I know the world of universities and research is pretty small in the greater scheme of things, and therefore not discussed much on the TV news or in newspapers. As a result, it may not be obvious how much Federal policies since 9/11 have impacted research and higher education.

For example, consider this comment from a discussion list regarding a venue for the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference:

Canada as a north American venue has a lot of appeal for many of our members for various reasons, one of the more important ones being visa issues (most say it's easier to get visas for Canada than the US, and also some are uncomfortable with the fingerprinting procedure in the US and don't want to do that).

The AoIR will probably not meet in the US next time. This is happening for other conferences, especially in the newer fields, such as Internet Research.

Put that together with new restrictions on access to scientific and technical information, new barriers for students and researchers from other countries coming to the US, cutbacks in support for research at both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, gag orders on scientists (as we saw last month at NASA), distortions of scientific findings (as in the global warming case), and politicizing of scientific review committees. The result is a negative climate for research and higher education. The impact is already evident to researchers and those in higher education, and the impact on the larger economy is beginning.

For the European Union, this is a terrific opportunity to surpass the US. They've already initiated a major new research program openly promoted as a way to take advantage of the US policies and to lure the most promising young researchers away from the US. It's also opened doors for India, China, and other countries.

There are of course national security arguments made for each of these new policies. But there is even stronger evidence that they actually weaken national security. For example, the clampdown on access to scientific and technical information is making it harder to develop responses to biological warfare. It's also very hard to understand how losing our leadership position in science and technology will make us stronger.

What's perhaps most worrisome is that muzzling people and information in this way means that it is increasingly more difficult to have open debate about the worth of the policies. As with the Patriot Act or the Detainee Treatment Act, the new laws come with criticism-proof provisions.

Someday, we should ask whether the effort to protect what we value is actually destroying it.

As you know, two of the major functions of museums are education and entertainment. David Leake, who is director of the Staerkel Planetarium (and a former student), asked an interesting question about planetariums, which are akin to museums, or include museums, depending on how you look at it:

Why do some planetariums focus on education while others focus on entertainment?

Before reading what he found, you have to know that astronomers study circles. The objects--stars, planets, galaxies, etc--are roughly circular and so are the ways they move in orbits. Diameter then becomes a very important thing to know. So, for example the sun is 100 times the diameter of the earth and as a result 1 million times as massive.

It turns out that planetariums are also circular. As their diameter doubles, their volume and hence cost go up 8-fold. Dave found that planetariums smaller than 75 feet in diameter are low-budget operations, which focus on education. They open up as needed, host school groups, and have programs designed to teach. Above 75 feet they shift to a focus on entertainment. There are high-interest shows (Harry Potter recently) with stiff admission charges.

Dave's study (a masters thesis) is so beautiful, not only because it provides a plausible and empirically-supported account of a major divide in the field, but also because the account itself (in terms of diameter) is so well-suited to the object of study.

The closest analogy I can come up with for other types of museums is that museums for young people focus on both education and entertainment. They're all about exploring what's new, especially through all the senses. As the audience ages the museums gradually shift the emphasis to preserving artifacts. There's less attention to employing all the senses, and more on conveying the needed information. Is that because the older folks become more conscious of preservation? Or have their senses dulled, so they just want to get the answer in the least amount of time?

Last Saturday, Stephen appeared on WTNH TV (New Haven, Connecticut) representing the Yale Russian Chorus. You can see the story and video online . This was to promote a benefit concert called "Songs of Hope", on January 29, for the Connecticut Bridge of Hope Summer Program for Russian Orphans.

The program brings older Russian Orphans to Connecticut in the summer in hopes of finding their "forever families". The children spend about one month with a host family learning about family life, attending local day camps, and participating in a typical American summer experience.

On October 21, while I was in Sweden, I spent a day in Lycksele. There, I learned about an innovative organization called Akademi Norr from Regis Cabral, their EU coordinator. The organization emerged as the result of cooperation among 13 municipalities in four counties in northern Sweden. It initiates, coordinates, and implements higher education programs and courses for people in the north, in order to meet needs for both education and development.

