[for those around SC or the Bay]
With Gopal Balakrishnan and whoever else wants to offer input or help plan, I'm going to organize a spring reading group in Santa Cruz on the Arab revolts, including both long-term historical analysis and recent writings on the current situation. Think it would be a big help to a lot of us, myself very much included, who are quickly discovering how little we actually understand of the region and its dynamics. If you're in the area and want to join in, let me know.
[If you aren't around these parts but want to contribute or follow along, at the very least we should be able to set up ongoing email threads. And if there's interest elsewhere, perhaps we can work together to set up roughly similar reading lists for groups in a few cities. This could be a useful occasion for us to begin to develop a common analysis - or, at least, more fleshed-out contentions with each other - on the present moment. And that is surely a needed thing.]
