Login
Guest post by Marta Furlan
In 2014, the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia armed group from the Sa’ada region of northern Yemen, aligned with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been removed following the Arab Spring uprisings. Together, they defeated the government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and established control over the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and the entirety of northern Yemen.
At that time, Iran began to progressively increase its support for the Houthis, seeing partnership with the group as an opportunity to advance its revisionist agenda in the region and establish its influence in the southern Red Sea, an area of immense strategic significance. Threatened by aggressive Iranian expansionism at its doorstep, in March 2015, Saudi Arabia entered the war alongside Hadi. As Iran sided with the Houthis and Saudi Arabia sided with Hadi, Yemen became the battlefield of both a domestic competition for power between different local factions and a regional competition for influence between Teheran and Riyadh.
The complexity that characterizes the Yemeni conflict is not unique. In the modern Middle East, countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya also experienced civil wars that developed into multi-layered conflicts involving local, regional, and international actors. In Syria, for instance, the confrontation initially involved the Assad regime, the secular opposition, a plethora of jihadist groups, and the Syrian Kurds. It grew, however, into a competition between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey over the regional status quo and a competition between the United States and Russia over influence in the Middle East. Despite the civil war scholarship suggesting that one-sided victories become harder with the passing of time, the Syrian conflict ended de facto with the one-sided victory of Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia and Iran.
As far as Yemen is concerned, the conflict is still ongoing. A major development, however, occurred two weeks ago when Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties and reopen embassies within two months, seven years after they severed relations. Following the signing of the agreement, which was brokered by China, questions emerged as to whether the deal might have positive implications for the war in Yemen.
Prospects aren’t promising. The conflict in Yemen is at its heart a civil war between Yemeni factions, which is driven by social and political tensions that emerged in Yemen following the country’s unification in May 1990. On the background of those tensions, the inception of the current conflict can truly be traced back to the early 2000s, when six rounds of confrontation saw the government and the Houthi movement fight each other in Sa’ada. Rather than being a simple binary confrontation between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed government, the war in Yemen is a complex mosaic of multiple armed factions fighting against and, at times, alongside each other. Within the anti-Houthi camp, there is a significant degree of military and political fragmentation, with different militias harboring different interests and visions. Some of those include the Southern Transitional Council (STC); al-Islah; the National Resistance Forces led by Tareq Saleh; and the National Shield Force formed by Saudi Arabia.
A reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia will not address the deep-rooted and long-harbored hostility between the Houthis and their opponents, nor will it address the tensions and differences that dominate the anti-Houthi camp. At the very best, the Saudi-Iranian détente will facilitate the bilateral talks that have been ongoing between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. Those talks were initiated last October, when a six-month-long ceasefire expired, yet no side (Houthis, Saudi Arabia, the government) was willing to return to the battlefront amidst war fatigue. However, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC, Yemen’s de facto government) has been excluded from the Houthi-Saudi negotiation table. Its exclusion inevitably makes any Houthi-Saudi deal that might be reached in the future with Iranian support hardly consequential for the country’s peace and stability.
Will Yemen see a one-sided victory, similar to what happened in Syria? That’s unlikely. The Houthis and the government-aligned forces reached a mutually damaging stalemate in Marib that left them all weaker. Under these circumstances, academic research suggests that the warring parties could either take steps toward a negotiated settlement or persist indefinitely in a costly, stalled conflict.
The regional dimension of the war might gradually be moving toward a negotiated settlement between the Houthis and Iran, on one hand, and Saudi Arabia, on the other. Pummelled by years of fighting, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia seem to view bilateral negotiations favorably. But the domestic dimensions of the war continue to evade any negotiated settlement between Houthis and the PLC and between different PLC-affiliated militias. As the civil war literature suggests, the trajectory of the conflict will depend on how those parties assess what they can gain or lose from fighting versus negotiating. As the Houthis appear once again determined to resort to force, prospects for peace do not look particularly encouraging.
Marta Furlan is a research and policy consultant at Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) in Germany.
Science and archeology journalist, Andrew Lawler, has made a name for himself writing unique and compelling books on somewhat unconventional subjects. His first book, Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?, explored the cultural history of the domesticated chicken and how it spread across the globe. — Read the rest
Ana and I are enormously lucky to be able to buy and try so many gorgeous pens. However, at times, we find that the pen stash has gotten a bit unwieldy, and some pens rise to the top of the ‘must-be-inked-at-all-times’ while others remain unused.
So what are we to do but have a pen sale and find forever homes for these beauties! A few notes about the sale going on right now over in the Well-Appointed Desk shop:
We hope you find a new-to-you pen and we’re thrilled to send it to a new home!
The post Did someone say pen sale? appeared first on The Well-Appointed Desk.