Each of the 13 municipalities has its own learning center, typically housed with the community library. Akademi Norr works with the center, a local industry, community members, and a university to devise a specialized higher education program. The center offers meeting spaces, ICTs, local tutoring, and other services. Their program shares many similarities with the GSLIS Chicago program in LIS education.

For example, I visited one of these learning centers, Lycksele lärcentrum. Most of their website is in Swedish, but you can see a little bit more in English on education in Lycksele. They've set up several programs. One currently underway leads to a BS in Engineering, with a focus on GIS; another is for a BS in Nursing, with an emphasis on ICTs.

Students who have completed these programs have easily found jobs in their region, because the program is designed from the start to make that possible. This is especially important in a region with strong ties to the land and community. The program is also designed to meet the needs of local industries, which might otherwise have dfficulty finding qualified workers in such a sparsely-populated area (3.8 people/sq-mi in Lapland versus 223.4 people/sq-mi in Illinois)

The staff in the Lycksele lärcentrum as well as at Akademi Norr are very open to having people visit or study what they are doing. There are possibilities for funding through iorganizations such as the American-Scandinavian Foundation . We could learn a great deal about community work, meaningful learning, ICTs in education, and more, through a better understanding of the learning centers programs.

I've been selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists award to Sweden, during the second half of October. My first week will be at the Department of Informatics at Umeå University. I'll visit with Ulf Hedestig, who works in computer support for collaborative learning, and Victor Kaptelinin, who works in human computer interaction and activity theory. Victor is from Russia and had worked with A. N. Leont'ev at Vygotsky's institute in Moscow, but he also has strong interests in John Dewey's work. I'll be giving a major talk on learning there, as well as leading a discussion on the Schools of Information movement in the US.

During the second week, I'll go to the IT-University at Göteborg, where they've been using my situated evaluation approach. I'll see Marisa Ponti, who works on in the area ICT and Learning, as well as others. There's a half-day seminar, "Supporting Distributed Collaboration in Science: Reflections from Experiences", which I'll present along with Diane Sonnenwald, from the University College of Borås. Later that week, I'll teach a two-day short course on Pragmatic Design of Information and Communication Technologies, and then on Friday give a lecture on inquiry-based learning.

On Tuesday of that week, I'll go to the Swedish School of Library & Information Science in Borås to give talks on our distributed knowledge project and the information school movement. In addition to Diane Sonnenwald, I hope to meet with there with Olof Sundin, who has done recent work on pragmatism and sociocultural theory, and also with Louise Limberg, who work in information literacy. She and I are both involved with an information literacy project directed by Eero Sormunen in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland.

Somewhere in there, I plan to teach my classes in Champaign using Flashmeeting (web-based, video conferencing). We may have links from the various Swedish universities in addition to the class in LIS 109 and me.

[presentation notes]

LEEP

• online professional development program
• library & information science
• 10 units, leading to a masters degree
• ~100 Ss/year

challenges

• low expertise, high resistance among Ss and Ts
• low-end equipment
• courses incompatible with online

outcomes

• 100% retention
• faculty choose
• now larger than on-campus
• students around world
• model for others
• WISE consortium (13 unis)

approach

• low-end tech
• tech support
• faculty buy-in
• cohort model
• coordination with library, advising, etc
• blended learning
• mix sync & async

inquiry model

• appropriate tech for each course
• participatory design
• diversity as a resource
• Learning, culture and community in online education: Research and practice
• LEEP Virtual Reunion

  ---

It's true. I've been in denial for too long. I kept deluding myself by saying that I was just "looking at the evidence" or "thinking." Now I know that it is time to face reality and admit that I have become an internationalst.

I'd like to blame my year abroad, but that's just shirking the repsonsibility. In fact, it wasn't just talking to non-Americans (shall I say "un-Americans"?) that caused the problem. It was also the reading, the examination of data, and, dare I say it, looking at history.

