Perhaps no one is better suited to observe Louisiana's 300-year legacy of French intellectual con... more Perhaps no one is better suited to observe Louisiana's 300-year legacy of French intellectual contributions to the U.S. political fabric. Gov. Edwards acknowledges those positives but also a darker side, i.e., that Enlightenment thought was invoked to preserve and expand enslavement of men, women and children of African, Caribbean and Native societies. He calls on us to remain vigilant so that liberty and Enlightenment values are each preserved. Central to his remarks is a legacy as public servant, by which his actions (but perhaps not his public persona) resemble the Scottish Enlightenment's David Hume's political practice and thought. Gov. Edwards supports humanities' centrality in education while recognizing the importance of STEM; he stakes his distance from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that we face “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” asserting that the humanities teach societies how to safely use STEM.
Louisiana Historical Association Virtual Conference, 2021
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that... more This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
"The Acadian Petitions--A 300-Year Legacy"
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists ... more "The Acadian Petitions--A 300-Year Legacy"
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Louisiana Historical Association YouTube Channel, 2021
Presentation as part of the panel, Legacies of the German-Acadian Coast, appearing at 43:10 minut... more Presentation as part of the panel, Legacies of the German-Acadian Coast, appearing at 43:10 minutes on the LHA YouTube channel's 2021 virtual conference. This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
This is a 'precis' or somewhat deep dive into the reason for the nomination of Louisiana attorney... more This is a 'precis' or somewhat deep dive into the reason for the nomination of Louisiana attorney Warren Perrin for a lifetime achievement award. His 1988 Petition for Apology from the Queen on behalf of the Acadians has resonance beyond Louisiana and Canada. Mr. Perrin's Petition prompts comparison with the current Hong Kong protests and the efforts of Mauritius, which recently obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice that decolonization is not yet complete until Great Britain returns Diego Garcia, among the Chagossian island archipelago. This of course has serious implications for the 'American pivot' to the Indo-Pacific in light of a growing Chinese presence. It also implicates the next "Grotian moment' and a realization the next tweak to the 'law of nations' will likely be less 'Western' in its approach.
As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given ... more As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants?
Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel
Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical an... more Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical and legal communities to his coined term drapetomania, in the New Orleans Medical Journal, to describe a “disease of the mind” peculiar to enslaved Africans of running away.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical an... more Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical and legal communities to his coined term drapetomania, in the New Orleans Medical Journal, to describe a “disease of the mind” peculiar to enslaved Africans of running away.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
-- “Ida B., P.G.T., W.C.C., Booker T. and W.E.B. (Mis-Remembered Bridges, Bullets and Battles of ... more -- “Ida B., P.G.T., W.C.C., Booker T. and W.E.B. (Mis-Remembered Bridges, Bullets and Battles of New Orleans)”—Contextualing the Confederate monument debate using 1915, the year Beauregard’s was erected, to include the January Battle of New Orleans centennial celebrations, which omitted mention of the 430 black men comprising the center of Andrew Jackson’s line; the February release of Birth of a Nation; Booker T. Washington’s April Louisiana tour and death the day the statue was dedicated; Ida B. Wells’ campaign of lynching, appropriated from her by both the NAACP and W.E.B. DuBois; and the October opening of the city’s first library to allow black patrons.
The paper situates post-Katrina civilian and police shootings of unarmed blacks in this context. Presented in Natchez to the 33rd Annual Gulf South History & Humanities Conference, “Celebrating Mississippi and Beyond— Life and Society in the Gulf South,” October 1-3, 2015, sponsored by the Gulf South Historical Association.
Paper presented June 4, 2015, to the General Philemon Thomas Chapter, Sons of the American Revolu... more Paper presented June 4, 2015, to the General Philemon Thomas Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution. The paper challenges existing scholarship on events popularly described as the "1811 German Coast Slave Uprising."
A white blood thirst certainly occurred during the events which occurred on the cusp of Congress' vote to allow the Territory of Orleans to petition for statehood. Many in Congress opposed the expansion of the nation's slavery over so vast an area which would be carved into numerous states, and they also voted, on the losing side, to provide full citizenship and voting rights to the considerable population of free people of color. French elite in the territory were apoplectic enough to hear of efforts to end slavery, much less to imagine that they might have to share voting rights with a subordinate class of individuals, the gens de couleur libre.
