Today In History: President Harding condemns lynching, Oct. 21, 1921

From: Politico

On this day in 1921, President Warren Harding delivered the first speech by a president condemning the lynching of blacks by Southerners. Harding spoke out against these illegal hangings — committed primarily by white supremacists — in Birmingham, Ala., amid increasing racism and racial violence throughout the Deep South.

Large population shifts in the wake of World War I had raised racial tensions throughout much of the country. As the 1920 Republican presidential nominee, Harding had advocated civil rights for blacks, despite evidence of wide opposition among white voters. At the time, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reported that lynchings claimed the lives of, on average, two blacks every week.

In Birmingham, Harding voiced support for anti-lynching bills pending in Congress. Legislation seeking to curb the practice was initially sponsored in 1918 by Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-Mo.); Sen. Charles Curtis (R-Kan.) sponsored a companion measure in the Senate. They called for $10,000 fines to be levied against any county where a lynching occurred, for the prosecution of negligent state and county officials in federal courts and for the lodging of federal murder charges against participants.

Although the House approved the bill in 1922, a phalanx of Southern Democrats mounted a successful filibuster against it in the Senate. Efforts to enact similar legislation languished on Capitol Hill until the 1930s, when Sens. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Edward Costigan (D-Colo.) took up the cause. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, refused to back their bill, fearing it would cost him Southern electoral support and jeopardize his 1936 reelection bid.

It took 42 more years for Congress to enact broad civil rights legislation that, among other provisions, protected blacks against officially sanctioned discrimination. In 2005, the Senate passed a resolution formally apologizing for its repeated failure to enact anti-lynching bills.

How The Bizarre World of Middle East Studies Messes Up U.S. Foreign Policy

From:Yid with Lid

Engaging in Middle East studies, as Lawrence says about putting your hand in a flame, hurts. The trick "is not minding that it hurts" and trying to do a good job of it.

I'm trying to understand the history of Middle East studies in some of its bizarre twists and turns. This has become an important issue now that U.S. (and European) policies in the region have become so ignorant, ridiculous, and even suicidal. Why is the analysis of the region so badly done?

Let me begin with a story I've never told before. One day when I was a graduate student at Georgetown University about 35 years ago, I was sitting in the library. Professor Carroll Quigley walked up to me. Quigley was the best professor in the university, a living legend.

Bill Clinton later said that Quigley was his favorite teacher. I understand why and he really taught me a lot also. All honor to his memory. Remind me to tell you some day why he was so great and how he taught me to be a proper political analyst and historian.

He was a European historian who taught a remarkable--then mandatory--two-semester course on Western Civilization. The lack of courses like that are one of the main reasons for the decline of universities in America today. Quigley had no interest whatsoever in the Middle East.

At that moment, I was honored that he'd even speak to me though I'd worked hard in his modern history class and was prouder of my "A" there than any other grade I received in college. He told me that he'd been participating in the meetings to establish a new Center on Contemporary Arab Studies.

Referring to the academics dealing with the Middle East at Georgetown, Quigley remarked, "They certainly don't like your people." He went on to explain that their big selling idea as a way to get money from Arab governments was that if they called the project "contemporary Arab studies" they'd never need to mention Israel, except to say how awful it was.

To be fair to Georgetown, its president, Father Timothy Healy S. J., returned a donation from the Libyan government because of that regime's repressive nature. One of my professors who had held the endowed chair paid for by Muammar Qadhafi, responded by calling Healy a "Jesuit Zionist."