The warning signs were there. I began to ask why the US, the richest nation on earth, lagged far behind others in helping to alleviate world poverty. Figures like .7% (the world goal for development aid) and .015% (the US record) began to gnaw at me. I read about the Arctic ice cap melting faster than anyone had predicted, and then wondered why the US failed to agree to the Kyot o treaty. And of course, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the illegal detentions, the torture, the lies, and the inability to do anything about the root causes of terrorism all made me lose faith in the absolute rightness of the US versus the rest of the world.

Back in the US now, I see signs of hope. The local newspaper and television news show me the path back to health, when "world news" means "events that involve Americans, especially music or movie stars." A good dose of shopping malls and lots of time spent driving should help, too, but I realize now that I have to seek real change within myself.

I want to find a chapter of Internationalists Anonymous. I want to tell my sad story and then work with a support group to return to the fold. What future can there be for me with all these impure thoughts, this questioning of the self-evident rightness of everything the US does? Perhaps, with some concerted effort and ample time, I can rid myself of this dreaded internationalism.

As an experiment to test iLabs version 3, and also to satisfy a long-standing impulse of mine to resurrect Quill, I created a Quill iLab http://ilabs.inquiry.uiuc.edu/ilab/quill. This combines information that used to be on basic html pages regarding the book (\"Electronic Quills\"), and new interactive features, which emulate what Quill did on Apple II computers many years ago. The example texts are taken directly from the book, and represent examples actually written during the Quill project.

I was pleased to see that iLabs could do much of what Quill did, and in a much easier way than writing in Pascal on the Apple, with its 64KB memory. I was also reminded that we had some good ideas for promoting writing and collaboration, even with that primitive equipment.

Check it out and let me know what you think. If you\'d like to be authorized as a member so you can see how entering texts work, just let me know.

I used to imagine the bird of peace as a small white dove with an olive leaf in its mouth, like the one Noah sent out to see whether the waters had abated. But now I think it's really the big city pigeon, which some people call the "rat with feathers."

This change of image started when I heard about the improbable scheme of Bertrand Delanoë, currently the Mayor of Paris. Delanoë recognized a problem: Pigeons are messing on the beautiful statues and buildings of Paris, costing huge piles of euros and displeasing both residents and visitors. But there are pigeon-lovers as well, many of whom risk fines to share their day-old bread with the hungry birds. Is there any way to recognize the divergent needs of pigeons, pigeon-haters and pigeon-lovers?

The Mayor proposed something, along the lines of his beach on the Seine or the ice skating rink 95 meters up the Eiffel Tower. I learned later that people in Basel, and then throughout Germany, had this idea also, but initally it seemed crazy to me. I'm afraid that when I talked with others about it they attributed that craziness to me as well.

The idea was to build a home for the pigeons, a pigeonnier, where they could live comfortably and safely, and even be fed by the pigeon-lovers. This would preserve "the only sign of biodiversity in the city center." In return, the pigeons would not mess the statues and they'd undergo population control. The money saved on cleaning statues would pay for the €40,000 construction and €9,000 annual maintenance.

Some people asked rude questions, such as "what will make the pigeons stay near their houses?" or "how can their population be controlled?" Yet the pigeonnier had been built and more were promised. I had to see for myself.

I set out for the Place de la Porte de Vanves in the XIVème arrondissement. This is in the SW of Paris, near the Périphérique, so it meant a good walk, and as I've discovered many times in Paris, a walk that would take on its own character.

Along the way, I stopped briefly in the Jardin de Luxembourg. On the west side of the garden, near rue Guynemer, I looked for a while at the bronze model of the Statue of Liberty by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. The statue itself was given by France to the United States in honor of our first centennial. Next to the model was an oak tree, planted to commemorate the solidarity of the French and Americans in response to 9/11. These made me ponder the deep intertwining of French and US histories, as well as the current political divisions. But I couldn't dewll on that, as I had a goal—to see the pigeons in their new home.

