Ooops, I forget to send this.
"What's more important than the identities of the authors is the quality of the articles. They're not all great (just like not all peer-reviewed journal articles or books are great), but several are. I'm more interested in an engagement with the content of Wikipedia articles than an obsession with the identities of the authors of the articles."
Farooq, AMEN to this point as well! I just now assembled much-needed information – a list of publication (with dates) for a 5-minute presentation. My time-saver move was to visit Wikipedia, get a starter list of works and double check a few other sources to confirm dates of publication! And I am ready to join in the conversation about this contributor. If, at the end of my 5- to 10-minute contribution
All your other points are well taken. Wikipedia was never intended to be or act/serve as an end-all, certainly not a guaranteed SOURCE of information!
Pam
Pamela J. Olúbùnmi Smith, PhD.
Professor Emerita, English, Humanities & Women Studies
Secretary, Association of African Women Scholars (AWWS)
The Goodrich Scholarship Program
University of Nebraska @ Omaha
Omaha, NE 68182
402 980 1649
URL: www.africanwomenstudies.org
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Farooq A. Kperogi
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 9:20 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Cc: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Non-NU Email
Wikipedia is powered by the intelligence of the crowd and of experts. Every Wikipedia article has an edit history. Check it out for articles you're curious about. You will not only find the identities (often just handles) of the authors there, but the record of the discursive contestations that took place before the articles were published.
Nonetheless, Wikipedia is an an entirely different model from our habitual, traditional forms of knowledge dissemination. It's an intentional repudiation of academic elitism. Author name recognition and prestige of institutional affiliation are immaterial there.
What's more important than the identities of the authors is the quality of the articles. They're not all great (just like not all peer-reviewed journal articles or books are great), but several are. I'm more interested in an engagement with the content of Wikipedia articles than an obsession with the identities of the authors of the articles.
Farooq
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com
Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.
On Tue, May 25, 2021, 8:29 AM Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
"Wikipedia has evolved dramatically since its founding. Several, perhaps most, of its (scholarly) articles are written by experts, and many are actually way better and more current than traditional encyclopedia articles. "
Ok. Can you please provide the names of some of
these experts and their fields of specialization?
Thank you.
Gloria
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 9:02 PM
To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Wikipedia has evolved dramatically since its founding. Several, perhaps most, of its (scholarly) articles are written by experts, and many are actually way better and more current than traditional encyclopedia articles.
A recent study, for instance, found almost as many inaccuracies on Encyclopedia Britannica as on Wikipedia, indicating that peer review or lack thereof isn't always a reliable predictor of quality control.
Again, a 2014 study found that Wikipedia was "the most trusted internet source" for information on ebola.
Epidemiologists also realized that more people searched information about the coronavirus on Wikipedia than on any site, including CDC's website, so they invested intellectual and scholarly resources to making sure that the Wikipedia entries on it are accurate. This is true of many subject matters.
Plus, Wikipedia articles are sometimes ranked, and several well-done articles are "protected" or "semi-protected," which means they're "locked" or "partially locked" to save them from vandalism and pointless, unproductive "edit wars."
Wikipedia's main guiding principles are "verifiability" and "neutral point of view." Entries that don't meet these criteria are often promptly deleted and edits that violate them are also usually promptly reversed.
Wikipedia isn't perfect by any means, but it's far and away the single greatest readily available epistemic vault in the world, and it's unhelpful to hang on to old memories of its earliest incarnation and dismiss it as unworthy of a scholar's attention.
The idea that Wikipedia articles are unreliable because they are editable by anyone and shouldn't be cited to support an argument is a frozen, unevolved understanding of this unexampled storehouse of knowledge. Many people have transcended this.
I also think supercilious attitudes to Wikipedia sources are informed by a sort of instinctive but outmoded academic elitism that chafes at Wikipedia's epistemic democracy, which puts knowledge at the fingertips of the "uninitiated" that the "initiated" took years to acquire in the traditional fashion.
I think it's more productive to contest the accuracy of a Wikipedia article than to facilely dismiss it without engaging with it just because of its provenance.
Farooq
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com
Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.
On Mon, May 24, 2021, 4:58 PM Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
We have had this discussion before, Toyin.
All that glitters is not gold.
If this is the best source on earth that you have come across, well .........................
I deleted the rest of the sentence.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 2:19 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
We need a. more creative approach to Wikipedia.
It is the richest source of organised knowledge on Earth and perhaps in history.
If there is any other such knowledge source I would like to know of it.
Thanks
Toyin
Toyin
On Mon, May 24, 2021, 17:29 Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
Who is the author of the Wikipedia article? The content changes per minute. What makes the entry wonderful?
I always appreciate the illustrations and in some cases the Bibliography but many of the articles are self serving, group coordinated and often
suspect.
