Shop Talk: Colleges Struggle to Park Additional Students’ Cars

I do not think this particular soldier (or a similar enlisted man or woman serving in Iraq) is morally equivalent to a senior Nazi official, no. But the precedent set (culturally moreso than legally) by the Nuremberg proceedings gives me pause amid the jingoistic cheering the members of our military generally receive. Our armed services are the violent enforcers of our economic imperialism, are they not? And they are volunteers, are they not?

Jeering would have been just as wrong from ROTC supporters as it was from opponents. Even if no supporters jeered the opponents — which we really can’t tell from the audiotape — that proves only that no ill-mannered supporters were present, not that there were no supporters at all. Besides, the moderator told the audience to quiet down; there was no reason for anyone else in the room to chime in against those who had interrupted.

If you listen to the recording, you will hear that Mr. Maschek received cheers and applause at the end of his remarks. Mr. Maschek himself says that the catcalls came from “a very small minority of the town hall participants” and that Columbia has provided a “supportive” atmosphere. (http://spectrum.columbiaspectator.com/spectrum/wounded-veteran-comments-on-audience-jeers-in-second-hearing.) These facts paint a very different picture of the place from the one you want us to see.

Most Columbians are liberal, as you say. Most Columbians are also civil, which seems to go against your preconceived notions about liberals generally and Columbians in particular. The facts do not back you up.

The hecklers called him a racist. This was not mentioned in the article.

Why on earth would they do that? Did he espouse racism of any kind? Even if he did, is it ever appropriate to publicly make an accusation like that? What kind of college would tolerate students who make such a base, vile accusation, against a disabled veteran, nonetheless? Were the hecklers disciplined for their outrageously inappropriate remarks? Were they suspended?

If students are able to get away with this kind of vile, heckling behavior, they simply have no business attending college. Are they being taught anything at all? They are certainly not being taught civility, open debate, or logical analysis. Has Columbia taken any steps to discipline these students, or if that is not possible, to expel or suspend them? Has the president of Columbia taken any responsibility for this incident, or apologized for the student’s behavior?

I have so very little faith in our institutions of higher learning these days. Institutions like Columbia, if they produce students like this, should not receive any tax money (federal, state or local) or any tax breaks whatsoever. It is sickening on so many levels.

If no one studies anthropology as an undergraduate, won’t the discipline die out entirely?  Please explain (I am genuinely curious, not just being snarky) what your vision is for the future of the field to which you have dedicated your career.

I don’t think the OWS people are really protesting capitalism as such or that most people in this country are anti-capitalist. I think what people are protesting is corporate socialism, institutionalized fraud, government-corporate bedfellows, and the blatant looting of the treasury combined with immunity from prosecution for flagrant thievery for the criminals involved.

Have you seen the financial-services commercial yet in which the advertiser–by no means out of touch with the public mood–emphasizes that the company has never accepted a bailout? What some so-called conservatives fail to realize is that the American public may be dumb enough to get fleeced, but not docile enough to pretend they like it. The utterly shameless disregard for the rule of law on Wall Street and in Washington is what’s wrong and, quite frankly, has little or nothing to do with capitalism. It has a lot to do with stealing. For some reason, people think that’s worthy of protest.

The decision not to issue a checklist of demands which can then be manipulated into oblivion  by politicians and other policy-influential individuals is a deliberate one. The protests are not ABOUT a concrete set of demands.  They consist of people attempting to remind their purported “representatives” in Congress and other branches of government that they EXIST, the only way they know how: by putting their bodies out on public display, as evidence of their existence, in an effort to counteract the extreme influence of the finance sector — which cares nothing for human bodies — on our politics.  In this regard, I think Peter Wood’s #4 and #5 on his list of sentiments comes closest to characterizing what the protests are about.  But it’s  important to note that the sentiment is not just “We’re angry” or “We’re suffering”: the people protesting know, and carry signs that clearly articulate, the REASONS they are angry and the CAUSES of their suffering.  And they believe their representatives in the government should make it a priority to address themselves to these problems.  The task of developing solutions belongs properly not to the protesters but to their elected representatives, who till now have abdicated that responsibility — hence the need for the protests.  Are we all clear now? Good.  It’s really not rocket science.