These events occurred in the midst of two fully documented 'rebellions', i.e., that of the 1810 West Florida Rebellion and that of East Florida, also known as The Patriots' War, the following year, 1812. The paper argues that the three events are inextricably linked and must be viewed in that context.
Attorney at Law 1 Thank you and the organizers for this great conference. I welcome the opportuni... more Attorney at Law 1 Thank you and the organizers for this great conference. I welcome the opportunity to fine-tune my ongoing research into the racialized-yet untaught--origins of Louisiana's legal system. This conference pushed me into awareness of the national dimensions of the issue.
While this is an older piece from 2014, today’s issues suggest the relevance of reasoned discours... more While this is an older piece from 2014, today’s issues suggest the relevance of reasoned discourse on government and the purposes it serves towards, in Rousseau’s term, “the general will.” This is contrasted with the vision set forth by Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan,” commanding unswerving and unquestioning allegiance to the sovereign, the violation of which is to face a life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" of perpetual war in which it is “every man against every man.” What follows is the introduction of former four-term Louisiana Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, who served as Honorary Chair of the Eighteenth Century Louisiana panel of the Montréal conference, in which he discussed the practicalities of governance imbued with Enlightenment values of vision, hope and consent, rather than of fear and overweening strength.
Open letter to both the Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Foundation for Historical Louisiana t... more Open letter to both the Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Foundation for Historical Louisiana to withdraw from participation in the lawsuit seeking to maintain the Confederate memorials to white supremacy in New Orleans.
The interests of these two organizations is disserved by this lawsuit, if only considering the longer term negative impact it will have on the organizations' ability to participate in a legitimate discussion of proper relocation and interpretation of the monuments, as well as the burden it imposes on long-term recruitment of membership.
Rather than lending their considerable expertise, prestige and presumptive legitimacy to a conver... more Rather than lending their considerable expertise, prestige and presumptive legitimacy to a conversation about where best to display these artifacts, several organizations chose instead to align on the wrong side of history by filing a lawsuit to keep the memorials to white supremacy in place.
Aside from immediately withdrawing from the lawsuit, and/or opening up the decision process to its membership after honest discussion of the scholarship, these historical associations should inform themselves of the context in which the monuments were erected.
As to Beauregard's, it was unveiled the same year "Birth of a Nation" opened, with its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. Any cursory search of the periodical, "Confederate Veteran," published during that time and available online, will reveal repetitive invocations of both the claimed "need" for, and appreciation of, the Klan's violence directed to the newly franchised blacks, aimed at "keeping the negro in his proper place." See, e.g., https://archive.org/stream/confederateveter24conf#page/158/mode/2up/search/klan
Presented to the Eighteenth-Century Louisiana session of the Conference, Revolutions in Eighteent... more Presented to the Eighteenth-Century Louisiana session of the Conference, Revolutions in Eighteenth-Century Sociability, Montréal, 15-18 Oct. 2014. The paper re-centers the three-hundred year legacy of Louisiana French intellectual thought and its contributions to the U.S. "canon" of political development, and teases out of those political writings, invoking the Enlightenment authors, the source of the expansion of U.S. enslavement of African, Caribbean and Native American men, women, children and families.
Perhaps no one is better suited to observe Louisiana's 300-year legacy of French intellectual con... more Perhaps no one is better suited to observe Louisiana's 300-year legacy of French intellectual contributions to the U.S. political fabric. Gov. Edwards acknowledges those positives but also a darker side, i.e., that Enlightenment thought was invoked to preserve and expand enslavement of men, women and children of African, Caribbean and Native societies. He calls on us to remain vigilant so that liberty and Enlightenment values are each preserved. Central to his remarks is a legacy as public servant, by which his actions (but perhaps not his public persona) resemble the Scottish Enlightenment's David Hume's political practice and thought. Gov. Edwards supports humanities' centrality in education while recognizing the importance of STEM; he stakes his distance from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan that we face “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” asserting that the humanities teach societies how to safely use STEM.
