Fish-nor

The Super Bowl occupies the attention of American football fans during the early part of the year, but “football” has a different definition outside America, referring to soccer.  FIFA stands for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.  Just as the Super Bowl is the championship game of the NFL (National Football League) in America, the FIFA World Cup is the championship tournament of international men’s soccer. 

The top 32 teams of the season compete in the games.  All of the competitors are the highest ranked players from professional leagues in their native countries. The first FIFA World Cup tournament took place in 1930 and has occurred during the summer every 4 years since then, except during the period of the Second World II. England hosted the tournament in 1966, the year they also won the World Cup, a feat they have been unable to duplicate since then. The stakes were extremely high, therefore, as England defeated Sweden, advancing to the semifinals on July 11, 2018.  Had they beaten Croatia, they would have had a chance at reprising their victory in the final game on July 15th. 

I mention this to introduce an ironic coincidence. A few nights ago, I was watching an episode online from the second season of a British detective series called Endeavour, which is set in Oxford, England.  The episode, titled “Nocturne,” is set in 1966, during the World Cup tournament which led to that historic English victory. The excitement over the game serves as a backdrop to the action in the episode. Endeavour is the prequel to Inspector Morse, a British detective series which ran on television in the UK from 1987-2000. The title character of that series is an older version of the eponymous detective of the present series.  

Endeavour tells the backstory of how the bright, sensitive young Detective Constable Morse evolves into curmudgeonly and antisocial Detective Chief Inspector Morse. His unconventional first name, as he later explains in Inspector Morse, is because “My mother was a Quaker, and Quakers sometimes call their children names like ‘Hope’, and ‘Patience’. My father was obsessed with Captain Cook, and his ship was called Endeavour.”  Captain Cook was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy during the late 18th century. The Morse family motto is In Deo Non Armis Fido (I trust in God, not arms). It also happens to be the motto of Morse College, one of the four colleges at Yale University. But Morse’s choice of profession involves working with violence rather than faith. 

Today we take for granted the ability to watch the game in color on the television through satellite or cable and catch replays on the Internet. But in 1966, broadcasting technology was limited to radio broadcasts or black and white programming on television with the reception provided by an antenna. One of the more humorous scenes in “Nocturne” occurs when Chief Inspector Thursday, Endeavour’s boss, is trying to watch the game at home and tells his daughter to keep moving the antenna in order to get the clearest reception and then to hold it in place. 

Endeavour is unfortunately caught between “town and gown.” Coming from a working-class background like his colleagues in the CID (Crime Investigation Department) of the Oxford city police, he attended Oxford on scholarship, where he studied the Classics. He dropped out without finishing his degree, traumatized by a romantic relationship that ended badly. Because of his family background, he lacks the social connections to blend in with the academic population at the university. While the department and the rest of the country are fascinated by the World Cup, Detective Constable Morse is doesn’t know anything about football and prefers listening to classical music and opera and solving crossword puzzles. He is also a stickler for grammar. His unusual intellect and personality quirks help him to solve his cases, but they also set him apart from everyone else. 

The murder victim in the episode is a retired genealogist whose hobby is researching heraldry. He is found dead in a natural history museum in Oxford, supposedly killed by a khatar, or dagger used by Indian royalty for ceremonial purposes.  On a side note, I recently had the opportunity to see a khatar at an exhibition of the Royal Arts of Jodhpur at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston during a visit earlier this summer.  

A group of girls who are summer boarders at the nearby Blyth Mount School for Girls was visiting the museum at the time the murder took place. Morse interviews them to see if any of them noticed anything that would help to solve the murder.  He learns that the boarding school used to be Shrive Hill House, home of the fictitious Blaise-Hamilton family a hundred years earlier. The family had built a fortune through its ownership of tea plantations in India. On July 27, 1866, the governess, nursemaid, and three of the Blaise- Hamilton children were found bludgeoned to death with a croquet mallet. 

Although the main purpose of each episode is to dramatize the solving of a murder or murders, “Nocturne” is unique because of the way it highlights the effect of various social factors in the timeline of the episode. Morse discovers that the murder at the museum is linked to the events of that fateful day in 1866. The theme of prejudice affects several characters in the story, who are outcasts in different ways, something Morse can identify with, given his own background and personality.  He has a conversation with the murdered genealogist’s niece later in the episode in which they talk about why it is so important to some people to find out where they came from and the niece says, “Surely who you are and what you can do counts more than breeding, so called?”

Morse interviews Stephen Fitzowen, an author who wrote a book about the murders. The author says that it was at first believed that Mrs. Blaise-Hamilton had committed the murders but the theory was abandoned because she had been bedridden for a long time due to a “nervous condition.” In Victorian times, women were often thought to be mentally unstable because of their “volatile” emotions. Morse examines Mrs. Blaise’s Hamilton’s Bible and notices a drawing of five stick figures, one with its face blacked out and several underlined passages referring to bastardy.  I can’t think of anything more shocking to a wife, especially from the upper classes, than finding out that her husband was unfaithful to her and had, in addition, fathered an illegitimate son whose Indian mother would have been her social inferior. While searching the family records, Morse also finds out that Blaise-Hamilton had been paying the boy’s mother a monthly pension. Mrs. Blaise-Hamilton’s frustration with the situation and her depression over the betrayal would have been viewed by the doctors of the time as a nervous malady and treated with bed rest to soothe the sufferer’s agitated mind. 

