As a former Bolivia Fulbrighter, I have paid particular attention to the story of Alexander van Schaick, a Fulbright Scholar in Bolivia who spoke out against the U.S. embassy and their alleged attempts to recruit him to report the movements of Cubans and Venezuelans in Bolivia. Below are a few articles and commentaries by other former Bolivia Fulbright scholars, who have had mixed reactions to this story and its treatment in the press.
Click here for the original ABC News report. Plus the Associate Press release.
Clare’s post at TamboGringo has garnered some mixed comments by former Bolivia Fulbrighters. Clare has also posted an update with more links to press coverage of the story.
Listen to an interview with van Schaick at Democracy Now.
In Other News: Here is an opinion piece in campus paper urges UCSD to return Native American remains Kumeyaay Nation.
The Letter of Recommendation: Tony from ethnography.com demystifies the all-important rec, both for those soliciting them as well as for those writing them.
Archaeological building blocks: Another product just in times for Indiana Jones. Archaeology Legos! [from Critical Archaeology]
Gay Math: Social scientists are being called in to discuss whether dating websites should use the same algorithm to match same-sex versus opposite-sex couples.
Oceanica: This post over at Material Culture discusses the reopening of Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the presentation of Oceanic material culture as art.
Death of the American Mall: Kerim pointed out this piece from the Economist on Birth, Life, and Shopping Check out this site dedicated to dead malls.
On the Record: Nancy Shepard-Hughes speaks out on high profile surgeons complicit in transplant black market. (Also covered on FoxNews). Plus, Michael Silverstein on Hillary Clinton the pimp word. (First posted on Culture Matters).
I think also SM readers might be interested in Australian government’s formal apology this week (Feb 13) to Indigenous Peoples who were part of the Stolen Generations. This follows up on my guest posts on the intervention here on SM back in November. The new Labor government under Kevin Rudd made this formal apology as the first order of business of the new Parliament. The Rudd government has also said that they will reverse the previous administration’s refusal to sign the (non-binding) UN Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights.
You can read Rudd’s speech or watch the video here
The Australian appology is a landmark, but it was watered down when certain words were changed around (e.g., stolen to separated). However, it is a great first step, let us just hope Rudd can keep it up and not compromise his government by caving in to the big resource extraction companies vying to get to all the mineral wealth on traditional aboriginal land.
The words were not changed, read Rudd’s speech he says “Stolen generations” many, many times. There was a conservative member of the opposition party that suggested the switch prior to the event (read Jangari’s post here. But Rudd did not fold to the ploy to water down the speech.