Louisiana Historical Association Virtual Conference, 2021
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that... more This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
"The Acadian Petitions--A 300-Year Legacy"
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists ... more "The Acadian Petitions--A 300-Year Legacy"
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Louisiana Historical Association YouTube Channel, 2021
Presentation as part of the panel, Legacies of the German-Acadian Coast, appearing at 43:10 minut... more Presentation as part of the panel, Legacies of the German-Acadian Coast, appearing at 43:10 minutes on the LHA YouTube channel's 2021 virtual conference. This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
This is a 'precis' or somewhat deep dive into the reason for the nomination of Louisiana attorney... more This is a 'precis' or somewhat deep dive into the reason for the nomination of Louisiana attorney Warren Perrin for a lifetime achievement award. His 1988 Petition for Apology from the Queen on behalf of the Acadians has resonance beyond Louisiana and Canada. Mr. Perrin's Petition prompts comparison with the current Hong Kong protests and the efforts of Mauritius, which recently obtained a ruling from the International Court of Justice that decolonization is not yet complete until Great Britain returns Diego Garcia, among the Chagossian island archipelago. This of course has serious implications for the 'American pivot' to the Indo-Pacific in light of a growing Chinese presence. It also implicates the next "Grotian moment' and a realization the next tweak to the 'law of nations' will likely be less 'Western' in its approach.
As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given ... more As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants?
Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel
Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical an... more Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical and legal communities to his coined term drapetomania, in the New Orleans Medical Journal, to describe a “disease of the mind” peculiar to enslaved Africans of running away.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical an... more Shortly after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, Dr. Samuel Cartwright introduced medical and legal communities to his coined term drapetomania, in the New Orleans Medical Journal, to describe a “disease of the mind” peculiar to enslaved Africans of running away.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
-- “Ida B., P.G.T., W.C.C., Booker T. and W.E.B. (Mis-Remembered Bridges, Bullets and Battles of ... more -- “Ida B., P.G.T., W.C.C., Booker T. and W.E.B. (Mis-Remembered Bridges, Bullets and Battles of New Orleans)”—Contextualing the Confederate monument debate using 1915, the year Beauregard’s was erected, to include the January Battle of New Orleans centennial celebrations, which omitted mention of the 430 black men comprising the center of Andrew Jackson’s line; the February release of Birth of a Nation; Booker T. Washington’s April Louisiana tour and death the day the statue was dedicated; Ida B. Wells’ campaign of lynching, appropriated from her by both the NAACP and W.E.B. DuBois; and the October opening of the city’s first library to allow black patrons.
The paper situates post-Katrina civilian and police shootings of unarmed blacks in this context. Presented in Natchez to the 33rd Annual Gulf South History & Humanities Conference, “Celebrating Mississippi and Beyond— Life and Society in the Gulf South,” October 1-3, 2015, sponsored by the Gulf South Historical Association.
Paper presented June 4, 2015, to the General Philemon Thomas Chapter, Sons of the American Revolu... more Paper presented June 4, 2015, to the General Philemon Thomas Chapter, Sons of the American Revolution. The paper challenges existing scholarship on events popularly described as the "1811 German Coast Slave Uprising."
A white blood thirst certainly occurred during the events which occurred on the cusp of Congress' vote to allow the Territory of Orleans to petition for statehood. Many in Congress opposed the expansion of the nation's slavery over so vast an area which would be carved into numerous states, and they also voted, on the losing side, to provide full citizenship and voting rights to the considerable population of free people of color. French elite in the territory were apoplectic enough to hear of efforts to end slavery, much less to imagine that they might have to share voting rights with a subordinate class of individuals, the gens de couleur libre.
These events occurred in the midst of two fully documented 'rebellions', i.e., that of the 1810 West Florida Rebellion and that of East Florida, also known as The Patriots' War, the following year, 1812. The paper argues that the three events are inextricably linked and must be viewed in that context.
Attorney at Law 1 Thank you and the organizers for this great conference. I welcome the opportuni... more Attorney at Law 1 Thank you and the organizers for this great conference. I welcome the opportunity to fine-tune my ongoing research into the racialized-yet untaught--origins of Louisiana's legal system. This conference pushed me into awareness of the national dimensions of the issue.
While this is an older piece from 2014, today’s issues suggest the relevance of reasoned discours... more While this is an older piece from 2014, today’s issues suggest the relevance of reasoned discourse on government and the purposes it serves towards, in Rousseau’s term, “the general will.” This is contrasted with the vision set forth by Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan,” commanding unswerving and unquestioning allegiance to the sovereign, the violation of which is to face a life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" of perpetual war in which it is “every man against every man.” What follows is the introduction of former four-term Louisiana Governor Edwin Washington Edwards, who served as Honorary Chair of the Eighteenth Century Louisiana panel of the Montréal conference, in which he discussed the practicalities of governance imbued with Enlightenment values of vision, hope and consent, rather than of fear and overweening strength.