The boy accompanied his father back to England and is introduced to the rest of the family as the child of a friend who had died during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny at Cawnpore. Morse observes that being an Anglo-Indian or half-caste wouldn’t have mattered in India but in Victorian England, or even the England of Morse’s time, things were different.  The boy’s physical appearance marked him as having mixed ancestry and prevented him from being accepted by British society. His illegitimacy with its lowered social status would also have kept him an outcast. His father left him with the gamekeeper and his wife, a white British couple, to be raised as their son. 

 The law of primogeniture governed inheritance rights at that time. Primogeniture is "the right, by law or custom, of the paternally acknowledged, firstborn son to inherit his parent's entire or main estate, in preference to daughters, elder illegitimate sons, younger sons and collateral relatives; in some cases the estate may instead be the inheritance of the firstborn child or occasionally the firstborn daughter." (Wikipedia). Although the boy was Blaise-Hamilton’s firstborn son, his illegitimate birth and his father not publicly acknowledging him prevented him from inheriting the family fortune.  

Charlotte, as the only surviving legitimate child after the murder, would normally have inherited the entire estate once her father passed away. The fictional storyline of the episode introduces a change in the law in 1966. Parliament was preparing to hear a report that would potentially lift the restrictions on inheritance towards those who were illegitimate and their descendants, allowing them to make a claim on the estate, just as with any legitimate descendants, which is a crucial plot point in the story. 

Fitzowen tells Morse that the real crime of the man who was wrongly accused and arrested for the murders was that he happened to be Irish and adds, “Bearing the surname Fitzowen, I can testify to this. When in doubt, blame the Irish.” However, he doesn’t recognize the irony of his own remarks. He says that Mrs. Blaise-Hamilton’s mental instability was inherited by her daughter. He believed the girl was the real murderer, referring to her as “Bloody Charlotte,” a name which had survived in local legend. The only evidence he has to support his claim is that the daughter’s face had been scratched out in the photographs he has gathered and that the portrait of her in the attic has her face painted over.  It is only when Morse takes a closer look at one of the photographs that he discovers the real reason that the pictures were altered. Charlotte's father confined her to an institution after the murders, where she died unmarried without heirs. Since she was in a mental institution, the estate and its holdings were auctioned off and the proceeds went to the Crown. 

Chopin’s Nocturne op. 9 no. 1 in B flat minor was playing on a music box when the police came to investigate the murders in 1866. It is heard several times throughout the episode and the episode's title takes its name from the piece. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a nocturne, "is a composition inspired by, or evocative of, the night, and cultivated in the 19th century primarily as a character piece, a relatively brief musical composition, usually for piano, expressive of a specific mood or nonmusical idea. Closely associated with the Romantic movement, especially in Germany, 19th-century character pieces often bore titles citing their inspiration from literature (such as Robert Schumann’s collection Kreisleriana, 1838) or from personal experience (e.g., Schumann’s Kinderszenen, 1838; Scenes from Childhood). Others refer to specific personages directly or in disguise (such as Schumann’s Carnaval, composed 1833–35) or evoke geographic or national images (e.g., Frédéric Chopin’s polonaises, mazurkas, and Barcarolle, 1845–46). Felix Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte (1830; Songs Without Words) covered a particularly wide range of styles and moods, while Chopin tended to favour musico-literary genres, such as ballades, and more-generalized idyllic or melancholy associations, such as nocturnes." 

With Morse’s knowledge of classical music, he recognizes that the complexity of the piece requires the talent of a highly skilled pianist. The schoolmistress says that Shelly Thengardi, one of the summer boarders is the only one with that level of expertise. Shelly is also an Anglo-Indian and subject to the same prejudice that existed against Blaise-Hamilton’s illegitimate son during the time of the murders at Shrive Hill House. She tells Morse that some of the other girls refer to her insultingly as Fish-nor. She is neither fish nor fowl because she neither purely white British nor purely Indian. She says that her father told her that the rule of the British Raj over India was a long injustice but she would not have existed without it, which he saw as a silver lining. Shelly continues to quote her father, saying that the past can only hurt us if we let it. 

When Morse asks the schoolmistress if Shelly and Bunty Glossop, another one of the summer boarders, are friends, she replies, “Shelly's not friends with anyone.” 13-year-old Bunty Glossop is highly intelligent and very observant. She is able to quote Lewis Carroll from memory. Morse and Bunty share some of the same traits. Both are sensitive, highly intelligent individuals who lost their mothers when they were young. This probably influences their temperaments and makes them unable to fit in. 

