Academic Blogger

April 20, 2011 By 1 Comment

The New York Times is onto something. First, it was the Weapons of Mass Destruction. And now… its investigative reporters have found another hitherto elusive entity: The Academic Blogger:  “A remarkable variety of scholars have achieved blogosphere fame, particularly those devoted to subjects related to the public sphere — politics, economics, legal affairs,” declares reporter Pamela Paul, with the breathlessness ordinarily reserved for revealing a new species.

Looks like some academics have found that it’s a desiccated world in the office space. The blogosphere allows them to be “deeply personal and, per the format’s wont, downright snarky in ways they are not in the classroom,” and offers them a space in which they can “regularly ruffle feathers” and even use the fanbase to troll for future spouses.

No surprises that all those featured are all white, mostly men (one woman: that’s the story about future spouses, coming up) and mostly rightwing, including the one woman. One and a half of those featured could be described as left; more on that later.

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Vanity Fair does Egypt

April 20, 2011 By 3 Comments


Vanity Fair’s May issue features a photographic series of young Egyptians dubbed, at various points in the accompanying article, ‘tech-savvy internet activists.’ The first photograph is of Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who created the Arabic-language Facebook page, “We Are All Khaled Said.” Ghonim (in the photo above) emerged as a hero of sorts (despite his public display of modesty), and to many around the globe represents the new face of this so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ Ghonim also participated in the referendum planning meetings with Egypt’s High Military Council and other (all male) ‘leaders’ of the revolution, including the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Tim Hetherington

April 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

The photographer, Tim Hetherington, (b. in Liverpool) was killed in Libya. Another photographer Chris Hondros, who has also done work for a number of major Western publications, also died. The tragic news was first posted on Facebook by their colleague, Andre Liohm.

Hetherington, who started his career in West Africa (mainly in Liberia and Sierra Leone) was featured on this blog when photojournalist Glenna Gordon talked to us about her 5 favorite photographers. At the time she described him as an “ideas guy.” (Another of those featured in Glenna’s interview, Lynsey Adario, was briefly held hostage by pro-Gaddafi forces, before she was released last month).

The photo above is from Hetherington’s series “Blindsided” about blind people in Sierra Leone. You can see Hetherington talk about his work here and here (as part of a larger panel). Below is a video, for Human Rights Watch, where Hetherington talks about Liberia and his work there:

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Dick Chimp

April 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

The blog Dictator Chimp answers the crucial questions, reveals the answers to puzzling dilemmas facing the ordinary brutal autocrat. Nothing is too simple a question, and nothing too complex.

“Should I grow a beard?” is answered with a firm affirmative, with a link to twin images of Saddam Hussein: (a) when he was in the prime of mustachio’d-dictating, and (b) in post-US detention/”inspection” full-beardedness—cleaned up for the courts, and a haunting, terrifying loneliness inhabiting his unfocused eyes.

He tells you what to do when your realise that your revolting peasants may be far smarter than you first thought, deliberates on whether a dictator should plunder the nation’s coffers or accept the $5mil from the Ibrahim Prize, “… which you can win if you just run your country like everyone expects, and then step down when the ‘constitution’ says you should.”

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Madonna choses Malawi

April 20, 2011 By 9 Comments

Kim Yi Dionne is an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University. She writes for AIAC about recent coverage of Malawi, actually Madonna in Malawi (that’s the problem). Kim also blogs about Malawi, politics, and HIV/AIDS at the blog, haba na haba. You can also find her on Twitter–Sean Jacobs.

Kim Yi Dionne
Guest Blogger

Malawi has been in the headlines of mainstream media outlets in the past couple of weeks. Was it because of a growing concern about the deteriorating human rights and governance situation? No. You guessed it: a story set in Malawi was on The New York Times landing page a few weeks ago because of Madonna.

