Borderland Historiography in Pakistan

In this article I survey historical writing related to the twentieth-century Afghan-Pakistan frontier, particularly Pashtun-majority locations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa: the former Northwest Frontier Province. I focus on works that help conceptualize history beyond issues of political economy. Some locate themselves solely in the Anglophone academy, but this is not intended as a complete survey of their field. Rather, I place those works in dialogue with, and prioritize, eclectic histories that are both ‘about’ and ‘of’ the borderland; and I discuss this combined field with reference to other scholarly work on ‘thinking from borders’ in both the political-economic and intellectual-cultural senses. My goal is to intervene in the second set of borders, to disrupt boundaries between global academic culture and ‘other’ intellectual milieus. Taking tazkiras and autobiographies as examples, I argue that genres of writing from regions heavily fragmented by imperial bordering, among other factors, are social theory in action, not just representation for historians to appropriate. Engaging border history genres and taking seriously the insight they offer requires a willingness to engage the webs of social commitments that produced these works: to work in contribution to their milieus rather than merely writing about them

Activism, knowledge and publishing: some views from Pakistan and Afghanistan

How can academic publishers support the study of regions and fields that receive comparatively little attention within South Asia-related humanities and social scuiiences? Approaching this question with regard to Pakistan and Afghanistan opens a series of conceptual questions that are useful beyond these cases. Above all, we contend that support to marginal specializations, particularly in service of making them less marginal, must involve an openness to the world beyond professional academic life. By this, we first mean an openness to different purposes for knowledge that are related to political and social stakes in countries other than India. Second, we suggest the need for a greater openness to different sources and forms of knowledge than have traditionally been admitted into academic conversation in the global north

Revitalizing the Estate Tax: 5 Easy Pieces

In a previous article, we argued that contrary to the state of the law over 35 years ago — when George Cooper wrote his seminal article on the estate tax (A Voluntary Tax? New Perspectives on Sophisticated Estate Tax Avoidance, 77 Colum. L. Rev. 161 (1977))—taxpayers today generally ‘‘can reduce the value of assets subject to transfer tax in many instances only if they are willing to assume the risk that the reduction may be economically real and reduce the actual value of assets transferred to heirs or, alternatively, in narrow situations if they are willing to incur some tax risk.’’ (The Estate Tax Non-Gap: Why Repeal a Voluntary Tax?, 20 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 153 (2009)) In another article, we documented the dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality over the past 30 years and the accompanying adverse social consequences and long-term negative effect on economic growth. (Occupy the Tax Code: Using the Estate Tax to Reduce Inequality and Spur Economic Growth, 40 Pepp. L. Rev. 1255 (2013)) We argued that tax policy historically has played an important role in reducing inequality and that the estate tax is a particularly apt reform vehicle in light of the role of inherited assets among the very rich and the adverse economic effects of that inherited wealth. In this article, we advance five estate and gift tax reform proposals that would generate needed revenue, reduce inequality, and contribute to economic growth: (1) disallow minority discounts when the transferred asset or business is controlled by family before and after the transfer; (2) maintain parity between the unified credit exemption amounts for the estate and gift taxes; (3) reduce the wealth transfer tax exemptions to $3.5 million, increase the maximum tax rate to 45 percent, and limit the generation-skipping transfer tax (GSST) exemption period to 50 years; (4) restrict the ability for gifts made in trust to qualify for the gift tax annual exclusion; and (5) impose a lifetime cap on the amount that can be contributed to a grantor retained annuity trust (GRAT). This article was presented on January 17 at a symposium in Malibu, California cosponsored by Pepperdine University School of Law and Tax Analysts. Twenty of the nation’s leading tax academics, practitioners, and journalists gathered to discuss the prospects for tax reform as it is affected by two crises facing Washington: dangerously misaligned spending and tax policies, resulting in a crippling$17.4 trillion national debt; and the IRS’s alleged targeting of conservative political organizations. A video recording of the symposium is available online

The Estate tax Non-Gap: Why Repeal a Voluntary Tax?

This Article challenges the conventional wisdom that the estate tax is easily circumvented

Occupy the Tax Code: Using the Estate Tax to Reduce Inequality and Spur Economic Growth

Inequality has been increasing in the United States. We should care about this increase because inequality contributes to a variety of adverse social consequences that persist across generations. There is also substantial empirical evidence that inequality has a long-term negative impact on economic growth. For many decades, federal tax policy has played an important role in reducing inequality, although the impact of federal taxes on inequality has waxed and waned depending on the focus of elected officials. We argue that the estate tax is a particularly apt vehicle to reduce inequality because inheritances are a major source of wealth among the rich, and studies suggest that inherited wealth has a more deleterious impact on economic growth than inequality caused by self-made wealth. Although there are loopholes in the estate tax, it is still effective in moderating the amount of wealth that is passed within a family from generation to generation. The major criticism about the estate tax — that it discourages savings — is inaccurate. Standard tax theory cannot predict the impact of the estate tax on savings and the empirical evidence is mixed. Moreover, the estate tax has a less harmful impact on savings than the income tax for two reasons. First, the event that triggers estate tax liability — death — is ignored by taxpayers during the period of life in which they are likely to be most productive. Second, the expected value of the estate tax’s effective rate is quite low during the period of life in which most taxpayers create wealth

Taliban and Participative Small Media in Pashtun Society, 1920-2010

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to view.Caron's talk focused on Taliban poetry, both oral and written, memoirs, transcribe​d folklore and modern media that shape Pashtun society and the Taliban. He looks at the perception​s of the Taliban both concrete and imagined, from the socio-poli​tical and the cultural history taken together.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo