The Chronicle Review

THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Section B
Face to Face With ISIS
May 27, 2016
FROM
Lingua Fr anca
Language and writing in academe
The Au Revoir Problem

By BEN YAGODA
W
For more, see
chronicle.com/linguafranca
AY BACK when I was taking

Introduction to French
during my freshman year
in college, we were given
a quiz a month or so into the term. At
one point, the professor spoke some
French words, and we were asked to
spell them. One of the words was the
French phrase for goodbye.
This is what I wrote down: orra
voire.
The professor had competently
taught us that the term is au revoir. And I had learned it, up to a
point. What happened on the day of
the quiz (Ive concluded in the many
times Ive mused about the incident
since) is that Id forgotten that French
is a markedly different language from
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English, and most definitely so in terms

of spelling. Falsely confident, I reverted
to a sort of common-sense, instinctual
mind-set, and spelled au revoir the way
it sounds.
The reason I think so much about
the mistake is that similar errors come
up every week in the work students do
in my writing classes, the aim of which
is to teach them to produce prose on a
professional level. That is not the same
thing as learning a foreign language,
but in both cases, it can be disastrous,
or at least problematic, to rely on your
instincts or on general logic.
The example that immediately occurs to me is a move so logical it has
the word logic in its name. Logical
punctuation refers to putting commas and periods outside quotation
marks, like this. While its accepted
in Britain and on Wikipedia and in
some scholarly journals, and is more
and more prevalent in unedited prose
on the Internet, it is still incorrect in
American publishing. And so at the
outset of every semester I stress that
commas and periods always go inside
quotation marks. Of course, students
still put them outside, which I mark
with IQ, which stands for inside
quotes. I revisit the topic in class,
and when they continue to logically
punctuate, I point out the error in ALL
CAPS. Sometimes I announce that I
will deduct a point from their grade
each time they make the error. And inevitably, in the final assignment, some
students still do it. Orra voire.
Journalism the form of writing I
most often teach really does resemble a foreign language, with a great
many counterintuitive rules. One that
comes to mind is that journalists are
not allowed to express an opinion, aka
editorialize. Theres no obvious justification for the rule, and as a result,
even if they master it for a moment,
students backslide from September
through June. Then theres the convention of almost always using said as a
verb of attribution. Thats as opposed
to stated, commented, remarked,
and other verbs, all of which are perfectly good words that would seem to
have the added benefit of reducing word
repetition. Word repetition is indeed a
flaw in journalistic writing, up to and
including and, a, and the (and
students persist in perpetrating it, in an
orra-voire kind of way), but for some
reason, said is the one word that gets
immunity. Doesnt make sense, but you

have to learn it, and if you rely on common sense, you never will.
This phenomenon applies not only to
writing but also to many other endeavors that (unlike, say, Chinese or computer programming) appear to resemble
stuff we already know how to do. The
trick is to learn to ignore your instincts
and your muscle memory. Skiing, personnel management, and courtship
would seem to qualify. And tennis! Even
today, after 50 years of playing that
game, I sometimes find myself whacking a ball with all my might and seeing
it hit the fence on a fly. In all these enterprises, there are geniuses whose in-
Journalism resembles
a foreign language,
with a great many
counterintuitive
rules.
stincts are preternaturally aligned with
best practices, but the rest of us need a
lot of help. Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the 10,000-hour rule the idea
that that amount of practice is a common denominator of elite athletes and
others who make extraordinary contributions. I suggest that achieving basic
competence in a skill requires a whole
bunch of time and practice, too.
I dedicate this to fellow faculty
members, who are currently correcting
papers and assignments, with a gentle
reminder that many of the writing errors and infelicities you encounter are
there not because students are defying
you, or are simple-minded, but because
they relied on instinct. So by all means
correct the errors, but when you speak
of them, and you will, be kind.
Ben Yagoda is a professor of English and
journalism at the University of Delaware.
CORRECTION
In a review of the book Why
the World Does Not Exist (October 16, 2015), the name of the
translator was erroneously given
as Gregory Ross. His name is
Gregory S. Moss.
MAY 27, 2016
New from
A deeply reported
account of how
Americas War on Terror
sparked a decadelong assault on the
rule of law, weakening
our courts and our
Constitution in the name
of national security.

May 27, 2016
FEATURES
Talking to ISIS
An unorthodox anthropologist
goes face to face with the enemy.
By Tom Bartlett B6
Strike a Deal With the Caliphate
Philippe-Joseph Salazar spent a year and a half studying ISIS

propaganda. His takeaway: Lets cut our losses and negotiate.
By Tom Bartlett B12
The Nature of the Threat
B6
Is radicalized Islam or Islamicized radicalism

the menace? Perhaps both.
By Robert Zaretsky B15
ROGUE JUSTICE
The Making of the
Security State
CONSIDER THIS
Nimble Symbol
When 16 black women cadets raised their fists, the gesture

inadvertently reflected complex layers of history.
by KAREN J. GREENBERG
Crown HC 978-0-8041-3821-5
320pp. $28.00
By Peniel E. Joseph B4
BOOKS & ARTS

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS B18
B4
OBSERVER
Big Brains, Small Minds
We risk becoming a society of technological

prowess and philosophical illiteracy.
Rogue Justice reads like a wellhoned argument delivered to a jury.

Greenberg has wrestled complex
questions of law and policy into
a clear, compelling narrative that
shows us how the United States
abandoned its principles of justice
and due process during the war on
terror, and why we must fight
to bring them back. A must-read
for anyone who cares about the
Constitution.
By John Kaag and David OHara B20
Anthony Romero, executive director, ACLU
THE CHRONICLE CROSSWORD B19
B20
9/11 changed America.

This invaluable book shows how
close we came to losing many of
the basic principles that underlie
our system of justiceand how
much we still have to do to protect
the basic principles that make
our country a beacon for
human rights.
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming

Tower and Thirteen Days in September
Cover photograph of Palmyra, Syria by Lorenzo Meloni, Magnum Photos
chroniclereview.com
KAREN J. GREENBERG is director of the

Center on National Security at Fordham
University School of Law and author of
The Least Worst Place: Guantanamos
First 100 Days and coeditor of The Torture
Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib.
@karengreenberg3
Professors: To order an Examination Copy, go to

www.randomhouse.com/academic/examcopy
THE CHRON ICLE R EV IEW, SECTION B OF THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, VOLUME LX II, N UMBER 37, IS PUBLISHED AT 1255 23RD STREET, N.W., WASHINGTON, D.C. 20037.
TELEPHONE: (202) 466-1000. EMAIL: EDITOR@CHRONICLE.COM. COPYRIGHT 2016 BY THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INC.
MAY 27, 2016
B3
The Many
Meanings
of a Fist
CONSIDER THIS
By PENIEL E. JOSEPH
B4
PICTURE of
16 black female
cadets raising their fists
triumphantly went viral on
social media after sparking
an internal investigation at the United
States Military Academy. West Point
sought to determine whether these
graduating cadets violated a defense
department ban on partisan speech
via a physical gesture with ties to blackpower-era militancy and contemporary
antiracist activism.
The raised fist has experienced a renaissance of
late, as black millennials
politicized by the deaths
of Trayvon Martin and
Michael Brown, outraged
by racist policing in Ferguson and Baltimore, and
united in their deft use of
social media have shown
an increasing willingness
to adopt both the shield of
Martin Luther King Jr.s
disciplined nonviolence
and the rhetorical sword
of Malcolm X in a quest
for social justice. Through
its popularization of the raised fist as a
symbol of generational insurgency, the
Black Lives Matter movement has ensnared the West Point cadets.
They said it was merely a celebratory
gesture, with no partisan or political
intent, and within days officials agreed,
saying the cadets actions demonstrated
a lapse of awareness in how symbols
and gestures can be misinterpreted and
cause division. But it is worth noting
the unlikelihood that West Point would
have investigated at all if the cadets in
the photograph had been white. The
Black Panthers became icons of radical

popular culture, and in imitation political revolutionaries around the world
offered raised fists in defiant opposition
to a spectrum of evils they argued were
rooted in the economic and racial exploitation of the third world as did
terrorists seeking to justify themselves
under the mantle of revolution.
The powerful demonstration at the
1968 Olympics in Mexico City by the
sprinters Tommie Smith
and John Carlos who
made the black-power salute
in solidarity with the international struggle against
racism as they accepted gold
and bronze medals represented the high point of the
raised fist as subversive symbol. Smith and Carlos were
pilloried in the white press,
kicked out of the Olympic
Village, and became mainstays on the black-college
lecture circuit.
By the early 1970s the
expression was popular
TWITTER VIA AP
enough to be adopted by a
a violent provocation even as it galvabroad range of black political actors,
nized blacks who correctly understood
not just the Communist and prisonit to be a more complex call for radical
er-rights activist Davis, but also the
self-determination. Sharecroppers,
civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson; Richstudents, welfare recipients, prisoners,
ard Hatcher, the mayor of Gary, Ind.;
preachers, and politicians adopted the
and the Black Art poet Amiri Baraka.
term, helping to animate a movement
As black-power radicalism came of powhose ideological, geographic, and political age, at times publicly cultivating
litical diversity remains shrouded by its
a more pragmatic side that always exequally potent symbolism.
isted alongside its revolutionary cries,
The raised fist became shorthand
the raised fist gathered new layers of
for public identification with the new
complexity.
black consciousness. Carmichael, AnIt became an expression of racial,
gela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, and the
cultural, and political solidarity, a sasituation reminds us how the raised fist
is at once a symbol with powerful historical resonance and one that can shift
in its meaning and intent.
June 16, 2016, will mark the 50th
anniversary of the historic evening
when Stokely Carmichael, leader of
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, called for black power
in Greenwood, Miss. The term scandalized whites, who interpreted it as
MAY 27, 2016
Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos

raise gloved fists during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
AP IMAGES
lute exchanged between women and

men, boys and girls who retained a cultural memory of the riotous upheavals
of the late 1960s and early 1970s even
if they were too young to have directly
participated. On the first wave of black
television shows ushered in by the civil-rights and black-power revolutions,
characters deployed the raised fist as
both a greeting and an expression of
racial pride.
As fears of a black
revolt in America
diminished, a raised
black fist became
less threatening.
Television shows
like Good Times and
The Jeffersons frequently caricatured
expressions of militancy and white and
black audiences now
cheerfully laughed at a symbol of radicalism that had lost its potency.
The raised fist was relegated to the
shadows. A mainstay within black-radical circles, among community activists,
and at bookstores, conferences, and
cultural centers, the gesture had traveled a long way from its heyday, when
it was ubiquitous enough to be featured
on afro picks, a defiant reminder of a
seemingly buried past.
new life to symbols of black militancy

whose power had seemingly peaked in
Mexico City in 1968.
The raised fists now associated with
Black Lives Matter have followed a
similar panoramic trajectory. Just as
black-power activists introduced the term
institutional racism and linked domestic racial oppression to global structures
of capitalism, war, and inequality, Black
Lives Matter has emphasized that the
criminal-justice
system is a gateway
to racial, economic,
and gender oppression.
From the outset its founders
three women
and movement
participants have
been determined
to focus on a range
of intersecting issues that boil down
to this: reclaiming the control, protection, and liberation of black and brown
bodies from harassment, violence, segregation, unemployment, disease, and
death. The movement has highlighted
the violence against black women not
only at the hands of law enforcement
but also in American society in general.
It has also drawn attention to critical
issues facing black queer and transgender communities, voices that have historically been marginalized both within and outside of the African-American
mainstream. In that way, Black Lives
Matter has galvanized a cross-section
of Americans, especially young African-Americans but also large segments
of white and Latino allies.
The raised fist has once again been
The cadets use of

the gesture reflects
the tumultuous
racial and social
climate of the age.
HEN hip hop rediscovered

black political radicalism. The
popularity of such groups as
Public Enemy and X-Clan
and movies like Malcolm X and Panther
introduced the expression to a new
generation of young people around the
world, and in the process helped give
MAY 27, 2016
reimagined. Like Promethean fire,

its current expression links the black
activist past and present, connecting
history with contemporary social
movements, united in a common desire
to illuminate and highlight what King
characterized as the fierce urgency of
now.
This is the maelstrom that the 16
West Point cadets stepped into. We
should take them at their word that
their raised fists were nothing more
than a celebratory gesture, one shorn
of political intent. Yet their decision to
enact the gesture speaks to an awakened political consciousness, one that
reflects the tumultuous racial and social climate of the age of Obama and
Ferguson. Indeed, the ensuing outcry
over this portrait and the investigation illuminate just how far America is
from achieving the postracial society
envisioned in the aftermath of Obamas
election in 2008.
Sometimes the depth and breadth
of symbols, especially those related to
Americas complex racial history, have
meaning that transcends individual
intent. The raised fist is such a symbol,
one whose ultimate meaning, however
fraught and contested, remains a harbinger of an undiscovered country where
black lives do indeed matter and whose
most important feature, King remarked,
was the right to protest for right.
New from University

of Toronto Press
The Slow Professor

Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy
by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber

