In Between Citizens and the State, public policy expert and historian of higher education Christopher Loss takes a fascinating look at the close and sometimes fraught relations between American higher education and politics. I recently asked him to shed some light on Governor Christie’s new proposal in New Jersey that would result in the merger of Rutgers-Camden University with Rowan University under the name Rowan, as well as give Rutgers’ main campus in New Brunswick three of UMDNJ’s pieces— Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the School of Public Health and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. The plan has been met by support on one side of the issue by both democrats and republicans who argue the plan could potentially remake South Jersey—a region with less educational opportunity than the wealthier northern part of the state—as a center of intellectual and economic success by creating an additional ‘research university’, fueling widespread investment in Camden similar to the renaissance that has transformed the West Philadelphia neighborhood of UPENN. Others, including many in the community at Rutgers-Camden, lament that Ru-Camden would have to adopt the name of what is currently a lesser-known university. The growth projected by the merger is unrealistic, they say, the two institutions are too different, and the cost of implementing the plan would be astronomical. Read on for a Q&A with Christopher Loss about the merger and the national conversation on higher education after the jump:

Today marks the anniversary of the Chinese warlord Koxinga’s victory over the Dutch during the Sino-Dutch War–China’s first war with Europe. Emory University has put together this fun book trailer for Tonio Andrade and his new book Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West, which shows how Koxinga outfoxed the Dutch at every turn to capture Taiwan:

Happy Year of the Dragon!

Philip Feeman, the translator of our timely new book HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicans, had his recent op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. Take a look to see which Republican candidate(s) would have done right by Quintus Cicero’s (Marcus’s lesser-known brother) advice. The “advice” was originally from a letter sent to Marcus when he was in the running for the biggest job in Rome.

FACT: “On the night of July 7, 1937, skirmishes between Chinese and Japanese troops near Beijing’s Marco Polo Bridge broke out, marking the beginning of World War II in China. The fighting quickly spread, and by month end Japanese forces had consolidated control over the region. An all-out assault on Shanghai in August, followed by the December slaughter of civilians and soldiers in Nanjing, forced the Nationalist government to flee. Chiang Kai-shek led his troops and supporters first to Wuhan, then to Sichuan, where he set up a temporary capital in Chongqing in October 1938.”

Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953
by Janet Y. Chen

In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. Investigating the lives of the urban poor in China during this critical era, Guilty of Indigence examines the solutions implemented by a nation attempting to deal with “society’s most fundamental problem.” Interweaving analysis of shifting social viewpoints, the evolution of poor relief institutions, and the lived experiences of the urban poor, Janet Chen explores the development of Chinese attitudes toward urban poverty and of policies intended for its alleviation.

David Scheffer, the first US ambassador for war crimes, has recently published All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals with Princeton University Press. In the book, he discusses bringing some of the most notorious war criminals to justice. David was interviewed on BBC Radio 3 NightWaves on 25th January and the interview is now available to listen again here.

We invite you to check out our new 2012 history catalog at: http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/history12.pdf

You will find books by Emma Rothschild, Sheldon Garon, Tonio Andrade, Andrei Codrescu, Jill Lepore, Jim Kloppenberg, David Scheffer and many more. New paperbacks and ebooks are also available.

The 126^th annual meeting of the American Historical Association is going on now in Chicago. We’re there at booth no. 313. Stop by to say hello and browse new books.

The ideas in David Marquand’s book ‘The End of the West: The
Once and Future Europe’ were the subject of a panel event at the British Academy on 29 November.
In front of a capacity audience David and his fellow panellists Rt Hon
Professor Shirley Williams and Professors Paulo Pombeni and Christopher Hill
addressed a range of issues, from how Europe should respond to the
changing global balance of power, to the growing demands for recognition by the
ethnic communities within its borders and the legitimacy deficit of its
politicians. There were also a variety of suggestions as to how the
current crisis in the Eurozone might be resolved. To hear this event in
full follow the link below.

http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/2011/The_End_of_the_West.cfm

Congratulations to Lawrence P. Jackson, whose book The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934–1960 is picking up accolades left and right. The book has won the 2011 William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association, which recognizes “an outstanding scholarly study of black American literature or culture.”

