Blog: www.farooqkperogi.com
Sent from my phone. Please forgive typos and omissions.
i return to wiki for information all the time. i profit from it.i also agree 100% with toyin that we should use it with discrimination.listin, there are about 101 million books on rwanda since the genocide. printed, by experts, with reputable presses. they completely take sides and contradict each other.the warning to read w discrimination doesn't begin and end w wiki.if you want the basic info on an incredibly vast number of topics it is great.ok, here's the one caveat i've heard, which i believe. orthodox jews, probably brooklyn and maybe israel want to control the narrative about things jewish. if someone goes into a site they want to "own," they oversee it and change it back, or forward, asap.i don't know how wiki defends itself against that kind of bias.
you can all go into the account of the biafra war and no doubt see an orientation that will please some and displease others.
however, not all info is so hotly contested. i found the disquisition on time, a subject i've been working on, brilliant; and the science as well in all the topics related to quantum mechanics and relativity were really good. they link to a zillion other sites, also excellent.if any criticism might be proffered, they shortchange many topics. well, they can't do anything.i told my students to use it, but with wisdom; realize you had to cite it; try to go beyond it, ie, use it as a start on a topic. in that regard most of it is really valuable
gloria goes beyond where i would go, but i agree with her on its standard as not acceptable for scholarly publications, mostly. not entirely. but for information for our exchanges, i think it is fine.ken
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 6:48 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for noneDear all:
Wiki is a great site! Intelligent scholars are trained to discriminate. Even in talking to people, we discriminate. I don't use what others tell me about another human being to relate to them. I can be inheriting another person's hostility, envy, hate, etc. That you have a bad friend does not mean that the person you call a bad person is bad to me. And in any case, you may call a person a bad person because of what he has done to you, which he has not done to me. Or I can have a Yoruba epistemological position that says:
Oro la danu
Ki i se eniyan
Translation: throw away a persons' words that you disagree with, not the person him/herself. This does not apply to Garba in Aso Rock as I want to throw his words and person away!
However, my problems with Wiki are these:
- Many of our colleagues, especially in Africa (I know this is a racist statement, and I expect to be crucified), draw on it extensively to create plagiarized essays. This is unfortunate. In the series that I edit, we have had to withdraw two books from the market. Is this Wiki's fault? No. It is the fault of indiscriminate use and direct lifting.
- Like social media, used to exaggerate or fake success, our colleagues, especially those in the diaspora (another racist statement!), create their profiles that read better than those of Nobel Laurettes!
- Again like social media, Wiki has been used to tarnish the names of innocent individuals. One time, those who wanted to get rid of Zeleza as President of his University revised his Wiki page to say that he was fired. I read it on the day I spoke with him in his office. Someone on this site was said to have been dismissed from for sexual harassment. Achile Mbebe was described as anti-semitic until the page was revised. And of course, our ambitious man of power, Mr. Tinubu of Lagos, had his page revised many times regarding his age.
Let us continue to use Wiki, but with discrimination.
Meanwhile, I was part of the initiative to create the AfricaWiki. When the financial sponsorship was to come from China, I backed out and got it dismantled. Of course, some of you will be disappointed that we rejected Chinese money but please throw away my decision but not my person.
TF
From: 'Pamela Smith' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 at 5:27 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for noneAMEN, GLORIA!
Some of the revisions change at the speed of lightening!
Like Ken, My-rule-of-thumb to students in my English Comp/Lit courses is simply: "Wiki for starters, o.k./maybe, but that submitted biblio better SHOW me how you NAVIGATED the forest of ideas that produced the so-called FINAL submission I am expected to READ and EVALUATE.
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 9:12 AM
To: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com>; usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Israel and Palestine: Peace for allor peace for none
Non-NU Email
You may agree with me that if you claim that
something is written by experts, in the academic
field, you should be able to name them.
The edits can be done by anyone and such
editors may certainly not be experts. What is
worst is that the information changes by the
hour so that the quote that you had in mind at
9.00 am Eastern Time may not be there at
midnight.
If the presentation by Diana Strassmann at the
University of Chicago conference,
earlier mentioned, does not encourage
reflection on how the information on
Wikipedia is acquired and its weaknesses,
well who am I to convince you?
I know of no historian in my History Department
who would accept Wikipedia as a scholarly source.
No doctoral candidate would be taken seriously
with a Wikipedia quote, although as I said from
the start, the bibliographies and illustrations
are useful. In the end I really like Harrow's
previous statement on the issue. You can use
wiki "as a lead into real source material."
But if you think that it is the best thing on
earth since the invention of paper by the
Egyptians and the Chinese, then go for it!
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: Tuesday, May 25, 2021 8:40 AM
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**
It's the quality of the Wikipedia article, the character of it's argument, the scope of it's coverage of the subject and the strength of it's bibliography, that establishes it's expertise, particularly when these qualities can be compared with those of other encyclopedias written by named experts.
With those qualities, the name of the Wikipedia article authors do not need to be known.
Thanks
Toyin
On Tue, May 25, 2021, 13:34 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovdepoju@gmail.com> wrote:
Most Wikipedia articles fit that description, I think.
The Hegel and Leibniz essays, to give two examples I consulted recently, are quite good, particularly for a non-expert such as myself who can compare them with the stanford Encyclopedia and Britannica articles which are written by named experts.
Thanks
Toyin
On Tue, May 25, 2021, 13:29 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
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