Open letter to both the Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Foundation for Historical Louisiana t... more Open letter to both the Louisiana Landmarks Society and the Foundation for Historical Louisiana to withdraw from participation in the lawsuit seeking to maintain the Confederate memorials to white supremacy in New Orleans.
The interests of these two organizations is disserved by this lawsuit, if only considering the longer term negative impact it will have on the organizations' ability to participate in a legitimate discussion of proper relocation and interpretation of the monuments, as well as the burden it imposes on long-term recruitment of membership.
Rather than lending their considerable expertise, prestige and presumptive legitimacy to a conver... more Rather than lending their considerable expertise, prestige and presumptive legitimacy to a conversation about where best to display these artifacts, several organizations chose instead to align on the wrong side of history by filing a lawsuit to keep the memorials to white supremacy in place.
Aside from immediately withdrawing from the lawsuit, and/or opening up the decision process to its membership after honest discussion of the scholarship, these historical associations should inform themselves of the context in which the monuments were erected.
As to Beauregard's, it was unveiled the same year "Birth of a Nation" opened, with its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. Any cursory search of the periodical, "Confederate Veteran," published during that time and available online, will reveal repetitive invocations of both the claimed "need" for, and appreciation of, the Klan's violence directed to the newly franchised blacks, aimed at "keeping the negro in his proper place." See, e.g., https://archive.org/stream/confederateveter24conf#page/158/mode/2up/search/klan
Presented to the Eighteenth-Century Louisiana session of the Conference, Revolutions in Eighteent... more Presented to the Eighteenth-Century Louisiana session of the Conference, Revolutions in Eighteenth-Century Sociability, Montréal, 15-18 Oct. 2014. The paper re-centers the three-hundred year legacy of Louisiana French intellectual thought and its contributions to the U.S. "canon" of political development, and teases out of those political writings, invoking the Enlightenment authors, the source of the expansion of U.S. enslavement of African, Caribbean and Native American men, women, children and families.
As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given ... more As Picasso said: “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.”
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants? Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel
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Louisiana Historical Association - YouTube
43:10 minutes
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Louisiana Historical Association - YouTube
43:10 minutes
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants?
Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
The paper situates post-Katrina civilian and police shootings of unarmed blacks in this context. Presented in Natchez to the 33rd Annual Gulf South History & Humanities Conference, “Celebrating Mississippi and Beyond— Life and Society in the Gulf South,” October 1-3, 2015, sponsored by the Gulf South Historical Association.
A white blood thirst certainly occurred during the events which occurred on the cusp of Congress' vote to allow the Territory of Orleans to petition for statehood. Many in Congress opposed the expansion of the nation's slavery over so vast an area which would be carved into numerous states, and they also voted, on the losing side, to provide full citizenship and voting rights to the considerable population of free people of color. French elite in the territory were apoplectic enough to hear of efforts to end slavery, much less to imagine that they might have to share voting rights with a subordinate class of individuals, the gens de couleur libre.
These events occurred in the midst of two fully documented 'rebellions', i.e., that of the 1810 West Florida Rebellion and that of East Florida, also known as The Patriots' War, the following year, 1812. The paper argues that the three events are inextricably linked and must be viewed in that context.
The interests of these two organizations is disserved by this lawsuit, if only considering the longer term negative impact it will have on the organizations' ability to participate in a legitimate discussion of proper relocation and interpretation of the monuments, as well as the burden it imposes on long-term recruitment of membership.
Aside from immediately withdrawing from the lawsuit, and/or opening up the decision process to its membership after honest discussion of the scholarship, these historical associations should inform themselves of the context in which the monuments were erected.