Walking a bit south of the garden, I came upon the unusual sight of a man getting into a late-model car and driving away. What caught my eye was that he wore sandals and a brown robe with a rope around the waist. He was a Capuchin monk coming out a monastery, next to Notre-Dame de la Paix, at 6, rue Boissonade. The image of old and new, religious and secular, somehow seemed relevant to my ponderings on the French/American relations, to accommodating and understanding differences, especially next to the "our lady of peace" church, but again, I had a goal to pursue, and couldn't afford to linger there.

Walking along rue Schoelcher, I passed Montparnasse Cemetery. There were plaques describing Victor Schoelcher (1804-1893), best known for the decree of April 27, 1843 abolishing slavery in the French colonies. Reading more about him, I learned of how he became the most well-informed French person on the Caribbean colonies, and of his efforts to show how sugar production could be continued without relying on slaves. He helped the French people see that their interests in peace and well-being were not counter to justice, but in fact depended upon it. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

But I moved on, not relinquishing my goal of seeing the pigeons in their house. At the town hall of the XIVème arrondissement, at 2, place Ferdinand Brunot, I stopped briefly at one of those innumerable monuments to the "enfants mort pour la france" (the young people who died for France). If I were ever to lose a loved one to war, I would certainly want to believe that it was for something noble, but I wondered, especially having just visited the battlefields of Verdun, whether all those deaths were really for France, or instead, for greed, stupidity, injustice, the inability to see from the perspective of others, and all the other vices that foster wars and violence.

Still moving toward my goal, I walked along rue Didot to the Cité Croix Rouge. This is a reconsturction of the Broussais charity hospital, which is to become "un grand projet humanitaine du couer du XIVème" and "un lieu d'échanges ouvert à tous." This new Red Cross center will be open to all and serve 1000 people a day as a hospital and education center. It seemed like a grand and noble project, but I couldn't avoid seeing the graffitti and tags marring the large banner proclaiming the project. I wondered about whether the "writers" were the intended beneficiaries of the Cité Croix Rouge and about the difficulties of working for the justice that Schoelcher and others saw as so necessary to civil society.

On other walks, I've focused on architecture or art, music, history, science, the clothes, or most often, the ordinary people on the street. This one presented me with images of peace and justice, which I hadn't intended. I simply wanted to see the folly of the pigeon house.

Nevertheless, I reached my goal, and was able to see it in a way I hadn't expected. The pigeonnier was set in a small park, with benches and trees. Pigeon-lovers could watch the pigeons and even feed them there. Pigeon-haters could stay away, or perhaps learn that pigeons aren't so bad when they have a place to live without harming others. The pigeons seemed happy, too. I also realized that the Place de la Porte de Vanves had become a more humane place. Softening the nearby railroad tracks, construction projects, and its general gritty urban character, the little park offered a hint of the natural beauty and gentility I had felt earlier that day in the Jardin de Luxembourg. I learned from the Pigeon Control Advisory Service that killing pigeons simply doesn't work; they breed too fast, and attempting to kill them all simply helps them evolve into stronger, faster, smarter birds. I don't know whether providing comfortable, modern homes, with ample food and water, perch sites, and a garden nearby will work either, but I saw that there was something grand, not just foolish, in the idea.

Jane Addams showed that tragedy lay in "believing that antagonism is real," in assuming that a gain for one must mean a loss for the other. In contrast, the pigeonnier represents an attempt to realize what she called "affectionate interpretation," to see the world as others see it, and thereby, achieve progress toward a common outcome. Pigeons need food and water, and a safe place to live and rear their young. But they don't need to mess up the statues. Similarly, pigeon-lovers, pigeon-haters, Parisians, and visitors each have their own needs and interests, which need to be understood and accepted, rather than quashed. The pigeonnier and its park is a common good, which is based on interpreting each party in an "affectionate" way. In fact, no one's interest is served either by killing pigeons or by indiscriminate feeding.

The final story of the Paris pigeonniers remains to unfold. But regardless of the outcome, it stands as a lesson for larger conflicts. Many people assume that their interests are served by military force or by building walls, indiscriminately imposing their interests over those of others (consider US prisons, immigration policies, the war in Iraq, etc.). The tragedy here is not just that injustices are done, that we commit these injustices on ourselves.

