StocktonAfterClass

Send us Fan Mail In 1948 the Jewish forces in Palestine declared themselves to be the state of Israel.  The Israelis joyously call this their independence war but Palestinians see it as the Nakhba, the catastrophe that deprived them of their homeland and sent most of them into exile.  What many people do not realize is that this was not one war but three.  There was the Zionist-British War, the Zi...

Send us Fan Mail When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we could handle it. Live classes were cancelled but faculty made audio talks to share with students.  At that point, the students knew each other, they knew me, I knew them, and I had examinations and  papers so assigning a semester grade was not a problem.  I decided to focus my talks on  important topics and have students write personal react...

Send us Fan Mail This is a discussion of public opinion, focusing upon scientific survey research studies.   Some of the findings are a bit surprising.  As we might guess, Jews are rated higher than Arabs or Muslims but the patterns are not as simple as they might seem at first.  There is a lot of nuance and complexity in public opinion.      The theme music Stockspeaks is by G. Kevin Dewey.  

Send us Fan Mail This may be the most important research project I have ever done, because of its ominous significance for the future of our country (and of other countries).  It is a worldview rooted in a terrifying sense of confrontation and violence.  It is a form of violent white nationalism rooted in the belief -- originally found in Europe but now emerging in the US on the extreme right -- t...

Send us Fan Mail This is Part Two of my discussion of  The Replacement Wars.  This is a worldview that began in Europe but has spread to the US and is emerging on the violent extreme right.  It is a discussion of this ideology and of nine manifestoes or expressions of this, plus of three novels in Europe, and of other sources.   You should listen to Part One before listening to Part Two.  Note tha...

Send us Fan Mail "On the seventh day of the six-day war, Israel became a different country."  This was the amazing victory of the Israelis over the combined armies of their immediate antagonists:  Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq.  How did they do that?  It was remarkable.  But there were consequences for as God says, "Take what you want.  And pay for it. "  In spite of the astonishi...

Send us Fan Mail In 1780 the Americans were on the ropes.  The British had won several key battles and had taken Savannah and Charleston, giving them control of the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.  Now Lord Cornwallis was coming south with a large army.  His plan was to link up with pro-British Americans, called Whigs in those days, and to separate the whole south from the rest of the country. ...

Send us Fan Mail Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets.  He was killed by his rival Henry VII in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth Field.  He has come down in history as a monster, thanks to Shakespeare and a Tudor propaganda campaign.   This is the story of his life and what happened after his death and how he has received some modest rehabilitation.  It is also the story of his body, how it...

Send us Fan Mail Theodor Herzl, the brilliant journalist, novelist, and political thinker wrote his famous treatise, Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in 1896.  He wrote this in a fever, in just a few days.  It was as if suddenly an insight had come to him and he had to get it down on paper.  That insight was that "We are a people.  One people."  Herzl was not the first person to make this p...

Send us Fan Mail In 1964 the Palestinian leaders met in Jerusalem under the tutelage of President Nasser of Egypt.  Nasser was a great hero to the Arab people, someone who believed that all Arabs shared a common destiny and that they alone should control that destiny free of foreign influence.  He had become a hero in 1956 for standing up to the British and French and Israelis.  He had sponsored t...

Send us Fan Mail Bernie Klein was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. His specialty was urban politics.  He was probably the single most popular classroom instructor on campus.  Students would sign up just to hear the stories he told about Detroit and Michigan politics.  (He would also manage to slip in a few dirty jokes from time to time).   Three times Bernie...

Send us Fan Mail I knew how the various players saw Zionism:  the Zionists, the anti-Zionist Jews, the British, the Christian Zionists, the Palestinians.  But I had never thought of how the Ottomans saw Zionism.  And how they thought of Jews, both the Ottoman Jews and the immigrant mostly Russian Jews.  That was very odd, given that Palestine was an Ottoman Province.   This podcast will discuss Ot...

Send us Fan Mail This is an article I wrote for the University of Michigan newspaper  back in 2002.  The essay discusses the fact that in polemical arguments certain discrediting words (focusing here on terrorism and anti-Semitism) have two characteristics.  First, they tend to have different meanings to different people and, second, those with a position will often try to define them in such a wa...