The Slow Professor counters the
corporatization of higher education
and shows how the slow approach to
academic practice can alleviate stress
while improving teaching, research, and
collegiality.
Peniel E. Joseph, author of several books on

the black-power movement, is a professor
of history at the University of Texas at
Austin and founding director of the Center
for the Study of Race and Democracy at
the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
Affairs.
B5
The Road
to ISIS
An unorthodox
anthropologist
goes face to face
with ISIS.
Is the payoff worth the peril?
B6
MAY 27, 2016
driving to the front line of the war against

the Islamic State carries some risk. This is not a good day:
High winds have kicked up enough dust to dim the sun
and hide nearby mountains, a thick haze that could provide
cover for snipers or suicide bombers. While Kurdish soldiers, known as Peshmerga, meaning those who face death, have
proved adept at keeping a determined foe at bay, they cant prevent
every incursion along a roughly 650-mile border, particularly when
those sneaking in are willing, even eager, to die in the attempt.
The road to the front passes through tiny villages of cinderblock
houses and over flat, green fields before giving way to rockier terrain
as it winds southwest from Erbil, capital of Kurdistan, a country that
doesnt quite exist. It also passes through a series of military checkpoints where increasingly skeptical soldiers, ancient AK-47s slung
over their shoulders, peer into a vehicle and ask its occupants not
unreasonably where, exactly, they think they are going.
Phone calls must be made, documents presented. Satisfied, the soldiers step back and wave the car on.
I am really worried, says Lydia Wilson from the back seat. This
is the worst time to be going. Wilson, a medieval historian by training, is not easily cowed. Shes visited military bases before, and shes
sat across a table from ISIS fighters. Shes just not keen on needless
risk. Hoshang Waziri, this groups translator and cultural ambassador, scans the blurred horizon and doesnt like what he sees, either.
Its not the lobbed shell or the stray bullet that unnerves him so
much as the prospect of getting kidnapped. Thats what scares me,
he says. The idea of falling into their hands.
They spent the morning drinking strong black tea from small glass
cups with a Kurdish official who, they hope, will grant them access
to captured ISIS fighters, the holy grail of research subjects and, for
obvious reasons, the toughest to track down. They explained to the
official, as they explain to everyone, that they are not journalists angling for a story or government envoys pushing an agenda, but rather
social scientists interested in knotty universal questions regarding
N A GOOD DAY,
the nature of human conflict. Answering such questions is difficult

in part because of an established gap between expressed willingness
and actual willingness; that is, between what people promise to do
and, when it comes down to it, whether they pick up the gun or strap
on the vest. Interviewing fighters engaged in combat or plucked from
the battlefield has the neat advantage of eliminating that gap. Then
the only question is: Why?
But getting to those fighters thats the trick. Weeks of planning
can evaporate in an instant, forcing the researchers to improvise.
Beyond the logistical aggravation, theres the matter of personal
safety. Where there are fighters, there is often fighting, and while the
semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq remains relatively
sheltered compared with Syria or large swaths of southern Iraq, the
proximity to bloodshed prompts understandable unease.
The least jittery member of the team is its leader, Scott Atran, an
anthropologist who floats among several institutions, including the
University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
part of the City University of New York. Hes also a founder of the
Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, at the University of Oxford. Hes normally the one arguing to go a little farther
afield, to challenge the groups comfort zone, perhaps to cross over
into Syria. While sitting around the hotel he appears restless and
testy, headed toward ISIS territory he is in his element, enlivened
and unfazed. We dont want to drive off the
road, because its probably mined on both sides,
By TOM BARTLETT
he warns casually from the passenger seat, the
way you might note a change in speed limit or a
forthcoming rest stop.
Atran is known as an expert on terrorism, a title he doesnt particularly want and a word he doesnt find useful. He views his work,
broadly, as examining what motivates people to do things beyond
themselves, for good or ill. These days he focuses on the ill, specifically ISIS. What propels people from 100 countries to come to this
Continued on Following Page
CHRONICLE REVIEW PHOTO BY TOM BARTLETT
Scott Atran and fellow researchers make a field trip to interview fighters in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
MAY 27, 2016
B7
Continued From Preceding Page

place to blow themselves up? he asks. Theres something in human
beings that this appeals to; otherwise it wouldnt work. And my goal
is to figure out what that is.
OU COULD BE FORGIVEN if, after perusing Scott Atrans pre2001 scholarly output, you werent sure how he ended up in
a car speeding toward ISIS territory. His body of work then
centered around folk biology, which explores how humans
think about the natural environment, how we categorize
flora and fauna and what it reveals about us. In a 1999 essay, he wrote
that Itzaj Maya women consider the cooing of the short-billed pigeon as the lament of the bird mother who confided her child to the
squirrel trickster. He was well regarded in that subfield, if not wellknown outside it; squirrel tricksters tend not to pique the interest of
television producers, whose invitations he must fend off these days.
He was a middle-aged academic who knew a lot about the birds and
snakes of northern Guatemala.
He knew other things, too. Way back in 1990, he wrote about the
alternating structures of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, a foreshadowing of his
later preoccupations. He also
spent years researching a book
on what he calls the evolutionary landscape of religion, wrestling with how humans across
cultures become convinced that
an unseen benevolent power
guides history. How can such
beliefs turn out to be a winning
evolutionary strategy? That book, In Gods We Trust, was published in
2002, and in it Atran addresses, briefly, the phenomenon of divinely
sanctioned suicide, writing that emotionally motivated self-sacrifice
to the supernatural stabilizes in-group moral order. Killing yourself
is an effective, if costly, means of signaling to fellow devotees the
strength of your commitment.
Atran was in France on September 11, 2001 hes also director
of research anthropology at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, in Paris when his son, then 12 years old, ran into the
room: Mom says you have to come quick. Atran, like everyone, was
shaken by what he saw. Unlike everyone, he could read Arabic, had
spent significant time in the Middle East, and had written a book
about religion and evolution. Im also worried about global warming, but I have no particular talent or ability to affect any of that, he
says. Here I can do something.
His focus didnt so much shift, then, as sharpen. In 2003 he
published a paper on suicide bombers in which he argued that the
stereotype dirt-poor and wildly unhinged failed to match the
true profile of the often educated and prosperous people who blew
themselves up on crowded buses or piloted planes into buildings.
That paper joined the glut of post-9/11 terrorism research. More
peer-reviewed papers on terrorism were published immediately after
the attacks than in the preceding three decades.
Atrans paper, however, stood out from the slew, and so far has
been cited more than 700 times, an impressive total. He wrote that
researchers should endeavor to uncover which configurations of
psychological and cultural relationships are luring and binding thousands, possibly millions, of mostly ordinary people into the terrorist
organizations martyr-making web. In the chin-stroking world of
academic research, it is perfectly respectable, even advisable, to raise
provocative questions and then tiptoe away, leaving the hard labor
of answering them to others. Likewise, you can write volumes on
human conflict and never venture beyond your book-crammed campus sanctuary.
Atran didnt walk away, nor did he opine from afar. He jumped in.
Which is how, in 2005, he found himself smoking clove cigarettes
in a restaurant on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. He was there
to meet a commander from Laskar Jihad, an Islamic group intent
on converting Christians and enforcing Shariah law at gunpoint.
Thousands had already been killed. Via a translator, Atran ran
the commander through a string of hypotheticals. For example: If
a roadside bombing would produce the same carnage as a suicide
bombing, would the commander opt for the less personally harmful
alternative?
Atran also trotted out one of his favorites, the switched-at-birth
I always tell people you can

learn a lot in just one day
on the ground, Atran says.
Theres nothing like it.
B8
scenario. What would happen, he asked, if a Christian or a Jewish