The first statement I utter to my students in my first week of Class is:
"Hello Students. Welcome.
I do not accept Wikipedia as a reference."
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 10:20 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>; Joseph.Bangura@kzoo.edu <Joseph.Bangura@kzoo.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
this wondwerful wikipedia entry gives a different picture, OAA, concerning polytheism and monotheism. the latter came latter, probably around when it was being accepted elsewhere in the middle east.
even in the jewish bible the idea of other gods existing is reiterated over and over in warnings not to worship them; not to mention that god has many different names, indicated an earlier period of many gods who were ultimately joined into one.
rushdie later plays on this notion of earlier worship of multiple goddess alongside allah (i'm switching subject here slightly), with the claim that the verses indicating this initially by muhammed were later revised and excised, whence the title "Satanic Verses."
it is interesting to me to ask when the greeks became, more or less monotheistic, which was around that same period 7-6th centuries b.c.e.
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2021 6:36 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>; Joseph.Bangura@kzoo.edu <Joseph.Bangura@kzoo.edu>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Ben- Sasson is right. The philistines were the civilization that preceded the settlements of the Israelites in Canaan and there are artifacts celebrating the glories of the civilization of the philistines.
The Israelites came to Canaan when the philistines civilization was on the decline ( just as the Greeks and Romans did in Egypt) and what was celebrated in the story of David and Goliath was the usual israelite teleological parodic narrative through which the Canaanites were dispossed by yet another conqueror nation replacing an erstwhile conquering nation ( the philistines). The phased annexation by Israel was capped in the allegory of the defeat of prophets of Baal by the prophets of Yahweh signifying the displacement of the originary polytheistic ethos in Canaan by monotheism not through persuasion but by force of arms, a parallel and continuum which Christopher Okigbo drew in his narrative of the forcible dispossession of the worship of Idoto in Eastern Nigeria by British colonialists (and replacement with Christianity) in Labyrinths.
Historians are however emphatic in stating that the philistines are NOT the same as today's palestinians. Today's palestinians they maintain emerged from series of migrations into the area over time, centuries after the philistines with a large contingent from Syria.
OAA
Sent from my Galaxy
-------- Original message --------
From: "Emeagwali, Gloria (History)" <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Date: 24/05/2021 02:32 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (emeagwali@ccsu.edu) Add cleanup rule | More info
My answer to this great question is that we
have to go back to antiquity to find out
who exactly were the ancestors of today's
Palestinians.Did these ancestors have a state-
in the form of a city state, a kingdom or an
empire? Where exactly was it located?
The battle over settlement in the area is hotly
contested, however.
archaeologists-both-lay-claim-to-heritage.
Ben-Sasson, in, A History of the Jewish People,
contends that the relationship between
the Philistines and the Israelites was tangled in
antiquity and that both groups were migrants
into Canaan. Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod were
among the Philistine towns. By the mid eleventh
century, BC, the Philistines had
a confederacy of five city states, he argues
(BenSasson, 87).
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Joseph Bangura <Joseph.Bangura@kzoo.edu>
Sent: Sunday, May 23, 2021 3:07 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
I meant to say "Has there ever been a Palestinian State in the history of what is now referred to as the Middle East?"
Apologies for the error.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 23, 2021, at 7:33 AM, Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu> wrote:
I just spotted some grammatical errors
in my previous post. Sorry about that.
Well here is a piece that tackles
some of the issues raised.
Raoul Peck's, "Exterminate All the Brutes "
is of special relevance.
pm-section/78-78/69429-bidens-special-
challenge-the-deadly-white-supremacy-doctriine
Gloria Emeagwali
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 4:23 PM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
not surprising. i think it makes my point....
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 3:45 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
For the record, this guy was 100 percent
Xhosa and had no cultural affiliation with
the Khoisan descendants (so-called Colored).
I asked him why he preferred the
Boers. He looked me in the eye and
said, with total conviction, that the Afrikaners
are racist but you know exactly where
you stand with them.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 3:28 PM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
gloria, i was talking about afrikaners, the slave owners and original conquerors, in the past. the british abolitionist movement was real. but i imagine your interlocutor was culturally more at home with afrikaners, who were probably less arrogant than the brits by the time you interviewed them. the "coloured" population spoke afrikaans.
i am not interested in defending the british colonialists; but i would have to be convinced that they were worse than the afrikaners. in 1948 the afrikaners came to power with their Nationalist party. They were pro-Nazi, and it was they who put in place the legal mechanisms of Apartheid; they who ruled while the ANC revolted against them.
how they stand in the present vis a vis racism, anglos vs afrikaners, i don't know.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 3:20 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
The Brits did not abolish slavery just like that.
