Anthropology of East Europe Review 

EDITORS NOTES: 

Robert Rotenberg 
DePaul University 

Subscribers from the 1980s will remember 
that the fat, artic1e-filled issues of the last 
few years were never the norm for this 
publication. This issue is the norm. 
There are several reasons why I am 
retreating to a smaller issue. First, both 
Nancy Ries and I are on well deserved 
leaves this term. This made it difficult to 
develop a large scale editing project. 
Bamb West did the spring issue and I can 
tell you from experience that two large 
issues in a row are more work than any 
volunteer editor deserves. The Spring 
issue may bring us back to thje 
extraordinary efforts of the past few years. 

As I write this, the U.S. is recovering from 
the attacks on the W orId Trade Center and 
thre Pentagon. The mood in the country is 
for retaliative violence instead of 
retributive justice. At my institution and 
in many other colleges and universities, 
calls for reason and long-sightedness seem 
to fall on deaf ears. Ethnic intolerance 
toward Asians is increasing. As 
anthropologists who were raised in 
different societies, we hold diverse views 
on the tragedy and appropriate responses. 
Yet, there is one value that we hold in 
common: the more diverse and tolerant a 
society, the more mature its vision, the 
more stable its future, and the more 
protective of the potential of all of its 
citizens to reach their potential. The 
United States is sometimes a model of 
what such a society can be and sometimes 
an arrogant and insensitive bully. The 
radicals who attacked the innocents on 
September 11 do not offer a social future 
of more diversity and tolerance. In fact, 
they offer its opposite. Those of us who 
are critics of conscience of uglier 

tendencies of the U.S. cannot embrace 
these enemies. Nevertheless, great 
powers are judged by history in the way 
they deal with these challenges. In the 
hope of helping the subscribers of this 
newsletter to engage in conversation with 
peers on this issue, I am reprinting a letter 
from Prof. Jennifer Terry at Berkeley, 
together with a letter from EEAG member 
Hugh Gusterson ofMIT. I hope it is 
helpful. 

Dear Friends: 
I have been talking with some of you and 
with others informally around the US and 
overseas about the possibility of starting a 
group called something like Professors for 
Peace. Perhaps there is such a group 
already but I am not aware of it. If any of 
you knows of such a group, would you 
please let me know? Some of us may 
consider joining it or, in its absence, we 
may consider forming one. In any case, 
here is the impetus behind the idea I 
propose to you now. 
Basic rationale: It seems obvious to 
many of us teaching college students 
right now that they have very little 
understanding of the history and 
possibilities of peace movements and that 
many of them are not so gung-ho about 
going to war yet they are nearly paralyzed 
and cannot think of alternatives right now. 
Also many of them feel personally 
threatened by the unleashing of bigotry 
being done in the name of patriotism and 
national security. 
Basic strategy: In addition to teach-ins 
and courses and public (on and off-line) 
demonstrations on waging peace in a 
post Cold War world, Professors for 
Peace could work in affinity with other 
anti-racist groups fighting against the 

J 


Vol. 179, No.2 Autumn, 2001, Page: 3 



4 

rising tide of hate crimes against people 
of Islamic and/or Middle East and South 
Asian origins. I understand that a course 
on tolerance and hatred is being put 
together to be collectively taught this Fall 
quarter at Ohio State University. We 
could share syllabi and course materials 
about such courses and teach-ins. And 
we could form ad hoc watch dog groups 
to monitor the role of the university in 
funding and supporting defense contracts 
and the current mobilization for war. In 
other words, there is much to be done 
and we could decide how much we want 
to undertake and what our coordinated 
strategies might be. Outreach to you is 
the first step. We might find that we 
should organize in local contexts, college 
by college, university by university. Or we 
might want to think of other strategies for 
organizing, such as around particular foci 
and tasks. Or a combo of these and 
other kinds of strategies and subgroups. 
I'm thinking outloud here folks, so please 
bear with me. 
Beyond the Campuses and into the Public 
Sphere: In addition to whatever we do on 
campuses, the group could show the 
larger society that the professoriate has a 
crucial (and neglected) role to play in 
shaping public dialogue and debate right 
now. This could also be an avenue for 
the voices of profs of color, women, and 
queers to be heard -- we are almost no 
where to be found in all the pundit shows 
and "late breaking news" on TV right now. 
Right now it's mostly the straight white 
men heroes' show. We need to be more 
organized, involved, and visible as this 
country moves toward some racist war. 
Let me know your thoughts on this and 
please spread the word to others who you 
think might be interested. 

Jennifer Terry Visiting Associate 
Professor of Women's Studies UC 
Berkeley (2001-2002) Associate 
Professor of Comparative Studies Ohio 
State University 

Dear Friends, 

I'm writing to tell you about a network of 
faculty and other educators called 
"Professors for Peace" that is crystallizing 
across the U.S. and Canada in response 
to the attacks of last week and the 
gathering signs that the Bush 
Administration's response to those 
attacks may result in much more loss of 
innocent life and a further wave of 
resentment against the U.S. in other parts 
of the world. Jennifer Terry's message 
below is pretty self-explanatory. If you 
want to join this network send a message 
saying "subscribe" to 
professors for peace­
subscribe@yahoogroups.com. If that 
doesn't work, contact Jennifer herself and 
she can add you to the group. In closing 
let me say that there has already been 
some discussion about the network's 
possibly elitist name, and Jennifer has 
made it clear that she construes 
"professors" very broadly and is happy to 
include all stripes of educators while 
holding on to both the alliterative title and 
the cultural capital that still, fadingly, 
inheres in the title "professor." 

Best wishes, 

Hugh Gusterson 

Vol. 179, No.2 Autumn, 2001, Page: 4 

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