For anyone who doesn’t know the Madonna-Malawi connection, Madonna adopted a son, David Banda, from Mchinji in central Malawi in 2006 and a daughter, Mercy James, from Zomba in the south of the country in 2009. In 2006, she started filming a documentary that was shot in Malawi, I Am Because We Are. (The film was released in 2008). Also in 2006, she founded Raising Malawi, an organization whose stated mission is “to bring an end to the extreme poverty and hardship endured by Malawi’s 2,000,000 orphans and vulnerable children once and for all.” (1)

The recent hubbub about Madonna has been about the mismanagement of funds of Raising Malawi’s primary project, the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls (2). Having raised $18 million and spent $3.5 million, there was still no school built, no teachers hired, and no girls selected to attend the small, private academy. The New York Times was the first to break the story (unless, of course, you read Malawian newspapers, which reported on the oddities surrounding the pop star’s school two months earlier), but other media outlets continue to report on the unfolding saga (e.g., Newsweek, The Guardian, The Mirror, USA Today, New York Daily News).

I could go on for pages about bad celebrity aid, the celebrity scramble for Africa, and the concomitant media reporting on celebrities “saving Africans,” but those arguments have been well articulated elsewhere.

Suffice it to say, much as I loved the Material Girl when I was a kid, I’m not a big fan of the work Madonna does in Malawi.

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International Death Metal Month

April 19, 2011 By 1 Comment

I won’t be able to tell the difference between just heavy metal or death metal. But I had to post this link to a video of Botswana death metal band Wrust, on All Metal Resource.

Via Ethan Zuckerman

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Tendai Biti @ Columbia University

April 19, 2011 By 3 Comments

Elliot Ross, Guest Blogger
Tendai Biti tells the story of being on a plane to an international conference with Robert Mugabe. Mugabe approached his finance minister and prodded his shoulder accusingly. “Biti,” he said. “Your trouble is that you forget that we are a sovereign state.”

“No,” replied Biti, unflinching in his retelling of the exchange at least, “we are part of a global community.”

The man charged with running the Zimbabwean economy, a job he once called the hardest in the world, was in New York last week, sharing a platform at Columbia University with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and the writer Peter Godwin.

The task Biti faces today is identical with the one he began to tackle as a student activist in the late 1980s. His life’s ambition – then as now – is to reverse permanently a national history he understands as an unrelenting tale of “state-imposed thuggery” stretching back to the earliest period of colonization.

“We must find our own, fundamental, Jeffersonian principles,” he says.

“And we must take violence out of the political landscape.”

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Duke Ngcukana

April 19, 2011 By 3 Comments

In the last year fans of South African jazz had to contend with the passing of musicians Robbie Jansen, Ezra Ngcukana (in August 2010), Vincent Kolbe (in September 2010) and Hotep Idris Galeta. This weekend Duke Ngcukana, brother of Ezra and himself a musician and jazz educator of note, passed away.

Read a news story about Ngcukana’s passing–in a local Cape Town daily newspaper–here.

Filed Under: MUSIC Tagged With: , , ,

Music Break

April 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

If you’re wondering who will replace the coward Amr Diab as international Egyptian superstar (who has recently resurfaced, tail between legs, with a song honoring the revolution), check out the younger, cuter singer Hamada Helal. His latest (above) is, “The 25th of January Martyrs”.

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Oliver Hermanus at Cannes

April 18, 2011 By 1 Comment

“Skoonheid,” the new film by South African director Oliver Hermanus will be screened in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival (starting next month). He is in good company. Check the Cannes site to see who else got invited.

The film is also the first Afrikaans film to be included in Cannes Film Festival’s official program. The film–the title translates as “Beauty”– “… tells the story of Francois van Heerden, a mid-40s, white, Afrikaans-speaking family man living in Bloemfontein, who has become devoid of any care or concern for his own measure of happiness, and so convinced of his ill-fated existence, that he is wholly unprepared when a chance encounter unravels his clean, controlled life.”

I like the film language of Hermanus (he studied film at the University of Cape Town, UC Santa Barbara and the London Film School), so I’m looking forward to seeing it whenever. Hermanus’ debut film, “Shirley Adams,” which I saw at the New York African Film Festival last year, a claustrophobic film about the desperate lives of a working class woman and her disabled son, is definitely worth a look.

Sources: Film Contact, Festival du Cannes, Screen Daily

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