After the Haitian revolution and a series of
other revolts throughout the region the Brits
realized that the power of resistance was
formidable and that multiple Haitis would
emerge in the future. Add to that fear factor the technological breakthrough in efficient machinery.
Who wiped out most of the Indigenous
people in Australia, NewZealand, the
Americas etc
Do we know how many millions the British
killed in their Wars of invasion and occupation
with the Gatling gun , the dumdum bullets and
Infected small pox blankets?
7 million? 8 million?
In one of my interviews in South Africa in 2002,
I asked the interviewee a straight question.
Between the Afrikaners and the British who
do you prefer?
"The Afrikaners," he replied.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
From: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2021 9:47 AM
To: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
the reality is apartheid was always there: the whites lived in white areas, the africans in theirs, the coloured in theirs. enforced by the same kinds of practices as kept whites and blacks apart in the u.,s. after the civil war. but more importantly, absolutely, there was not a single colonial state at all that did not impose segregation and differential laws on the population. that was at the heart of colonialism, and the southern african model was real in the portuguese colonies just as it was in south africa. i was surprised when i first learn that s africa was not an exception. but it was in effect a system of segregation, more formalized after 1948, but effectively the same.
gloria your recitation of history was meant to show the horrors of the brits, with which i agree. they took over the economic reins and governance. but they also abolished slavery and fought the afrikaners who tried to revolt, and keep their slave owning ways.
the brits had a more liberal faction; i am not aware if the afrikaners did, i never heard of it. the brits included anti apartheid activists who were famous, we all know of them. the afrikaners? dunno of them.
the afrikaners were at the heart of the racism; the brits more typical colonial racist. that's my impression of their cultural difference.
i once argued with an austalian woman of british descent about this reality in kenya; she was convinced the brits were good, etc. nonsense. they were monsters in kenya, for reasons i won't bother enumerating...just read a little ngugi to get a nice feel for the harshness and destructiveness to kikuyus. as for the brits in nigeria, i would love to hear from the nigerian historians on this listserv who can expatiate better than i on how they imposed their race restrictions and economic rules on the colonized people. how was lagos island organized? here's what a cursory look gave: "The historical core of the town, Lagos Island, developed from the main sub-communities who lived in relatively distinct districts. The European community represented a small group (300 people by 1901). This community established the physical foundations of the city, which consisted of warehouses and government buildings built along the Marina and around the racecourse."
the wealth of all colonial states was similarly organized in apartheid fashion. everywhere. south africa was no different.
ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: Emeagwali, Gloria (History) <emeagwali@ccsu.edu>
Sent: Friday, May 21, 2021 10:39 PM
To: Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for all or peace for none
Please be cautious: **External Email**
"apartheid, that is separation by practice and eventually law, was there in south africa for centuries, long before the british came, and when they did, it was over the opposition of the afrikaners who believed in enslaving africans, and fought a war against the british."
It is always good to have input from you, Ken, but here is the historical reality.
The British made their appearance at the end of the 18th century in the 1790s about a century and a half after the 1652 arrival/invasion of the Dutch. Was apartheid in place during that initial era of Dutch domination?Technically no. Military conquest was the major preoccupation of the
Dutch, who fought four major wars against the Khoisan.
They also engaged in large scale kidnapping of Khoisan women but the institutionalization of the system through a series of laws and regulations such as the Prohibition of Mixed Marriage Act - Act no. 55 of 1949 and the Population Regulation Act of 1950 was not a factor.
If we use your loose definition of apartheid we would have to call all the colonial regimes, apartheid states - whether British, French, Belgium, German, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian- or American, Canadian or Australian, for that matter. I am good with that.
The opposition between the British and the
Dutch Afrikaners was primarily over the imposition of British rule in the early 19th century. That was what triggered the Infamous Great Trek northwards. The issue over who would control the diamond and gold fields in the North in the Johannesburg area and environs, was also a major cause of opposition between the two.
The war fought in 1899 was also about
secessionist tendencies and power and was certainly not aimed at protecting Africans. In fact the British invaded and fought wars against the Xhosa, the Zulu and any African nation or kingdom that tried to defend its territorial integrity and retake control of land and resources.
That is the significance of the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, for example.
Why didn't the British include the Zulu or Xhosa or Pedi or Ndebele nation in the 1910 union if they were the good guys?
Why did they give Cecil Rhodes and others a free hand to seize gold fields and bar Africans from controlling the world's greatest diamond fields of the era?
Why did the British encourage Jan Smuts to rule in the first place. He was a defeated general but the British facilitated
his emergence as the first PM of the Union of South Africa 1919-24.
"if you wanted to say this state was formed like s africa, that's not true"
I said what I meant, namely, that the year 1948 saw the emergence of two major violators of human rights.
GE
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