Today, I saw the monument to Aristide Briand on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, where on August 27, 1928, fifteen nations signed the Pact of Paris, or Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war. Briand won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926, just five years before Jane Addams did.

There's a story that he "attended a dinner in Geneva where the guests were given menu cards on which was printed a cartoon depicting the statesmen of the world smashing a statue of Mars while Briand, alone, talked to the god of war trying to convince him to commit suicide. The cartoon caught not only Briand's main objective in public life - the elimination of war in international relations - but also his method: his penchant for personal diplomacy, his renowned persuasiveness, and his habit of attacking the heart of a problem rather than its symbols or symptoms" (see his bio on the Nobel Prize site ).

The first article of the Kellogg-Briand pact states: "The High Contracting Parties solemly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another." Should the US now formally renounce its signing of the pact or just pretend that what it's doing in Afghanistan and Iraq isn't war?

Has the US abandoned its role as moral leader in the world today? At a time when many people and countries actually look to the US as a model, we seem to have chosen the low road on many issues.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has closely monitored foreign aid for years. They use the ratio of "official development assistance" to "gross national income" as a way to account for the different sizes of economies (for example, Iceland vs United Kingdom). They also distinguish between developing countries, such as Indonesia, whose GDP is almost as high as Austria's, but can't be expected to contribute nearly as much given its huge population and less developed economy.

Among developed countries, the average ratio is .41, that is, about four tenths of one percent of gross national income. Around 1980 the UN set seven tenths as a goal, but Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden are still the only countries to meet the target. Three other countries have given firm dates: Belgium by 2010; Ireland by 2007; and France by 2012. Norway is the most generous, at .92. There's a wide range, with the US at the very bottom, .14. The US has made no pledge to reach the UN target, and as far as I can see, barely acknowledges it exists.

This is all on top of the facts that much aid is pledged but never delivered, 2/3 of US aid goes to just Egypt and Israel, much of the aid is tied to military needs or with strings to US companies, more money flows from poor to rich nations than the other way around, and first world trade subsidies dwarf even the seven tenths target.

I used to think that the US made up in private donations for what it failed to do officially. But the evidence I've seen says we do even worse in the private sector. Norwegians, for example, give at five times the rate Americans do.

Now, President Bush's Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) proposal, actually works against sustainable development. it abandons the idea of helping people learn how to fish. Instead, it holds out fish to starving people in return for their compliance with US strategic and financial interests.

As I'm sure you know, on February 18, 2004, a group of 60 prominent scientists issued a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking", which expressed concern over the Bush administration's misuse or suppression of science in areas such as environment, health, and nuclear weapons. Signers included 20 Nobel laureates and scientists from a broad spectrum of political views. When the statement was released, Russell Train, a lifelong Republican, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford said "this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration." The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a companion 37-page report detailing practices such as censorship of scientific documents, rewriting to distort the evidence, packing scientific panels, and dismissing panelists who arrived at the wrong conclusions. Since then, there have been numerous incidents showing that these practices are continuing.

This issue seems absolutely central to the GSLIS mission to promote access for all to reliable information. At the level of National policy, open access to the best information we can obtain is essential in every area and the wanton distortion of evidence undermines effective governance. I've signed the statement for those reasons, but also because I believe that manipulation of information in this way is a crucial element in the erosion of democracy.

A closely-related issue is the large-scale removal of scientific and information from the public domain.. There is a National Academies of Science report on this "The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain: Proceedings of Symposium". (I have a paper copy as well). That report, by the way, took an entire year to come out (compared to the usual 4-5 months); the extra time was most likely for security review. That's consistent with an environment in which the CIA can mark as "classified" its report on the National Research Council meeting on scientific openness (held in Washington, DC on January 23-24, 2003).

If you'd like to sign the statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," or to read more about the issue, just start with the update message below or follow the links at http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/. You can also see the Bush administration's April 2 response.

