Harvard University Alumni

"Rhetoric involves a dialogical understanding of discourse and of “truth” itself in contrast to a monological idea of a unified authorial voice providing an ideally exhaustive and definitive (total) account of a fully mastered object of knowledge. Historiography is dialogical in that, through it, the historian enters into a “conversational” exchange with the past and with other inquirers seeking an understanding of it. The problem is the nature of the conversation."

"Contexts of interpretation are at least three-fold; those of writing, reception, and critical reading."

"Rhetoric includes “performative” uses of language that make a difference in one’s relation to the object of study. This does not mean that the historian is obliged to resort to explicit moral judgments, overt didacticism in drawing lessons, or “show and tell” sessions in which one’s values or autobiographical propensities are bared to one’s audience. The more direct forms of public exposure generally serve a purgative function and rarely inform an account in a telling or transformative way."

"Rhetoric highlights the problem of how one reads texts. It even raises the question of whether historians are trained to read. I have already noted the tendency of professional historians to see texts as documents in the narrow sense of the word and, by the same token, to ignore the textual dimensions of documents themselves, that is, the manner in which documents “process” or rework material in ways intimately bound up with larger sociocultural and political processes."

"Genealogical history in both Tocqueville and Foucault begins with an important if not burning issue in the present and traces it back to its often concealed or repressed roots in the past. The purpose of such inquiry is not purely antiquarian. History for both men involves an at times intense involvement or implication of the historian in the object studied and an active exchange between the present and the past in ways that may be useful in shaping the future."

"Reading in both its literal and metaphoric senses is a crucial constituent of the problem of language, and it is reciprocally related to writing. A mode of reading implies a mode of writing (and vice versa). In this sense, a different mode of reading would imply that the writing of history would also undergo significant variations and that historical works might take different forms."

"The historian Eric Foner said of him, “No one did more to inspire the revolution in historical understanding that places slavery at the center of American history and indeed the history of the West.”"

"Nothing is proved by the expectation of some Northerners that the clause would eventually put an end to slavery, for there was widespread confusion of "slavery" with the "slave trade." Both American and British abolitionists assumed that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery."

"One cannot question the genuineness of Jefferson’s liberal dreams. He was one of the first statesmen in any part of the world to advocate concrete measures for restricting and eradicating Negro slavery."

"Writing home in 1946, he told his parents that he wanted to study history because he hoped that a knowledge of the past might “make people stop and think before blindly following some bigoted group to make the world safe for Aryans, Democrats or Mississippians.”"

"I often think of others who hunger and thirst for something more, for whom the Catholic Church is a very intimidating but compelling presence. They must overcome misunderstandings about what the Catholic Church teaches, and fears about what it might mean to live in the Catholic Church. Patient pastoral work can resolve much of this."

"Sometimes people think that it’s a very simple matter to become a Catholic, that it’s like changing your uniform, that’s not the way it is. It requires a profound transformation at so many levels."

"Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger on Tuesday announced Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU as founding director of the First Amendment Institute, which was created to work to preserve and expand freedoms in the digital age.... “We’re at a moment in our history when freedom of expression, access to information and high quality journalism have never been more important, yet are facing unprecedented challenges,” Bollinger said in a statement. “No one understands that better than Jameel Jaffer. Throughout his accomplished career, Jameel has proven himself to be among the First Amendment’s most effective defenders and we could hardly have a more ideal founding director of the Knight Institute at Columbia.” Jaffer, who joined ACLU nearly 15 years ago, has litigated a number of notable cases involving national security and civil liberties, including constitutional challenges to gag orders under the USA Patriot Act and National Security Agency surveillance."

"Democracies may be more fragile than we care to admit, existing perhaps one election from tyranny. At a time in history when those words blink red in the mind, this investigation shows the dangers of investing government with the power to kill suspected enemies in secret. Jaffer and his team perform a lasting public service by exposing the ‘targeted killing’ policies, and Jaffer’s introductory essay is a much-needed corrective to the linguistic manipulation and official obfuscation that have made these policies possible."

"The sad fact, as Jaffer notes, is that Democrats who protested when George W. Bush claimed broad war powers were quite willing to help Barack Obama claim even broader ones. The result is that the counterproductive, colossally wasteful, deeply unethical, and endlessly expanding ‘war on terror’ has now become a permanent bipartisan fixture of our foreign policy. Jaffer’s introduction is careful and fair—some might say too fair—but it is a devastating indictment of the irresponsible and short-sighted arguments that the Obama administration made in secret memos and then in open court."

