I know I promised you all photo from Bali in my round up two weeks ago, but I got my itinerary wrong and I was in Bangkok last weekend, before heading to Indonesia. I was there for work, so didn’t get to do too much of the big tourist stuff. but did visit the Jim Thompson house, a museum/exhibit dedicated to the “Thai Silk King,” as he was known. Thompson’s life should be a movie (and I’m surprised that it isn’t yet) — he was a Princeton grad who joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor to the CIA) during World War II, and was parachuted in behind enemy lines. (This tactic continued under the CIA following the war; an account of one officer who was captured and held as a prisoner of war is detailed in this Slate piece by one of my former students.) The war ended soon after, and Thompson, who was then in Thailand, fell in love with the locale and settled there, deciding to revive the silk trade, which was on the decline. Thompson’s strange and sudden disappearance, as well as various theories behind it, during a 1966 visit to Malaysia are chronicled here — check it out if you are into whodunits.
I’m now in Bali, catching a few days of rest and relaxation after a State Department-sponsored conference for higher education professionals who focus on international recruitment (hey, working in admissions has its perks). Bali is incredibly beautiful and rejuvenating, and also fascinating for me because it is 80% Hindu, even though Indonesia is a majority Muslim country overall. As an Indian-American, it’s cool to see how Indian and Hindu culture have influenced Balinese culture and created its own unique fusion, from the cuisine to the religious dances to the rituals in the Hindu temple. I had a chance to visit the Tirta Empul Temple and participate in a purification ceremony (not sure if that gets canceled out if I return to the U.S. in this political climate). It’s been a lovely visit so far and I can’t wait to come back and visit this part of the world again.
One thing that I have been thinking about since my conference is how Trump and J.D. Vance’s xenophobic rhetoric hurts our economy by discouraging international students from studying in the U.S. Universities are economy engine-drivers for their respective states — it’s one of the reasons that they were among the first to push back against Trump’s ill-conceived travel ban in 2017. And not for nothing, but many universities — including those in red states — rely on international students, many of whom (though not all) have the means to pay full freight to get undergraduate and advanced degrees here, to offset the cost and provide scholarships to U.S. students. When these prospective international students see people like themselves being accused of eating pets and targeted for harassment generally, it doesn’t make coming halfway around the world so appealing. (The gun violence doesn’t help, either — many I’ve spoken to worry that it is unsafe to study here, and I don’t blame them.) One administrator from the University of Alabama lamented that her state’s anti-DEI laws have also made it harder to create programs to help international students adjust to life in the U.S. It’s just another one of the many ways that the Trump agenda is anti-American and incredibly short-sighted…and all the more reason to make sure we bring this election back to sanity on November 5.
Articles worth reading:
I loved this great piece by Tom Nichols for The Atlantic on what George Washington would have thought of Donald Trump (take a wild guess)
And this piece by Anne Applebaum on Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric, and how his is intentionally invoking the fascists of the past
Upcoming events:
Wine & Fries Club Workshop: INTEL BRIEF: Who Wants Your Data and Why, Sunday, October 27, 8 p.m. EDT. In light of the seemingly endless parade of DOJ indictments against rogue actors for foreign influence in our political and electoral system, I will be offering founding members a chance to hear my talk that uses the U.S. Intelligence Community’s current Annual Threat Assessment to explain in lay terms how our foreign adversaries and use cybertools – including theft, espionage, and hybrid warfare – to facilitate their geopolitical objectives. I recently gave this talk to the Yale community at the invitation of our IT department and one attendee wrote to say it was “the most interesting talk I have attended at Yale.” (!) Zoom link will be sent to founding members three hours prior to the talk and will be recorded and posted after.
NEW! Guest Speaker Jennifer Mercieca, author of Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump, Wednesday, October 30, 12-1 p.m. EST. Given that Trump’s fascist rhetoric is escalating, I am pushing back our talk with Renee DiResta to November (see below) and instead invited back one of our previous guests for October. (You can check out Professor Mercieca’s earlier talk here.) I’m excited to discuss how Trump’s rhetoric offers his followers ways to resolve their cognitive dissonance through moral disengagement — a topic I’ll be exploring in my next class post, coming up this week.
Freedom Academy Book Club with Yale Professor Jason Stanley, author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, November 3, 8 p.m. EST. I’m soooooo excited that my friend and colleague Jason Stanley will be joining us to discuss his new book, which was released just last week! We’ll have this book discussion right before the election, to remind us what’s at stake. The Freedom Academy Book Club discussions are open to all paid subscribers and recordings of the talks are posted afterwards in case you can’t make it live.
Guest Speaker Renee DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, November 21, 12-1 p.m. EST. Finally! I have been waiting for someone to unpack how social media and algorithms distort our marketplace of ideas, and am thrilled that Renee has agreed to be a guest speaker for our class! This will dovetail with our upcoming module on Social Media and the Media Ecosystem, where we will look at how social media and “propaganda feedback loops” like Fox News and Elon “invisible hand” Musk have upended some of the basic underpinnings of our democracy. A Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers three hours before the talk and will be recorded and posted after.
Back to the real world in a couple of days…what’s new there?
I've visited the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. My jaw dropped when I read his history -- mostly because he was born in Greenville, DE., a few miles from where I was raised. Without knowing that, I would have wondered where the seed money came from that enabled Thompson to become a silk merchant. Greenville was where much of the duPont family lived (at one time one of the wealthiest families in the world).
An interesting aside, Thompson's mother, Mary Wilson Thompson, a daughter of a Civil War general, married into the money. As a Delaware civic leader she is, according to Wikipedia, credited with the Delaware General Assembly's failure to ratify the 19th Amendment. In a memoir written in the 1930s, Thompson explained her position against women's suffrage:
"I have always opposed votes for women. It is constitutional with me. It is not that I feel women cannot vote or are not the mental equal of our men folks, but I feel that it is duplicating our work. It is putting an extra burden on the women and it has weakened materially our power with the legislatures."
So, I have mixed feelings about the Thompsons.
Wonderful pictures, Asha, to give us some respite. Thank you very much. And to your question—the Al Smith Dinner debacle elevated things beyond cray-cray. Safe travels, my dear. We need you home.