Antwan Lofton has been named vice president for human resources at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. He has served as the interim vice president for human resources since April 2022, while also serving as the assistant vice president for staff and labor relations and staff and family programs since 2017.
Lofton is a graduate of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He earned a master’s degree at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Mya Jolly is the new director of public relations at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama. Before joining Miles College, Jolly worked for the community engagement firm CBG Strategies and at a public relations firm in Detroit.
Jolly is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she majored in communication with a public relations concentration and minored in political science.
Timothy A. Minor has been named interim vice chancellor for strategic partnerships at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He was vice president for development for the University of North Carolina System. Minor served as associate vice chancellor for university advancement at North Carolina A&T from 2008 to 2013.
Minor holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned a master of public affairs degree with a concentration in nonprofit management from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Lisa McClinton has been named the vice chancellor for finance and administration at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, effective April 1. She has been serving as vice chancellor for business and finance at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. Earlier, she was associate vice chancellor for finance at the University North Carolina School of the Arts.
McClinton received a bachelor’s degree in accounting and management information systems from Winston-Salem State University and a master’s degree in accounting and financial management from the Keller Graduate School of Management.
Jessica Madison is the new executive director of strategic communications and marketing at Alabama State University in Montgomery. She was the assistant athletic director for development and marketing at the university. Earlier, she held positions with NASCAR, Arena Football, and the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.
Madison earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in sport management from Troy University in Alabama. She is completing work on a doctorate through Walden University.
Marcus Byrd was appointed director of financial aid at Alabama A&M University. He was the director of financial aid at Coppin State University in Baltimore.
Byrd earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and an MBA with a concentration in management information systems from Alabama A&M University.
Historically Black Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina has announced that seven faculty members have been promoted to full professor. Three of these scholars are Black.
Ike Okonta is a professor of philosophy in the department of history, politics & social justice. He joined the faculty at the university in 1987. Dr. Okonta holds a master’s degree in political philosophy from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He earned a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Georgia.
Tennille Presley was promoted to professor of chemistry. Her research focuses on providing a better understanding of contributing factors to vascular dysfunction and blood disorders as they relate to overall functional health in diabetic individuals in the African American population. Dr. Pressley is a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University. She earned a Ph.D. in biophysics from Ohio State University.
Pamela G. Jones was promoted to professor of biological sciences. Professor Jones is a graduate of Xavier University. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.
Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail programs. We’ve got one program for adults and another for kids ages 6-12. Next month, subscribers will be receiving letters from Asale Angel-Ajani and Idra Novey, and Elly Swartz and Anya Josephs, respectively.
Asale Angel-Ajani is the author of A Country You Can Leave and Strange Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in The International Drug Trade. She’s held residencies at Djerassi, Millay, Playa, Tin House, and VONA. She is a recipient of grants from the Ford, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations. She has a PhD in Anthropology and an MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in New York City.
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have any recent favorites you’d like to share?
Asale Angel-Ajani: I lived in the library, basically, so many, many books made me a reader. The first books would have been every Encyclopedia Brown and then, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, followed by Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and Mikail Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita. Currently, I am loving Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan. It’s so good. I love books that flips a narrator’s insides and lays them out on the table. I also just started and so far, am enjoying, Tracey Rose Peyton’s Night Wherever We Go. I can’t resist stories that take a new look at historical truths.
Rumpus: How did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Angel-Ajani: There was a brief period in my childhood when I went to church with my grandmother. I was eight and these Sundays belonged to the Holy-Ghost. The church had everything, from speaking in tongues to spontaneous healing. Since my mother was a staunch atheist and I lived in fear of god’s wrath, I wrote an appeal to “him,” asking for my mother to see the error of her ways. The church published my letter in their Mother’s Day newsletter, on the front page, no less. I was so thrilled to see my name in print, followed by words I wrote, that I didn’t shed a tear when my mother beat me for putting her sinner’s business out in the streets. That’s when I learned the power of words and importantly, the power of an editor, because I was a terrible speller back then.
Rumpus: What’s a piece of good advice or insight you received in a letter or a note?
Angel-Ajani: I would say that the best note I received was from my twin sister, after I proudly sent her a stack of unfinished stories. She wrote back saying, “This is a good start. But none of these will be stories unless you finish them.” Sometimes we just need to be confronted with reality.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with readers?
Angel-Ajani: My novel, A Country You Can Leave, centers on a mother and daughter, each trying to figure out who they are and how they are supposed to be in America and to each other. The narrator is a Black bi-racial girl and her mother is a dynamic and demanding immigrant from Russia. It’s also a book about books and love and community. My hope is that readers will find a bit of themselves in the book and that the characters or the setting stays with them for a day or two. And I hope readers laugh. Laughter is always good.