In the universe of the series, Lady Matilda’s is a fictional college in Oxford, intended to be a combination of the colleges of Lady Margaret Hall and St. Hilda’s. The schoolmistress says of Bunty that “she would be a prospect for Lady Matilda’s if boys don’t get in the way.”  She worries that the ambitions of someone with Bunty’s intelligence and potential to succeed would be sacrificed to the demands of an unsupportive partner.  The schoolmistress describes herself as a 34-year-old unmarried woman in the middle of some God-forsaken nowhere where there are no potential marital prospects. Out of desperation and loneliness, she begins a relationship with a man she met at the pub on her day off. He is a postgraduate student who was working at the museum when the genealogist was killed. It can be inferred from the episode that despite the progress in women’s rights since Victorian times, unmarried women seem no happier than many married women, even if they have jobs and financial freedom. 

The question of property and inheritance rights is still an issue today although the context has changed. The United States Constitution gave the states police power, which governs issues related to marriage and family law. While interracial marriages are now accepted as legal unions, until the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell vs Hodges in 2015, many states did not recognize the legitimacy of gay marriage. This precluded partners in such relationships from receiving the federal benefits accorded to heterosexual couples, including medical and survivor’s inheritance benefits. Obergefell made gay marriage legal in all 50 states by relying on the Constitutional provision of equal justice under the law.

Prejudice towards those who are different because of their physical appearance, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and nowadays, even political affiliation, continues, although we claim to be a democratic society with liberty and justice for all. Whereas in the past it was hidden under the surface, as the episode showed, today accusations of bigotry, intolerance, and prejudice are a rallying cry for individuals and groups, fueling the fires of unrest and discontent. 

It hurts when those who discriminate against us the most are the ones who are the closest to us. Some of us respond by withdrawing and others by lashing out or by engaging in self-destructive behaviors. Endeavour Morse encounters many of these types of individuals during his investigation and over the course of his career and personal life. His own efforts to fit in with those around him are largely unsuccessful, which eventually causes him to change into the person he becomes in his later years.

Amistad

Me prometaste que algun dia
Voy a ser mujer grande, reina de my destino
Sus palabras me dieron la fortaleza en mi vida
Porque vinieron de un alma sincero

En una mirada, podrias leer un futuro brilliante
Pero te escapo el dolor en mi corazon
Tenia muchas experiences en el curso del pasado
Y una de las mas dulces fue conocerte
En eso, encontre a yo mismo

Es mejor asi, la amargura en mi vida no manchaba la felicidad en la tuya
El regalo de su amistad fue lo mas especial que alguien pueda darme.

The Shade of A Hope

My life has been lived in the shade of a hope
That made my days more beautiful and my nights less lonely
In my dreams, I see your face,
Those deep knowing eyes looking at me with warmth and love
I hear your voice, its vibrations coursing through my body
I feel the light pressure of your hand on mine
As though it were a bolt of electricity piercing my all too susceptible heart
Whatever you were, that too I wanted to be
Wherever you were, there too I wanted to go
Whoever you knew, they too I wanted to know
Hoping that it would bring me closer to you

I dreamed of watching for you, waiting for you, 
Laughing and loving and sharing a life with you
But now another will watch for you
Another will wait for you
Another will laugh and love and share life with you
Was I wrong to have built my life around that shadow of a dream?
Was it wrong to believe that you had the power to make a day beautiful or a night less lonely?
The time is past when I could  have shared what was in my heart
You will never understand what you had within your reach
So I am doomed to be left to my unasked questions
And the shade of a hope that can never be.

The Confused Feminist

I recently posted an article on my Facebook page about the antics of Cornell University student Letitia Chai, during a practice presentation of her thesis on how best to integrate refugees into host communities to help them successfully adapt to their new living situation. The thesis was a final requirement for a course titled "Acting in Public: Performance in Everyday Life." The syllabus was fairly lenient in its guidelines about the students’ attire, suggesting that students should "dress appropriately for the persona [they] will present."  Chai turned up for her presentation in a button down shirt and cut off jean shorts. I use the word “antics” deliberately. What kind of persona she was attempting to portray in a presentation that was ostensibly based on the plight of refugees in a host country is still mystifying.

In response to an innocuous query from her professor about her choice of attire, indicating that it was not very professional, and would be distracting to the young male students, and asking whether her mother would approve of her choice, Chai said "I think that I was so taken aback that I didn’t really know how to respond.” I would not think the student should have been so unprepared to answer her professor’s question. I would assume that her thesis defense would have included a Q& A session where she would have to spontaneously field questions from the audience regarding her presentation and be able to articulately defend her position. Her reaction displays her complete disregard for a perspective that differed from her own, as well as her arrogance and immaturity in failing to see her professor's advice as well meant constructive criticism.

