facility:university of massachusetts

  • Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes - MIT Technology Review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613630/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in

    In a new paper, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emissions of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).

    It’s a jarring quantification of something AI researchers have suspected for a long time. “While probably many of us have thought of this in an abstract, vague level, the figures really show the magnitude of the problem,” says Carlos Gómez-Rodríguez, a computer scientist at the University of A Coruña in Spain, who was not involved in the research. “Neither I nor other researchers I’ve discussed them with thought the environmental impact was that substantial.”

    They found that the computational and environmental costs of training grew proportionally to model size and then exploded when additional tuning steps were used to increase the model’s final accuracy. In particular, they found that a tuning process known as neural architecture search, which tries to optimize a model by incrementally tweaking a neural network’s design through exhaustive trial and error, had extraordinarily high associated costs for little performance benefit. Without it, the most costly model, BERT, had a carbon footprint of roughly 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent, close to a round-trip trans-American flight.

    What’s more, the researchers note that the figures should only be considered as baselines. “Training a single model is the minimum amount of work you can do,” says Emma Strubell, a PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the lead author of the paper. In practice, it’s much more likely that AI researchers would develop a new model from scratch or adapt an existing model to a new data set, either of which can require many more rounds of training and tuning.

    The significance of those figures is colossal—especially when considering the current trends in AI research. “In general, much of the latest research in AI neglects efficiency, as very large neural networks have been found to be useful for a variety of tasks, and companies and institutions that have abundant access to computational resources can leverage this to obtain a competitive advantage,” Gómez-Rodríguez says. “This kind of analysis needed to be done to raise awareness about the resources being spent [...] and will spark a debate.”

    “What probably many of us did not comprehend is the scale of it until we saw these comparisons,” echoed Siva Reddy, a postdoc at Stanford University who was not involved in the research.
    The privatization of AI research

    The results underscore another growing problem in AI, too: the sheer intensity of resources now required to produce paper-worthy results has made it increasingly challenging for people working in academia to continue contributing to research.

    #Intelligence_artificielle #Consommation_énergie #Empreinte_carbone

  • Des universitaires et des artistes israéliens mettent en garde contre une mise en équation de l’antisionisme et de l’antisémitisme
    22 novembre | Ofer Aderet pour Haaretz |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/des-universitaires-et-des-artistes.html

    Une lettre ouverte de 34 éminents Israéliens, dont des chercheurs en histoire juive et des lauréats du Prix Israël, a été publiée mardi dans les média autrichiens appelant à faire une différence entre critique légitime d’Israël, « aussi dure puisse-t-elle être », et antisémitisme.

    Cette lettre a été émise avant un rassemblement international à Vienne sur antisémitisme et antisionisme en Europe.

    L’ événement de cette semaine, « L’Europe par delà l’antisémitisme et l’antisionisme », se tient sous les auspices du Chancelier autrichien Sebastian Kurz. Son homologue israélien, Benjamin Netanyahu, devait y prendre part, mais est resté en Israël pour s’occuper de la crise dans sa coalition gouvernementale.

    « Nous adoptons et soutenons totalement le combat intransigeant [de l’Union Européenne] contre l’antisémitisme. La montée de l’antisémitisme nous inquiète. Comme nous l’a enseigné l’histoire, elle a souvent été l’annonce de désastres ultérieurs pour toute l’humanité », déclare la lettre.

    « Cependant, l’UE défend les droits de l’Homme et doit les protéger avec autant de force qu’elle combat l’antisémitisme. Il ne faudrait pas instrumentaliser ce combat contre l’antisémitisme pour réprimer la critique légitime de l’occupation par Israël et ses graves violations des droits fondamentaux des Palestiniens. » (...)

