Richard L. Cravatts Ph.D.
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Articles by Richard L. Cravatts Ph.D.
September 01, 2009
In an effort to back pedal on Vice President Joe Biden´s June 5th observation that Israel would be justified in using its own initiative to launch a preemptive strike against Iran´s nuclear facilities, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly quickly cautioned that "We are certainly not goin...
August 04, 2009
The stridency of the Obama administration´s attitude about Israeli settlements in the West Bank has stunned some observers, not the least of whom is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Even more troubling to the Israelis is the State Department´s recent scolding of Ambassador Mich...
March 02, 2009
The fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in the recent Gaza incursion may have brought a tentative peace to that region, but on campuses in California—the veritable ground zero of anti-Israel sentiment in the academy—the debate over the 60-year conflict has gained a new, and more i...
January 18, 2009
The anti-Israel demonstration of some 200 to 300 people outside the Ft. Lauderdale courthouse on December 30th , which took place on the same day in other major American and European cities, gave Palestinian supporters yet another excuse to decry Israel: this time because of its recent incursions in...
January 18, 2009
Taking a cue from a similar effort by its morally-imbecilic union brethren in Britain, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) made the smarmy announcement that, "as a protest against the December 29 bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza," it would introduce a resolu...
January 11, 2009
As Israel launched strikes against Hamas strongholds in Gaza over the past week, putting down temporarily a relentless barrage of some 3000 Qassam rockets and mortars that have been lobbed into southern Israeli towns this past year alone, Israel´s many global critics immediately denounced what they ...
January 11, 2009
No sooner than Israel launched its December 27th offensive against Hamas operations in Gaza, reacting to the unceasing barrages of rockets and mortars that have rained into southern Israel, the moral arbiters of acceptable behavior in war between democratic states and terrorism were condemning Israe...
October 17, 2008
When President Bush hosted the Annapolis conference in 2007, Israel, the Palestinians, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left hoping that some resolution to the decades-old conflict would reveal itself by the end of 2008. The likelihood of such an outcome by the end of Bush´s p...
October 17, 2008
"Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade," wrote the brilliant paleontologist and Harvard professor, Stephen Jay Gould, "a secular religion masquerading as science." Signaling that those charges are still part of a contentious discussion about the origi...
October 17, 2008
As evidence of what Professor Edward Alexander has called "the explosive power of boredom" in rousing the liberal professoriate to its ideological feet, Harvard´s own Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies, L. Roland Matory, called upon his academic peers once again in...
October 17, 2008
In one of those ironies of questionable scholarship, just as a battle over a Barnard scholar´s book about Israeli archeology had inflamed her application for tenure, heavy equipment was tearing away at the ancient crown of Jerusalem´s 36-acre Temple Mount, Judaism´s holiest site. Nadia Abu El-Haj's ...
October 17, 2008
No doubt inspired by the perverse Holocaust "conference" sponsored two years ago by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, student members of the Islamist Basij militia have just published a book of cartoons mocking and minimizing the Shoah, just in time for a festive distribution at a Tehran rally f...
August 18, 2008
Just this week, as the implosion of the $1.3 trillion subprime mortgage crisis seem to threaten even government-sponsored Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, lawmakers and housing advocates were already busy look for culprits, accusing mortgage companies and banks of "predatory lending" practices, usurious ...
August 09, 2008
As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as ´place branding,´ Israel, to no one´s great surprise, comes up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 35 nations included in an August 2006 survey...
April 15, 2008
In a move that may prove shortsighted and misguided, the Boston Zoning Commission, with support from City Councilor Michael Ross and Mayor Menino, recently enacted an ordinance ostensibly designed to curb the anti-social behavior of college students who, living as groups in rental units, are accused...
October 18, 2007
One thing that Columbia University’s recent invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmajinidad made clear was that questionable intellect and moral imbecility will not immediately disqualify someone from being an honored speaker on the most prestigious American campuses. What might g...
July 23, 2007
While the recent $660 million settlement overseen by Cardinal Roger Mahoney, archbishop of the Los Angeles diocese, to some 500 abuse victims has brought closure to one aspect of the Catholic Church’s far-reaching child abuse scandal, it still leaves unanswered—and troubling—questions about the psyc...
April 19, 2007
For Boston law enforcement officials, not to mention the anxious residents of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, the recent spate of shootings and deaths must bring to mind the inimitable Yogi Berra’s observation that “it’s like déjà vu all over again.”
The epidemic of youth violence, which so f...
February 16, 2007
As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as ‘place branding,’ Israel, to no one’s great surprise, has come up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 36 nations included in an August 2006 survey. Simon An...
January 25, 2007
Newly retooled Yankee Magazine may be discovering what the Coca Cola Company found out in 1985 when it introduced “New Coke”: that consumers do not like change in iconic products, and that repositioning a brand can be problematic until the positive attributes of the new brand become evident to loyal...
January 18, 2007
President Bush’s January 10th speech about a future strategy for the Iraqi war ignored two key suggestions found last month in Jim Baker and company’s meretricious Iraqi Study Group report: first, that the U.S. should initiate diplomatic conversations with Syria and Iran, and, second, that it should...
December 14, 2006
In 1948, one year after the death of legendary Charles Scribner's Sons editor Maxwell Perkins—editor of Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Wolfe—the annual Books in Print index listed 85,000 titles from only 357 book publishers. The small scale of the book trade at that time meant that book publishers cont...
December 14, 2006
In a country where many high school students cannot even correctly identify the century in which the American Civil War was waged, at least students in Andover High School in Massachusetts will be very familiar with the historical term “ethnic cleansing,” and how the world’s singular and most egregi...
December 14, 2006
In a curious Supreme Court decision last week, one that upheld the habitual practice of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to adapt Constitutional readings to its narrowly focused liberalism, outraged parents in California's Palmdale School District were told again that they have "no funda...
August 17, 2006
Boston University recently announced the launch of its Certificate Program in Book and Magazine Publishing, offered by the University’s Center for Professional Education.
“Students in the new publishing program can select custom coursework in all related aspects of the publishing industry,” said R...
April 17, 2006
"Anti-Semitism," wrote Stephen Eric Bronner, author of the engaging book A Rumor About The Jews, "is the stupid answer to a serious question: How does history operate behind our backs?" For a wide range of ideological extremists, anti-Semitism is still the stupid answer for why what goes wrong with ...
March 09, 2006
As if observers needed yet another example of higher education’s big lie, Lawrence Summers’ recent ignoble loss of the presidency of Harvard University confirms the reality that, despite its claims to the contrary, academia is no longer the certain intellectual marketplace for open discourse and f...
January 03, 2006
There was a certain moral irony that in December at Harvard two situations arose in the university’s hunt for funding. Fundraising, of course, is the lifeblood of higher education—even for Harvard University, which, given an endowment of some $25.9 billion, should have the luxury of being selective ...
November 29, 2005
?Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade,? wrote the brilliant paleontologist and Harvard professor, Stephen Jay Gould, ?a secular religion masquerading as science.? Signaling that those charges are still part of a contentious discussion about the origi...
November 10, 2005
With yet another display of its uncanny ability to adapt Constitutional readings to its narrowly focused liberalism, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently shocked parents in California's Palmdale School District with the finding that they have "no fundamental right" to solely share inform...