An article on the online website https://www.nationalreview.com by Kyle Smith, defended the professor’s position, arguing that part of the professors’ role was to prepare their students to take on adult responsibilities in the real world. As one online commentator pointed out, the way a person dresses not only shows self-respect, but also respect for their audience, and in Chai's case, for the gravity of the subject matter she was presenting on. A male international student in the class commented that a speaker has a "moral obligation" to dress in a conservative fashion while presenting their thesis. There are those who question whether a male who presented in his underwear would have been similarly admonished but the standard of appropriate behavior is not and should not be gender specific. The student did not specify that it was a female’s moral obligation to dress conservatively, simply that it was a general principle.  The student's comment, however, caused Chai to leave the room in tears, choosing to see it as a sexist criticism that belittled her status as a human being. Her response unfortunately would only strengthen the perception of women as emotionally weak and incapable of handling the pressures of a professional career.

Rather than offering any sort of explanation for her stylistic choices, Chai returned to the classroom, determined to give the “best damn speech of [her] life” and began removing her clothing down to her bra and underwear, issuing a command to the rest of the class to do the same. I have taken speech classes in school and undergone further training in public speaking later in life. Nowhere in such training has it been suggested that removing one’s clothing is an effective speechmaking technique.

One of the arguments in support of Chai’s choice of attire was that not all students would be able to afford the cost of formal clothes, especially if they were attending the university on scholarship. Chai’s family lives in Korea. Education is a high priority in Asian societies and families make enormous personal sacrifices to ensure their children access to the best educational opportunities. By the student’s own admission, her mother is an educated professional, and likely a member of at least the middle class. Chai’s background does not indicate that she suffered from any economic hardship. In addition, it was never stipulated that the students wear formal clothes for the presentation, only that they are appropriate.

Chai claimed that she was striking out against sexist and patriarchal dress codes and that her mother, as a feminist, gender and sexuality studies professor, endorsed her actions. Chai’s actions were more similar to those of a toddler indulging in a temper tantrum than a young adult pursuing higher education at a prestigious university. While many young people believe that it is possible to live in an environment where they are free to choose how they present themselves, which apparently includes how much or how little to wear, it demonstrates how little they know about life in the world outside their own privileged existence. If Chai was living in a truly patriarchal environment, as she believes, she would have been exhorted to return home and apply herself to learning housekeeping skills to please her future husband and in-laws, rather than pursuing an advanced degree.

 Smith’s article includes an observation from his colleague that very logically points out that if the young woman felt that she was truly a member of the human race, why would she stop at her underwear?  Which stage of humanity is she referring to? The Bible and creationism claim that Adam and Eve, the first humans, were naked in the Garden of Eden until eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, made them conscious and ashamed of their nakedness. A study of the evolution of modern man reveals that the existence of clothing was initially not because of societal strictures but as a protection against the elements.

Smith’s colleague continues, “If being expected to wear a normal amount of clothing constitutes an unfair, sexist double standard, why not stroll around campus in a bikini at all times, not just when delivering a thesis?” Of course at Cornell, where temperatures are frigid most of the year, that may be just as illogical as a woman claiming that she is a victim of a sexist patriarchy while delivering a presentation on an important issue dressed like a Victoria's Secret model.

I was challenged by a Facebook poster for equating Chai’s removal of her clothing to the actions of a stripper. Yet I must stand by my analogy. The definition of a stripper is “one who removes their clothing in a sexually provocative manner” or a woman, in this case, "who gets paid to perform by taking her clothes off on stage." The classroom was the stage for the student's presentation, while Chai's "payment" was the amount of public attention her performance garnered, both in the classroom and through online viewing. Her intent was certainly to provoke an emotional response from her audience or she would not have taken such an action. 

Chai claims that she wants to raise awareness about the prevailing mindset of oppression in today's society. If Chai truly believed that she was in the right, why did she command her classmates to also strip to support her? Is that not also oppressive to those who do not agree with her views? The irony is that she has no appreciation for how fortunate she is to be able to pursue a higher education and to have the range of choices she does in a democratic, capitalist and liberal society as a nonwhite woman from an educated family. Her entire focus seems to be instead on promoting her self-proclaimed victimization, rather than advocating for the refugees she has studied in her thesis, who have escaped political, religious, economic and sexual persecution in their home countries and who are often viewed as an unwelcome burden by the countries they flee to. From the comments from other posters about her speech, it appears that she was relying on her exhibitionism to cover up the deficits in the content of her presentation. Chai states, "I am not responsible for anyone’s attention because we are capable of thinking for ourselves and we have agency." Her selfishness undermines the relevance of her subject matter.

 Her behavior is very similar to that of Michelle Wolf, the comedienne who hosted the White House Correspondent's dinner on April 28th of this year. Both women took full advantage of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression, with Wolf breezily proclaiming "I know as much as some of you might want me to, it’s 2018 and I am a woman so you cannot shut me up." Yet neither woman's presentation had the gravitas to give them credibility. 