    #antisionisme #antisémitisme

    • La liste des signataires:
      Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Moshe Zukermann, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; Israel Prize laureate, sculptor Dani Karavan; Israel Prize laureate, photographer Alex Levac; Israel Prize laureate, artist Michal Naaman; Gadi Algazi, a history professor at Tel Aviv University; Eva Illouz, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and former President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design; Gideon Freudenthal, a professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University; Rachel Elior, an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Anat Matar, philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Yael Barda, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Israel Prize laureate, graphic designer David Tartakover; Arie M. Dubnov, Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University; David Enoch, history, philosophy and Judaic Studies professor at Israel’s Open University; Amos Goldberg, Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities David Harel; Hannan Hever, comparative literature and Judaic Studies professor at Yale University; Hannah Kasher, professor emerita in Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University; Michael Keren, emeritus professor of economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate, Yehoshua Kolodny, professor emeritus in the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Nitzan Lebovic, professor of Holocaust studies at Lehigh University; Idith Zertal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dmitry Shumsky, professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University; Israel Prize laureate David Shulman, professor emeritus of Asian studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Jewish philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Dalia Ofer, professor emerita in Jewry and Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus for Jewish thoughts at the Hebrew University; Jacob Metzer, former president of Israel’s Open University; and Israel Prize laureate Yehuda Judd Ne’eman, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University arts faculty

      #Palestine

  • Israeli academics and artists warn against equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism
    Their open letter ahead of a conference in Vienna advises against giving Israel immunity for ‘grave and widespread violations of human rights and international law’

    Ofer Aderet
    Nov 20, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-professors-warn-against-equating-anti-zionism-with-anti-se

    An open letter from 35 prominent Israelis, including Jewish-history scholars and Israel Prize laureates, was published Tuesday in the Austrian media calling for a distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel, “harsh as it may be,” and anti-Semitism.
    To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    The letter was released before an international gathering in Vienna on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Europe.
    The event this week, “Europe beyond anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism: Securing Jewish life in Europe,” is being held under the auspices of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. His Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, had been due to take part but stayed in Israel to deal with the crisis in his coalition government. 
    “We fully embrace and support the [European Union’s] uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism. The rise of anti-Semitism worries us. As we know from history, it has often signaled future disasters to all mankind,” the letter states. 
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    “However, the EU also stands for human rights and has to protect them as forcefully as it fights anti-Semitism. This fight against anti-Semitism should not be instrumentalized to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel’s occupation and severe violations of Palestinian human rights.” 

    The signatories accuse Netanyahu of suggesting an equivalence between anti-Israel criticism and anti-Semitism. The official declaration by the conference also notes that anti-Semitism is often expressed through disproportionate criticism of Israel, but the letter warns that such an approach could “afford Israel immunity against criticism for grave and widespread violations of human rights and international law.”
    The signatories object to the declaration’s alleged “identifying” of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. “Zionism, like all other modern Jewish movements in the 20th century, was harshly opposed by many Jews, as well as by non-Jews who were not anti-Semitic,” they write. “Many victims of the Holocaust opposed Zionism. On the other hand, many anti-Semites supported Zionism. It is nonsensical and inappropriate to identify anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”
    Among the signatories are Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; sculptor Dani Karavan; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and graphic designer David Tartakover.

    Ofer Aderet
    Haaretz Correspondent

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    • La liste des signataires:
      Moshe Zimmerman, an emeritus professor at Hebrew University and a former director of the university’s Koebner Center for German History; Moshe Zukermann, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University; Zeev Sternhell, a Hebrew University emeritus professor in political science and a current Haaretz columnist; Israel Prize laureate, sculptor Dani Karavan; Israel Prize laureate, photographer Alex Levac; Israel Prize laureate, artist Michal Naaman; Gadi Algazi, a history professor at Tel Aviv University; Eva Illouz, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and former President of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design; Gideon Freudenthal, a professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University; Rachel Elior, an Israeli professor of Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Anat Matar, philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Yael Barda, a professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Miki Kratsman, a former chairman of the photography department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Jose Brunner, an emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a former director of the Minerva Institute for German History; Alon Confino, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Israel Prize laureate, graphic designer David Tartakover; Arie M. Dubnov, Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University; David Enoch, history, philosophy and Judaic Studies professor at Israel’s Open University; Amos Goldberg, Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate and vice-president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities David Harel; Hannan Hever, comparative literature and Judaic Studies professor at Yale University; Hannah Kasher, professor emerita in Jewish Thought at Bar-Ilan University; Michael Keren, emeritus professor of economics at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize laureate, Yehoshua Kolodny, professor emeritus in the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Nitzan Lebovic, professor of Holocaust studies at Lehigh University; Idith Zertal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dmitry Shumsky, professor of Jewish History at Hebrew University; Israel Prize laureate David Shulman, professor emeritus of Asian studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Jewish philosophy professor at Tel Aviv University; Dalia Ofer, professor emerita in Jewry and Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus for Jewish thoughts at the Hebrew University; Jacob Metzer, former president of Israel’s Open University; and Israel Prize laureate Yehuda Judd Ne’eman, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University arts faculty

  • Opinion | Is Boycotting Israel ‘Hate’? - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/opinion/is-boycotting-israel-hate.html

    Opponents of the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement are involved in a dishonest branding campaign.