child was raised by a Muslim family, one that believed in Shariah law
and jihad? The commander had two responses. If the child was from
a Christian family, he or she would grow to be a devout Muslim. But
not the Jewish child. Jews were from hell, and no amount of godly
instruction could alter that. The commander then asked if Atran
was Jewish, a fact that the translator unwisely confirmed. Sensing an
unwelcome change in the conversations tenor, Atran excused himself
and slipped out the back door.
In the past decade or so, he has listened to the distraught mother
of a young Palestinian suicide bomber read a letter congratulating
her on her sons valorous death. In Pakistan he slept in a rotting,
abandoned mosque in order to avoid government agents he had heard
were pursuing him. He once asked a veteran of Al Qaeda training
camps, a man with whom he had established an amiable rapport, a
simple question: Would you kill me for jihad? The man replied
simply as well: Yes, I would kill you.
His three adult children beg him not to travel to dangerous destinations. His mother, now in her 80s, told his wife to break his legs so
he couldnt return to Iraq. She was kidding, sort of. Perhaps theres
cause to be concerned: ISIS recently published an 11-page article on
Atran titled In the Words of the Enemy. Colleagues wonder why a
scholar in his 60s, an age when emeritus could be appended to his
title, is gallivanting about rural villages, getting sneaked into Iraqi
prisons, pondering fake checkpoints and roadside bombs. I always
tell people you can learn a lot in just one day on the ground, he says.
You get more knowledge about what questions you might ask, what
to look for, what is bullshit, than you get in five years of academic
study. Theres nothing like it, and theres nobody out there doing it.
at Makhmur, a two-hour drive from Erbil, is surrounded by a high concrete wall topped with razor wire. In
the courtyard, a dozen Kurdish soldiers play dominoes next
to armored vehicles in varying states of disrepair. Missing
wheels, splintered glass. The soldiers are shot up, too; one
leans his crutches against the game table. Many purchased their own
uniforms and equipment. They settle for junky, outdated weapons,
holdovers from previous wars. In recent months, soldiers were paid
only a fraction of their salaries, modest to begin with, as the Kurdish
government struggled to resolve a disagreement over oil revenue
thats brought the region close to economic ruin.
While the fearsome, cultivated mystique of ISIS fascinates, if you
wish to comprehend what makes ordinary people go beyond themselves, you could do worse than the Peshmerga, who patrol the edges
of Kurdish-controlled territory and cope with constant threat. They
are fighting under conditions that would undermine the morale of
a less ardent army, and yet there are no reports of revolt or outward
indicators of dissatisfaction.
Thats why Scott Atran and company are here, to test the mettle
of the Kurds compared with ISIS. The teams plan is to stop by the
main base, then continue on to a forward outpost, a few kilometers
away. The base is a semicomfortable distance from the enemy. The
outpost is not. Someone suggests sending an armed escort to lead
the way. Thus reassured, everyone piles back into the car for a short,
stressful drive. If you continued down this road, you would go
straight into the Islamic State, Atran says, a comment that calms no
ones nerves.
The two dozen soldiers stationed at the outpost are hemmed in by
dirt berms and stacked sandbags. They live in quarters with thatched
roofs covered by blue tarps held down with tires and rope. Its said
that war is boredom punctuated by sheer terror, and so a visit by
Westerners wearing jeans and sweaters, notebooks and iPads tucked
under arms, is at least a diversion from anxious monotony. The ever-hospitable Kurds offer their guests breaded dates sprinkled with
powdered sugar. The younger soldiers take selfies with the strangers.
The outposts commander, a colonel in his mid-40s with heavy eyelids and a weary air of seriousness, agrees to submit to an hour of examination intended to reveal, in essence, why he fights, what he will
and wont do for his cause, and how he imagines the future. Before
the session begins, Atran tells him that it is important for you to tell
us what you really think.
Absolutely, is the colonels translated reply. From my heart.
In his private quarters are a single bed, a small TV, a table with
an ashtray, a space heater, a teapot, a wooden crate used for storing
ammunition, and a couple of grenade launchers. On the back of the
metal door someone has drawn the outline of Kurdistan in Sharpie
HE BASE
MAY 27, 2016
and noted the surrounding countries (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria). The
Kurds are besieged on all sides.
The colonel and two of the researchers, Lydia Wilson and
Hoshang Waziri, remove their shoes and sit on the floor. Their style
of data-gathering feels more like a late-night bull session than a formal survey, the idea being that their subjects are already under pressure, so anything they can do to lower the angst results in more-genuine responses. The colonel leans against the bed and lights a skinny
cigarette.
The researchers begin with laminated cards that show cartoon
drawings of men with flags instead of heads: the American flag, the
Iranian flag, the ISIS flag, and so on. They ask the colonel to rank
the physical and spiritual strength of each country by pointing to
the corresponding figure (theyve also created an iPad app version of
the test, in which subjects adjust the height and musculature of the
flag-headed men). One consistent finding is that the Kurds, while they
abhor Islamic State fighters tactics, respect their capacity to fight and
their commitment to the cause, particularly those ISIS fighters who
come from abroad. The Kurds have witnessed their zeal. ISIS fighters
are known to wear suicide vests into battle so theyll be prepared for
martyrdom should the need arise. They hold their ground when most
armies would retreat. Asked how ISIS maintains control of Mosul, the
second-largest city in Iraq, with a small force, another Kurdish officer
shrugs and says, Theyre Daesh, a commonly used, somewhat derogatory nickname for the Islamic State. That is explanation enough.
The questions become progressively more personal. The colonel
is asked to rank, in order of importance, his country, his family, and
his religion. He puts Islam and country above kin. If I lose my soul,
what use is my family? he says. He is, like the majority of Kurds,
a Sunni Muslim. ISIS is also Sunni. Most Kurdish Muslims adopt
a tolerant attitude toward other religions, including Christianity
and Judaism. ISIS considers people who do not subscribe to its own
gloss on Islamic teaching to be hell-bound heretics, including fellow
Sunnis. The colonels view of Islam takes torture off the table. ISIS is
only too glad to torture. The colonels faith forbids targeting women
and children. ISIS regularly slaughters them. The colonel rules out
suicide missions as a battle tactic. ISIS has no such qualms.
The researchers press him on suicide, a key dividing line. The willingness of ISIS fighters to, for example, drive a fuel truck rigged with
explosives into a checkpoint, as happens frequently near Makhmur,
gives the group an intimidating edge. Wilson asks the colonel what he
would do if presented with the opportunity to kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State. Would he kill Baghdadi if he knew,
for certain, that he would lose his own life? Would he, in other words,
embark on a suicide mission if the payoff was substantial?
The colonel doesnt hesitate. He shakes his head. Kurds dont do
that, he says, the disapproval evident in his tone.
Thats how pretty much all Kurdish fighters respond to such a
scenario. The way the colonel expressed his refusal matters, too: He
is a Kurd, and Kurds dont do that. In similar tests with 38 Kurdish
fighters and support personnel at the front, an abiding connection to
their ethnicity was evident, and 21 were fused with Kurdish identity above all else. Atran draws on the theory of identity fusion as laid
out by William B. Swann, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, defined as commitment to a group so tightly
bound to personal identity that the two are all but indistinguishable,
creating what Swann calls a visceral feeling of oneness. I becomes
us. Among Kurds generally, Atran finds, commitment to Islam is
surpassed by their commitment to national identity.
Not that Islam is irrelevant. Untangling overlapping allegiances
to suss out an individuals sacred value, the term Atran uses for the
red line a subject wont cross, is ticklish business. A Kurdish soldier
who fights ISIS is protecting his country, sure, but his family lives in
that country, and linked to his love of country is his ethnicity, which
can be difficult to divorce from a shared faith in God. The heart is a
Venn diagram, mysterious even to its owner.
Wilson and Waziri are not trained, at least not formally, for this
sort of work. Theyre not anthropologists or psychologists. Atran
views their eclectic backgrounds as an advantage and figures they
can pick up the science on the job. Waziri is a playwright and author
of a book of essays titled Between Two Iraqs. He was born in Erbil and
can make small talk with subjects about life under Saddam Hussein
and the American invasion. He studied theater and draws on that
background when gauging the emotional temperature of the room.
Wilson earned her doctorate in medieval Arabic philosophy from
the University of Cambridge, where she investigated 10th-century
MAY 27, 2016
An interview with an
ISIS fighter is recorded
by Scott Atrans research
team.
STILL FROM VIDEO BY SCOTT ATRAN
classification of knowledge. She was trying to figure out what to do

next when she ran into Atran at a conference in 2010. His fervor was
contagious.
During the interviews, Wilson is off to the side, taking notes. If
you didnt know better and subjects dont you might think she
was Waziris assistant, when, in truth, shes frequently feeding him
lines like an offstage director. Wait, no, he didnt answer that, ask him
again. Waziri and Wilson communicate in a practiced verbal shorthand, skipping unproductive questions, circling back to earlier topics, trying to puzzle out the human before them.
HE CAPTIVE is escorted into the room, guards at his side,

a firm hand on the back of his head. A video shows he is
wearing a leather jacket over a traditional tan robe, his face
obscured by the balaclava, the same black mask worn by
knife-wielding executioners in ISIS propaganda. The rooms
pinkish carpet is well-worn; stucco peels off blank walls. Wind rattles the unlatched door. The guards sit the captive down in a chair
behind an old wooden desk.
The day after their visit to the front, the researchers drove to a
prison in the volatile city of Kirkuk to meet with a captured ISIS
fighter. They know a few things about him, Atran says later. They
know he is 27 years old. They know he is from Hawija, a city in central Iraq about a half-hour from where he is now imprisoned. They
know hes been fighting since at least 2009, before the Islamic State
technically existed, before the organization eclipsed Al Qaeda. They
know he was captured three months earlier.
What does he know about them? He can see there are four people,
three of whom are white. Are they journalists? Do they work for the
CIA? Is this an interrogation? Its not as if he spotted a flier tacked to
a bulletin board and decided to give it a go. He didnt fill out a form
agreeing to participate in a survey. Not only was his consent not
B9

informed, but in the parlance of human-subject ethics guidelines, it
wasnt even consent.
Waziri latches the door to keep it from rattling. He tries to eliminate distractions, to make the captive comfortable, or as comfortable
as possible considering the circumstances. As the door clicks shut,
Richard Davis, a former White House counterterrorism official who
got to know Atran during George W. Bushs administration, strenuously objects. The guards are outside, he reminds everyone, and it
doesnt seem prudent to trap yourself in a room with an unshackled
member of a murderous organization. Waziri unlatches the door.
They dont know his name, so Waziri addresses him as Muhammad. Waziri explains to him that the information they want isnt
tactical. Theyre not asking what he knows about the next planned
attack in Europe or the location of Baghdadis hideout. They are
researchers who study why people fight, and what theyre after is
more universal: They want to understand war from the perspective
of those waging it. We would love to see what is going on in your
minds and your hearts, Waziri tells him.
Muhammad understands.
They learn that, while he didnt
make it past sixth grade, hes
clearly astute and self-assured.
The ISIS captives they interviewed last year were more
skittish. They didnt resemble
the black-clad bogeymen on
YouTube. Muhammad, in
contrast, radiates confidence.
He leans back in his chair. He
crosses his ankles. He reaches under his jacket to scratch his armpit.
When they bring out the laminated cards and set them on the desk,
he taps his choices firmly with his index finger. This one. That one. If
hes apprehensive about the situation, he doesnt show it.
Waziri sits to Muhammads right. Wilson is on his left. Atran and
Davis observe from a few feet away, filming the encounter on an
iPhone, capturing Muhammad at the desk with Wilson and Waziri just
out of frame (theyll use that video later to study his tone of voice and
body language). Asked to rank his values, Muhammad puts the Islamic
State first, then his family, then the wider Muslim world. When asked
to rank the spiritual and physical strength of players in the region, he
puts ISIS first, followed by the United States, then Russia, then the
Kurds. He has encountered U.S. soldiers in combat, back when he
fought as part of Al Qaeda in Iraq, ISISs previous incarnation, and
he was impressed that they could keep going for five to 10 hours at a
stretch. He has much less respect for the Iraqi army. He is unwilling to
rank Iran. I dont care about that, he says, gesturing dismissively toward the Iranian flag. His contempt for Shia Muslims is absolute.
For sensitive questions, rather than ask what Muhammad thinks,
they ask what he believes his comrades think. The researchers find
that ISIS captives often describe their fellow fighters as more radical
and more violent, perhaps because the captive might desire to play
down the intensity of his own beliefs. What good would it do to convince the researchers (who, for all he knows, are working closely with
his captors) that his own views are extreme? Atran believes they get
closer to the truth when they make it less personal.
Is Islam under threat?
Yes.
Is his country is being occupied?
Yes.
By whom?
By the Shia, with Americas backing
Would his comrades kill civilians?
Yes.
Would they torture?
Yes.
Would they carry out suicide attacks?
Yes.
Would they sacrifice family members?
Yes.
Would they kill family members who opposed the caliphate?
He hasnt seen anyone do that. There is a long pause. He remembers hearing that a fellow ISIS fighter from Syria killed his own
mother.
Muhammad says he is tired of these questions. There are so many
of them.
Atran is the scientist who sits

down with terrorists. Thats why
big names in the national-security
apparatus reach out to him.
B10
Atran asks: What would he tell the American people or the French
people? What would his friends tell the Americans or French to stop
the violence on both sides?
Muhammad is confused by the question.
Atran rephrases: There is fighting, people are being killed. Children are crying. Their fathers and mothers are dying. American soldiers are also being killed. Their children are also crying. What would
he do to stop the children from crying?
Go back to your country, Muhammad replies.
During the experiment, while the others stay seated, Waziri is
moving around, placing cards in front of Muhammad, getting his
attention, keeping their reluctant subject engaged. I love this guy,
Waziri says, in English so Muhammad wont understand. I want to
take him home with me. They joke about this afterward. Really? You
want to take an ISIS fighter home with you? What Waziri meant was that
he wanted to talk with him for hours, to see who he is, what he wants,
what he thought before he was captured and what he thinks now. Wilson feels the same: I wanted to be able to see his face, look in his eyes,
and be like, Why, why?
HESE TTE--TTES with
terrorists lend weight to Atrans

