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Leftist Brown Shirts Shut Down Horowitz Speech at Emory   By Ruth Malhotra and Orit SklarFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 26, 2007 On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.  The event was part of the Terrorism Awareness Project, a...

As One Who Stood Against Horowitz As a current Emory student who stood with my back turned during Horowitz's speech, I would like to respond to those who have called my actions 'disgraceful.' I made the choice to stand silently while he spoke; however, I do not condemn those who yelled out. While Horowitz claims he is willing to engage in free and open debate with those who disagree with his views, we arrived to the event Wednesday night to a few stacks of index cards with instructions to write our questions down. I believe that it was this...

Conservative commentator David Horowitz was forced to cut short his speech on “Islamo-Fascism” in the face of repeated interruptions, heckling and catcalls from some audience members in a packed lecture room in White Hall on Wednesday. The event played out like a tug-of-war between two groups: protestors who shouted questions or anti-conservative taglines after every few sentences Horowitz spoke and another faction in the audience who became increasingly vocal about their desire to hear him speak uninterrupted. When the disruptions peaked about 20 minutes into Horowitz’s speech, Senior Vice Provost for Community and Diversity Ozzie Harris stood up at the...

Wednesday, Feb 14, 2007 (CBC) - Award-winning author and essayist Salman Rushdie got back into the classroom on Tuesday, teaching his first world literature class at Atlanta's Emory University. In addition to counting Rushdie as its writer-in-residence for the next five years, Emory is now also the holder of his literary archive, which includes journals, letters, e-mails, photos, unpublished works and manuscripts - including more than 1,000 typewritten pages from his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. Asked why he chose to donate his archive to Emory, a school which he had only visited once before for during a 2004 lecture...

Some male prairie voles are devoted fathers and faithful partners, while others are less satisfactory on both counts. The spectrum of behavior is shaped by a genetic mechanism that allows for quick evolutionary changes, two researchers from Emory University report in today's issue of Science. The mechanism depends on a highly variable section of DNA involved in controlling a gene. The Emory researchers who found it, Elizabeth A. D. Hammock and Larry J. Young, say they have detected the same mechanism embedded in the sequence of human DNA but do not yet know how it may influence people's behavior. Voles,...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - During the anthrax mail attacks in 2001, Bill Paliscak, a gung-ho, hockey-playing postal investigator who had missed 3 days of work in 11 years, removed a filthy filter above a mail-sorting machine to preserve it as evidence. Anthrax-laden dust showered down on him. Skip to next paragraph David Scull for The New York Times Bill Paliscak cannot live at his home until an elevator is installed. Enlarge This Image Agence France-Presse Workers in October 2001 cleaned the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, where employees like Mr. Paliscak were exposed to anthrax. Four days later he began to...

The nation of commoners Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin were skeptical about the common man and government. By PERRY TREADWELL Tuesday, December 14, 2004 This has been the year of Alexander Hamilton, with a new biography and a museum exhibit in New York City. All that I remember about Hamilton from high school senior history taken more than a half-century ago is a quote attributed to him, "The People is a Beast." More recently, a poem Hamilton may have read by a 17th century Italian cleric, Tommaso Campanella, has appeared. The first stanza goes: The People is a beast of...

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<p>Wanna Save the World?</p> <p>When you read Tolkien's trilogy, which characters, if any, do you relate to? Do you want to be Tom Bombadil? Do you have a lot of things in common with Fanghorn? Aragorn? Frodo?</p> <p>Tolkien crafted his story in a very Christian way. The heros are unrelatable. Not for all people, but for most. One of the modern complaints that movie makers had to work around in producing their film is the completely unrelatable character of Arwen. She is the pure, immortality-sacrificing elf maiden who cannot marry any mortal lower than a king of all of the West. She doesn't have much in common with your average female viewer.</p>

A Tolkien Virgin: Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldorby Mark-Edmond The Journey ContinuesAt long last! The Silmarils! Tolkien titled this volume "The Silmarillion," so something tells me these little fellas are going to be even more important than Feanor. But, at the same time, since he created them, whatever happens, he will have a hand in it. For without Feanor there would be no Silmarils...and therefore no Silmarillion. Perhaps this great deed, the creating of the Silmarils, is his supernatural act. Perhaps, this is why he sapped so much strength and energy from his mother at...

A discussion of Bree's significance and probable history in the Third Age. [ Published prior to the first Lord Of The Rings movie ] Strange as news from Bree...Word has it that we won't see much of Bree in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies. Bree is the little village east of the Shire where Frodo and his companions meet up with Aragorn (who is known there as Strider). I expect most of the Bree scenes will deal with how the Hobbits come to travel with the Ranger, and the movie will just move on. Will we even see...