    By Joseph Levine
    Mr. Levine is a philosophy professor and a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council.

    The debate over the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement against Israel has been one of the most contentious in American political culture for more than a decade. Now, given the tumultuous and deadly events of the past several months, it is likely to heat up further.

    Casualties in the ongoing protests in Gaza, which began in March, continue to mount; nearly 180 mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli forces, with more than 18,000 injured, according to the United Nations. Dozens of those deaths came in mid-May, as the United States took the provocative step of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Tensions will surely spike again following last week’s decision by the United States to stop billions in funding to the United Nations agency that delivers aid to Palestinian refugees.

    B.D.S. began in 2005 in response to a call by more than 100 Palestinian civil society organizations, with the successful movement against apartheid South Africa in mind. The reasoning was that Israel, with its half-century occupation of Palestinian territories, would be equally deserving of the world’s condemnation until its policies changed to respect Palestinian political and civil rights. B.D.S. calls for its stance of nonviolent protest to remain in effect until three conditions are met: that Israel ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantles the wall; that Israel recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and that Israel respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.

    • The debate over the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S.) movement against Israel has been one of the most contentious in American political culture for more than a decade. Now, given the tumultuous and deadly events of the past several months, it is likely to heat up further.

      Casualties in the ongoing protests in Gaza, which began in March, continue to mount; nearly 180 mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli forces, with more than 18,000 injured, according to the United Nations. Dozens of those deaths came in mid-May, as the United States took the provocative step of moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Tensions will surely spike again following last week’s decision by the United States to stop billions in funding to the United Nations agency that delivers aid to Palestinian refugees.

      B.D.S. began in 2005 in response to a call by more than 100 Palestinian civil society organizations, with the successful movement against apartheid South Africa in mind. The reasoning was that Israel, with its half-century occupation of Palestinian territories, would be equally deserving of the world’s condemnation until its policies changed to respect Palestinian political and civil rights. B.D.S. calls for its stance of nonviolent protest to remain in effect until three conditions are met: that Israel ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantles the wall; that Israel recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and that Israel respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.

      Opposition to B.D.S. is widespread and strong. Alarmingly, in the United States, support for the movement is in the process of being outlawed. As of now, 24 states have enacted legislation that in some way allows the state to punish those who openly engage in or advocate B.D.S., and similar legislation is pending in 12 more states. At the federal level, a bill called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act would criminalize adherence to any boycott of Israel called for by an international agency (like the United Nations). The bill has garnered 57 Senate co-sponsors and 290 House co-sponsors, and may very well come up for a vote soon.

      While these bills certainly constitute threats to free speech — (a view shared by the ACLU) — I am interested in a more subtle effect of a fairly widespread anti-B.D.S. strategy: co-opting rhetoric of the anti-Trump resistance, which opposes the growing influence of racist hate groups, in order to brand B.D.S. as a hate group itself.

      In my home state of Massachusetts, for example, where a hearing for one of the many state bills aimed at punishing B.D.S. activity took place in July 2017, those who testified in favor of the bill, along with their supporters in the gallery, wore signs saying “No Hate in the Bay State.” They took every opportunity to compare B.D.S. supporters to the alt-right activists recently empowered by the election of Donald Trump. (Full disclosure: I am a strong supporter of B.D.S. and was among those testifying against the bill.)

      The aim of this activity is to relegate the B.D.S. movement, and the Palestine solidarity movement more generally, to the nether region of public discourse occupied by all the intolerant worldviews associated with the alt-right. This is an area the philosopher John Rawls would call “unreasonable.” But to my mind, it is the anti-B.D.S. movement itself that belongs there.