"Armed drones have given the United States the power to kill individuals anywhere, even far from conventional battlefields, but the United States has failed to articulate clear limits on their use—let alone subscribe to the limits imposed by international law. As Jaffer’s book makes clear, that failure has grave implications as the technology of killer drones inevitably spreads to other countries."

"Our request was relatively broad because we don’t think the public can meaningfully evaluate the lawfulness of the strike that killed al-Aulaqi and Samir Khan—or the strike that killed 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi two weeks later—without access to the factual basis the government relied on to justify the strikes. We also believe that the public is entitled to records relating to civilian casualties.... Once the Second Circuit remands our case to the district court, the ACLU will almost certainly be litigating not only over the other OLC memos but over this kind of factual information as well."

"I am excited about this opportunity to build an organization dedicated to a mission that’s so essential in a free society,” he said in the statement."

"Justice Alito’s opinion for the court seems to be based on the theory that the secret court may one day, in some as-yet unimagined case, subject the law to constitutional review, but that day may never come. In many national security cases, the government has prevailed at the outset by citing lack of standing, the state secrets doctrine or officials’ immunity from suit.... More than a decade after 9/11, we still have no judicial ruling on the lawfulness of torture, of extraordinary rendition, of targeted killings or of the warrantless wiretapping program. These programs were all contested in the public sphere, but they have not been contested in the courts.”"

"I do think that the decision is important and surprising, a very significant victory for Julian Assange. I think the press freedom implications are more complicated. The judge — while ultimately holding that Assange can’t be extradited to the United States on the basis of his mental health and the conditions under which he would be held if he were extradited here, the judge largely endorses the U.S. prosecution theory. And that theory is based on an indictment that sweeps very, very broadly, that basically the indictment is an effort to hold Assange criminally responsible for acts that journalists engage in all the time. And it doesn’t matter whether Assange himself is properly characterized as a journalist. That may be an important debate, but legally it’s completely irrelevant."

"President Obama has spoken eloquently about the importance of restoring America’s moral authority abroad. Restoring that moral authority, though, will require restoring the rule of law at home, and restoring the rule of law at home will require finally confronting the gross human rights abuses of the last administration. Crucial to this process will be the creation of a comprehensive and publicly accessible record of the last eight years."

"And the press freedom fear here is that the prosecution of Assange, and even the indictment itself, will deter journalism that is important and necessary and that should be regarded as protected by the First Amendment. And I think that this ruling is, again, a victory for Assange, but insofar as it’s an endorsement of the U.S.’s prosecution theory and of the underlying indictment, I think that that indictment is going to continue to cast a kind of shadow over investigative journalism."

"This is a compelling exposé of the sophisticated and concerted efforts by Obama Administration officials to thoroughly subvert the international rule of law in the pursuit of minor short-term military gains and at the expense of American credibility."

"The important fact is that Assange has been indicted on the grounds that he engaged in activities like cultivating confidential sources, maintaining their confidentiality or maintaining the confidentiality of their identities, and publishing classified secrets. And, of course, those things, all of those things, are integral to national security journalism."

"I think we should be snorkeling and swimming on reefs. Because I think people only develop a passion for protecting things if they know what is at risk. I would hardly be one to say that we shouldn’t go near them. That said, its important to manage tourism properly. If you have a lot of people going onto reefs, stepping on reefs, collecting things from reefs, breaking corals off, or throwing anchors on top of reefs, that’s not good. It’s important to properly manage the numbers of people and their behavior when they’re in water. It’s also important to make sure that the hotels that support that tourism have good water treatment for the sewage that they release, and that they aren’t also feeding this large population of visitors critically important reef fish. That is ecologically sound tourism. But you can’t just let it develop willy-nilly. It has to be managed carefully. Otherwise, you end up with lots of people and not much reef."

"You may have knowledge, then, without having any insight into the epistemic status of what you know. In other words, you may know a proposition h to be true without having any beliefs at all about the fact that h is evident or about what makes h evident for you. You will have some degree of insight into your knowledge of h if you have a true belief about what makes h evident for you. You will have a greater degree of insight if, moreover, you have no false belief to the effect that some other proposition makes h evident for you. And you will have an even greater degree of insight into the status of your knowledge of h, if you also know that e makes h evident for you. But our ordinary knowledge about such things as ships, trees, and houses does not require that we have any beliefs about our epistemic situation."