The Undefinable ShadowlandA Study of the Complex Question of Dualism in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the RingsLeif Jacobsen In memory of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, to whom I owe so much The Road ever goes on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say. Introduction "I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the...

Who were the real heroes of Middle-earth?Probably the most moving story in all the Tolkien legendarium is that of Beren and Luthien. They are the true heroes of Middle-earth, the first and only people among Elves and Men to achieve any palpable result against Morgoth in the ill-fated War of the Silmarils. They are also the only heroes of the First Age to actually be given any significant consideration in the pages of The Lord of the Rings.Many Tolkien fans know that Beren and Luthien were a metaphor for the romantic relationship between Ronald Tolkien and Edith Bratt, but seldom...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkorby Mark-Edmond The Journey ContinuesFeanor seems almost supernatural. Something is going to go down. It's going to be nasty. And Feanor is going to have his hand in it. That much is clear. But, is it just me, or is he supernatural? He's special. But the way his mother withers away and dies (as much as that is possible for an elf) after his birth, he would almost seem even greater (not in the "good" sense of great). We don't know why (his birth alone?), but we can tell he's an...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalieby Mark-Edmond The Journey ContinuesAt this point, I'm hooked. The story of the Elves up to this point has been sweet and sad, but Tolkien has me, and I like it. He's addicted to complexity, and I like that too. He couldn't have had all the Elves pick up and go to Valanor/Aman, that wouldn't be Tolkien, and that wouldn't be interesting. All along the way some are lost. Some flee Orome at the very beginning and were lost. And as the Teleri finally arrive on the shores of...

    The door to the Mines of Moria Viking-era carvings on Sweden's Sigurd Rock   Viking ship post (circa A.D. 850)(Photograph from National Geographic Television) Stonehenge, one of the many ancient British ruins that inspired Tolkien(Photograph from National Geographic Television) A transcript of Tolkien's lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”(Photograph from National Geographic Television and Jane Chance) Akseli Gallen-Kallela's 1891 painting “Aino Myth,” which depicts a passage from the Kalevala, a compilation of old Finnish ballads and poems(Photograph courtesy Art Museum of Ateneum) Ian McKellen as Gandalf(© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema)  ...

    Dominic Monaghan as Merry (left) and John Rhys-Davies as Gimli Grimspound ruins, Dartmoor National Park, England           World War I's Battle of the Somme (Photograph by Corbis)   Battle scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New Line Cinema)   Factory in Birmingham, England (Still image from National Geographic Television)   English countryside (Still image from National Geographic Television)   Mordor, seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (© 2001 New Line Productions, photograph courtesy New...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of Thingol and Melianby Mark-Edmond The Journey ContinuesHere we have Tolkien's first take on love in the Silmarillion. Thingol is drawn by the beauty of her singing, but it isn't love till he sees her. Love at first sight. She's indescribably beautiful, sings wonderfully, and has the light of Aman in her face, but what does she see in him? Tolkien doesn't really say. She's a type of goddess, a Maia, existing before Ea, while he's an elf, born in Middle Earth. It seemed strange to me that she would "stoop" to the level of a Quendi....

`Lord' of racism? Critics view trilogy as discriminatory `Two Towers' film reflects tone of book Happily for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, director Peter Jackson stayed true to the fantasy author's artistic vision in "Fellowship of the Ring," the first film in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Unhappily, in "The Two Towers," Jackson may reflect the "Rings'" racial view of the world as well.

The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does the same for Anglo-Saxon democracy. Tolkien well may have written...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of The Coming of Elves and the Captivity of Melkorby Mark-Edmond The Journey ContinuesThe thing that first struck me about this section is the creation of the Orcs. Tolkien has done something brilliant here. He established with Aule that none of the Ainor or Valar could create beings--things that exist apart from their creator. Illuvatar alone can truly create beings. So in order for Melkor to have a race of followers, he takes elves and breeds them into hideous creatures--the Orcs. For the Orcs to be descended from Elves is really a fascinating concept. If Tokien is...

Tolkien teaches us to take courage Tom ShippeyThe Daily Telegraph Monday, January 06, 2003 J.R.R. Tolkien was not a professional author nor, for much of his life, even a much-published one. He had a certain success with The Hobbit in 1937, when he was 45 -- enough for his publisher, Stanley Unwin, to ask for a sequel. But though Tolkien dutifully began to write one almost immediately, it was 17 years before the first volume of The Lord of the Rings was published, by which time Tolkien had almost reached retirement. For much of his life he was haunted by...