      There are two dimensions of reasonableness that are relevant to this particular issue: the one that allegedly applies to the B.D.S. campaign and the one I claim actually applies to the anti-B.D.S. campaign. Rawls starts his account of the reasonable from the premise of what he calls “reasonable pluralism,” an inevitable concomitant of modern-day democratic government. Large democratic societies contain a multitude of groups that differ in what Rawls calls their “comprehensive doctrines” — moral, religious or philosophical outlooks in accord with which people structure their lives. What makes a comprehensive doctrine “reasonable” is the willingness of those living in accord with it to recognize the legitimate claims of differing, often conflicting doctrines, to accord to the people that hold them full participation as citizens and to regard them as deserving of respect and equal treatment. We can label this dimension of reasonableness a matter of tolerance.

      The second dimension of reasonableness is associated with the notion of “public reason.” When arguing for one’s position as part of the process of democratic deliberation in a society characterized by reasonable pluralism, what kinds of considerations are legitimate to present? The constraint of public reason demands that the considerations in question should look reasonable to all holders of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, not merely one’s own.

      For example, when arguing over possible legal restrictions on abortion, it isn’t legitimate within a democracy to appeal to religious principles that are not shared by all legitimate parties to the dispute. So, while the personhood of the fetus is in dispute among reasonable doctrines, the status of African-Americans, women, gays and Jews is not. To reject their status as fully equal members of the society would be “unreasonable.”

      One of the essential principles of democratic government is freedom of thought and expression, and this extends to the unreasonable/intolerant as well as to the reasonable, so long as certain strict limits on incitement to violence, libel and the like are observed. Still, doctrines within the “tent of the reasonable” are accorded a different status within public institutions and civil society from those deemed outside the tent. This is reflected in the kinds of public support or reprobation representatives of the state and other civil society institutions (e.g., universities) display toward the doctrines or values in question.

      To put it simply, we expect what’s reasonable to get a fair hearing within the public sphere, even if many don’t agree with it.

      On the other hand, though we do not suppress the unreasonable, we don’t believe, in general, that it has the right to a genuinely fair hearing in that same sphere. For instance, after the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., in August last year, students at my campus, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, were greeted in the fall with signs plastered everywhere that said “Hate Has No Home at UMass.” This was intended to let the Richard Spencers of this world know that even if it may not be right or legal to bar them from speaking on campus, their message was not going to be given the respectful hearing that those within the tent of the reasonable receive.

      The alleged basis for claiming that B.D.S. advocates are anti-Semitic, and thus worthy only of denunciation or punishment, not argument, is that through their three goals listed in their manifesto they express their rejection of Jews’ right to self-determination in their homeland. This idea was put succinctly by Senator Chuck Schumer at the policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) in March, where he said, “Let us call out the B.D.S. movement for what it is. Let us delegitimize the delegitimizers by letting the world know when there is a double standard, whether they know it or not, they are actively participating in an anti-Semitic movement.”

      B.D.S. supporters are “delegitimizers,” according to Schumer, because they do not grant legitimacy to the Zionist project. Some might quibble with this claim about the B.D.S. goals, but I think it’s fair to say that rejection of the legitimacy of the Zionist project is fairly widespread within the movement. But does this constitute anti-Semitism? Does this put them outside the tent of the reasonable?

      To justify this condemnation of the B.D.S. movement requires accepting two extremely controversial claims: first, that the right to self-determination for any ethnic, religious or racial group entails the right to live in a state that confers special status on members of that group — that it is “their state” in the requisite sense; and second, that Palestine counts for these purposes as the rightful homeland of modern-day Jews, as opposed to the ancient Judeans. (I have argued explicitly against the first claim, here.)

      With regard to the second claim, it seems obvious to me, and I bet many others when they bother to think about it, that claims to land stemming from a connection to people who lived there 2,000 years ago is extremely weak when opposed by the claims of those who currently live there and whose people have been living there for perhaps a millennium or more.

      Remember, one needn’t agree with me in my rejection of these two principal claims for my point to stand. All one must acknowledge is that the right at issue isn’t obvious and is at least open to question. If a reasonable person can see that this right of the Jews to establish a state in Palestine is at least open to question, then it can’t be a sign of anti-Semitism to question it! But once you admit the B.D.S. position within the tent of the reasonable, the proper response is not, as Senator Schumer claims, “delegitimizing,” but rather disputing — engaging in argument, carried out in the public sphere according to the rules of public reason.