Rumpus: What is your best/worst/most interesting story that involves the mail/post office/mailbox?
Angel-Ajani: My worst story was when I was a feral kid (so I think its way past the statute of limitations) running the streets of my crappy neighborhood with all the other feral kids. There was, what seemed to be, an abandoned house and one day we stole the mail and I brought it home, stuffed it in a drawer. Weeks later, my mother found it, waving all of the social security checks in front of our faces, saying we could go to prison because it was a crime to steal someone’s mail. She made all of us back to the house and put the mail back and apologize to the old woman who lived there.
Rumpus: Is there a favorite Rumpus piece you’d like to recommend?
Angel-Ajani: There is an excellent piece by Stefani Cox, “Searching for Sleeper Trains” published November 4, 2021. It’s a clever piece that does the thing I love in essays: takes seemingly disparate concerns, in this case, insomnia, trains, race and mobility, and the creative process and links them all together to explore history and meaning making. Plus, the writing is lovely.
Idra Novey is the author of Those Who Knew, a finalist for the 2019 Clark Fiction Prize, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year with over a dozen media outlets, including NPR, Esquire, BBC, Kirkus Review, and O Magazine. Her first novel Ways to Disappear received the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize, the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. Her poetry collections include Exit, Civilian, selected for the 2011 National Poetry Series; The Next Country, a finalist for the 2008 Foreword Book of the Year Award; and Clarice: The Visitor, a collaboration with the artist Erica Baum. She was awarded a 2022 Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Glacier.”
The Rumpus: What book(s) made you a reader? Do you have any recent favorites you’d like to share?
Idra Novey: I relished reading the same fairy tales as a child over and over, seeing how my mind would catch on a detail, or creepy allusion, that didn’t strike me when I read the same words before. Rereading fairy tales and experiencing them differently became a marker to myself of unseen ways I was changing that were imperceptible to my parents and siblings. That habit in childhood of rereading, of anticipating the discovery of a deeper meaning that had escaped me a year before, has remained a habit into adulthood. I’m still drawn to fiction with the deceptively spare prose and foreboding tone of fairy tales, to stories that shift from lightness into darkness in slippery, unexpected ways. A recent favorite book with a fairy tale quality that merits rereading is Claire Keegan’s Foster. Also Patricia Engel’s novel Infinite Country.
Rumpus: Is there a favorite Rumpus piece you’d like to recommend?
Idra Novey: Last summer, I came across Christian Detisch’s beautiful piece in The Rumpus addressed to poet Jay Hopler. Instead of a review, Detisch, who has a day job as a hospital chaplain, had the instinct to write an epistolary piece to Hopler directly, who died a month before the publication of his last book. I found it beautiful that the Rumpus staff allowed for that change in format. It’s so rare to see anyone break with the traditional review format and in this case, given that Jay didn’t live to see the publication of his extraordinary last book of poems, the direct address to him felt right, a way to recognize the haunting absence of Hopler himself in the reception of Still Life.
Rumpus: Tell us about your most recent book? How do you hope it resonates with readers?
Idra Novey: Take What You Need is a novel about familial estrangement and what role art can play in revealing the psychic cost of writing off family members and friends for years. It’s taken me ten books of translation, poetry and fiction to figure out how to write with honesty and complexity about the Southern Allegheny Highlands of Appalachia where I grew up. I hope readers will start Take What You Need for one reason and end up appreciating it most for another reason entirely. I tried to write the novel that way, open to the possibility that every character and scene would subvert my intentions and reveal something about art, trust, and libidinal forces that I didn’t anticipate at all.
This is the last month of our beloved Letters for Kids program <3
March 1 LFK Elly SwartzElly Swartz loves writing for kids, visiting schools, Twizzlers, walking her pups, and doing anything with family. She grew up in Yardley, Pennsylvania, studied psychology at Boston University, and received a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. Elly is the author of 5 contemporary middle grade novels. Finding Perfect, Smart Cookie, Give and Take, Dear Student, and Hidden Truths (coming 2023). All her books touch on issues of mental health. Connect with Elly at ellyswartz.com, on Twitter @ellyswartz or on Instagram @ellyswartzbooks.
Anya Josephs was raised in North Carolina and is now a therapist working in New York City. When not working or writing, Anya can be found seeing a lot of plays, reading doorstopper fantasy novels, or worshipping their cat, Sycorax. Anya’s short fiction can be found in Fantasy Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Mythaxis, among many others. Their debut novel, Queen of All, is an inclusive adventure fantasy for young adults available now, with the rest of the trilogy coming soon.