It’s a well-understood premise that men of all ages respond to visual stimuli. As the daughter of a feminist and gender studies professor, this is something Chai should have been aware of. For her to deliberately choose to dress in a manner that drew attention to her figure and then to proceed to further create conditions that enhance such stimuli shows that she was either oblivious or indifferent to the message it was sending to her audience. Society has imposed rules and strictures on what constitutes appropriate conduct between the sexes. However, sex remains a basic human impulse. Restricting daily interactions to one gender as in prisons and the Catholic Church does result in instances where men are victimized by other men.  But those are exceptions, and not what tends to happen in the society at large. The rise of the MeToo movement is evidence that women are much more at risk of harassment and predatory sexual behavior by men than men are by women. The difference is that now women have the power and ability to protest such behavior and see it publicly condemned. Wolf said she had worked in a lot of male-dominated fields but had never been sexually harassed, perhaps because she had the ability and confidence to set and enforce strong boundaries and because she adhered to an accepted dress code in the workplace.

Yes, women should have control over what happens to their bodies and be free to express themselves any way they want, but that does not absolve them from using good judgment and common sense. The latest generation of feminists takes an almost militant sense of pride in placing the onus of responsibility for appropriate behavior solely on male shoulders. A woman who has true control over her body makes conscious choices when it comes to the situations she puts herself in. She would not allow herself to do things that lowered her inhibitions or deliberately made her physically vulnerable. Chai could confidently expose her body in the classroom because it was a safe environment in a westernized society that had laws that punished sexual predators.

However, she would have not had the same protection in a less evolved culture, nor could she rely on that protection once she stepped out of the classroom. If the impression left by her behavior in the male mind was that she did not care about showing a sense of self-restraint in her appearance, what would stop one of her less “socialized” male classmates or peers from acting on his primitive impulses, which could lead to a far more traumatizing outcome? In her call for solidarity, she shows no understanding of the challenges faced by women who do not have access to the resources that she has for redress. In many remote rural areas in India, for example, there is no running water or indoor plumbing, so when the women go to fetch water for their families or to relieve themselves in the fields, they are often sexually assaulted -even though they are fully clothed.

The young woman was subsequently approached by the Title IX office at Cornell. Title IX is a federal law that deals with cases that involve civil rights violations based on sexual discrimination, including harassment, sexual assault or rape. Although she said was not actively pursuing a case against the university, it would be a travesty of justice to the real victims of such incidents for her to implicate the professor or the university as perpetrators of sexual harassment simply for cautioning her that her actions in exercising her right to self-expression could have consequences.

The Mysterious Murder of the Crusades

Much of America’s foreign policy has been predicated on the assumption that the leaders of every other nation in the world should think and act like we do, and if they don’t, they are considered unstable, a myopic and misguided presumption which has resulted in some disastrous decisions in our interactions with other nations. Other than official visits abroad, our leaders are unfamiliar with life in the non-Western world. On the other hand, many Asian, African and Middle Eastern leaders have studied in the West and are familiar with Western customs and beliefs. In addition to their native language, most world leaders are either fluent in, or have some knowledge of English, and often one or two other languages. By contrast, 11 of our last 12 presidents speak no other language but English and none of them have ever studied or lived in any non-Western country before they became president.

The assassination of Conrad of Montferrat, a northern Italian nobleman who was elected the king of Jerusalem in 1192 was referenced in an article by John C. Hulsman on the project syndicate website in regard to the tendency to label Kim Jong Un as an unpredictable lunatic. I was intrigued by the mention of this obscure historical figure and as I researched more about him, I realized that his assassination was a result of a complex relationship of religious, political and economic interactions in the medieval Latin East and an apt example of the dangers of underestimating your opponent.

Jerusalem was a holy place for many religious denominations throughout history. The majority religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, each sought dominance over the area. 

The Crusades of the Middle Ages were series of confrontations between the Christians and the Muslims to establish control over the Holy Land. Conrad of Montferrat lived in the 12^th century, during the time of the Third Crusade.  In 1186, Saladin, the sultan of Egypt and Syria, and his troops captured Jerusalem and a large portion of what was considered Holy Land in the name of Islam. Although he was defeated during the siege of Acre by Richard I (the Lionheart), king of England, Saladin made a treaty with Richard that would allow Jerusalem to be under Muslim control but guaranteed the safety of Christian pilgrims. In 2005, director Rideley Scott made the Kingdom of Heaven, a fictional and dramatized version of the conflict.

Richard returned to England in 1192 to protect his throne from his brother John who had been conspiring with Philip II of France. Richard needed someone who could keep the Holy Land stable for him until he could return with more troops and supplies to re-capture Jerusalem. Richard’s initial preference was Guy de Lusignan, the brother of one of his vassals.  The Constitution of Jerusalem gave the High Court the right to elect the ruler of the city but Guy did not have the support of the barons, especially since he had led them to defeat by Saladin’s forces at Hattin five years earlier.

Conrad of Montferrat became king of Tyre after he successfully wrested control of the city from Muslim forces in 1188 by urging its residents to actively resist Saladin. 

