My dissertation focuses on elites’ usage of regions and regional identities to alter public opinion in order to achieve their political preferences. Hence, my delight to discover Rethinking the Mediterranean in the Fulbright Library here in Morocco. It is a book that details how elites and scholars have thought (or more accurately—not thought) about the Mediterranean as a region and a concept over time. It is a useful case study inasmuch as the Mediterranean is certainly a very fixed region in popular conceptions of the world today.

How Severe is the Problem? “Many people are likely to be misinformed, not only inaccurate in their factual beliefs but confident that they are right.” So say Kuklinski and colleagues (2000, p.809); modest enough, but in the same article, they find that most people are misinformed about welfare, crime, the proportion of minorities (see also Wong et al., 2012), and foreign affairs (see also Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2010). Other scholars have observed severe misinformation on issues ranging from the economy (Bartels, 2002) to national debt and tax policy (Flynn et al.

Overview In the Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels sets out to accomplish several things: to give a general overview of the movement, to advance an argument about the diversity of early Christian thought, and to show the ecclesiastical and political ramifications of gnostic versus orthodox belief. An overview of gnosticism is not easy since it was not a unified movement by any means. Pagels finds broad areas of agreement, however, that could be said to characterize the majority of gnostic sects.

Robert Dahl’s On Democracy is a handbook of sorts setting out the basics of his vision of democracy. He more or less articulates a liberal pluralist version of democracy without using that term specifically. The term he does use, polyarchal democracy, he describes as a political system that has: 1. Elected officials 2. Free, fair, and frequent elections 3. Freedom of expression 4. Access to alternative sources of information 5. Associational autonomy

Given the extent of globalization, I’m often surprised when a solution which is obviously better is applied in one place and not another. The case I want to talk about here is the solution to the problem of seating a lot of people in your house. In the U.S., if you want to have any sort of large gathering, it involves having to drag in a lot of chairs from around the house, to the point where you’ve got people seated on a hodge-podge of sofas, chairs, and stools.