      But now we get to my second main point — that it’s the anti-B.D.S. camp that violates reasonableness; not because it is an expression of intolerance (though often it flirts with Islamophobia), but because it violates the constraints on public reason. Just how far the positive argument for the legitimacy of the Zionist project often veers from the rules of public reason is perfectly captured by another quote from Mr. Schumer’s speech to Aipac.

      “Now, let me tell you why — my view, why we don’t have peace. Because the fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East,” he said. “The view of Palestinians is simple: The Europeans treated the Jews badly, culminating in the Holocaust, and they gave them our land as compensation. Of course, we say it’s our land, the Torah says it, but they don’t believe in the Torah. So that’s the reason there is not peace. They invent other reasons, but they do not believe in a Jewish state, and that is why we, in America, must stand strong with Israel through thick and thin …”

      This quote is really quite remarkable, coming from one of the most powerful legislators in our democracy. After fairly well characterizing a perfectly reasonable attitude Palestinians have about who is responsible for the Holocaust and who should pay any reparations for it, Mr. Schumer then appeals to the Torah to justify the Jewish claim against them. But this is a totally illegitimate appeal as a form of public reason, no different from appealing to religious doctrine when opposing abortion. In fact, I claim you can’t find any genuine argument that isn’t guilty of breaching the limits of the reasonable in this way for the alleged right to establish the Jewish state in Palestine.

      This almost certainly explains why opponents of B.D.S. are now turning to the heavy hand of the state to criminalize support for it. In a “fair fight” within the domain of public reason, they would indeed find themselves “delegitimized.”

      Joseph Levine is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of “Quality and Content: Essays on Consciousness, Representation and Modality.” He is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council.

      #Palestine #USA #BDS #criminalisation_des_militants #liberté_d'expression #censure

      Et aussi à ajouter à la longue liste d’articles sur la confusion entretenue entre #Antisionisme et #Antisémitisme :

      https://seenthis.net/messages/337856
      https://seenthis.net/messages/580647
      https://seenthis.net/messages/603396
      https://seenthis.net/messages/604402
      https://seenthis.net/messages/606801
      https://seenthis.net/messages/690067
      https://seenthis.net/messages/700966
      https://seenthis.net/messages/716567
      https://seenthis.net/messages/718335
      https://seenthis.net/messages/719714

  • AI Programs Are Learning to Exclude Some African-American Voices , by Will Knight, August 16, 2017, MIT Tech review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608619/ai-programs-are-learning-to-exclude-some-african-american-voices

    “If you analyze Twitter for people’s opinions on a politician and you’re not even considering what African-Americans are saying or young adults are saying, that seems problematic, ” O’Connor [professor at the University of Massachusetts] says

    The pair [O’Connor and one of his student] also tested several popular machine-learning-based APIs that analyze text for meaning and sentiment, and they found that these systems struggled, too. “If you purchase a sentiment analyzer from some company, you don’t even know what biases it has in it,” O’Connor says. “We don’t have a lot of auditing or knowledge about these things.”

  • Ignorance — Disruption Network Lab
    http://www.disruptionlab.org/ignorance

    Berlin · Sep 30 - oct 1 · 2016:
    IGNORANCE: The Power of Non-Knowledge

    “Art & Evidence” conference series by Disruption Network Lab
    Artists, scientists, researchers, activists and journalists present and discuss ways and strategies to explore, unveil and unmake ignorance and its political, legal and social uses in everyday life.
    The 9th event of the Disruption Network Lab

    Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Mariannenplatz 2, 10997 Berlin. Directed by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Co-curated by Daniela Silvestrin.

    Funded by: Der Regierende Bürgermeister von Berlin, Senatskanzlei, Kulturelle Angelegenheiten / City Tax.
    In partnership with: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
    In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien. In collaboration with SPEKTRUM, The Resistance Studies Network and the Resistance Study Initiative, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
    Media partners: ExBerliner, Furtherfield.
    Pre-Lab 14.9 at SPEKTRUM, Bürknerstraße 12, Berlin.

    Entrance 5€ / day. In English language.