Send us Fan Mail Orville Hubbard was the mayor of Dearborn for 38 years.  He was brilliant, creative, passionate, dedicated, popular.  He was also a mean demagogue, a racist, a bully.   This reports the time I went with a group of students to interview the mayor.  All of his qualities were there on display.   Especially his racism.  This interview was just before he had a debilitating stroke.   Ev...

Send us Fan Mail In a religious text, a number is not a number.  It is a point, a teaching.  Those who think the Bible or other religious texts are science books are missing the point.   Those who think a religious text is offering you facts miss the point.   This podcast outlines several different ways that numbers are used and appear in a mix and match pattern in religious texts.  When I say tha...

Send us Fan Mail The events of 1948 were a joyous celebration for Israelis who got their independence, but it was a time of despair for Palestinians who lost their homeland.  They call it the Nakhba or Catastrophe.  Perhaps 80 or 85% of all the Palestinians inside of what was Green Line Israel on January 1st of 1948  (i.e., internationally recognized boundaries) were in exile on December 31 of 194...

Send us Fan Mail This is my summary of Barack Obama's presidential memoir.  It is a stunningly elegant book, intimate, informative, insightful, candid.  Obama's style is as a story teller, someone sitting in the living room discussing with you what really happened.  It reminds me of Jimmy Carter's family story, An Hour Before Daylight.  Anyone taking a drive across country would be...

Send us Fan Mail I decided early on that a grandfather should be a story teller.  I would entertain the four grandkids by telling stories.  Sometimes these were real stories, and sometimes they were made up.  I would say, "Do you want a real story or a made up one?"  My grandson would often ask for a real story, but the other kids were more flexible.  These are three stories that I told...

Send us Fan Mail When I would start my class on Religion and Politics, my first lecture would always be on Feuerbach.  He would give students a new way to think.  We could focus on the God Idea-  which we humans generate.  This had nothing to do with God but rather with human thinking.  We could analyze "outside of the circle" of believers as I would call it.   This is a bit of an intell...

Send us Fan Mail Vernon Jordan died on March 2, 2021.  He was one of the last of the Civil Rights generation, those giants who were contemporaries of Martin Luther King.  (Jesse Jackson is the last of that generation, unless I have forgotten someone).  Jordan was at the center of DC politics, and of advancing Black rights.   As a close friend of Bill Clinton, he got questioned in the Monica scanda...

Send us Fan Mail To his fans, who were many, Ariel Sharon was a hero, a defender of his people.  His exploits during the 1973 war were legendary.  But not everyone agreed. To the Lebanese he was the Butcher of Beirut.  Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin, under whom Sharon served, saw him as a security threat, an insubordinate general who escalated the Lebanese War into a major crisis.  Begin sai...

Send us Fan Mail This describes the two times Jane and I crossed paths with Nelson Mandela.  Once was in Cape Town, once in Detroit.   How amazing to come so close to greatness. 

Send us Fan Mail Deep Blue is the University of Michigan virtual archive on the internet.  You can find my publications there -- articles, talks, essays, book chapters.  They can be downloaded for free.  When I mention one of my articles or talks during a podcast, you can follow up if you wish.  Update (June 1, 2021)  1.  Google "University of Michigan Deep Blue" 2.  Once in, click on De...

Send us Fan Mail Christian Zionism is the belief that the Bible predicted the creation of a Jewish state in 1948 and that Christians are obligated to support that state.  This belief grew out of the Protestant Reformation in the 1600s.  By the late 1800s it was very strong in America.  What is interesting is that the Protestant idea of "restoring" the Jews to Jerusalem predates the emerg...

Send us Fan Mail This is a short discussion of only about 15 minutes.  These are not rules in the traditional sense of rules and you do not have to be a student in the traditional sense of being enrolled in a class.  These "rules" are more guidelines for how to listen in a way that will maximize your ability to engage with difficult topics on which you might have pre-existing perspective...