I knew that the iLabs timeline tool was useful for the Learning Technologies Timeline where I wanted both the format of a timeline and collaborative construction of it. Rajeev has taken that to a new level with his timelines for Dewey, Addams, and Chicago.

It wasn't much to go from there to see the timeline tool as a way to present a roadmap for a project or to make an agenda for a meeting. And recently I realized that it's also a way to make a syllabus for those who think the syllabus tool is too complex or offers too many options.

I didn't see initially that it was also a blog, if I simply sorted by newest first. It's also a lab notebook with spaces for regular notes, links to data, automatic dating, etc.

Dave and Rajeev helped me see that it's a roster for a project or a class, especially helpful if it includes photos.

Now, I'm seeing that it's a bulletin board. Each instantiation of a timeline can be a separate forum, and individual postings are entries in that forum, which can then be sorted by dates or titles of the postings. Of course it doesn't thread messages...

Do each of the iLabs tools have this multiple use character?

The next DIME meeting will be held on

Saturday, March 27, 10 am - 4 pm
Barkstall Elementary in Champaign

DIME is the group which Jack Easley and Bernadine Stake started 20+ years ago. It has continued with twice-yearly meetings ever since. This meeting starts with dinner at my house on Friday, then meets all day Saturday, and another dinner Saturday night. People talk informally about their current work, whatever that might be--a cool teaching idea, a book they read, a puzzling thing a student did, or evaluation of an online course.

See the article Jack and I wrote about DIME.

On August 27 the earth and Mars will pass just 34.6 million miles apart. Mars will appear 58 times brighter than it did on January 1. As Francis Reddy points out, the last time this happened, Neanderthals flourished and humans had not yet made it to Australia.

If you paste \"34,649,589\" into Google, you\'ll get to a bunch of sites on this, including Celestial Delights Online, which has a beautiful poster you can download and an animation showing how the image of Mars will change.

The Community Inquiry Lab Builder provides a way to create a web site for a class, group, project, or community. It includes Inquiry Page tools, such as Inquiry Units, and a Document Center for group writing projects.

A Community Inquiry Laboratory (CIL) is a place where members of a community come together to develop shared capacity and work on common problems. Community emphasizes support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge that is connected to people\'s values, history, and lived experiences. Inquiry points to support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement. Laboratory indicates a space and resources to bring theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner. A CIL is most importantly a concept, not a technology in the narrow sense, but it may be supported through a website and other tools for communication.

Today, April 9, there will be an attempt at the world\\\'s largest lesson. The UN\\\'s Literacy Decade has just begun and today they want people all over the world to teach a lesson about literacy, which focuses on facts such as that nearly a billion adults are illiterate, most non-literate people are women, and 100 million children don\\\'t even go to school. They hope to have thousands of students thinking about these issues all on the same day. The idea of record setting seems a little silly, but the campaign for global literacy is very serious, addressing a problem that stands in the way of solving almost any problem one can name, whether that\\\'s about healthcare, the environment, economic development, social welfare, or conflict resolution.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. —Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

During and immediately after World War I, the US under President Woodrow Wilson cracked down on immigrants, radical labor, and war dissidents. There was remarkably little oppostion to this assault on civil liberties. People who questioned the President risked having their own patriotism questioned. Many people felt that criticism of the President was tantamount to criticizing the country as a whole, or was even harmful to the Nation.

There was a feeling that people should show their patriotism by voicing unqualified support for the President and his actions, especially in a time of war or with the threat of hostile international movements. In response, a former President, Teddy Roosevelt wrote this in one of his columns in the Kansas City Star (May 7, 1918).

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Criticism includes the identification of \\"good conduct\\" as well as bad. Those who find a President\\\'s actions to be honorable and good for the country should certainly voice their support. But as Teddy Roosevelt wisely pointed out, it is \\"treasonable to the American public\\" not to question the President when his actions are seen to be harmful. Most people today applaud Roosevelt\\\'s articulation of how criticism is a requirement of patriotism, not just a right, of citizens in a democracy. But do we apply his words to our own times? Or do we expect that all good Americans should express unqualified support for the President?

