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Libyan Rebels Skype With Lehigh U. Students

April 15, 2011, 3:41 pm

Courtesy of Ryan Hulvat

For a roomful of students, faculty, and staff at Lehigh University, the revolution was on Skype this Friday.

Libyan rebels, using the popular Web video and telephone service, spoke with the Lehigh audience for about one hour from a conference room in Benghazi, the country’s second-largest city and the center of the rebellion that has challenged the 42-year rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi this spring.

A translator for the rebel army said he hoped the event would give students and faculty a clearer picture of what’s happening, which would in turn help them spread their message to a wider audience in the United States.

“This is real-time information,” said the translator, who said he did not want to give his name because his outspokenness had led Libyan-government forces to kidnap his brother, who has since been released. “Whatever is happening in the streets is actually conveyed to you.”

He said he was particularly interested in talking with the academic community because many policy makers emerge from its ranks.

“Through people like you we can actually form an idea of what we stand for in terms of values,” he said.

The meeting was arranged by Issa Hakim, a Libyan engineering graduate student at Lehigh who took a leave from his program last spring to return home and is now a volunteer in the rebel army.

John P. Coulter, a professor in the department of mechanical engineering and mechanics at Lehigh who served as Mr. Hakim’s adviser, moderated the event on Friday. In an interview, he said he and others at Lehigh had been in touch with Mr. Hakim periodically since the revolution began, in mid-February.

“We’ve all been concerned about him since this started,” the professor said.

With the help of a PowerPoint presentation, the Libyans explained why they thought it was necessary to overthrow Colonel Qaddafi, traced the path of the current revolution, and described the democratic government they would like to build if they depose him.

Arranged around a conference table and speaking in front of a banner that read “Libyan revolution highly appreciates the coalition intervention,” they thanked the United States for its help but called for ground support from NATO troops.

In response to a student question about what legacy the rebels would leave, Mr. Hakim said he hoped it would be clear that the actions of the rebels were a necessary response to years of repression under Colonel Qaddafi’s rule.

“We are not armed creeps or terrorists,” he said. “Necessity requires that we fight.”

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11232306

Would love to see that PowerPoint.
lufacultyrep

The question about “legacy” was not answered.
ajokic

“the event would give students and faculty a clearer picture of what’s happening”

Why would anyone think so, just a propaganda opportunity!

It is nice to contrast this event to the more or less simultaneous US bombing of the university in Tripoli and the killing of Libyan students. I wonder which event was more educational.
mstlouis

Would we be giving the Right Wing Militia or the New Black Panther party such coverage and Air time if they had taken up arms against the United States? We are such hypocrites! These guys are legitimate targets of Gaddafy as it should be. France and England really want this oil don’t they?
eelalien

Only in America… someone gets the truly fantastic opportunity to actually hear from the rebel side, and the naysayers and Ghaddafi apologists immediately call for the shutdown of a unique opportunity to provide students with valid source of interesting information, or at least a point of view. Yeah, our university students need to be sheltered and have their information screened and filtered by… you?
vfriedman

I suspect the naysayers here are Qaddafi loyalists…..
http://www.facebook.com/JohnTHenry John Henry

Social Networking changing the political landscape.
marktropolis

I think it’s always curious that the right wants to trumpet the former leftists-turrned-conservatives like Sol Stern or David Horowitz (especially if there were sufficiently radial to have worked at Ramparts), praising their consciousness. But when someone like Diane Ravitch makes a change in the other direction, she is criticized for being two-faced or a political opportunist.

Not to mention the dismissive attitude towards the OWS marches – those uninformed rabble-rousers. Obviously, if the NAS gang was having their meeting at a prestigious 5th Avenue address, they *must* know what they are talking about.

And then the old trope that unions are by definition evil. But those guys hanging out in an over-priced few-thousand-foot apartment on 5th Ave are assumed to know what they’re talking about. Clearly address doesn’t equal knowledge, seeing as how Bloomberg lives right down the street…
peterwwood

bscmath78 wonders what Sol Stern, I, and the audience at Stern’s talk think was disappointing about No Child Left Behind. I can speak mostly for myself, though Mr. Stern did say some relevant things. He pointed out, for example, that the NCLB set impossible goals (e.g. all students to have achieved proficiency in math and reading by 2014); that the law left it to the states to define the standards, creating an incentive to set them low; and that the emphasis on testing was an invitation to abuse that many teachers and even whole school districts responded to with a determination to cheat.

My own view of NCLB is similar to bscmath78′s at least in regard to the humanities. A system of rigorous testing in core subjects makes sense up to a point but inevitably puts emphasis on the easily testable and undervalues forms of knowledge and judgment that resist quantification.

As to the several individuals who have posted comments to the effect that I am, as one put it, “discrediting protesters,” I disagree. The OWS movement has chosen its own tactics and messages. These are indeed discrediting in the eyes of most observers, but I don’t see any need to insist on the point. People can make up their own minds.

