Samir Chopra is Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or co-author of: Decoding Liberation: The promise of Free and Open Source Software; A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents; Eye on Cricket: Reflections on the Great Game; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/India-Pakistan-Air-War-1965/dp/8173046417/" target="_blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.amazon.com/India-Pakistan-Air-War-
by Samir Chopra A couple of years ago, I participated in a radio discussion on ‘Male Intimacy,’ hosted by Natasha Mitchell on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s show Life Matters. Natasha had invited me on to offer the ‘alternative perspective’ of an immigrant who had lived in India, the US, and briefly, in Australia. (Audio is…
by Samir Chopra Like every human being on this planet, I speak with an accent. In my case, I speak the English language with a hybrid, mongrelized Indian variant that bears the impress of thirty years spent on the US East Coast—in New York City and New Jersey—with a two year stint in Australia in…
by Samir Chopra One winter vacation some years ago, as my wife and I waited for a ferry from Fajardo in Puerto Rico to the island of Culebra, I noticed on the walls of our waiting room a poster for the Cayo Luis Pena in the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge. As I gazed at dazzling…
by Samir Chopra The American philosopher Ivan Soll attributed "great sociological and psychological insight" to Hegel’s remarks that "the frustration of the freedom of action results in the search of a type of freedom immune to such frustration," that "where the capacity for abstract thoughts exists, freedom, outwardly thwarted, is sought in thought."[1] The perspicuity…
by Samir Chopra One fine morning, as I walked along a Brooklyn sidewalk to my gym, heading for my 8AM workout, I saw a young woman walking straight at me, her face turned away, attending to some matter of interest. She might have been paying attention to a smartphone, but it might have been kids…
by Samir Chopra I often ‘pass for Pakistani.’ In my Brooklyn, New York City zip code 11218, once supposedly the most ethnically diverse in the US, assuming another subcontinental identity, and especially that of Pakistan’s, is not an insuperable task—for someone like me, of Indian origin. I speak highly colloquial ‘street-level’ Urdu and Hindustani fluently,…
by Samir Chopra Once upon a time in America’s not-too-distant past, immigrants of the first and second generations were reckoned a safe vote for the Republican Party’s brand of conservatism. It was not just immigrants with log-sized chips on their shoulders from communist countries—Russia, Hungary, Poland, Cuba, for instance—who were willing and enthusiastic consumers of…
by Samir Chopra On 12 February 2014, Penguin India announced it was withdrawing and destroying—in India—all published copies of historian Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009). Penguin's decision came after reaching an out-of-court settlement with Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which, in 2011, had filed a legal complaint objecting to sections of Doniger's book. Amidst…