    #Berlin #événement #disruption

  • Cartography and the Political Imagination · Ohio University Press / Swallow Press

    http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Cartography+and+the+Political+Imagination

    “MacArthur’s exploration of the historiography of ethnicity in Kenya combines theoretical sophistication with innovative and deftly interdisciplinary methodological work, along with a knack for personalized storytelling. In Cartography and the Political Imagination, MacArthur has knit together a diverse and complex array of actors, plot lines, and forms of evidence (archival, cartographic, oral), resulting in a fascinating and important piece of historical scholarship.”
    Heidi Gengenbach, University of Massachusetts, Boston

    After four decades of British rule in colonial Kenya, a previously unknown ethnic name — “Luyia” — appeared on the official census in 1948. The emergence of the Luyia represents a clear case of ethnic “invention.” At the same time, current restrictive theories privileging ethnic homogeneity fail to explain this defiantly diverse ethnic project, which now comprises the second-largest ethnic group in Kenya.

    #cartographie #kenya #imagination

  • Obama must end support for Israeli apartheid against Palestinian scholars
    4 septembre | Radhika Balakrishnan et al |Tribunes

    US President Barack Obama, in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, reaffirmed his support and love for Israel because, as he claims, “it is a genuine democracy and you can express your opinions.”

    He further expressed his commitment to protecting Israel as a “Jewish state” by ensuring a “Jewish majority.”

    The US government’s support for the “Jewish state” has always been far more than rhetorical, backed by billions of dollars of military funding and consistent pro-Israel vetoes at the UN Security Council.

    We are a group of US-based academics, representing diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, as well as a range of national origins, who recently visited Palestine. We were able to gain firsthand exposure to what Obama described in the interview as Israel’s “Jewish democracy” and to what kinds of infrastructure our tax dollars help to support — walls, checkpoints and modern weaponry.

    We had the privilege of traveling through part of the occupied Palestinian territories — the West Bank, including East Jerusalem — where we met with Palestinians.

    Double standards

    We feel compelled to share a few examples of what we witnessed during our visit with Palestinian scholars, policy makers, activists, artists and others working in the West Bank. We observed numerous double standards with regard to Palestinians’ rights that prompt us to question the claim that Israel is a genuine democracy.

    We believe that our government’s assertions that Israel is a democracy obscures the conditions it imposes on the Palestinian people through the occupation and beyond with conditions that amount to apartheid under settler colonialism.

    Our concerns began even before we arrived, as a search of the US State Department website for information about travel to Israel returned sobering results.

    The US government warns travelers to back up their computers because Israeli border control officials can erase anything at will. This indeed happened to one of us upon leaving Tel Aviv to return to the US.

    The site also warns travelers that their personal email or social media accounts may be searched, and so travelers “should have no expectation of privacy for any data stored on such devices or in their accounts.” Equipment may also be confiscated.

    The State Department further acknowledges that US citizens who are Muslim and/or of Palestinian or other Arab descent may have considerable trouble entering or exiting through Israeli-controlled frontiers. And this too happened to one of us who had mobile phone contacts searched immediately on entering Tel Aviv.

    Profiling

    Concerns in entering and exiting pale in comparison to the restrictions placed on US citizens of Palestinian origin, along with all other Palestinians who hold identification documents from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

    Before traveling, most of us did not understand that for Palestinians under occupation, there are several types of identification and profiling and each comes with its own restrictions on mobility.

    Palestinians from Jerusalem have identification cards they must carry in a blue booklet while those living in the rest of the occupied West Bank hold an ID card in a green booklet, issued to them from the Palestinian Authority with the permission of the Israeli government.

    People possessing that identification generally cannot enter Jerusalem or present-day Israel without prior permission, even for a visa interview to attend an academic meeting in the US. Many people we met had only visited Jerusalem, home to many holy sites, once in their lives despite being mere minutes away by car.

    In the rest of the West Bank, a US citizen of Palestinian origin who wants to live there long term has to obtain a visa that says West Bank only. They are not allowed to travel in and out of the West Bank and are subject to the same checkpoints as other Palestinians. They cannot leave the occupied territories as a US citizen, as the State Department warns on its website.

    A Palestinian in the West Bank who holds US citizenship cannot simply catch a plane from Tel Aviv like any other US citizen simply because he or she is Palestinian and holds a Palestinian ID card. This fact is stamped into the US passport.