“In this magisterial narrative history of African American literature running from the end of the Harlem Renaissance to the beginning of the civil rights period, Lawrence P. Jackson expands the archive for assessing African American writing during a period that has often been reduced to protest writing. Jackson places writers into fresh contexts of cohorts (critics and editors included) and threads a clear narrative line through three heady decades jam-packed with African American authors publishing in a variety of genres and venues. Jackson is excellent on the important influence of the Communist Party, on mid-twentieth-century black literary culture, and on issues of publishing and reception. Beautifully written and rich in historical detail, The Indignant Generation should quickly become a standard work in twentieth-century African American studies and United States publishing history.”

Jackson’s work is also a finalist for the 2011 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction, from the Hurston/Wright Foundation.

“The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award™ is the first national award presented to published writers of African descent by the national community of Black writers. This award consists of prizes for the highest quality writing in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry.”

Emma Rothschild has won the 2011 Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year Award for her book The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History. This award recognizes an exceptional work of Scottish historical research:

“The Saltire Society Literary Awards bring together the very best of Scottish literature, from the writings of established and new authors through to the accomplishments of researchers and historians, and is a wonderful way of celebrating this important aspect of our rich cultural heritage.”

Princeton Professor Sheldon Garon has done a few major interviews so far this week to discuss the big ideas in his new book, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves.

His recent Q&A with NPR’s senior business editor Marilyn Geewax is the most popular post on the NPR site today: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143149947/why-americans-spend-too-much

And Kimberly Blanton of the Squared Away Blog of the Financial Security Project at Boston College recently spoke with Prof. Garon about savings rates, “over-indebtedness,” and America’s “unusual” Christmas shopping season: http://fsp.bc.edu/united-states-of-credit/

You can also check out Prof. Garon’s interview yesterday with Marilyn Geewax and host Michel Martin on “Tell Me More” from NPR News: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=143141870

Kristen Ghodsee’s “Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria” has won the 2011 John D. Bell Memorial Book Prize from the Bulgarian Studies Association. This award is established for the most outstanding recent scholarly book within any area of Bulgarian studies.

“Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe examines how gender identities were reconfigured in a Bulgarian Muslim community following the demise of Communism and an influx of international aid from the Islamic world. Kristen Ghodsee conducted extensive ethnographic research among a small population of Pomaks, Slavic Muslims living in the remote mountains of southern Bulgaria. After Communism fell in 1989, Muslim minorities in Bulgaria sought to rediscover their faith after decades of state-imposed atheism. But instead of returning to their traditionally heterodox roots, isolated groups of Pomaks embraced a distinctly foreign type of Islam, which swept into their communities on the back of Saudi-financed international aid to Balkan Muslims, and which these Pomaks believe to be a more correct interpretation of their religion.

Ghodsee explores how gender relations among the Pomaks had to be renegotiated after the collapse of both Communism and the region’s state-subsidized lead and zinc mines. She shows how mosques have replaced the mines as the primary site for jobless and underemployed men to express their masculinity, and how Muslim women have encouraged this as a way to combat alcoholism and domestic violence. Ghodsee demonstrates how women’s embrace of this new form of Islam has led them to adopt more conservative family roles, and how the Pomaks’ new religion remains deeply influenced by Bulgaria’s Marxist-Leninist legacy, with its calls for morality, social justice, and human solidarity.”

This is the most recent in a slew of prizes for “Muslim Lives,” which has also won the 2011 Davis Center Book Prize, the 2011 William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology, and the 2010 Heldt Prize.

Earlier this week, Maurizio Viroli was invited to speak at the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. We arranged this event months and months ago, but recent events being what they are, this talk suddenly took on greater importance. Watch the video here to listen to Maurizio discuss Berlusconi’s Italy and the ideas that he further develops in his PUP book, The Liberty of Servants, about Berlusconi operating a pseudo-Royal Court of courtiers eager to please in return for economic and political favors.