analyses. Theyre his calling card. Hes the scientist who sits
down with radicals, probes their innermost thoughts, and
returns to the civilized world to disseminate that hard-won
intelligence. Thats why big names in the national-security
apparatus reach out to him. The White House has been in touch. He
has testified in front of Congress and the United Nations Security
Council. While in Iraq, he spoke with Leon Panetta, the former
CIA director, and Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain,
on a conference call. Unlike academics who prefer to keep policy
makers at arms length, Atran seeks out those in power. He cringes
every time he hears a presidential candidate refer to ISIS as crazy or
brainwashed. Those labels obscure rather than inform. He wants to
help defeat ISIS, and he thinks what hes learning can be of service.
Consequently hed rather his findings appear in The New York Times
than, say, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The work hes doing, and how he goes about it, is intentionally
unorthodox. Trips to Iraq are organized and paid for through Artis
International, a group he and Davis founded, whose mission is to
improve the human condition by reducing global conflict. Some of
Artiss funding comes via the Minerva Initiative, a program of the
U.S. Department of Defense that supports social science related to
national security. Minerva wont pay for experiments in places like
Iraq, though, so the researchers are forced to raise that money from
private sources, or chip in their consulting fees a situation that
perplexes and frustrates Atran. Millions are spent, and mostly wasted, on speculative gaming, counter-narratives, and modeling this or
that, but nary a penny on scientific attention to what is actually happening on the ground, he says.
With prominence comes criticism, and Atran has suffered his
share. Sam Harris fired the most personal broadside after listening to
a lecture by Atran. Harris, a neuroscientist known for his advocacy
of atheism, deemed Atran preening and delusional and wrote that
his views were evidence of either mental illness or a terminal case of
intellectual dishonesty. Per Harris, Atran believes that Islamic extremists who blow themselves up do so not because of their deeply
held beliefs about jihad and martyrdom but because of their experience of male bonding in soccer clubs and barbershops.
Equally dismissive is Jerry Coyne, a professor of biology at the
University of Chicago, famous these days as a thunderous ridiculer
of religion. In a blog post titled Once again, Scott Atran exculpates
religion as a cause of terrorism, he quotes the following remarks by
Atran: [W]hat inspires the most uncompromisingly lethal actors
in the world today is not so much the Quran or religious teachings.
Its a thrilling cause that promises glory and esteem. Coyne then
addresses Atran directly, caps-lock on to drive the point home:
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO MAKE YOU ASCRIBE ANY
OF THEIR ACTIONS TO ISLAM?
According to Coyne, Atran is an apologist for a pernicious faith.
According to Harris, he is a liar or a nut.
Atran does write about soccer in his book Talking to the Enemy,
published in 2010, before the rise of ISIS. In it he describes an epiphany he had while talking with a jihadi from Afghanistan. Atran asked
how he had maintained contact with fellow Afghan alumni when
they werent fighting or training. Soccer, the guy said. They played
soccer together. They do it for friends campmates, schoolmates,
MAY 27, 2016
workmates, soccer buddies, bodybuilding buddies, paint-ball partners action pals who share a cause, Atran wrote. Maybe they die
for dreams of jihad of justice and glory and devotion to a familylike group of friends and mentors who act and care for one another,
of imagined kin, like the Marines. ISISs ruthless interpretation of
holy texts plays a role, he acknowledges, but what he finds is that ISIS
captives often know precious little about Islam, the faith theyre supposedly killing and dying for. Theres something else going on.
The critiques of Atran from fellow terrorism researchers are less
bombastic and more interesting. The core of that criticism is that his
ideas can be slippery, that his explanations change. He emphasizes
the concept of sacred values, a term thats been around for a while
and is most associated with Philip Tetlock, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist whose work on predictions and judgment is
widely cited. Tetlock argued in a 2003 paper that sacred values can
become so entrenched at certain historical junctures that to propose
compromise is to open oneself up to irreversible vilification. Sacred
values are the beliefs that cant be bought.
As Harris and Coyne correctly note, Atran highlights the significance of brotherhood. To some of Atrans colleagues, like Harvey
Whitehouse, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oxford who has written about the importance of communal bonds
and studied revolutionaries in Libya, it remains fuzzy where Atran
falls. I think it depends on which day you ask Scott, he says. I can
quote times when he says its all about sacred values, then he will say
that its about relational ties. Whitehouse has worked closely with
Swann, the Texas professor, on identity fusion. Swanns careful elucidation of that theory revolves around the question he poses in one
papers title: What makes a group worth dying for? Though Atran
praises identity fusion, Swann, for his part, isnt convinced that Atrans research jibes with his own. Its not clear to me where sacred
values exist in the larger scheme of things, because hes never bothered to do that work, Swann says. Its defined somewhat differently
in each paper.
The charitable way to account for this is to say that Atran grabs
new tools for the task at hand, that hes not married to a specific
system. Or, not as generously, you could decide that hes short on
theoretical consistency. Compared with the work of other high-profile terrorism researchers, like Robert Pape, a professor of political
science at the University of Chicago, Atrans is less straightforward.
Pape maintains that the catalyst for suicidal terrorism is foreign occupation. People kill themselves for a cause when they feel that their
land has been taken over by outsiders. Last fall, President Obama
seemed to echo precisely that view in a speech when he worried
that ISIS can use our presence to draw new recruits. Is Papes silver-bullet theory of terrorism elegant or simplistic? Atran thinks its
the latter and has said so in print. Meanwhile his research draws on
an assortment of theories and cant be easily summarized.
Maybe that messiness is a defect, or maybe it reflects the reality of
a complex situation.
In a forthcoming paper, to be published in Current Anthropology,
Atran fleshes out what he calls the Devoted Actor Framework,
which pulls sacred values and identity fusion into a single theory and
offers advice for beating ISIS: The science suggests that sacred values are best opposed with other sacred values that inspire devotion,
or by sundering the fused social networks that embed those values.
Left unspoken: How do you offer an equally inspiring alternative?
By what method can those social networks be sundered? Atran
doesnt pretend to know the answer, but he does think that current
attempts at so-called countermessaging are destined to fail because
those messages are disembodied from the social networks in which
ideas are embedded and given life.
Scholarly squabbles aside, there is near-universal admiration,
bordering on awe, for how Atran is able to collect data in the midst
of a violent conflict. He feels a kinship with swashbuckling war correspondents, and yet he also rubs shoulders with the likes of Noam
Chomsky, an old friend who calls his work on extremism truly
exceptional. Most of us dont have the balls to do what he does,
says Swann. One longtime observer of scholarship in this area, Andrew Silke, director of terrorism studies at the University of East
London, puts a premium on the type of information gleaned via
Atrans firsthand methods. An awful lot of research on terrorism is
done by people who have never met a terrorist, Silke says. There
is good work you can do at long distance, but the insight and understanding you develop from speaking with them is much more
impressive.
MAY 27, 2016
HE HOTEL where the researchers stay in Erbil is a oncegrand establishment long past its day. The electricity is iffy,
the hot water a myth. The metal detector at the front gate
buzzes every time someone passes through, an alert that
does not prompt the uniformed guard to look away from his
phone. The stuffed goat near the entrance is equally vigilant. There
are accommodations in Erbil more modern, but they might attract
foreigners and, the thinking goes, terrorists, too. Last spring a car
bomb exploded across from the U.S. consulate in Erbil, killing three
people and wounding more than a dozen. Best to blend in.
After traveling to the front, Atran and his team gather in the ornate,
dimly lit lobby to study satellite maps, spar over survey questions,
debate whom they should contact, when they should call, what they
should say. Waziri quarrels with Davis, the former White House official and author of a recent book on Hamas, about how demanding they
should be when approaching the Kurdish government. Davis wants to
petition in advance for more time with ISIS captives. Tell them this
is whats needed for the science, he says. Waziri pushes back, contending that Kurdish sensibilities require a more deferential tack. You
dont walk into someones house and make demands, he says. Navigating cultural imperatives while getting the job done is a balancing act.
They also strategize about where to go next. They could drive to Sinjar, a city in northwest Iraq that has only recently been liberated from
ISIS. The hope would be, assuming they can skirt ISIS-controlled
territory along the way, to interview Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking people
whose ancient religion is considered devil worship by the Islamic State.
ISIS deems it theologically permissible to murder, rape, and enslave
Yazidis, and thats precisely what its fighters had done after seizing the
city in 2014. The stories and photographs trickling out of the region
after ISIS was pushed back are horrific, and estimates of Yazidis killed
reach 5,000. By going to Sinjar now, so soon after these atrocities, they
would be able to gather accounts from survivors that might shed additional light on how ISIS conducts itself when it has free rein over people
it considers dispensable. Part of understanding ISIS is observing the
depths to which it will go.
There is an undeniable thrill to the work, the sense that theyre
taking chances in order to accomplish something important. There is
an evident camaraderie among them, too, sometimes playful, sometimes impassioned. Perhaps its not altogether different from what
motivates and sustains the fighters they study. When Atran returns
to New York the next week, the first email he sends to the rest of the
team will acknowledge as much. I miss it, he will write.
Adventure aside, what they discover can be depressing. Its created
more fear in me, Waziri says. You can see a clearer picture of what
theyre thinking. It feels really bleak. It feels bleak, for instance,
when the Kurdish colonel predicts that, once it is defeated, ISIS will
spring up again under a new name. It feels bleak when the ISIS captive accepts killing civilians and
family members.
Atran doesnt share Steven Pinkers view, in The Better Angels of our
Nature, that humanity is on a promising, if unsteady, course toward
reduced levels of violence. Civilization is intermittent. It can spiral
down, he says. Human beings
are not particularly loving, caring
creatures. They are sometimes, mostly to their own kin, but human
beings can be intensely cruel, barbarous, and self-predatory.
Like Atran, Wilson has a nuanced awareness of the region and the
science, but after interviewing combatants, plumbing their minds,
dissecting their motivations, shes not always sure what to think.
You can go away with the feeling that everyone hates each other
and humans suck as a species, she says.
Wilson dreamed about ISIS after a day at the front. In her dream, she
was watching a quartet play classical music in a town square as civilized a scene as you could ask for when a car rolled by with no driver.
She knew it was a threat somehow and began to run. Just then the driver, wearing a suicide vest, emerged from the driverless car. Dreams dont
always follow the dull rules of logic. The same goes for human conflict.
She stood before the would-be martyr in the instant before he
completes his mission.
So what happened next?
I dont know, she says. Thats when I woke up.
Scholarly squabbles aside,

there is widespread admiration
for how Atran is able to collect
data amid a violent conflict.
Tom Bartlett is a senior writer at The Chronicle.
B11
ISIS produces a glossy magazine

intended to recruit fighters
from Western countries.
Want to Beat ISIS?