As to Beauregard's, it was unveiled the same year "Birth of a Nation" opened, with its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. Any cursory search of the periodical, "Confederate Veteran," published during that time and available online, will reveal repetitive invocations of both the claimed "need" for, and appreciation of, the Klan's violence directed to the newly franchised blacks, aimed at "keeping the negro in his proper place." See, e.g., https://archive.org/stream/confederateveter24conf#page/158/mode/2up/search/klan
Louisiana Historical Association - YouTube
43:10 minutes
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Louisiana Historical Association - YouTube
43:10 minutes
This paper invites inquiry to look beyond the mists of the myths and to the historical facts that today’s Acadian forebearers, using simple goose quill pens as their weapon of choice, wrote innumerable petitions and thus held at bay for forty years the world’s greatest superpower at the time, Great Britain. Scholars have not yet deconstructed those petitions—many now lost but many preserved--to mine the rich vein revealed within which contain themes common to the greatest intellectual minds of the age and to come, among them the fathers of modern international law, philosophers, scholars and writers, including Samuel Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, David Hume, Voltaire, Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The petitions assured the Acadians would not have to take up arms against their Indigenous neighbors, with whom many had formed families, and also preserved their French language and their Catholic faith. These concessions by the British would lead to the Quebec Act, the Royal Proclamation, and due to them, the modern world’s first ‘Grotian pivot’ and decolonization of what would become the United States. The paper suggests the petitions deserve further study and contextualization as to their impact in shaping the onset of decolonization.
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants?
Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
Fast forward to United States courtrooms today, and science is similarly presented as evidence in cases involving police use of lethal force, frequently against people of color. Today’s witness describes expertise in a coined term “force science,” complete with explanations of victims being shot in the back while running away.
The paper supplies some gaps which the shouted soundbite “Black Lives Matter” drowns out from dialogue of the asymmetry experienced by people of color both in their lives and in judicial proceedings subsequent to intersections with enforcement communities.
A principal cause, suggesting its own remedy, is posed: the process by which each of the 205 law schools in this country is accredited lacks requirements that schools expose students to experience--much less to participate in or understand--cultural competence, or how a student’s own bias or preconceived ideas and values differ from those of a pluralistic society the law is intended to serve.
Unlike the AMA’s accreditation process replete with numerous requirements and references to race and cultural difference and their impact on delivery of medical services, the bar association, whose membership is nearly ninety percent white, makes but one suggestion, not even a requirement, of cultural competence.
The paper addresses law’s historical but questionable embrace of science.
The paper situates post-Katrina civilian and police shootings of unarmed blacks in this context. Presented in Natchez to the 33rd Annual Gulf South History & Humanities Conference, “Celebrating Mississippi and Beyond— Life and Society in the Gulf South,” October 1-3, 2015, sponsored by the Gulf South Historical Association.
A white blood thirst certainly occurred during the events which occurred on the cusp of Congress' vote to allow the Territory of Orleans to petition for statehood. Many in Congress opposed the expansion of the nation's slavery over so vast an area which would be carved into numerous states, and they also voted, on the losing side, to provide full citizenship and voting rights to the considerable population of free people of color. French elite in the territory were apoplectic enough to hear of efforts to end slavery, much less to imagine that they might have to share voting rights with a subordinate class of individuals, the gens de couleur libre.
These events occurred in the midst of two fully documented 'rebellions', i.e., that of the 1810 West Florida Rebellion and that of East Florida, also known as The Patriots' War, the following year, 1812. The paper argues that the three events are inextricably linked and must be viewed in that context.
The interests of these two organizations is disserved by this lawsuit, if only considering the longer term negative impact it will have on the organizations' ability to participate in a legitimate discussion of proper relocation and interpretation of the monuments, as well as the burden it imposes on long-term recruitment of membership.
Aside from immediately withdrawing from the lawsuit, and/or opening up the decision process to its membership after honest discussion of the scholarship, these historical associations should inform themselves of the context in which the monuments were erected.
As to Beauregard's, it was unveiled the same year "Birth of a Nation" opened, with its portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. Any cursory search of the periodical, "Confederate Veteran," published during that time and available online, will reveal repetitive invocations of both the claimed "need" for, and appreciation of, the Klan's violence directed to the newly franchised blacks, aimed at "keeping the negro in his proper place." See, e.g., https://archive.org/stream/confederateveter24conf#page/158/mode/2up/search/klan
Art is a powerful medium which conveys messages reflected by our "cultural code", to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Beginning with the West's first 'border wall' protecting the Garden, Adam and Eve, and thus all of humankind, were relegated to a :less than" status. Are we, inheritors of this "less than" status, descendants of refugees, exiles, migrants? Paper delivered at the Conference on the Americas and Great Lakes History Conference, October 21 & 22, 2016, Grand Valley State University, Robert C. Pew Campus, as part of the "Immigration Politics, Borders, and Human Rights” Panel