Conrad had an impressive pedigree. His mother’s brother was Leopold IV of Austria and his mother’s grandfather was Henry V, the Holy Roman emperor. His mother’s sister was the grandmother of Philip II of France, Richard’s adversary, which was why Richard was reluctant to support Conrad as the next king of Jerusalem. Conrad’s younger brother had married the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor.  His older brother William married Sibylla, the sister of Baldwin IV, the young king of Jerusalem, and they had a son named Baldwin V. 

When William died suddenly, his widow married Guy de Lusignan. Baldwin IV didn’t want Guy to claim the throne so he named his nephew as his co-ruler.  Unfortunately, Baldwin IV died of leprosy at the age of 24, leaving no children, and his nine year old nephew died the year after him. In the absence of a living male heir, Sibylla claimed the right to rule without the consent of the High Court. When she and her daughters died in an epidemic during the siege of Acre, Guy sought Richard’s backing in attempting to claim the kingship of Jerusalem by virtue of his marriage to her and, but the High Court rejected Guy’s claim.

It instead validated the right of Sibylla and Baldwin IV’s half-sister Isabella to be the next ruler. The High Court also had the power to choose Isabella’s husband and it chose Conrad based on his past record of military success. Richard eventually realized that Guy would not be an effective ruler so he decided to defer to the High Court and support Conrad as well. Conrad married Isabella in 1190. He received the news of his election by the High Court as king from Richard’s nephew, Henry II of Champagne, on April 26, 1192. Before he could be formally crowned, he was stabbed to death on April 28^th by two hashashin, or assassins under the control of Rashid al-Din Sinan, “the Old Man of the Mountain.” Sinan reputedly planned the assassinations of key figures in both armies during the Crusades in an effort to unite Jerusalem.

Although Conrad of Montferrat is not a well-recognized figure in the study of the Crusades, the circumstances surrounding his death illustrate the social, political, cultural and economic factors that were important during that time. In researching Conrad’s story, I learned many interesting things. One was about the superior position of women in the Holy Land compared to their European counterparts. Jonathan Phillips writes that women were much more powerful in the Latin East, and contrary to the accepted practice of male primogeniture in Europe, queens could rule in their own right with a consort who would lead the army (https://www.historytoday.com/jonathan-phillips/crusades-complete-history).

During the 9^th and 10^th centuries, much of the Italian coastline had been attacked by Muslim maritime raiders from the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. By the time of the First Crusade, the four Italian city states or maritime republics of Pisa, Venice, Amalfi and Genoa built strong navies funded by trade.  Naturally, the merchant class held the power in these states. The city states were able to not only resist the Muslims but also to successfully challenge them and take over their trade routes on the Mediterranean. Conrad of Montferrat was supported by Genoa to be the king of Jerusalem while Pisa supported Guy of Lusignan. Although the Third Crusade did not give the Christians control of Jerusalem, they gained access to the city under Richard’s treaty with Saladin. With Conrad as king, the Genoans would prosper.

King Richard has been blamed for Conrad’s murder but he is an unlikely suspect for several reasons. He could not afford to destabilize the region and weaken his power. He had already withdrawn his support for Guy de Lusignan and accepted the decision of the High Court to make Conrad the next ruler, so Richard would have nothing to gain by arranging for Conrad’s death. Richard had many negative qualities but preferred direct confrontation to subterfuge so he would be personally incapable of engineering a strategic assassination attempt on Conrad’s life. 

Richard’s nephew Henry II of Champagne has also been named a suspect in the murder. He succeeded his father as the Count of Champagne just as the news came of the Crusaders’ defeat at Hattin under Guy de Lusignan. Henry went on Crusade but always planned on returning to Europe afterward and never considered remaining in Jerusalem long term. The barons of the High Court had to make a quick decision to fill the power vacuum after Conrad’s death so they chose him, perhaps because he was the best available male prospect for king in the vicinity. Henry could do nothing without Richard’s approval so he would not be likely to murder for the throne of Jerusalem, one he had never really wanted anyway. Henry became the husband of Conrad’s widow Isabella a week after the murder, ruling for the next 5 years until his premature death at age 31. Though he was the king of Jerusalem, he always preferred to refer to himself as “the Count of Champagne,” which is not something an ambitious man would do.

In America, we tend to think of Muslims as a homogenous population with similar beliefs. The reality is that while they follow the same fundamental principles of Islam, Muslims are characterized not only by theological but also cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences. Saladin was a Kurdish Muslim, one of the many ethnic groups in the Middle East. Although the Kurdish people have no nation of their own, they occupy parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Islam divided into two branches after the death of Muhammed in 632 left no successor. Saladin belonged to the Sunni branch of Islam, which is the religion of over 85% of modern Muslims worldwide. 