Try Poetry and Negotiation
By TOM BARTLETT
the world respond to ISIS?

and will be available in English next year from
Philippe-Joseph Salazar immersed
Yale University Press.)
himself in the promotional and theological texts of the Islamic State and
Youve praised the oratory and the literary
emerged with a provocative answer to
style of the Islamic State, in contrast to the
that question. Salazar, a professor of rhetoric
Wests fascination with Facebook and Twitat the University of Cape Town and a former
ter. But the Islamic State relies on social
student of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes,
media for recruitment. Its popular videos,
argues that we should negotiate with ISIS. He
far from being complicated theological exalso contends that the groups ability to attract
planations, tend to engage in fairly shallow
recruits from Europe and the United States
rhetoric visions of heroism, promises of
highlights a weakness in literary education
glory. Is the appeal really as scholarly as you
that ISISs success is, to some degree, a teaching
say?
failure.
The Internet is simply a utensil. What the
Salazar spent a year and a half analyzing ISIS
caliphate has realized and theyre the first
propaganda: watching documentaries, scrolling
global ideology to do it is that the utensil can
through posts on social media, studying the
be used to convey different messages. Its proLAURENT VITEUR, GETTY IMAGES
magazines it publishes in multiple languages.
paganda is highly erudite. Theres not a single
Philippe-Joseph Salazar
He concludes that ISISs appeal is more intellecdocument, documentary, harangue by a soldier
tual than frequently assumed. His book Words
of the caliphate when they kill someone that is
Are Weapons: Inside ISISs Rhetoric of Terror won a top prize in France
not based in the Quran.
and has, unsurprisingly, inspired strong reactions in that country
But we dont see it because we dont know it. And the media and
and throughout Europe. (Its been published in Italian and Spanish
politicians fall back on what they think they know of Islam instead
B12
OW SHOULD
MAY 27, 2016
of doing a careful analysis of the content. Were fooled by the fact

that the caliphate uses Twitter, Snapchat, and so on.
Youve said that if we pay attention to the rhetoric of ISIS
that will help us negotiate with its leaders. But how do you negotiate with a group that believes that if you dont submit to its
version of Islam, you deserve to die?
Let me answer your question with another question. Arent we
talking with Iran? Were we talking with them two years ago? No.
Yet Iran is still propagating the strange idea that Israel should be
wiped off the surface of the earth. There is a time when you dialogue with the enemy and there is a time when you battle the enemy.
Im quite convinced that we can strike a deal with the caliphate.
Im thinking of sovereignty and preserving what weve got. If the
safeguarding of France requires letting go of part of the Middle East
and letting it be the caliphate, then thats what it should be.
Weve seen that when ISIS forces have free rein over territory, they will kill inhabitants who do not conform to their ideology. How does one reach an agreement with such a group?
The caliphate offers the population in the Middle East a choice.
The choice is convert or live in sin and you dont want to live in
sin. Therefore, youre going to tell me, its a dreadful argument. But
it is an argument. The only thing we can do is take it at face value. It
is pointless in my view to call it a genocide. Or to call it massacres. It
is what it is.
What should we call it then?
Its a war. It is a true war.
But we dont usually use the word war to refer to the
slaughter of civilians. We have other, more specific words.
I quite agree with you. This is what our vocabulary has become.
But think of 1945, think of the 12 million Germans who were
forcibly transported from east to west with the full knowledge of
Churchill and Roosevelt. Whats very interesting with the caliphate
is that its a return to a situation that existed before. So we should
start again using terms that are adequate to the situation. It is a war
that they are waging on us, and its served with a global instrument
MAY 27, 2016
which no other global military power had before, which is the Internet.
The caliphate has turned the Internet into this everlasting library
that will continue to inspire, teach, give tips on how to conduct your
private life, treat your children, what kind of education your children should get, to fabricating bombs and writing speeches. Think
of what Marxism could have achieved, which had the same type of
following young, highly erudite, highly literate, the belief that violence is the engine of history. Imagine if Marxism had the Internet
at its disposal.
I read a comment by you, referring to the Islamic State,
saying let us not deride it, instead we must take it seriously.
Cant we simultaneously deride
it and take it seriously? Why are
those in opposition?
In Texas, there
was a case of a guy
who wanted to join
the jihad because
it came to him in
a dream. In the Islamic tradition, the
will of God appears
in a dream. But in the media he was derided as a psychotic case.
Well, no, it isnt so. Lets not laugh at it. Lets take it very seriously.
We have reduced the

university to getting a job.
Thats a weakness ISIS
has tapped into.
Youve written that what the Islamic State is creating is its

own humanities, and that the West needs to strengthen its
grounding in the humanities. But what does reading Homer
or Thoreau have to do with extremists beheading people in
Iraq and Syria? Also, it seems possible to say that what the
Islamic State is doing in its propaganda and its philosophy is
sophisticated in terms of having a system and a worldview, but
is humanities the right word? Doesnt ISIS have more of a
B13

persuasive, fundamentalist mission, which seems like the opposite of what we mean when we talk about the mission of the
humanities?
What I mean is a culture based on reading complex texts and
understanding complex arguments and being able to write complex
literature. By complex I mean the assemblage of philosophical
ideas, poetic ideas, aesthetic ideas, the ability to add beauty to a text.
This is what the caliphate is doing. And the only way we respond is
by putting out ridiculous counter-messaging videos. This is not the
way to combat the caliphate because the fundamental question is,
Why dont we convert to Islam? Why dont we? Why would it be so
scandalous?
Because we believe that we belong to a different culture, that we
have a different relationship with the divine, a different relationship
to the world, and to nature, and to other human beings. All of that
is embodied in our traditions in the West, in the arts, in literature,
in philosophy, in the cultivation of history. And this is what I mean
by the humanities. Our education has been so reduced that we are
unable to summon up the resources to think more profoundly about
the challenge of the caliphate.
So you see the root of this as a general decline in whats
taught at colleges and universities?
Yes, of course. Ive had masters and doctoral students, and I ask
them questions, and Im stunned to see how little knowledge they
have of the history of philosophy, of the history of history.
As you point out, these Western recruits are not all criminals
or idiots theyre well educated and middle class in many
cases. But at the same time, youre pointing to a lack of education as the problem. Isnt that a contradiction?
Let me imagine this little scene. This young Australian nicknamed Jihadi Jake. He wasnt popular, as you say in America. Came
from a rather rich family. He wasnt popular because he was a genius
at math. This young man kept a diary, and he gave an interview to a
newspaper in which he explains how he came to convert himself to
Islam and how he offered himself for an attack.
What would have happened if an English teacher had entered into
a discussion with this young man? Made him read Thomas Aquinas.
Made him read the very first translation of the Quran. Made him
aware of how rich the cultures of Christianity and Judaism are, how
rich the culture of 18th-century rationalism is. That is, enter a literary dialogue with this young man. I think he wouldnt have gone.
So youre saying counter-messaging cant be this sort of very
superficial, talk-the-language-of-the-young, it needs to be a
full-fledged response from all parts of our society, our own
intellectual traditions, our own
religious traditions. That its
about offering an alternative
path.
I think it will be the job of educational institutions to try to
offer up a different version of history, of time, of nature, and more
importantly the realization that
transcendence, ideals, and self-sacrifice, which are the mainstays of
the caliphate ideology, belong to
us as well.
We have reduced the university
to getting a job. These are the
sources which the caliphate has
tapped into.
Those young men during

the Spanish Civil War
who went to fight on the
Republican side had Virgil,
Homer, they had poetry
in their pockets.
But rebuilding our Western literary tradition wouldnt seem

to have any effect on an Iraqi who is from Kirkuk and wishes
not to live under Shia rule. How does your argument deal with
that guy?
My argument is that in such a global world you have to cut your
losses and choose your enemies and your friends. If an Iraqi wants
to go to the caliphate, well, good for him. I dont see why we should
convince an Iraqi to act otherwise. But if a German, French, Briton, or American wants to join the caliphate, I think its our duty to
counterargue.
B14
In terms of military action, are you in favor of what the U.S.

and its allies have been doing on the ground?
Personally, as a Frenchman, I think we should enter in direct
negotiation with the caliphate. France has a longstanding interest
in North Africa, as you know. We were the colonizing power. We
have a long expertise in the field. There is that fallacy that either the
West or NATO should do something. No. I think each major country should decide for itself.
I want to make sure I didnt mishear you. You said France
should enter directly into negotiations with the Islamic State?
Youve dragged me into a political discussion. I dont mind.
To drag you even further, when you say that France should
enter into direct negotiations, it seems like your assumption is
that ISIS is willing to negotiate. Theres been zero indication
that thats the case. And negotiation necessarily entails concessions from each side. Theres also zero indication theyre
willing to do that.
Are you sure?
Do you have information that says otherwise?
What Im saying here is that the interests of France in the Middle
East are not the same as the interests of, lets say, Germany or Britain. We have different interests because we have a different type of
Muslim population in France.
If I were in diplomatic circles, I would advocate that we strike
a deal. That is, you leave us alone, you dont send partisans into
France anymore, you redeploy your parties elsewhere. That wont be
popular. But that is what I believe.
In the United States, what unites both political parties is the
goal of defeating ISIS. It seems, though, that youre not arguing for its defeat.
Since the Vietnam War, in the American psyche, to defeat an
enemy is very important for national pride. We have to defeat x
because they are bad. The populace says Yes, we must defeat the
enemy. Its a rhetorical ploy used by politicians. For me, the real
question is not to defeat ISIS but to understand it so that we manage
it, so that we contain it. If you want to defeat the caliphate, you can
try, but I think its far more clever to try to understand it.
Those words defeat and enemy have a lot of traction in American political jargon. But they are obfuscating.
So what should we do?
My question is, what have we lost of ourselves to lose them the
7,000 Westerners [who have joined ISIS]? You do not find, on the
other side, the same sense of enthusiasm. We dont see Britons and
Germans forming international brigades to fight the caliphate, to
defend the Yazidis and the poor Christians that are being destroyed,
and the way the Jewish population has been eradicated from those
countries.
We have lost sense of our own roots. Those young men during
the Spanish Civil War who went to fight on the Republican side had
Virgil, Homer, they had poetry in their pockets. Their humanities
enabled them to fight for a noble cause.
Are you imagining that if we still had that tradition, if it was
as strong now as it was then, Americans, French, Germans
would go to Syria and fight ISIS with pockets filled with poetry?
The reason its not happening is because weve lost track of what
we are. We fell back on the state to take care of all that. So the state
manages an army and an air force that bombs from 40,000 feet. We
are being managed. We are denied the possibility of living better
lives, enthusiastic lives.
How is that congruent with your argument that we should sit
down and negotiate with ISIS?
The two relate in a certain way. I would like to see a social movement based in our humanities and our history opposing the caliphate with the same strength as the 7,000 Westerners. I would like to
see young men and women defend our values the way that young
jihadis defend jihadi values.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MAY 27, 2016
KENZO TRIBOUILLARD, AFP, GETTY IMAGES
French police officers raided an apartment in suburban Paris last fall in their search for those behind the terrorist attacks in the city.
Radicalized Islam,
or Islamicized Radicalism?
By ROBERT ZARETSKY
the November terrorist attacks in Paris, the

government declared that France was at war. But who, exactly,
was the enemy? The answer terrorism satisfied no one
and sparked a different kind of war in France, this time fought
among its intellectuals. Unlike other Left Bank slugfests, however, this melee has far-reaching implications, ones that may help us
better understand what took place not just in Paris and Brussels, but
also in Fort Hood and San Bernardino.
The leading antagonists in this battle are Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, renowned scholars of political Islam. Little more than a
week after Islamic State jihadists massacred 130 people in Paris, Roy
published an op-ed in the newspaper Le Monde. Titled Jihadism Is
a Generational and Nihilist Revolution, the piece argued that the
young French Muslims who committed these acts did so less because
they were Muslim than because they were young. ISIS, he declared,
recruited French youths who, already radicalized, seek a cause, a
label, a grand narrative on which to slap the blood-stained signature
of their personal revolt.
The threat facing France, Roy argued, was not the caliphate that
ISIS seeks to resurrect. That nightmarish notion, he insisted, will
HORTLY AFTER
MAY 27, 2016
sooner or later evaporate like an old mirage. The real threats to