And the battle cry “We are the 99%” is not, as Wood mischaracterizes it here in rather an obvious deliberate misunderstanding, a claim that 99% of the public agrees with the protests (either in “sentiment” or in tactics).  It is, rather, a simple statement of fact: 99% of the population has NOT benefited from the tax breaks and “deregulation” (actually systematic regulation in favour of corporations and against individual citizens and their human rights) that corporate campaign contributions and lobbying dollars have bought over the past several decades.  The point isn’t “99% of the electorate agrees with us. so beware the next election” but “We are a sample of what your policies have done to those not fortunate enough to earn incomes in the top 1%.  Please pay attention to our stories and do something about the system which is punishing us and others like us.”

I don’t see the campus walk-out proposals as especially constructive or useful — rather, they’re an example of the naive sense students often have of their own importance (if they don’t go to class, will the university grind to a halt? Probably not, and there are probably less self-defeating ways to join in the protests).  But at least this generation of students, whose apathy only a few years drove Thomas Friedman to public despair in the pages of the NY Times, is making an effort to participate in public life!  That alone is worth some appreciation — and as educators, we can foster debates about both the issues involved and the question of what kinds of political activism are most useful and effective.  What are the relative merits and disadvantages of, e.g., staging a campus walkout vs. writing to your congressman vs. signing a petition vs. camping out in a public park vs. engaging in civil disobedience (what kind?) vs. picketing an institution to whose practices you object vs. [etc., etc.]?

The bottom line is, and here I think we have to give credit to anyone who shows up to a demonstration or gets involved in grassroots politics regardless of the cause, that significant numbers of Americans feel that their aspirations for our society are not being articulated by either of the two major parties.  That being the case, they are left with no option but to take to the streets to articulate the kind of society they want to live in.  And so that’s what they are doing.  And good for them.

Anon1972:  So you think grasping “Marxist platitudes” would provide clarity in the midst of confusion?  And, once grasped, those platitudes would resolve for bankers, brokers, corporate executives, etc. the perplexity that many of them (as well as many of the rest of use) have about the self-contradictory pronouncements, strange histrionics, and vagueness of the OWS movement?  

My view is that acquaintance with the shambles of modern Marxism makes the gestural politics of OWS recognizable and more or less familiar, but it doesn’t bring coherence to incoherence.  Peter Wood

     The teaching demo does give students and a search committee a sense of the candidate’s logic, organizational ability, pace, in-class responsiveness, and “presence.”  However, in isolation, it can be unfair–at least for candidates little familiarity with an institution and its students. 
      However, when paired with teaching evaluations (including student evaluations) from places where the candidate has taught before–especially if these are contexts similar to the hiring institution (small liberal arts college, large state institution, etc.), they can provide one more important piece of information for the search committee.  In addition, we always review syllabi.  And I always pose post-teaching demo questions to each candidate:  Given that teaching in an unfamiliar context is an artificial situation, how did your “class” compare to what you usually do when you teach? Why did you make the decisions you did for this “class”?  and Now that your “class” is over, what (if anything) might you have done differently, knowing what you now know about our students? 
     Answers to questions like these usually allow a candidate to repair the possible damage of a naive choice for the “class”, and can give the committee a sense of how thoughtful he or she is about teaching.  After all, good teachers–even the veterans–are always thoughtfully adjusting to make learning experiences better.

http://chronicle.com/article/Demonstration-or-Demolition-/44842/

David – I am not going to approach your question specifically — my guess is that the demonstration class is mostly okay — but I appreciate so much your generosity in sharing your experience, misgivings and vulnerability for us to approve, attack and ambivolate.  (If that’s not a word, maybe it should be; especially, when one works for “a” words in a series.)