Sunnis, who are more orthodox than the Shi'ites, believed that the right to rule came through merit and that religious leaders should be chosen by election of the community, while the Shi’ites believed that they should be descended from the founder’s bloodline. Shi’ites are followers of Ali, the 4^th prophet or imam, who was also Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law and include the Ayatollahs of Iran. The Sunnis are generally more powerful and prosperous than the Shi’ites. The former Iranian royal family, the Saudi and Bahraini royal families are all Sunni Muslims. Within the Sunni branch, the Salafi movement is an ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam in Saudia Arabia, Qatar and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Sunnis are also the majority in Egypt and Jordan. Kuwaiti Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who controlled the majority Shi’ite population of Iraq until his death. The late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a Kharjite, or Sunni Muslim. He grew up in Saudi Arabia but was the son of an immigrant from Yemen. The Assad family of Syria is Alawite, or Shi’ite Muslim, while the majority of the Syrian population is Sunni.

There has been ongoing political tension between Sunnis and the Shi’ites in the Middle East ever since Muhammed’s death, fueled by American interference in the region. The modern day terrorist organizations of Al Qaeda and ISIS are Sunni Muslim groups that were ironically sponsored by the CIA in its war against the Soviet Union. The Saudis provided the money and the CIA the training to fight the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980's. A decade earlier the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was employed by the CIA as a tool against Soviet influence in the Middle East.

The members of Al Qaeda follow the doctrines of Wahhabism. They believe that God is the ultimate authority and there is no need for reliance on prophets like Muhammed to interpret God's word and advocate a return to traditional Islam as it was first practiced. When the Saudis began to export oil abroad in the 1970s, the money was used by charitable organizations in Saudi Arabia to establish the madrasas and mosques that were ultimately responsible for the education of the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11. 

The U.S. is now working with the Shi’ites in Iraq to defeat ISIS/ISIL, Salafi jihadists who split off from Al Qaeda over ideological differences. According to a question on Quora, "Al Qaeda wished to bring ‘world-wide Jihad’ to every part of the globe as a means of forcing RESPECT for Sunni Islam within its historic borders. ISIS wished to recreate a CALIPHATE, which involves the occupation and control of large swathes of territory as a means of enforcing extreme Sunni Islamic doctrine within a particular TERRITORY." (https://www.quora.com/Why-did-ISIS-split-from-Al-Qaeda-if-they-both-have-the-same-enemies)

The U.S. is working with its Saudi Arabian allies against the Houthis, northern Yemeni Shi’ite fighters from the Zaidi sect (named after the great grandson of Ali) who want to overthrow the US-sponsored Yemeni government. The Houthis are supported by Iran as well as many Sunni Muslims in the country. The Houthis support the Shi'ite Assad regime in Syria. Hezbollah is a Lebanese terrorist Shiite group that is backed by Iran. By implementing economic sanctions against Iran and air strikes against ISIS in Syria, the US is attempting to weaken the power of Hezbollah and the Palestine supported Hamas, both of which threaten the safety of Israel, America's ally. At the same time, the US is also trying to negotiate an agreement about nuclear weapons with the Iranian government. 

The politics of the medieval Middle East were equally complex. Of all the possible suspects in Conrad’s assassination, Rashid al-Din Sinan probably had the strongest motive. Sinan and his group of assassins were members of a sect of Shi’ite Muslims known as Nizari Isamilis. To the Muslim Sinan, Christian Crusaders were enemies. As a member of a Shi’ite minority that espoused extreme views, Sinan was a threat to Sunnis like Saladin. Conrad’s assassination therefore might have been part of a long term strategy to weaken the power of either side over Jerusalem. A comprehensive understanding of the influence of politics, economics and culture on a region should be an important part of the development of America’s foreign policy but those factors are often misunderstood or ignored. American foreign policy has been motivated by self interest in many parts of the world with catastrophic consequences. This is the parallel that Hulsman is trying to draw by using the example of Conrad of Montferrat.

Another Twist in the Shape of Water

By now, news of physicist Stephen Hawking's death is common knowledge. Like Elisa in Guillermo del Toro's the Shape of Water, Hawking was disabled. Both circumstances were out of their control.Elisa has been mute since birth from an unexplained injury to her throat.  Hawking was completely paralyzed as a result of the progressive effects of ALS, a disease of the neurons that control the voluntary muscles. He lost his voice in 1985 after coming down with pneumonia while at a CERN conference in Geneva. Looking at all of the articles describing Hawking's impact on the world and in his field, I came across words like "visionary", "renowned", "brilliant."

Hawking has said, "Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking."Other than the loss of her voice, Elisa has no other physical disabilities and is able to function normally. Her mind, like Hawking's is unaffected. She is highly intelligent, appreciates music and culture, and teaches sign language to the creature so they can communicate. The rudimentary tools she has at her disposal limits the number of people she can communicate with. Hawking is able to reach a much wider audience because he has more sophisticated tools at his disposal. He is celebrated because of his intellectual achievements in spite of his disability while Elisa, a female janitor in a male dominated workplace, is insignificant and virtually invisible. Even if she had a voice, as her co-worker Zelda does, she still has no way of changing things.