France and the rest of the West are the nihilistic and revolutionary
reflexes of a certain cross-section of alienated youths. Were they, Roy
wondered, the avant-garde of a coming war or, instead, the detritus
of historys intestinal rumblings?
Roy plumped for the latter explanation. Ultimately, the ISIS recruits who carried out the November attacks were rebels seeking
a cause, any cause, with which to garb their murderous impulses.
Think Marlon Brando wearing a beard, not a leather jacket, and riding a gun-mounted pickup, not a Triumph. In a well-chiseled phrase,
Roy concluded that the challenge confronting France and the rest of
the West was not the radicalization of Islam, but the Islamization of
radicalism.
Roys bon mot caught the attention not just of the French media,
but also of Gilles Kepel. Author of several works on Islam in France,
especially on the grim suburbs that have become hothouses for
Salafism, the ultra-conservative sect that rejects secularism and
more-moderate interpretations of Islam, Kepel lambasted Roy. In a
bravura piece published by the newspaper Libration, Kepel suggested
B15
leads to accusations of Islamophobia. One of the seminal texts

ignored by Roy and his followers, Kepel declared, is The Global Islamic Resistance Call. Written by Abu Musab al-Suri, a Syrian engineer turned jihadist, the text appeared online in late 2004 or early
2005 and, Kepel believes, frames the worldview of ISIS militants in
France. In his most recent book, Terror in the Hexagon, he argues
that al-Suri offers a kind of third-generation jihadism. From the
1970s to 1990s, the mujahedin in Afghanistan and Armed Islamic
Group of Algeria formed the first generation of jihadists, who were
then superseded by Osama bin Ladens Al Qaeda at the turn of the
millennium. Turning the Al Qaeda model upside down, al-Suri
dismissed centrally planned attacks against large and symbolic targets. Instead he urged a bottom-up strategy privileging the actions
of independent and isolated groups already embedded in the West.
The attacks in Paris and Brussels might well reflect al-Suris malign
influence.
Predictably, the French media have been taken more by the sparks
than by the substance of Roy and Kepels very public quarrel. But the
substance is crucial because it forces us to reflect on the roots of jihadist terrorism. Does it find its sustenance in the soil of a politicized form
of Islam, or instead in the secularized forms of society in the West? Is
religion at the source of these awful events, or is it merely a justification a convenient hostage, really for acting on impulses that have
little if anything to do with faith?
ALBERTO CONTI, CONTRASTO, REDUX
Olivier Roy
RGA, REA, REDUX
Gilles Kepel

that Roy should visit the suburbs that have hatched these terrorists
rather than rehashing Wikipedia entries and newspaper accounts.
Repeatedly punning on his antagonists name his piece was titled
Le Roi Est Nu (The King Is Naked) Kepel blasted Roy for echoing
the glib analysis first proposed by American specialists who, knowing
neither Arabic nor Arabs, nevertheless declared that these acts of terrorism were the product of ruptures with their dominant societies.
According to Roys school of thought, the ISIS militants of
today are no different from, say, the members of the Red Brigade
in Italy or Red Army Faction in West Germany during the 1970s.
Change the color from red to black and, voil, you find the same
rebellion, the same rupture, the same rapture with violence. For
Kepel, this is utter nonsense. Deafened by the mantra of radicalization which, for Kepel, signifies the absence of analysis Roy did not hear the actual words pronounced by Salafist
preachers in the suburbs, just as he had failed to read the tweets
and tracts they were broadcasting.
Salafism, Kepel argued, must be taken seriously even if this
B16
these questions with Kepel in a telephone

interview, he renewed, in impeccable English, his emphasis
on religion.
At times, Kepel, asking about the significance of certain dates, made me feel like a contestant on Jeopardy.
Why is the year 2005 important? Was it the online appearance of
al-Suris Global Islamic Resistance Call? The explosion of the suburban
riots in France? Those answers were right, but not right enough.
Kepel interrupted my stabs at an answer: It was the year that YouTube was born. That event, he declared, was as pivotal as al-Suris
manifesto or the riots in France. With YouTube, not only did ISIS
find an invaluable platform, but Salafism found an audience far greater than that of the largest mosque.
The growing presence of Salafism in certain urban enclaves also
preoccupies Kepel. In his books, he traces the halalization of these
neighborhoods. Increasingly, everyday life in places like Saint Denis,
in Pariss northern suburbs, is governed by what is halal (permitted)
and haram (forbidden). These categories extend well beyond food, encompassing sartorial, sexual, and social mores.
Kepel worries that this trend is not limited to the borders of these
suburbs. Have you heard, he asked, about Hijab Day at Sciences
Po? In fact, I had read that morning an account of it in Le Monde.
Sponsored by a few Muslim students at the university one of
Frances most prestigious institutions of higher learning they encouraged fellow students to don a headscarf for a day in order to give
them an idea of daily life for some Muslims in Paris. While a few students accepted the invitation, many others demurred.
Teaching at a public university where I regularly encounter students
passing out material about Hinduism and Sufism, Pentecostalism and
Buddhism, and where on occasion a young man, waving a Bible outside our library, tells me I am damned, I found Hijab Day both unexceptional and well-intentioned. But here, too, I was wrong. For Kepel,
it instead carried the whiff of proselytization and made yet another
dent in the rusting carapace of lacit, Frances robust separation of
church and state.
But it is less the hijab that threatens higher education in France than
the countrys successive governments. Excoriating the deep cuts made
in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, Kepel reminded me of a fundamental difference between French and American universities. Unlike
our country, in France there is little public pressure and few interest
groups to finance these fields. He suggested that the Israel-Palestine
conflict has largely driven the founding of chairs and departments in
the United States devoted to the Middle East.
I asked Kepel what advice he would give Frances leaders if he had
their ear. I have their ears, he replied. The problem was that the ears
were hard of hearing.
As it turned out, here was an issue where he and Roy agreed. In a
long email exchange, Roy told me he also had spoken into powerful
ears, including the French presidents. In particular, he had warned
Franois Hollande against his efforts to expel religion from the public sphere, as with Hollandes backing of headscarf bans, but to little
HEN I RAISED
MAY 27, 2016
avail. There is a political logic, he wrote, that has little to do with

good politics and good logic.
The greatest danger to lacit, for Roy, is its fiercest defenders. When
I asked him about the role the schools and universities have played
or failed to play in the rise of Islamist fundamentalism, Roy cited the
recent metamorphosis of lacit. Once it was a term defining the legal
separation of church and state, but now there is a growing trend to
turn lacit from the neutrality of the State into an ideological system of
its own. This mirrors distrust concerning lacit among the youths living in the devastated suburbs. These so-called valeurs laques, secular
values of the republic that reflect its revolutionary origins, he wrote me,
are met with suspicion by young schoolchildren who feel cheated by
the system and do not find galit, libert, fraternit in their relationship
with the police, the labor market, and the school system.
This explains, for Roy, why Salafism is the consequence, not the
cause, of youthful radicalization. Insisting that we cannot make sense
of the suicide bombers according to any kind of traditional, religious,
and fundamentalist approach, he instead points to the attraction that
violence holds for this particular demographic. ISIS fishes in an existing pond, he insisted, and it is useless to understand radicalization as
part either of a religious trajectory or of great global strategy.
ADICALISM VERSUS ISLAMISM: Is the choice truly so stark? Or,

instead, has this debates sound and fury obscured the shared
traits of equally compelling analyses? Might we not instead
compare Roy and Kepels approaches to a theoretical double
helix? Doesnt each of these thinkers offer a discrete strand of
interpretation, which in turn coils around a shared axis?
Marc Hecker shares this impression. A respected, widely published
terrorism specialist at the French Institute of International Relations
who also teaches at Sciences Po, Hecker observed that the spat between Kepel and Roy in part reflects the confrontational nature of
French academe, based on chapels, or schools of thought, fueled by
personal or institutional animosity.
Roys and Kepels approaches are in fact complementary, Hecker

wrote. In his own research on the motivations of jihadist terrorists,
Hecker has been impressed by their great diversity. Some of these
profiles correspond to Kepels analytical framework, while others
correspond to Roys, he says. At times the two frameworks simply
overlap.
Since the 2015 attacks, Hecker has also had the ear of government
officials. While he has emphasized the reinforcement of Frances
system of human intelligence, Hecker allows that
much more must be done
at a national level. Like Roy
and Kepel, he worries about
Frances fraying social fabric
and the growing divide between well-to-do urban centers and impoverished peripheries. As one potential way
to ameliorate the situation,
Kepel cited the current debate
in France concerning the re-establishment of compulsory military
service, and pointed out that it would allow the young from different
social milieus to mingle and mature together.
One of Frances greatest political observers, the late Raymond
Aron, wrote several decades ago that those who believe that people
will follow their interests instead of their passions have understood
nothing of the 20th century. Both Kepel and Roy can shed light on
the jihadist particulars of that insight. Theyd do well to listen patiently to each other, and wed do well to listen to both of them.
A quarrel between two renowned

French scholars of political Islam
forces us to reflect on the roots
of jihadist terrorism.
Robert Zaretsky is a professor of world cultures and literatures in the department of modern and classical languages and the Honors College at the University of Houston. He is the author, most recently, of Boswells Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2015).
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MAY 27, 2016
B17
New Scholarly Books
For additional books this week,

go to chronicle.com/books
COMPILED BY NINA C. AYOUB
Archaeology
Communication
The following list has been compiled

from information provided by the publishers. Prices and number of pages are
sometimes approximate. Some publishers
offer discounts to scholars and to people
who order in bulk.
AMERICAN STUDIES
ARTFUL LIVES: THE FRANCIS WATTS LEE
FAMILY AND THEIR TIMES, by Patricia J.
Fanning (University of Massachusetts Press;

224 pages; $90 hardcover, $25.95 paperback).
Examines the Arts and Crafts movement,
Christian Socialism, and other aspects of
of turn-of-the-century culture in Boston
through a study of the family of the photographer and printer.
ARCHAEOLOGY
A UNIVERSAL THEORY OF POTTERY PRODUCTION: IRVING ROUSE, ATTRIBUTES,
MODES, AND ETHNOGRAPHY, by Richard
A. Krause (University of Alabama Press; 214

pages; $54.95). Draws on the classification
theories of Irving Rouse in a study of potsherds from the Paso del Indio site in Puerto
Rico.
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
HEAVEN, HELL, AND EVERYTHING IN

BETWEEN: MURALS OF THE COLONIAL
ANDES, by Ananda Cohen Suarez (University
of Texas Press; 274 pages; $90 hardcover,

$29.95 paperback). A study of vivid church
murals painted in Perus Cuzco region from
the 16th through the early 19th centuries.
BOTANY
ETHNOBOTANY OF THE COOS, LOWER
UMPQUA, AND SIUSLAW INDIANS, by Pa-
tricia Whereat-Phillips (Oregon State University Press; 176 pages; $22.95). Discusses
the traditional use of plants by three coastal
tribes of southern Oregon.
BUSINESS
THE DISRUPTION DILEMMA, by
Joshua Gans (MIT Press; 166 pages; $24.95).

