I got this email from the powers-that-be at Georgetown yesterday:As part of his official visit to the U.S., His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales will be attending a seminar on Faith and Social Responsibility at Georgetown with academic and faith leaders from across the nation on [xxx].The seminar is unable to accommodate additional participants but members of the campus community interested in seeing the arrival and departure of His Royal Highness are welcome to do so in [xxx]. For his arrival please be in [xxx] no later than [xxx]. and for his departure please come no later than...

A minor brouhaha over at America Abroad. David Rieff sent an email to Anne-Marie Slaughter (short version: liberal interntionalism inevitably leads to neoconservativism, so stop enabling!). Today, John Ikenberry summarizes Reiff's argument:Behind Rieff’s comments is his own intellectual journey away from the liberal interventionism of the Clinton years chronicled in his recent book, At the Point of a Gun. The Iraq war has led Rieff to question the entire "project" of humanitarian intervention. His basic claim appears to be that the ideals of liberal interventionism – carried out for...

Chris Bertram received some flack, apparently, for describing the recent Birmingham race riot as a "pogrom." Today he gets to enjoy a qualified (and somewhat angsty) last laugh:But I see that both the conservative columnist Theodore Dalrymple and the Observer’s Nick Cohen have also noticed the echoes. Dalrymple wrote:The rumour that a 14-year-old black girl had been caught shoplifting by a Pakistani shopkeeper in the Lozells area of Birmingham, and subsequently raped in revenge by a score of his compatriots, is highly reminiscent of the blood libels that used to sweep through Tsarist Russia...

I recently wrote about the misuse (or, more to the point, apparent schizophrenic understanding) of reputational logic in the war on terror. Administration officials have repeatedly utilized rhetoric which rationalizes US policy against terrorists and rogue states on the basis of maintaining a reputation for resolve--i.e. we need to show our enemies that we won't back down just because the going gets tough, therefore staying the course is paramount lest we encourgae and embolden these actors. Rob Farely over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money followed my post with an excellent one of his own....

Through the magic of podcasting, I've been able to listen to a number of pre- and post-game interviews with baseball players and managers as I go for my morning run -- subscribe to the daily MLB podcasts through iTunes, plug in my iPod, and when I get up in the morning there they are, ready to go. (Of course, now that the baseball season is officially over -- congratulations, White Sox, even though I wanted the Astros to force a game 5 so that we could see Roger Clemens try to pitch despite his hamstring injury -- I'll need to find some new podcasts to listen to on those runs. I wonder if...

In my post on Stanford's iTunes store, I mentioned that Patrick has always been on the cutting edge of integrating technology into the classroom. Well, Patrick's just been featured prominently in a Chronicle for Higher Education story on the costs and benefits of podcasting (subscription only). Here are some key excerpts:Lectures on the GoAs more colleges use 'coursecasting,' professors are split on its place in teachingBy BROCK READWashingtonTake your typical college student — bright, curious, but probably a bit sleep-deprived and short on attention span. Stick that student in a lecture...

Couldn't resist (thanks to Brian Levy for the link):Strauss Guides Sox From GraveFiled as: Leo Strauss, White Sox

Iranian officials, not surprisingly, defended President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments at a conference Wednesday called "The World Without Zionism" where he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Their argument: It has been Iran's policy since the 1979 revolution. Oh, well that does it I guess. World leaders, including many in the Arab world, condemned the statement. The Washington Post has a great article which discusses the context of the statement as well as outlines the early difficulties President Ahmadinejad has encountered being a foreign policy novice (hell, even Ayatollah Ali...