    They are not allowed to enter the checkpoints into Jerusalem or any other checkpoints as other people with a US passport can. This restriction is not at all applied to the Jewish settlers who are growing in number — thousands of them US citizens who are choosing to live in the occupied West Bank inside illegal settlements financed in part by US tax-exempt organizations.

    Academic freedom

    As scholars, among the many disturbing things we witnessed was the limited academic freedom and freedom of speech imposed on Palestinians (and many Israelis, whose travel in the West Bank is restricted) by the Israeli government.

    We learned that there is a prohibition on most books published in Syria, Iran and Lebanon even though Beirut is a central publishing hub of Arabic literary materials in the region. Regardless, banning books is, in our view, a profoundly anti-democratic act.

    Israel’s wall that surrounds the West Bank including Jerusalem — and which snakes deep inside the West Bank in many locations — also functions to limit academic freedom.

    One of the starkest examples is in Bethlehem, where the wall cuts through the city, making access to education at Bethlehem University very difficult for those who happen to be on the wrong side of the wall’s many twists and turns.

    Additionally, the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University is completely surrounded by the wall, making travel to and from the campus incredibly arduous despite it being in Jerusalem.

    An academic colleague described to us the difficulties she experiences getting to campus on a typical day. She must pass through roadblocks and endure searches and myriad forms of harassment by Israeli soldiers. In the West Bank, we were shocked to witness separate roads for Palestinians and Israelis based on the color of one’s license plate and identity card.

    In theory, these roads exist for the protection of Israeli settlers living on settlements built in the West Bank illegally according to international law. In practice, these roads create an apartheid travel system where Palestinians encounter several checkpoints on a given day, some of which may be mobile, unpredictably placed “flying checkpoints.”

    As our colleague explained to us, what used to be a very short trip between her village and the university now often takes more than an hour and a half and she is expected to cross through at least three checkpoints. She is often late to teach her classes and some days she is unable to make it to work or back home at all.

    Her students are often arrested and jailed using the legal cover of administrative detention — detention without charge or trial for an indefinite amount of time — for their participation in any political activities, or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We heard that this process is intensified at exam periods.

    This creates an extraordinarily stressful academic environment when on any given day Israeli soldiers might detain students and faculty who are simply traveling to class.

    Impunity

    We recognize every people’s desire to be secure — and Israel’s supporters will defend its policies and actions in the name of its national security. What we witnessed during our visit is that “security” was offered as a rationale for almost any troubling behavior or policy.

    What we witnessed was a slow but deliberate expansion of Israel’s occupation, increased settlements, the taking over of agricultural land and the spread of industrial parks in the West Bank including substantial parts of East Jerusalem — all in the name of “security.”

    The United States, as a settler colonial state with its own occupations, police violence, carceral injustice, de facto apartheid and its own brand of border brutality — certainly has its own failings as a democracy, failings we continue to address in our intellectual and political work.

    We thus claim no moral high ground. But an ethnocracy is not a democracy ; the State of Israel imposes violent domination of the Palestinian people through colonialism, occupation and apartheid — three prongs of brutal oppression that are the very antithesis of democracy.

    As academics, watching attempts to stifle criticism of Israel — as in the case of our colleague, Professor Steven Salaita — and visiting the West Bank has prompted us to speak out publicly about Israel’s injustices. Doing so is imperative.

    We implore President Obama to reconsider his rhetoric and policies — and budget appropriations — that support Israel with impunity.

    Radhika Balakrishnan is professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

    Karma R. Chávez is associate professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

    Ira Dworkin is assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University.

    Erica Caple James is associate professor of Anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is associate professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

    Doug Kiel is assistant professor of American Studies at Williams College.

    Barbara Lewis is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

    Soraya Mekerta is director of the African Diaspora and the World Program, and associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Spelman College.

    http://www.aurdip.fr/obama-must-end-support-for-israeli.html

    L’AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine) est une organisation française d’universitaires créée en liaison avec la Campagne Palestinienne pour le Boycott Académique et Culturel d’Israël PACBI et avec l’organisation britannique BRICUP.

  • Arab Dar al-Handassa wins Suez Canal bid | Mada Masr
    http://www.madamasr.com/content/arab-dar-al-handassa-wins-suez-canal-bid

    Dar al-Handassa was established in Lebanon by a Palestinian engineer named Kamal al-Shaer, which, according to Nael al-Shafei, a lecturer at the University of Massachusetts who conducted research on the new Suez Canal project, was an unofficial financier of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in the 1960s.