Contrasts demand-side and supply-side disruption and considers why some companies
exhibit resilience in the face of disruption
while others fail.
COMMUNICATION
BY ANY MEDIA NECESSARY: THE NEW
YOUTH ACTIVISM, by Henry Jenkins and
others (New York University Press; 352

pages; $29.95). Offers case studies of how
youth are engaging the political potential of
social media, video, and other communications strategies.
PUBLIC INTERESTS: MEDIA ADVOCACY
AND STRUGGLES OVER U.S. TELEVISION,
B18
History
Literature
by Allison Perlman (Rutgers University

Press; 241 pages; $90 hardcover, $27.95 paperback). Offers case studies of education reformers, feminists, the NAACP, the Parents
Television Council, and others in a study of
activists efforts to influence broadcasting
policy.
Press; 383 pages; $45). Discusses the bulldozer as instrument and icon in a study of
the machines move from military to civilian
uses and the rise of a postwar culture of
clearance.
CULTURAL STUDIES
(University of Nevada Press; 294 pages;

$29.95). Discusses an incident in August
1879 in which five Italian-immigrant charcoal-making workers were killed, along with
six others wounded and 14 taken captive by a
sherriffs posse.
GUERRILLA AESTHETICS: ART, MEMORY,

AND THE WEST GERMAN URBAN GUERRILLA, by Kimberly Mair (McGill-Queens
University Press; 384 pages; US$100 hardcover, US$29.95 paperback). Explores the
aesthetic rather than instrumental intent of
actions by the Red Army Faction and other
elements of the West German radical left
from 1967 to 1977.
ECONOMICS
CHINAS INNOVATION CHALLENGE:
AVOIDING THE MIDDLE-INCOME TRAP,
edited by Arie Y. Lewin, Martin Kenney, and

Johann Peter Murmann (Cambridge University Press; 496 pages; $150 hardcover, $44.99
paperback). Writings by Chinese and Western economists and management scholars
on the challenges of building an innovation
growth model in China.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD ECONOMY: THE FLYING GEESE THEORY OF

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND
STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION, by Ter-
utomo Ozawa (Edward Elgar Publishing; 224

pages; $120). Topics include the prospects for
Chinese industry in Africa.
FILM STUDIES
HUMOUR AND IRONY IN DUTCH POSTWAR FICTION FILM, by Peter Verstraten
(Amsterdam University Press, distributed by

University of Chicago Press; 410 pages; $124).
Uses such categories as low-class comedies,
neurotic romances, deliberate camp, and grotesque satire to examine Dutch feature films.
VIOLENT WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY
CINEMA, by Janice Loreck (Palgrave Mac-
millan; 179 pages; $95). Explores the appeal

of homicidal women in art-house fare, with a
focus on Antichrist, Trouble Every Day, Baisemoi, Heavenly Creatures, Monster, and The
Reader.
GENDER STUDIES
WHAT GENDER IS, WHAT GENDER DOES,
by Judith Roof (University of Minnesota

Press; 280 pages; $94.50 hardcover, $27 paperback). Uses examples from film, television,
and other realms of popular culture in a
discussion of the polymorphous dynamics of
gender.
HISTORY
BULLDOZER: DEMOLITION AND CLEARANCE OF THE POSTWAR LANDSCAPE, by
Francesca Russello Ammon (Yale University
Sociology
IMAGINING TOMBSTONE: THE TOWN

TOO TOUGH TO DIE, by Kara L. McCor-
CHARCOAL AND BLOOD: ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS IN EUREKA, NEVADA, AND THE

FISH CREEK MASSACRE, by Silvio Manno
mack (University Press of Kansas; 206 pages;

$27.95). Explores the encounter of myth
and history in Tombstone, Ariz., a silver
boomtown turned ghost town turned tourist
attraction with reenactments of the gunfight
at the O.K. Corral.
A CHRISTIAN SAMURAI: THE TRIALS OF

BABA BUNKO, by William J. Farge (Catho-
sin Press; 251 pages; $39.95). Discusses coffee

houses, music halls, and other realms in a
study of how assimilated, secular Jews shaped
the citys modernist culture in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
lic University of America Press; 336 pages;

$34.95). Documents the hidden history of
Christianity in 18th-century Japan through a
study of the life, writings, and influence of an
author and orator who was tried and executed
in 1759.
FROM SLAVE TO STATESMAN: THE
LIFE OF EDUCATOR, EDITOR, AND CIVIL
RIGHTS ACTIVIST WILLIS M. CARTER OF
VIRGINIA, by Robert Heinrich and Deborah
Harding (Louisiana State University Press;

162 pages; $35). Traces the life of a man born
into slavery in 1852 who, after gaining his
freedom with the Civil War and pursuing
education, became a teacher and principal,
newspaper editor, and civil-rights activist in
Staunton, Va.
FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO CHECKPOINT

CHARLIE: THE ALLIANCE FOR SOVEREIGNTY BETWEEN AMERICAN INDIANS AND
CENTRAL EUROPEANS IN THE LATE COLD
WAR, by Gyrgy Ferenc Tth (State Uni-
versity of New York Press; 320 pages; $90).

Describes a transatlantic activist alliance that
worked on behalf of the American Indian
sovereignty movement.
GIRLS OF LIBERTY: THE STRUGGLE FOR
SUFFRAGE IN MANDATORY PALESTINE, by
Margalit Shilo (Brandeis University Press/

University Press of New England; 232 pages;
$85 hardcover, $40 paperback). Examines
feminist struggles for suffrage and equal
rights within emerging Zionist political institutions in British Mandate Palestine.
THE GUN IN CENTRAL AFRICA: A HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND POLITICS,
by Giacomo Macola (Ohio University Press;

Considers practical and symbolic aspects of
firearms in a study of why some Central African peoples embraced gun technology in the
19th century while others did not.
HEART OF EUROPE: A HISTORY OF THE
HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, by Peter H. Wil-
son (Harvard University Press; 942 pages;

$39.95). Traces the empires history from its
Carolingian origins to its dissolution in 1806.
THE HOLY SEE AND THE EMERGENCE OF
THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST: BENEDICT
XVS DIPLOMACY IN GREATER SYRIA (19141922), by Agnes de Dreuzy (Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press; 296 pages; $69.95).

Discusses Pope Benedict XVs statecraft
during and after World War I regarding
post-Ottoman Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
THE INVISIBLE JEWISH BUDAPEST: METROPOLITAN CULTURE AT THE FIN DE SICLE, by Mary Gluck (University of Wiscon-
THE JEFFERSON HIGHWAY: BLAZING

THE WAY FROM WINNIPEG TO NEW ORLEANS, by Lyell D. Henry Jr. (University of
Iowa Press; 213 pages; $29.95). Examines the

origins, history, and significance of the first
North American north-to-south intercontinental highway.
LIBERATION AND DEVELOPMENT: BLACK

CONSCIOUSNESS COMMUNITY PROGRAMS
IN SOUTH AFRICA, by Leslie Anne Had-
field (Michigan State University Press; 270

pages; $39.95). Focuses on the yearbook Black
Review, the Zanempilo Community Health
Center, and the Njwaxa leatherwork factory
in a study of Black Consciousness projects of
the late 1960s and early 70s.
THE REVOLUTION BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: LATE AUTHORITARIANISM

AND STUDENT PROTEST IN PORTUGAL,
by Guya Accornero (Berghahn Books; 169

pages; $90). Focuses on student protest in the
long 1960s that predated the military coup
and Carnation Revolution that overthrew
the authoritarian Estado Novo in 1974.
SOCIALIST FUN: YOUTH, CONSUMPTION,
AND STATE-SPONSORED POPULAR CULTURE IN THE SOVIET UNION, 19451970,
by Gleb Tsipursky (University of Pittsburgh

Press; 384 pages; $29.95). Combines archival
and interview sources in a study of youth
entertainment and leisure activities at tens of
thousands of state-sponsored klubs.
THE THOMAS INDIAN SCHOOL AND THE
IRREDEEMABLE CHILDREN OF NEW
YORK, by Keith R. Burich (Syracuse Uni-
versity Press; 189 pages; $59.95 hardcover,

$29.95 paperback). Discusses a school founded around 1900 by Presbyterian missionaries
on the Cattaraugus Seneca Reservation in
western New York.
HISTORY OF SCIENCE
THE RESTLESS CLOCK: A HISTORY OF
THE CENTURIES-LONG ARGUMENT OVER
WHAT MAKES LIVING THINGS TICK, by
Jessica Riskin (University of Chicago Press;

548 pages; $40). Traces the rise in science of
a principle banning ascriptions of agency to
nature, as well as the history of dissents from
that mechanistic view.
LITERATURE
BLOOD, BONE, AND MARROW: A BIOG-
MAY 27, 2016
RAPHY OF HARRY CREWS, by Ted Geltner

(University of Georgia Press; 448 pages;
$39.95). Traces the outlaw life and work of
the Georgia-born writer (1935-2012), whose
books included Scar Lover, Body, and Naked in
Garden Hills.
port fiction, and maternal care ethics and

childrens fantasy.
of Pennsylvania Press; 208 pages; $49.95).

Draws on conversion narratives, poems, novels, and other texts in a study of Protestant
discourse on abjection.
MUSIC
CAST DOWN: ABJECTION IN AMERICA,

1700-1850, by Mark J. Miller (University
CULTIVATING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: A LITERARY HISTORY OF U.S. GARDEN WRITING, by Robert S. Emmett (Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press; 246 pages;

$90 hardcover, $25.95 paperback). Documents how ideas of environmental justice
emerged in descriptions of gardening across a
wide range of mid-20th-century literature.
ELIZABETH BISHOPS BRAZIL, by Bethany
Hicok (University of Virginia Press; 192
pages; $59.50 hardcover, $24.50 paperback).
Draws on unpublished sources in a study of
the poets nearly two decades in Brazil, where
she lived after falling in love with Lota de
Macedo Soares; topics include Brazilian writers influence on her work.
FINDING MEANING: K AONA AND CONTEMPORARY HAWAIIAN LITERATURE, by
Brandy Nalani McDougall (University of

Arizona Press; 204 pages; $55). Explores
the Hawaiian aesthetic concept of kaona in
a discussion of such authors as HaunaniKay Trask, John Dominis Holt, Imaikalani
Kalahele, and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl.
KAFKAS ETHICS OF INTERPRETATION:
BETWEEN TYRANNY AND DESPAIR, by Jen-
nifer L. Geddes (Northwestern University

Press; 176 pages; $99.95 hardcover, $34.95
paperback). Disputes the notion that Kafka
attempted to avoid or prevent the interpretation of his work.
MOTHERS IN CHILDRENS AND YOUNG
ADULT LITERATURE: FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO POSTFEMINISM,
edited by Lisa Rowe Fraustino and Karen

Coats (University Press of Mississippi; 240
pages; $60). Topics include animal mothers
and animal babies, mothers in Kindertrans-
SHAKESPEARES BINDING LANGUAGE, by

John Kerrigan (Oxford University Press; 622
pages; $60). A study of oaths, threats, pledges,
vows, contracts, and similar language in the
plays.
MUSIC IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY: AMERICAN MUSIC IN THE FIFTIES, by James
Wierzbicki (University of Illinois Press; 312

pages; $95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback).
Documents wider social forces that shaped
the fortunes of both established and emerging musical genres during the decade.
TROPICAL RENDITIONS: MAKING MUSICAL

SCENES IN FILIPINO AMERICA, by Christine
Bacareza Balance (Duke University Press; 256

pages; $84.95 hardcover, $23.95 paperback).
Discusses Pinoy indie rock and other genres in
a study of how popular music figures in Filipino
identity and acts to challenge U.S. stereotypes.
PHILOSOPHY
COMPLICITY AND MORAL ACCOUNTABILITY, by Gregory Mellema (University
of Notre Dame Press; 176 pages; $40). Uses

