Category Archive

As pro-democracy youth protest movements sweep the Arab world, the government of Yemen announced this morning that university tuition fees would be suspended for the rest of the year and a new jobs program would be created for young university graduates.

The government is trying desperately to defuse popular opposition in the wake of massive democratic movements in countries from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond. Opponents of the current regime have called a day of action for this Thursday.

Patrick St. John of the For Student Power blog has a good post up on how the demography and contemporary culture of Egypt is shaping the role of Egyptian youth and students in the current popular uprising. Among other things, he notes that nearly two thirds of the Egyptian population is under 30, and that one in four young adults in Egypt is unemployed.

Egypt’s colleges and universities are large and growing, but as St. John notes, the student role in this revolt can be hard to disentangle — with the country’s population so young, and the student body relatively representative of the country as a whole, the “demographic overlap” between students and revolutionaries makes distinctions difficult to draw.

Meanwhile, the New York Times this morning has a fascinating look at the strategists behind Egypt’s uprising, noting that the heavy lifting has been done almost exclusively by young people, with the “old guard” of the country’s pro-democracy movements mostly falling into line behind them. Key quote:

Both newcomers and veterans of the opposition movement say it is the young Internet pioneers who remain at the vanguard behind the scenes.

“The young people are still leading this,” said Ibrahim Issa, a prominent opposition intellectual who attended some of the meetings. And the older figures, most notably Dr. ElBaradei, have so far readily accepted the younger generation’s lead, people involved said. “He has been very responsive,” Mr. Issa said. “He is very keen on being the symbol, and not being a leader.”

Interesting stuff.

In the last week or so, two different people have asked me for advice on how to be an effective blogger. It’s a question I’ve been asked before, but it’s only recently that I’ve settled on a short answer I like. Here’s that answer:

Make yourself useful.

Find a question that people are asking, and answer it. Address a widespread misconception, or a currently popular myth. Draw attention to something that needs more attention. Do a translation. Do an intervention. Do the math.

Make yourself genuninely useful, and by definition you’re doing something worth doing.

I haven’t made myself very useful on the blog this last week. Between writing syllabi and tending to a feverish four-year-old, I’ve kind of had my hands full. And the big story of the hour — the Egyptian revolt — isn’t one I’ve had much to add to.

When Tunisia exploded, I could make myself useful just by writing about it, because for a while lots of people literally had no idea that anything at all was happening. But this time around, it didn’t make much sense for me to write a post just saying “hey, guys, Egypt’s youth are making a revolution,” because anyone reading my blog would already know that. If I’d had more time I would have found an angle, but like I say I’ve been assembling primary source readings packets and mopping a tiny sweaty forehead instead.

One blogger who’s been making himself very useful indeed on the Egypt story is Nick Baumann of Mother Jones magazine. Earlier this week Baumann put together a thorough introduction to the current Egyptian crisis, and he’s been augmenting and expanding it ever since. It’s a really great resource, and it’s exactly the kind of stuff that needs doing at a time like this.

I don’t have time right now to explain exactly how and why Baumann’s work rocks so hard — the sick four-year-old wants ibuprofen, and her big sister needs design assistance on the line of Phineas and Ferb Pokemon cards she’s putting together — so it’s lucky that the folks at the Nieman Journalism Lab have explained it for me. Seriously. If you care about blogging for social change, if you care about using social media for social good, go read the Nieman piece. It’s a wonderfully concise and cogent summary of exactly what Baumann’s doing right … and why it matters.

According to a leaked advance copy of President Obama’s State of the Union speech, the president will, with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell on the way out, ask America’s colleges and universities to let ROTC back in:

Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.

There’s one problem with that call, though — the doors aren’t closed now.

As Professor Diane Mazur noted in the New York Times three months ago, no college or university currently bars ROTC from campus. Not one. Some faculty and students are opposed to such programs, and some universities choose not to grant course credit for ROTC, but the ban is entirely a myth.

Update | It should be noted that the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the federal government can withhold funds from any campus that bars military recruiters, and that many campuses have allowed recruiters to return since that ruling was issued. I don’t know whether any are currently still keeping them off.

It should also be noted that the DADT policy still remains in effect, and that the military is thus still discriminating against lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicemembers. Congressional repeal of DADT was a step toward ending that discrimination, but it wasn’t the final step.

(I stole the headline for this post from one by Boyce Watkins, who has a thorough and well-worth-reading rundown of the story.)

Kelly Williams-Bolar, a black single mom in Akron, Ohio, was convicted of felony records-tampering charges and sentenced to ten days in jail for registering her kids for school at her father’s residence rather than her own. She lives in the projects, her dad lives in a good district, and he’s facing a felony grand theft charge for “stealing” two years of public school for his grandkids. Oh, and her felony conviction means that she’s going to have to give up her plans to become a teacher.

Yeah. Incredible. Disgusting.

And there’s one thing in Watkins’ piece that I’d like to respond to specifically. He writes:

It’s interesting how courts find it convenient to make someone into an example when they happen to be poor and black. I’d love to see how they prosecute wealthy white women who commit the same offense. Oh, I forgot: Most wealthy white women don’t have to send their kids to the schools located near the projects.

I live in New York City, where school placement is a bit of an obsession. This kind of gaming of the system is rampant among well-off white families here, and I’ve never heard of anyone being jailed for it — much less convicted of a felony.