    The company slowly distanced itself from the PLO and in the 1980s, the Saudi branch, which will undertake the Suez Canal project today, became associated with Sheikh Kamal Adham, the founder of the Saudi intelligence. It is unclear whether Adham is still involved as a partner in the Saudi branch of the company, but Shafei says that Dar al-Handassa, which undertakes major national projects in the Gulf, has King Abdullah himself as a partner.

  • Is It Normal to Hoard ? - Issue 10 : Mergers & Acquisitions
    http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/is-it-normal-to-hoard

    Animals like to hoard. Christopher E. Overtree, director of the Psychological Services Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a specialist in treating hoarding, says that “the mechanisms triggering this kind of biological reflex are present in all of us.” A friend of his in Minnesota had an eagle’s nest on his property fall from a tree. This led to a surprising discovery: 23 dog and cat collars. “The eagle ate the animals but saved the collars,” says Overtree. His own cat, Gus, wasn’t much better. Overtree recently tailed his cat sneaking off with his wife’s costume jewelry, dragging the trinkets into the attic and stashing them in a hole in the floor. “I realized he must be saving it,” says Overtree. “I think it is interesting to see a behavior that has no practical value in an (...)

  • Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

    http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/225-general/52530-implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture.html

    Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

    posted on: Monday, October 28th, 2013

    by: Harris Gleckman, Center for Governance and Sustainability, University of Massachusetts – Boston

    Almost since the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was created, there have been ECOSOC reform efforts. Most of these efforts have been preceded by a build-up of political enthusiasm and followed by quite minor changes. One then could be quite skeptical of the 2013 version of ECOSOC reform adopted this September [1]. The timing of this round of ECOSOC reform was based on the last time “ECOSOC was reformed” (General Assembly decision 61/16), but now supplemented by the Rio+20 outcome document’s call for the mainstreaming of sustainable development by ECOSOC.

    ECOSOC has always been the weakest piece of the UN charter. Unlike the Security Council, there are no obligations for Member States or the UN system to act on ECOSOC’s decisions. As the opening paragraphs of the new resolution repeat three times, ECOSOC‘s job is “to coordinate” the economic, social, environmental and related activities of the UN system. But it was not given any ability to sanction UN-related organizations that ignore its advice, nor has it received any real role in budget decisions. And, unlike the Security Council and the General Assembly, ECOSOC has not been a place where governments bring pressing external economic, social or environmental threats to their security or development. Further, in spite of its name, it is not a place where economic counsel is given to global economic actors or where coordination of globalization’s challenges is forthrightly discussed.

    voir http://uncsd.iisd.org/guest-articles/implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture

    #environnement

  • Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure
    http://truth-out.org/news/item/16693-actual-us-poverty-twice-official-figure

    Jeannette Wicks-Lim [assistant research professor at PERI institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst] : according to official figures 15 percent of Americans live in poverty, real numbers are over 33 percent of Americans cannot meet basic needs.

    The official poverty income threshold is about $23,000 [for a a family of four], and I’m saying about double that is a much more reasonable threshold, something on the order of $45,000, to cover the basic needs of a family of four.

  • Au sujet du papier déjà mentionné par votre serviteur corrélant croissance et dette publique :

    An economics paper claiming that high levels of national debt led to low or negative economic growth could turn out to be deeply flawed as a result of, among other things, an incorrect formula in an Excel spreadsheet.

    Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, tried to reproduce the Reinhart and Rogoff result with their own data, but they couldn’t. So they asked for the original spreadsheets that Reinhart and Rogoff used to better understand what they were doing. Their results, published as “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff,” suggest that the pro-austerity paper was flawed. A comprehensive assessment of the new paper can be found at the Rortybomb economics blog.

    It turns out that the Reinhart and Rogoff spreadsheet contained a simple coding error. The spreadsheet was supposed to calculate average values across twenty countries in rows 30 to 49, but in fact it only calculated values in 15 countries in rows 30 to 44. Instead of the correct formula AVERAGE(L30:L49), the incorrect AVERAGE(L30:L44) was used.

    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/microsoft-excel-the-ruiner-of-global-economies