"Our second "anti-Pyrrhonian" principle is this: (A4) If anything is probable for S, then something is certain for S"

"The objectivity principle tells us what kind of justification we can have for beliefs about justification: (A5) If S knows that p, then, if S believes that he knows that p, then S knows that he knows that p"

"It is sometimes said that playing it safe is always more reasonable than taking any chances. And this would seem to be the attitude of the Pyrrhonist with respect to what it is reasonable for us to believe. But the following principle is "anti-Pyrrhonian": (A3) If the conjunction p&q is beyond reasonable doubt for S, then believing p&q is more justified for S than believing p while withholding q"

"In making their assumptions, epistemologists presuppose that they are rational, beings. This means, in part, that they have certain properties which are such that, if they ask themselves, with respect to any one of these properties, whether or not they have that property, then it will be evident to them that they have it. It means further that they are able to know what they think and believe and that they can recognize inconsistencies."

"The category of being beyond reasonable doubt is illustrated by the proposition that the building in which I now find myself will be here tomorrow. The proposition is not evident. But for me—and I hope that for others— the proposition is such that believing it is more justified than withholding it. Obviously there are some true propositions which are such that we are more justified in believing them than in withholding them. Are there also false propositions which we are more justified in believing than in withholding? We will find that this may well be true. Or, more exactly, we will find that, if philosophical skepticism is false, and if, as a matter of fact, we do know many of the things about the world that we now think we know, then it is quite possible that some false propositions are such that it is more reasonable for us to believe those propositions than it is for us to withhold them."

"What we have been saying, of course, is not likely to convince the skeptics and we can hardly claim to have "refuted" them. But our question was not, "Can we refute the skeptics?" Our question was: "Are there positive reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of succeeding in the epistemic enterprise?" The answer seems to be that there are no such reasons. And therefore it is not unreasonable for us to continue."

"To see the point of such a hierarchy, let us turn back to the concept of the evident. An evident proposition is one that is justified. But there are many justified propositions that are not evident. Indeed many propositions that may be said to have a very high degree of justification are not evident. For example, it may be evident to you now that you have walked today and that you also walked yesterday and the day before that. You may have very good grounds for accepting the proposition that you will walk tomorrow and the day after that: the proposition may be strongly supported by induction. But it is not now evident to you or to anyone else that you will walk tomorrow, for no one now knows that you will walk tomorrow. The proposition that you will walk tomorrow may be beyond reasonable doubt for you, but nothing that you can find out today can make it evident for you today that you will walk tomorrow."

"It is true, of course, that most of us have very little knowledge of our psychological makeup and that we are likely to accept oversimplified and false accounts of why it is we think and act as we do. But this fact is quite consistent with what we have said about self-presenting properties. For, although these properties may mislead us about other things, they are not a source of error about themselves."

"Strictly speaking, "The wine tastes sour to me," and "something looks red to me," do not express what is self-presenting in our sense of this term. For the first statement implies that there is a certain thing—namely, the wine— that I am tasting, and the second statement implies that there is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me. But, "I am tasting wine," and, "There is a certain external thing that is appearing red to me," do not express what is self-presenting. What justifies me in thinking that I am tasting wine is not simply the fact that I am tasting wine, and what justifies me in thinking that a certain thing is appearing red to me (and that I am not, say, merely suffering from a hallucination) is not simply the fact that a certain thing is appearing red to me. To arrive at what is self-presenting in these cases, we must remove the reference to the external thing—to the wine in, "The wine tastes sour to me," and to the appearing thing in, "That thing appears red to me." This, however, is very difficult to do, since our language was not developed for any such philosophical purpose."

"It has been suggested that the sentences giving rise to the problem of the synthetic a priori are really "postulates about the meanings of words" ar»d, therefore, that they do not express what is synthetic a priori. But if the suggestion is intended literally, then it would seem to betray the confusion between use and mention that we encountered earlier. A postulate about the meaning of the word "red," for example, or a sentence expressing such a postulate, would presumably mention the word "red." It might read, "The word 'red' may be taken to refer to a certain color," or perhaps, "Let the word 'red' be taken to refer to a certain color." But, "Everything that is red is colored," although it uses the words "red" and "colored," does not mention them at all. It is not the case, therefore, that, "Red is a color," refers only to words and the ways in which they are used."

"You can have all your scientific method down, all your experiments done accurately and recorded in minute detail. But most of the significant, universe-changing advances in science were not done by methodically plodding ahead with reasonable steps. Things like Einstein's theory of relativity or the foundations of quantum mechanics came about more as hunches. Scientists talk about a theory being elegant - it just feels right. Sometimes you have to just trust your instincts. People often talk about following your head or your heart, but sometimes there's a deeper feeling you follow. Sometimes you follow your guts, your instincts. Scientists are also trained to do that."