ON TOLKIEN Growing up with language The Shakespeare of model languages is J.R.R. Tolkien. His best-selling fantasy novel, The Lord Of The Rings, now considered a literary classic, achieved much of its believability from the depth of its invented languages: Quenya, Sindarin, Adu^naic and others. The following article provides a broad overview of Tolkien's seminal work with model languages. Tolkien was exposed to languages to a remarkable degree. He learned Latin, German and French from his mother. At school, he learned or taught himself Middle English, Old English, Finnish, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Old Norse, Spanish, modern Welsh and medieval Welsh....

A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 2 [ Part three is the source notes as annotated in the article.  The appropriate source notes have instead been added to the end of the other two parts for consolidation]This is the final article concerning the war of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. The article was originally written for the Tolkien journal Arda. Part 1 covered events leading up to the war. Special thanks to Rick House, who provided comments and suggestions when the article was written in 1996. The actual war began with the assault...

A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 1[ Part three is the source notes as annotated in the article.  The appropriate source notes have instead been added to the end of the other two parts for consolidation]In 1996 the editor of the journal Arda asked me to contribute some of my research to a twelfth volume which has, to my knowledge, never been published. I chose the war of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men as my topic because no one had really ever done a full treatment of the subject.It remains, to my knowledge,...

A Tolkien Virgin: Of Aule and Yavannaby Mark-EdmondThe Journey ContinuesWow. So, the Elves and Men--for all their differences--are the Children of Illuvatar, but the Dwarves were made by Aule. This passage is short, but amazing. When Aule raised up his hammer to destroy the Dwarves he made, but Illuvatar gave them life instead, it actually caused me to get misty-eyed. This act of kindness and compassion is truly beautiful.In this section, we also have our first taste of dissention among the Valar (excluding Melkor). Yavanna fears that Aule's Dwarves will destroy her living things, and when she gets word from...

I wanted to write about the latest Lord of the Rings movie today. But as I scoured the Web reading what other people had to say, I realized I had nothing new to offer. I love Tolkien. It’s a good movie. A bit too long, I thought, but I will see it again, regardless. Anyway, while trying to figure out what to write, I kept stumbling on articles about how Tolkien was a racist and/or about how The Lord of the Rings is pro-war propaganda. Both of these ideas have dedicated adherents. For example, John Yatt says in the British...

If the Ainulindalë is the most primal story of ""the beginning,"" the Valaquenta is a quaint recap and cast of characters. The Valaquenta touches on the important events of the Ainulindalë, with further description of the four primary characters--Melkor, Manwe, Ulmo, and Aule--followed by the expanded cast of characters in Tolkien's cosmology. And I'll be honest, at first, I found these ""Powers"", the Valar--those of the Ainor who entered into Ea--flat, uninteresting, stereotypical rip-offs. I mean, really. Melkor is your typical evil deity. He loves fire and tries to undo anything good that the others create. Sadly, he's not even...

Kicking the HobbitChris Mooney When it comes to the fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, it is a truism that critics either love the books or hate them: Concerning Middle Earth, there is no middle ground. Such has been the case ever since Tolkien, an Oxford philologist, first published his epic novel The Lord of the Rings in three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) between 1954 and 1955. In 1956 W.H. Auden wrote in The New York Times that, in some respects, Tolkien's story of the hobbit Frodo's quest to destroy...

A Tolkien Virgin: Pre-amble and The Ainulindalë   The first in a seriesI haven’t read Tolkien. Well, okay, I think I started the Hobbit at one point, but didn’t get very far. And then I saw some animated TV or movie version of the Hobbit. But, that was all at least 10 years ago, I’m thinking, and a vague picture of an animated Bilbo taking a ring (that turns the bearer invisible) from the hideous Golem whose pet-name for the ring is "Precious," is all that I can remember.At any rate, some friends of mine-avid Tolkien fans-have created Tolkien Online...

The men who would be StewardGuardianship is the mark of the Stewards of Gondor. They are guardians, wardens, keeping an ancient trust placed in their hands by a family of kings which, at the end of the Third Age, no longer exists. Gondor's Ruling Stewards are a curious example of how authority combined with tradition can produce a subtle irony in power and position.The Elvish word for "steward" is Arandur, "King's servant". The name implies that the Stewards began their long career as something less than government officials. They may have been the personal servants of Gondor's early kings. At...