Fannie Gaston-Johansson, a long-time faculty member of the School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, died at her home in Baltimore on January 7. She was 84 years old.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson grew up in Hickory, North Carolina, and was valedictorian of her high school class. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from nearby Winston-Salem State University. Dr. Gaston-Johansson continued her studies at the University of California, San Francisco, where she received a master’s degree in medical, surgical, and psychiatric nursing. She traveled to Sweden as an exchange student where she met her husband, Dr. Sonny Johansson and raised a family. While raising her four children and working full-time, she earned a Ph.D. in 1985 at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Dr. Gaston-Johansson was a member of the University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty from 1985 to 1993 where she served as an associate professor and the director of nursing research and quality improvement. She joined the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1993 as an associate professor and held the Elsie M. Lawler Endowed Chair throughout her tenure. In 1998, Professor Gaston-Johansson became the first Black woman to become a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University. For a time, she held joint appointments at Johns Hopkins and the University of Gothenburg.
Her work and research focused on symptom and pain management, quality of life, breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and racial and ethnic health disparities. A scientist who authored upwards of 100 scientific articles, Professor Gaston-Johansson was also an inventor, holding U.S. and international patents on the Pain-O-Meter, an assessment tool that provides a standardized way to measure pain. It has been used by hospitals in the United States and overseas.
In 2007, Gaston-Johansson was named the inaugural chair of the department of acute and chronic care at John Hopkins Nursing, as the school’s faculty was organized in academic departments for the first time. She also served as director of the school’s Center on Health Disparities Research. She was named professor emerita upon her retirement in 2014.
In May 2022, Johns Hopkins University renamed the Target Opportunity Program, the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Faculty of Excellence Program. Since 2015 this program has played a key role in increasing faculty diversity at Johns Hopkins University.
Elwood L. Robinson, chancellor of Winston-Salem State University, announced that he will step down from his post on June 30. Dr. Robinson became chancellor on January 1, 2015.
In a statement to the university community, Dr. Robinson said that “I have always believed that genius resides within everyone, and I have spent my career creating opportunities where that genius can be realized and shared. I believe with the launch of this strategic plan that the groundwork to continue that mission has been firmly established and now is the perfect intersection of time and opportunity to retire.”
From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Robinson had been the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Cambridge College in Massachusetts. Previously he was the founding dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at North Carolina Central University. He joined the faculty there in 1984.
Dr. Robinson is a magna cum laude graduate of North Carolina Central University. He earned a master’s degree from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Pennsylvania State University.
The university wasted no time and immediately appointed Anthony Graham as interim chancellor, effective July 1. Since July 2018, he has been provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the university. Previously, Dr. Graham served as dean of the College of Education and as a professor of educator preparation at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. He joined the faculty there in 2003.
A native of Kinston, North Carolina, Dr. Graham earned his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a master’s degree in education and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Twice a month, The Rumpus brings your favorite writers directly to your IRL mailbox via our Letters in the Mail programs. We’ve got one program for adults and another for kids ages 6-12. Next month, subscribers will be receiving letters from Matthew Salesses and Anuradha Bhowmik, and Eleanor Glewwe and Lee Edward Födi, respectively.
Anuradha Bhowmik is a Bangladeshi-American poet and writer from South Jersey. She is the 2021 winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for her first collection Brown Girl Chromatography, published by Pitt Poetry Series. Bhowmik is a Kundiman Fellow and a 2018 AWP Intro Journals Project Winner in Poetry. Her poetry and prose have appeared in POETRY, The Sun, Quarterly West, Nashville Review, Indiana Review, The Offing, Bayou Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Zone 3, The Normal School, Copper Nickel, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. She can be found at anuradhabhowmik.com. Anaradha writes to us about seeking happiness in an unhappy world.
Matthew Salesses is the author of four novels, most recently The Sense of Wonder, and a book about writing and teaching writing, Craft in the Real World. He writes to us poignantly about feeling love after loss.
Eleanor Glewwe was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Minnesota. She plays the cello and once braved a snowstorm to perform in a chamber music competition. At Swarthmore College, she studied linguistics, French, and Chinese and worked in the music library, shelving composers’ biographies and binding scores with a needle and thread. She is the author of the middle grade fantasy novel Sparkers and its companion Wildings, both from Viking Children’s Books. In addition to being a writer, Eleanor is a folk dancer and a shape note singer. She now lives in Iowa, where she teaches linguistics at Grinnell College. Eleanor’s letter is all about musical instruments!
Lee Edward Födi is an author, illustrator, and specialized arts educator—or, as he likes to think of himself, a daydreaming expert. His books include Spell Sweeper, The Secret of Zoone and The Guardians of Zoone. During his free time, he’s a traveler, adventurer, and maker of dragon eggs. He especially love to visit exotic places where he can lose himself (sometimes literally!) in tombs, mazes, castles, and crypts. He lives in Vancouver with his wife and son. Lee Edward Födi writes to us about how growing up on a farm helped him become a writer.
***
FreshRSS 