The audience makes the assumption that Elisa works at such a lowly job because that is the only kind of work that she is able to get with her disability. It is not lack of aptitude that limits her. She desires connection but isolates herself, realizing that other people will not take the time to understand her challenges and expect her to adapt to them, rather than trying to adapt to her. Harsh experience has bred caution in her and she would prefer to stay safe and unnoticed in an insignificant position than to put herself in a position where she can be hurt further.

Adversity affects people in different ways. For sensitive people like Elisa, it is particularly traumatizing and the lack of effective support or empathy makes recovering that much more difficult. As a teenager, I got my driver's license, along with many of my peers and drove independently for several years until a serious car accident in my late 20's left me disabled for several months. Although I recovered from the physical injury, the experience left me terrified of driving. The emotional effects lingered for years, as they do for many victims of PTSD. I never sought psychological assistance and instead found other ways of coping, just as Elisa does. I became dependent on friends and family to get around, effectively curtailing my independence. Although people knew what had happened to me, they could not understand why I wasn't able to get over it and start driving again. This only succeeded in isolating me further.

I still longed for freedom and independence, as Elisa did, but my negative experience obstructed my ability to find a solution.  On his website http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html, Hawking describes how computers and assistive technology have given him the lifeline he needed to do his work.  I recently bought a vehicle that came equipped with technology that would help me in performing many of the functions associated with operating a motor vehicle and with advanced safety features to minimize serious injury. A smartphone with built in GPS provides verbal  navigational assistance without my having to read a map and remember a long sequence of directions.Those two things gave me the confidence to drive again, which helped to restore my sense of self worth.

Unfortunately, Elisa was not as lucky. If del Toro's objective was to increase awareness of and elicit sympathy for the plight of the disabled, that message has not come through. Those who have access to better resources, as Hawking and I did, have a built in advantage even with a disability. Elisa's gender and her inferior economic status are her real disability, not her inability to speak.

Nothing Common About Common Core, Part 2

This morning's edition of the Wall Street Journal contained a review of "Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy", a book by Nicholas Tampio, which opposes the application of national standards to the problem of educational reform. Tampio's main objection to a federally controlled curriculum rests less on the problems with the actual structure of Common Core than it does on the fact that the authority to develop an educational system that meets the needs of all its users rests in the hands of a small group rather than being subject to input from a variety of sources. His argument is based on the founding fathers' fears of an overly powerful central government that resembled the one they were trying to avoid.

As a nation, we rank far behind other nations academically, a factor which Tampio partly attributes to racial and socioeconomic differences within the country, which create significant gaps in students' academic abilities. Students for whom English is not their native language or who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds do not have the edge that their more affluent or culturally socialized peers do. To this I add that students with learning disabilities face an additional obstacle in adapting to the methodology of the Common Core. Common Core involves providing an explanation for how students arrived at a solution rather than simply providing a numerical answer. Even if English is their first language LD (learning disability) students still struggle with deficits in comprehension and processing skills so they cannot articulate their reasoning process clearly. Tony Attwood, an autism researcher interviewed in a November 11, 2015 article in the Washington Post says that students with autism seem to have a special facility for math but struggle when they attempt to explain their answers, which can “mystify teachers and lead to problems with tests when the person with Asperger’s syndrome is unable to explain his or her methods on the test or exam paper.”

Tampio claims that uniform curricular standards restrict creativity and individualism, as it does in China. However, innovation cannot occur without first achieving competence in the fundamentals of a given field. Architects, builders, bakers, surgeons, accountants and individuals in many professions have the ability to employ creative solutions to problems in their work only because they have already mastered the basics. This is one of the problems that English teacher D’Lee Pollock-Moore at Warren County High School in Georgia has flagged in the design of the ELA standards of Common Core. She says, "While the Common Core does integrate reading and writing, it does not ask students to learn how to write by first imitating someone else’s style before inventing their own."

Tampio  also says the problem with the English Language Arts curriculum is that it is primarily focused on a logical approach that requires evidentiary support to analyze literature rather than an approach that allows students to respond to what they are reading. Yes it is important to learn how to substantiate a claim with relevant evidence. But part of a well rounded curriculum goes beyond logic into emotion.  Moore contends that the background of the author also influences style and voice by incorporating their life experience into the narrative, which is missing in the current format of the Common Core. She further explains that the reading standards for 8th grade include identification of literary themes but not an understanding of how they apply to literature. She cites Henry David Thoreau's "On Walden Pond" as an example of a work that changes readers internally, getting them to think and feel and sympathize with the author's perspective. From that combination comes the impetus for change and the desire to make the world a better place. Given the turmoil and the increased polarization in the nation, we need changemakers who can restore a sense of balance and perspective and a respect for the virtues that made this country great in the past. But they cannot do that if they lack the skills and the Common Core does a poor job of training the current generation in the acquisition of those skills.