The Nature of Faramir? An analysis of Faramir, as it relates to the conversion from book to film Some notes on the introduction of Faramir (in the book -- not the movie)When Faramir and his men capture Frodo and Sam, Faramir declares his identity to the two Hobbits with the following words: "'I am Faramir, Captain of Gondor,' he said. 'But there are no travelers in this land: only the servants of the Dark Tower, or of the White.'" (A minor side-note by the way: one white use this passage for an argument that the two eponymous towers are those...

kevinm-4 Joplin, Missouri Date: 23 December 2002 Summary: Not like the book... I am a "Tolkien geek" who thinks Tolkien would hate Peter Jackson and his films were he alive today and watching them. I live and breathe Middle Earth and I cannot even begin to fathom the injustice that Jackson has done with his movies. For example, in the 89th minute of the film, Aragorn lifts his left arm and points off into the distance. When I saw this I thrashed about in my seat because EVERYBODY knows that in the book, Aragorn raises his "right" arm and points....

December 18, 2002 9:00 a.m.Tolkien’s Clash of CivilizationsTwo Towers’s eerie relevance. f you think about it, making the connection between the obliterated Twin Towers and The Two Towers is a dime-store synchronicity. The World Trade Center was a morally neutral symbol of commercial dynamism (though Tolkien himself would have taken a darker view of those towers). In contrast, the towers of the film's title are twin projections of unambiguous evil. Still, the comparison is irresistible — even director Peter Jackson says he gets an "eerie" feeling thinking about it — because audiences see Jackson's first-rate film versions of the Tolkien...

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien has been denounced as "an epic rooted in racism" by a respected acadmic. Dr Stephen Shapiro, an expert in cultural studies, race and slavery, accused the author of using the novels to make racial prejudice innocent - by presenting bigotry through a fantasy world. Speaking just days before the film of The Two Towers, the second part of the classic series, opens across the UK, Dr Shapiro said the books represented anxieties about immigration in mid-1950s Britain. The academic claimed: "Put simply, Tolkien’s good guys are white and the bad guys...

Title: LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (WIDESCREEN EDITION) Studio: New Line Cinema Year: 2001 Region: 1 - USA Yesterday, the most amazing thing happened. My wife picked up the mail and walked over to me, a package in her hands. "There's something here for you," she said. I really wasn't expecting anything, but when I looked at the package, my heart started racing. I didn't know why, but I knew it was something special. Like a child who's overanxious on Christmas morning, I snatched it from her hands. My heart was pounding faster and faster as...

Welcome to The New Hobbit Hole Concerning Hobbits The New Hobbit Chronicles This is a continuation of the infamous thread New Zealander Builds Hobbit Hole originally posted on January 26, 2001 by John Farson, who at the time undoubtedly thought he had found a rather obscure article that would elicit a few replies and die out. Without knowing it, he became the founder of the Hobbit Hole. For reasons incomprehensible to some, the thread grew to over 4100 replies. It became the place for hobbits and friends of hobbits to chit chat and share LoTR news and views, hang out,...

Feb. 25, 2003 The professor is a terrorist By Daniel Pipes It was quiet in [Cooper Hall] 464 Thursday night, where [Sameeh] Hammoudeh's 6 p.m. Arabic IV class was scheduled to meet. Two students who hadn't heard of his arrest came to class, and a substitute was assigned to teach in Hammoudeh's place. Hammoudeh missed teaching his Arabic class last week due to a slight inconvenience: he had just been charged with racketeering and conspiracy to murder. In fact, he was one of eight men indicted at a US District Court in Florida as "material supporters of a foreign terrorist...

What Is Knopf Waiting For? By Jerome Sternstein Mr. Sternstein is Professor Emeritus of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of American Biography. Early in 2002, Jane Garrett, Michael Bellesiles's editor at Alfred A. Knopf, told Danny Postel of the Chronicle of Higher Education that the publisher "stands behind" Arming America despite everything the book's critics had to say about its scholarly failings. "I realize that he made some errors," Garrett admitted, "but they certainly were not made intentionally. They were the result of some over-quick research," she said, adding that Knopf was "satisfied" with what Bellesiles...

5-20-02 HISTORIAN ON THE HOT SEAT Could Bellesiles's Problems Undermine Gun Control? By Don Williams Mr. Williams lives near the Valley Forge Encampment and has a Masters in Computer Science. He frequently posts comments on H-OIEAHC. Emory University recently announced that an outside panel of scholars will examine Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America—with results to be announced this summer. If the investigation discredits Bellesiles then it could hurt the arguments filed by gun-control advocates in a major Second Amendment case ( US vs Emerson) that is coming before the Supreme Court.If the Supreme Court hears US vs Emerson, the Justices...

<p>Martinez -- Don't let her lilting voice and prim, schoolmarmish demeanor fool you. You mess with Betty Maffei, you dis her volunteer staff at Contra Costa Historical Society, you have the temerity to cast aspersions on their filing acumen, and you're in for a world of hurt, my friend.</p>