"I also love working for the government (no really!). There is more security working for a government lab and I didn't have to get tenure. The people at NASA are so good -so dedicated, so fun to be with"

"We should allow the undercurrent of anxiety to surface long enough to awaken humility, repentance, and awe in the face of the divine mystery. In this sense, the opposite of anxiety is not peace but dullness, stagnation, complacency, estrangement."

"Prayer has this wonderful quality of conveying a sense of security in the mystery, in the face of mystery: “I don’t need to see everything in the future. I just need enough light to take the next step.”"

"To sum up, Islam is a religion of continuous personal and through disciplined worship. The involve individual and communal obligations meant to provide the proper context for social, religious and, above all, spiritual reform. This process of disciplined reform is called jihad, "striving" or "struggling." the greatest Jihad is the struggle of every person against the evil of their own carnal soul. However, depending on social and political circumstances, Jihad can become an obligation as well as a process. Jihad may be regarded as a sixth fundamental obligation (faridah) incumbent on every Muslim when social and religious reform is gravely hampered or the community's integrity threatened. In a situation where the entire Muslim ' is in danger, jihad becomes an absolute obligation (fard 'ayn). Otherwise it is a limited obligation (fard kifayah), incumbent upon those who are directly involved. These rules apply to armed struggle, or the jihad of the sword. This, and the struggle to reform society and rectify its social, moral, and political ills, is called jihad fi sabil allah ("strugle in the way of God"). Another and closely related form of jihad is jihad bi-al-qur'an, that is jihad by means of the Qur'an. The Prophet is commanded, "Do not obey the rejecters of faith but wage a great jihad against them by means of it [the Qur'an]" (Q. 25:52). This form of Jihad is as imperative today as it was in the time of the Prophet. Yet the greatest and most fundamental striving is the jihad of the spirit, which was called by the Prophet "the greater jihad." It is jihad fi-allah, "struggle in God." As God declares in the Qur'an: "As fo those who strive in Us, We shall guide them to Our ways" (Q. 29:69) These are the ways of peace, to which God shall "guide those who seek His good pleasure" (Q. 5:16). The goal of true jihad is to attain a harmony between islam (submission), iman (faith), and ' (righteous living)."

"Judges set the tone for a . Especially when it comes to sensitive matters like and , that tone must be dignified, solemn, and respectful, not demeaning or sophomoric."

"For live action projects, I like getting “dressed up,” getting my hair and make-up done, and working on a set, opposite other actors. On a recent TV gig, I was in awe of all the design and detail that went into creating the physical space where my scenes took place. And working on a live set that’s buzzing with crew, other actors, craft services, and everyone around — it has its own magical vibe to it! And for voice acting, I feel a different kind of joy from slipping on the headphones and seeing all the action unfold in my mind’s eye. I get to move my body as much as I want to, and I can make silly faces while I perform. And no one ever sees that, well, except for the people in the recording session. I guess I like the anonymity you feel during voice acting, as much as I enjoy acting in front of a camera that sees everything you do. I know my creative soul is happiest being able to work on both types of projects."

"The science is on the administration’s side and the administration is on the side of science."

"Admiral Brett Giroir of the spends all of his time coordinating testing deployment and resources deployment from . And what we're making clear to governors, and I want the American people to know, is that we will continue to do that."

"There are side effects to hydroxychloroquine. It causes psychiatric symptoms, cardiac problems and a host of other bad side effects. [...] There may be a role for it for some people, but to tell Americans ‘you don’t have anything to lose,’ that’s not true. People certainly have something to lose by taking it indiscriminately."

"He was a leader within the emergency room field. ... Unless our government steps up & gets us the protective equipment we need, he will be the first of many of my colleagues."

"Humans do not have any specialized genetic, anatomical, or physiological adaptations to meat consumption. By contrast, we have many adaptations to plant consumption. We have longer digestive tracts than do carnivores, and this allows humans to digest plants and fibers that require longer processing time. We also lack the ability to produce our own . Vitamin C is found in plants, so the fact that we cannot make our own, indicates just how reliant upon plants we actually are. This is why we have trichromatic vision. This is very different from carnivores, which have dichromatic vision. We can see more colors and this is very important, especially if you need to find fresh, ripe fruit."

"Every day there are new estimates coming out for the incubation period (of COVID-19)."

"Strange as it may seem to hear it said, there were no Germanic peoples in late antiquity. The illusion that there were can be outgrown."