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December 6, 2002
Front-Page
News
Domestic Dispute
Politics professor Chris Pyle is a frequent contributor to op-ed
pages with his thoughts on civil liberties and the war on terror.
His latest piece, in the November 20 Hartford Courant,
attacked a new proposal through which the military would monitor
the computer traffic of ordinary citizens. The Mount Holyoke
News also ran the piece. Pyle wrote, “The Pentagon is
planning to use computers to investigate hundreds of thousands
of law-abiding Americans. Why? On the odd chance one might be
a terrorist. The person in charge of this new dragnet? John M.
Poindexter, the former national security adviser who secretly
sold weapons to Middle Eastern terrorists in the 1980s and, as
a result, was convicted of defrauding the U.S. government, lying
to Congress and destroying evidence.”
Getting Notices
Sociology professor Richard Moran’s new book, Executioner’s
Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention
of the Electric Chair, continues to garner positive attention.
In the November 25 issue of Forbes magazine, writer Susan
Adams calls the book “morbidly fascinating.” And, writing
for the Knight Ridder chain, J. R. Labbe calls Moran’s book,
in part a study of how Edison tried to use electrocution to undermine
business rival Westinghouse, “a fascinating look at the lengths
gone to by one nineteenth-century magnate to ruin another.”
Moran’s recent reading at the Odyssey was on C-SPAN’s
Book TV this past weekend.
Giving Thanks
Sohail Hashmi, Associate Professor of International Relations
on the Alumnae Foundation, was quoted in a November 23 New
York Times article examining the ways in which a variety of
people express their thanks at Thanksgiving. That the holiday
this year fell during Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight
hours, is “a felicitous conjunction,” Hashmi tells the
Times. Ramadan “serves for Muslims many of the same
purposes of Thanksgiving: giving thanks with family and friends
for the many blessings we enjoy, sharing with people who are truly
in need.” Hashmi was recognized by the Times as a
professor “who has published widely on Islamic ethics of
war and peace.”
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