My book, Literacy in the information age: Inquiries into meaning making with new technologies, just came out. You can read about it at the International Reading Association Online Bookstore. It\'s listed under \"new books\".

Stephen Pelletiere raises important questions in his NY Times Op-Ed piece, A War Crime or an Act of War?: Is the war against Iraq all about oil? Did Iraq gas the Kurds in Halabja? Why is the US intent on war in the first place?

Here\'s an excerpt from an important recent article in The American Prospect: Shelf Life: Librarians, liberals with backbone, by Christopher Hayes

The sedate shushers of your childhood have stepped into the political arena, and they\'ve emerged as one of the most vital and effective progressive forces in the country. Over the past several years, librarians, and their professional governing body, the American Library Association (ALA), have been behind some of the most significant civil-liberties battles in the country — from the fight over the Communications Decency Act (which the Supreme Court struck down as the result of a lawsuit brought by the ALA and the American Civil Liberties Union) to the controversy over the USA PATRIOT Act (which the ALA sharply criticized in a recent resolution) to the question of whether to strengthen copyright restrictions on digital media (which the ALA opposes).

From No Iraq Attack: An Open Letter

Naturally the common people don\'t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.\"

Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, 1946.

Another quote from Martin Luther King, which seems especially a propos today:

In the days ahead we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask, \'Why are there forty million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence? Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God\'s military agent on earth...? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?

See Where do we go from here? Chaos or community?

The web site for No Iraq Attack: An Open Letter was \"accidentally\" deleted by the web hosting company, but it\'s back up again. It contains an open letter, which I\'ve signed along with thousands of other academics.

I would be converted to a religion of grass.
Sleep the winter away and rise headlong each spring.
Sink deep roots.
Conserve water.
Respect and nourish your neighbors and never let trees gain the upper hand.
Such are the tenets and dogmas.
As for the practice — Grow lush in order to be devoured or caressed, stiffen in sweet elegance, invent startling seeds — these also make sense.
Bow beneath the arm of fire.
Connect underground.
Provide.
Provide.
Be lovely and do no harm.

by Louise Erdich

The Chronicle: 8/2/2002
By Siva Vaidhyanathan

Let\'s pretend that a journal has just published your harshly negative review of a book in your field. In this review, you quote short passages from the book, confident that the long-accepted concept of \"fair use\" enables you to make even unwelcome use of copyrighted material for purposes of criticism.
\"But a week or so after the electronic version of the review appears on the publication\'s Web site, the editors inform you that it violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that they are removing it. You are welcome to respond. You are free to argue that the use of the copyrighted quotes falls under fair use. But the publication is under no obligation to accept your defense. So you publish the review on your own Web page. But you soon discover that all of the major Web search engines have removed your site from their indexes.

UI Scientists Head Back to School [article in the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette]
"Students at Danville High School built their own molecules last year.
"Obviously, this is the kind of thing you can't do with a textbook. Not surprisingly, it doesn't yield typical textbook answers from the kids, which are more likely to be a recitation of facts from the book than a real understanding of how molecules work, says Shelley Barker, a Danville biology teacher and department chair."

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it... Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr., \\"Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?\\", 1967

Last September I was struck by what seemed to be universal support for the US government actions against terrorism. It seemed to me that many of these actions were unlikely to achieve their stated goals and might even be counterproductive. The pain I felt and saw around me only heightened my concern that these actions weren\\\'t addressing the problem.

>When I questioned these actions, a common response was \\"but, we have to do something!\\" My feeling then, and now, was not to doubt that some action was needed, but that the US response was both wrong-headed in many ways, and not nearly enough. Even the idea of a \\"war on terror\\" seemed to reflect a lack of understanding of what terrorism is, how it arises, and the opportunities to do something about it.

