case currently before the Supreme Court also rests on the search for certainty when we cannot access infallible, external truth: the Court is considering whether the third and final shot in a lethal injection is sometimes unnecessarily and cruelly painful when the second renders inmates unable to signal that they are in pain.

 

Iowa and Beyond

The 2008 Iowa Caucus, held on January 3, surprised many when Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won Iowa's endorsement in the Democratic and Republican nomination fight, respectively, beating out predicted front-runners Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney. So what does this mean for the upcoming election? This question is particularly salient, considering that the January 8th New Hampshire primary yielded nominations for neither of the Iowa winners; they went to Senators Clinton and John McCain.

Christopher C. Hull, author of Grassroots Rules: How the Iowa Caucus Helps Elect American Presidents, has been making the rounds in the press the past few weeks, offering his expertise on this extremely topical issue in Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Huffington Post, among others. Hull emphasizes the influence of grassroots activist-heavy Iowa, a state replete with voters who throw their support to steadfast candidates and discourage the use of mudslinging campaigns and television ad attacks.  According to Hull, the Iowa caucus helps shape which candidates will sweep the New Hampshire primary, the first official stop in determining the presidential nominees. David Glenn points out in Chronicle of Higher Ed that the Hawkeye state has the ability to make or break a candidate as they head to the primaries, just as it did for Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean.

But what are the possible explanations for the discrepancy between the Iowa and New Hampshire results? In Glenn’s Chronicle interview with Hull on January 2, the Grassroots author discusses the unusual circumstances of this year’s caucus: “This is by far the most compressed schedule we’ve had. I tend to agree with those who say that compression is dangerous. It becomes harder to vet candidates. As we cavort toward having what is effectively a national primary, I’m worried. I think we could see something strange happen this time, especially on the Republican side.”