St. Thomas Aquinass nine-part taxonomy
of complicity as a starting point to examine
issues of blame and responsibility in being an
accomplice to the wrongdoing of others.
LEVINASS ETHICAL POLITICS, by Michael
L. Morgan (Indiana University Press; 432
pages; $100 hardcover, $40 paperback). Defends the Lithuanian-born French philosopher
as a serious political thinker, with particular
attention to his writings on Zionism and Israel.
GRAND STRATEGY WEAKENED AMERICA,
lated and edited by Shannon Blake Skelton

(Bloomsbury Academic; 256 pages; $112).
Focuses on Simpatico, The Late Henry Moss,
and other of the American playwrights work
since 1988.
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE VOTING

RIGHTS ACT, by Charles S. Bullock III,
URBAN STUDIES
by Robert G. Kaufman (University Press of

Kentucky; 294 pages; $40). Focuses on Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in a critique
of Obamas foreign policy as a doctrine that
threatens Americas role as a superpower.
Ronald Keith Gaddie, and Justin J. Wert
(University of Oklahoma Press; 240 pages;
$29.95). Pays particular attention to the period between the 2006 revision of the 1965 act
and the invalidation of one of its key provisions in Shelby County v. Holder (2013).
RELIGION
COMMENTARY ON GENESIS, by Didymus
the Blind, translated by Robert C. Hill
(Catholic University of America Press; 248
pages; $39.95). First translation of what may
be the earliest work of the fourth-century
Egyptian monk and theologian, who was acclaimed by Jerome and other contemporaries
but was anathematized in 553 for his defense
of Origen.
INCORRUPTIBLE BODIES: CHRISTOLOGY,
SOCIETY, AND AUTHORITY IN LATE ANTIQUITY, by Yonatan Moss (University of
California Press; 264 pages; $65). Focuses on

early sixth-century debates between the theologians Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus concerning the nature of Christs
physical body before the resurrection.
SOCIOLOGY
SPANISH LEGACIES: THE COMING OF
AGE OF THE SECOND GENERATION, by
by Geoffrey Bennington (Fordham University Press; 294 pages; $125 hardcover, $35
paperback). Topics include politics relation
to rhetoric, philosophy, and truth.
Alejandro Portes, Rosa Aparicio, and William Haller (University of California Press;
Draws on interviews of students in Madrid
and Barcelona in a study of adaptations to
Spanish life by children of immigrants; includes comparisons with the United States.
POLITICAL SCIENCE
THEATER
SCATTER 1: THE POLITICS OF POLITICS

IN FOUCAULT, HEIDEGGER, AND DERRIDA,
DANGEROUS DOCTRINE: HOW OBAMAS
THE LATE WORK OF SAM SHEPARD, trans-
A NICE PLACE TO VISIT: TOURISM AND

URBAN REVITALIZATION IN THE POSTWAR RUSTBELT, by Aaron Cowan (Temple
University Press; 234 pages; $84.50 hardcover, $29.95 paperback). Compares Cincinnati,
St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore in a
study of Rustbelt cities revitalization efforts
to attract tourism in the wake of deindustrialization.
PUBLISHERS FEATURED HERE AND

ONLINE: Amsterdam U. Press, Berghahn
Books, Bloomsbury Academic, Cambridge
U. Press, Catholic U. of America Press,
Duke U. Press, Edward Elgar Publishing,
Fordham U. Press, Harvard U. Press,
Indiana U. Press, Louisiana State U. Press,
McGill-Queens U. Press, Michigan State
U. Press, MIT Press, New York U. Press,
Northwestern U. Press, Ohio U. Press, Oregon State U. Press, Oxford U. Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Rutgers U. Press, State
U. of New York Press, Syracuse U. Press,
Temple U. Press, U. of Alabama Press, U. of
Arizona Press, U. of California Press, U. of
Chicago Press, U. of Georgia Press, U. of
Illinois Press, U. of Iowa Press, U. of Massachusetts Press, U. of Minnesota Press, U.
of Nevada Press, U. of Notre Dame Press,
U. of Oklahoma Press, U. of Pennsylvania
Press, U. of Pittsburgh Press, U. of Texas
Press, U. of Virginia Press, U. of Wisconsin Press, U. Press of Kansas, U. Press of
Kentucky, U. Press of Mississippi, U. Press
of New England, and Yale U. Press.
THE CHRONICLE CROSSWORD
Crossing the Isle
By JACOB STULBERG | Edited by BRAD WILBER

32. Fuss
33. Wipe the floor with
36. Address with slashes,
for short
37. Where to find all three
41.
42.
44.
45.
47.
49.
51.
57.
58.
59.
60.
ACROSS
1. Necco Wafers, e.g.
6. Clumsy me!
10. Italian tennis star Errani
14. Month between diciembre
and febrero
15. Home of Zion National
Park
16. Locale in Genesis

17. *Make a time capsule out
of magazines you looked at

while luxuriating in bubbles?
M AY 2 7 , 2 0 1 6
20. Episode playback device

21. Dudgeon
22. Hawaiian island devoid
of traffic lights
23. *Potters argument over
whether to make vases

or crocks?
27. Country with the only remaining wild Asiatic
cheetahs
28. Gift recipient
29. Beaded counters
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
parts of the answer to each

starred clue
Amazon event of 1997,
briefly
Hindu deity depicted riding
a parrot
Arles affirmative
Bonus track, often
See 19 Down
Close, as an envelope
*Excessively theatrical drum
major?
Gilbert who wrote 1980s
sequels to the works of
Lewis Carroll and J.M.
Barrie
Call from the pasture
Pound, e.g.
*What a lingerie-store clerk
might do after some
haggling?
On the quiet side, for sailors
Act carefree, perhaps
Some hail-related property
damage
Ariz., once
Walkie-talkie users
acknowledgment
Furtive summons
DOWN
1. They might be outstanding
2. Native Alaskan
3. Cruise control is one, briefly
4. Kind of preservation
in an urban myth about

Walt Disney
5. Anguished sound
6. Beat in a footrace
7. Common survey option
8. Matter of course?
9. ___ sweeps with manycolored brooms: Dickinson
10. Under
11. For the time being
12. Kidney-related
13. Title woman in a 1973
chart-topping breakup song
18. Sony subsidiary, once
19. With 47 Across, voice
of J.D. Salinger in Netflixs
BoJack Horseman
24. City roughly halfway
between Cleveland and
Buffalo
25. Scandinavian collection
that influenced Tolkien
26. Big plus
29. Cold-climate diving bird
30. Cause of a tan line, maybe
31. School on a rsum
32. Prince in Disneys Aladdin
34. Reuters competitor
35. Spot for holders of opera
glasses, often
38. Kiss Me Deadly or Touch
of Evil, e.g.
39. Unpleasant buildup
40.
43.
46.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
61.
62.
63.
1/16 ounce
Judge in a dispute
Goes by
Founding patriarch of
the Flying Wallendas
Dog asleep on a roof
Painter Schiele who was
a protg of Klimt
Tackles
Turning Tables balladeer
of 2011
Beatnik version of 68 Across
Strawberries at the
Kentucky Derby, maybe
TD Garden cagers
Giant cloud producer
of the 50s
PC key next to F1
Ring ruling, for short
Significant econ. indicator
Comments? Write to
crosswords@chronicle.com
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE
B19
OBSERVER
Big Brains, Small Minds

By JOHN KAAG and DAVID OHARA
E ARE on the verge

of becoming the best
trained, and least educated, society since the
Romans and reducing the humanities to a type of soft science will only
hasten this trend.
As the sciences rightly grow, a free
society must ensure that criticism of
the sciences grows apace. Effective
criticism depends on distance, in this
case on an unshakeable difference,
between the humanities and the
STEM fields. That is not to say that
STEM researchers cant or shouldnt
be experts in the humanities, but
rather that the work that the humanities do should not be judged by the
metrics of hard science. As Aristotle,
Platos most famous student, suggests
at the beginning of the Nicomachean
Ethics, precision is not to be sought
for alike in all discussions. Similarly,
we should not expect the humanities
to be driven or dominated by the
objectives of science. Plato teaches us
that part of the liberal arts enduring
mission is precisely to critique these
objectives.
It ought to be obvious that the
study of law, justice, and the arts is
one of the best preparations for governing. This goes for governing our
polis and equally for governing our
technologies and ourselves. If youre
interested in learning about justice,
you dont go to the chemistry laboratory. You go to philosophy class and
travel to Platos Republic.
But if you go to the Republic in
search of concrete answers about
justice (as many of our students are
encouraged to search for the right
answers in their labs), you will be
disappointed. Plato is not famous
for answering questions but for
staking his life on the chance to ask
them. He seems more interested in
inviting his readers to ask their own
questions and to finish the dialogue
themselves, as if to say that its more
important to learn to think than to
memorize others dogmatic principles. The question about justice that
motivates the Republic is posed in a
lengthy series of dialogues, and it
does not give rise to a fixed doctrine.
Plato seems to be suggesting that
part of being just is taking the time
to think seriously about justice.
That involves asking questions
and not answering them before they
have been posed in a meaningful and
detailed way. It involves patience and
reflection, increasingly rare in our
STEM culture. When we dismiss
perennial questions of right action as
ivory-tower claptrap and try to get
down to the business of satisfying
our passions or current economic or
B20
TINA ZELLMER FOR THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
military needs, we can find ourselves

chasing the wrong ends because we
quickly forget what the right ends
could be. To put it differently: If we
treat the contemplation of the best
life as a luxury we cannot afford,
seemingly urgent matters will crowd
out the truly important ones.
Plato knew this firsthand. He had
watched as ambition, tied to technological superiority, had led his fellow
Athenians to engage in a number of
poorly conceived military campaigns,
the last of which had allowed the
Spartans to lay siege to Athens. In
the face of such a ruthless foe, Athens did what any wealthy democracy
would do: It built a wall around itself.
Some of the walls of the Peloponnesian War are still visible, hastily
built out of whatever the Athenians
could lay hands on the remnants
of roofs and doorposts suggesting
that some buildings were torn down
to make them. That is instructive,
if not cautionary. It is often the case
that in our attempts to guard our-
selves we destroy the very things that

we long to protect. Identifying and
negotiating these paradoxes is the
stuff of a liberal-arts education.
F THE AIM of education is to

gain money and power, where
can we turn for help in knowing
what to do with that money
and power? Only a disordered
mind thinks that these are ends in
themselves. Socrates offers us the
cautionary tale of the athlete-physician Herodicus, who wins fame
and money through his athletic
prowess and medicine, then proceeds
to spend all his wealth trying to
preserve his youth. This is what we
mean by a disordered mind. He has
been trained in the STEM fields of
his time, and his training gains him
great wealth, but it leaves him foolish
enough to spend it all on something
he can never buy.
These days, no one really talks
about Socrates or Herodicus; students dont need to read Plato, were
told. Harking back to the golden

age of Athens is seen as impractical,
old-fashioned, or elitist terms that
are now used almost interchangeably,
as in the bizarre declaration in 2013
by Pat McCrory, the Republican
governor of North Carolina, that
universities had been taken over by
educational elites.
Plato argues that there is nothing
wrong with turning education over
to elites, as long as they take it as
their mission to pursue wisdom and
guide political and technological
ambition, and to stake their lives
on the chance to help students ask
meaningful questions, rather than
give half-baked answers, about the
meaning of life.
John Kaag is a professor of philosophy
at the University of Massachusetts at
Lowell. David OHara is an associate
professor of philosophy and classics at Augustana University, in South Dakota,
and teaches field ecology courses in Central America and Alaska.
MAY 27, 2016

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

Face to Face With ISIS

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When 16 black women cadets raised their fists, the gesture

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We risk becoming a society of technological

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By John Kaag and David OHara B20

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Black Panthers became icons of radical

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The cadets use of

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