Leigh M. Johnson

Closer than Gitmo, Further from Humane

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

In case any of you were still operating under the illusion that our prisons at home are somehow better than our secret prisons abroad, Lousiana has stepped in to disabuse you of that misconception. Sheriff Jack Strain of St. Tammany Parish is currently under scrutiny for his practice of confining “suicidal” inmates to 3’x3′ metal…

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Bon Mots: Derrida on the future of the Humanities

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bon Mots, Human Rights, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 1 Comment

From “The University Without Conditions” in Without Alibi (Stanford University Press, 2002, p.231), Jacques Derrida describes “the Humanities of tomorrow”: These new Humanities would treat the history of man, the idea, the figure, and the notion of “what is proper to man.” They will do this on the basis of a nonfinite series of oppositions…

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Kermit and Me

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 3 Comments

I just returned from a long weekend in New Orleans, the second-greatest city in the U.S. South. One of my chief aims while in NOLA was to see Kermit Ruffins, an absolutely amazing trumpet player, co-founder of the legendary Rebirth Brass Band and, more recently, a regular star on the HBO series “Treme.” Before I…

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Doing Harm

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Torture, Weak Humanism 4 Comments

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, Physicians for Human Rights, has just released a White Paper entitled “Experiments in Torture” that documents medical professionals’ complicity with CIA human intelligence collection programs, which include the now-infamous “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs), in post-9/11 detention centers. There is, of course, a continuing (and, at least on one side, entirely…

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Ass[backwards]essment in Higher Ed

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 6 Comments

About a week ago, in a NYT article entitled “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” professor and provocateur Stanley Fish lambasted the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Texas Governor Rick Perry for proposing that the evaluation of faculty should move to a more “consumerist” (Fish calls it “mercenary”) model. The proposal would require college and…

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Let Them Play!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Music, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 2 Comments

As I’m still not quite over my post-New-Orleans euphoric haze, I wanted to post one more thing about that city and its blessed horns before returning to more serious material on this blog. This time, however, the news is not good… One of the most fantastic and unique things about New Orleans is its street…

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Thanks x 50K

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson BlogCounts, Music, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive Comments Off on Thanks x 50K

We’ve reached another milestone here at Dr J’s blog: 50,000 hits! We passed 10,000 hits back in our second year, and so it’s exciting to reach the 50K mark at just under four years! Here’s a big THANK YOU to all the readers who keep coming back to this small little speck in the blogosphere….

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Parsing the “Anti-“s

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Obama, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 8 Comments

Read no further if you’re not willing to consider the possibility that “anti-Israeli state policy” claims are NOT tantamount to “anti-Semitism.” The recent deadly attack on an aid-bearing flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip has re-stoked the fires at home and abroad over Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza. That blockade has been in effect since…

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In Praise of Smartypants

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 11 Comments

This morning, in stereotypical egghead fashion, I tuned my radio to the Saturday NPR programming, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the most recent (June 7) issue of the New Yorker. In the mini-essay section “Talk of the Town,” located near the beginning of every New Yorker, there was a…

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My Poor Memphis

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Memphis, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 5 Comments

The New York Times ran a story earlier this week entitled “The New Poor: Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades of Gains,” which painted a very grim picture of the recession’s effects on African-Americans in Memphis. According to most demographers, Memphis will soon be the first metropolis in the U.S. with a predominantly black population, which…

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