I jotted down then a set of actions, which I thought would actually hold more hope of reducing terrorism. In an effort to keep this relatively brief, I hope I didn\\\'t make the items too cryptic. It\\\'s a very incomplete list; I might add tolerance education, anti-racism, comparative religions, health care, libraries and schools, infrastructure development, and a number of other things, but doing even what\\\'s listed below would be a start. I\\\'d welcome any questions, reactions, suggestions.

Are bombings and restriction of civil liberties all we can do to combat terrorism? Here are a dozen other ideas for things the USA could be doing, none of which are being implemented today:

1. Educate: Institute major formal and informal education programs aimed at global understanding: history that is more than European and American experiences; investigations of the relations among globalization, new technologies, and economic development; dissemination of scholarship on world religions, economies, and cultures. Our lack of understanding makes it difficult to combat terrorism, and worse, serves as fuel for the hatred behind it.
2. Establish proactive diplomacy: Concentrate on improved relations with among others, Muslim and Arab countries and peoples, not only when oil interests are concerned.
3. Stop arms sales: Reduce, if not eliminate, global arms production and sales. The US supplies over half of the new weapons in the world today, and 2/3 of those sold to developing countries (see http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2001/09/sjn0109d.html).
4. Cooperate with the international community: Become a full partner in international efforts to improve the environment, reduce disease, and protect human rights. The US go-it-alone approach after 9/11 is exactly what infuriates many around the world. Very few of those people would condone, or even consider, terrorist acts, but the response to terrorism would be greatly aided if the US were viewed more as a partner, and less as an overlord.
5. Support democracy: Establish a priority of supporting democratic governments and democracy movements. Where in the Middle East have we done that? Where in Africa? Asia? the Americas? All too often, the US sides with autocratic regimes, thus allying itself with the enemy of ordinary people.
6. Alleviate poverty: Poverty, especially in contrast to conspicuous consumption, provides a fertile ground, if not justification, for a violent response. The US has the lowest percentage of GDP going to foreign aid of any industrialized nation in the world, currently 1/7 of the already low OECD target (see http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp). What counts as foreign aid rarely goes to the areas of greatest need and allocations are often earmarked for buying military equipment from US manufacturers.
7. Open dialogues: The opportunities for communication across countries, religions, and ethnicities, or even within communities, are limited by governments and the concentration of media control in a few corporations. The US could lead the way in promoting new and improved channels for communication, especially for groups that have little voice today.
8. Conserve: The US foreign policy is inordinately shaped by our dependence on foreign oil. Even modest conservation efforts would reduce that dependence and allow a focus on other considerations for the long-term interests; this, in addition to the beneficial environmental effects.
9. Improve literacy: Most people in every region of the world are against violence and seek similar goals related to family, culture, economic survival, and personal fulfillment, but their participation in decision-making is limited, because they lack the basic literacy needed for written communication and access to information. The US possesses the tools and resources to have an enormous, positive impact on world literacy development, which would, in turn, facilitate democratic and economic development, and lessen the support for terrorist responses to desperate conditions.
10. Resolve conflicts: Not every conflict can be resolved easily, but the US has the stature, the political and economic clout, and in many cases the neutrality to play a major role in resolving conflicts before they become disasters. In Kashmir, Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor, Sudan, and many other regions, we could engage as mediators and perhaps lessen the violence. Very often, conflicts far away are treated as irrelevant to USA interests, until they become all-too-relevant and nearly impossible to address.
11. Protect the rights of women: When women\\\'s rights to health care, education, and political participation are ensured, most societies show economic development, population control, reduced disease, and reduced violence. Aside from the intrinsic justice issue, culturally-sensitive support for progress in women\\\'s rights will also protect against terrorism. In the long run, this will do far more than hiring more armed guards.
12. Learn languages: It is difficult to do any of the items above without full communication, attentive to the nuances of culture and politics. The US educational system, which strives for monolingual learning, is swimming against history. Although English is used widely in the world today, there is evidence that other spoken languages are growing faster than English and writing in the thousands of world languages is expanding with the support of new digital technologies.

Check out the new collaborative bibliography. It builds on work of Jun Wang and is maintained by Xueqing Jiang and Steven Poulakos.