Peter Wood
ruth13l

I thank the authors for bringing this up because situations like this one need to be brought to light. I was present when the discussant made these comments, the discussant also mentioned that Latinos don’t make education a priority as much as “us.” Who is “us”? As mentioned in the article, we are “those” families and students that the discussant was talking about, but we are also part of this academic world. Along with the comments, what was also disheartening to me were the head nods of agreement from some of the audience members when the discussant was making very stereotypical statements. This showed me that the discussant is not the exception, but that prejudice and racism are alive and well in academia. In that moment, this situation of being in a national conference, faced with comments like this made me question how it is that we should respond to these situations. What is generally accepted? I honestly didn’t know. How might I have reacted if this was not an academic conference and these comments were made? The comments by the discussant are indicative of power relationships that exist in academia and also the invisibility many of us feel in spaces such as this. The discussant chose not to acknowledge our realities and our presence, and instead helped to further stereotypes of communities of color. Once again, tremendous thanks to the authors, I really believe this is a step in the right direction for challenging this type of “academic” thinking.
nativefan

Banning the sale of bottled water on campus will do little more than shift the purchase of bottled water to area retailers like Walmart. A healthier alternative, for both the individual and the environment, would be to make available a brand like Native Water. Delicious spring water from the Berkshire’s, it is packaged in a recyclable and BIODEGRADABLE plastic bottle. If not recycled the bottle will biodegrade naturally and completely in a landfill within 10 years. Until, as a society, we decide to take recycling seriously and recycle empty beverage bottles at a greater than 20-25% rate…replacing bottled water with sugary alternatives will not make an impact.
busyslinky

Caffeine, lots of caffeine. Both for the instructor and the students.
nico108

I struggled with this all semester. I also had a class that met in the evenings and once a week. I feel like I lost the entire semester to apathy and if it had been my first semester teaching I would have decided teaching was not for me. (Thankfully, I have had great classes with the same texts in the past…)
It wasn’t just one class but the entire semester. They didn’t like me and I didn’t like them. I tired various things to bring them back—incorporating more writing (and getting rid of writing), trying to read just with the text St John’s style, trying more lecture, posing a question…nothing seemed to work.
I really deeply feel like I failed with them.
jstuntz

I have them stand up, turn around a few times, and then they have to keep standing until they ask a good question. If the weather is good, we can go outside. (Yes, they do not retain much from an outside lesson but they weren’t getting much inside, either, in this example.) Sometime we do the hokey-pokey. Anything that is out-of-norm will revive them, especially if it is silly. If I could tell jokes well, I would do that.
climate_change

Here’s 25 years of teaching experience talking…some times a particular group of students is just plain bad (apathetic, rude, uncaring, whatever). Just forget it. Don’t sacrifice your teaching aspirations, positive attitude, goals for tricks and games. It won’t work, and the students will see through it. Just move on and look forward to next semester.

And guess what? Sometimes a student from one of those hopeless classes will approach you years later and tell you what a great class it was. Go figure.
1hova

Yep, you and Frank are they only ones who care.
neurojoe

“The Top Ten Reasons I’m Apathetic”
#1:
11134078

I once had an evening class that didn’t end until 10:45 PM—and we were all working adults, of course. Interestingly, the idea of a break or breaks was voted down by an overwhelming majority. Almost everyone preferred to soldier on, grimly if necessary, so as to get home and get a decent bit of sleep before having to go work early the following morning.
22040058

I’ve found that dividing students into groups and giving them a question to answer, a problem to solve, a short essay to evaluate, or almost any short assignment that can be done collaboratively will wake people up and get them focused. (I actually used this strategy successfully in my morning class today!)
mbmenard

I teach critical evaluation of research and research methods–can you say potential snoozefest?

I like to start class with a moment of mindfulness based stress reduction, to get people settled and ready to focus on the class. I also have people stand up and move around, stretch, or sometimes teach a quick qi gong breathing exercise if the energy in the room is low. I keep a bag of small individually wrapped pieces of dark chocolate to pass around the room. Sugar AND caffeine, for emergency use.
obelix

I call attention to the lack of energy in the room and ask them what’s up, and what we should all do about it.

I change topics. Often to something involving 80s pop tunes or a recent celebrity or political scandal (same thing, really). Relevance is secondary to scandalousness.

I ask an intentionally over-the-top provocative question (or pose a similar hypothetical situation related to the class topic).

And sometimes, I simply *gasp* cancel class and ask them to come back more energized the next week.

Here’s one I haven’t tried yet, but intend to soon: Ask everyone to report what they’re looking at on their laptop right now.
educate_run

You cared! When you tried and everything fell flat, you tried something new. You could just go in and lecture and feed into the students apathy. I have been educating college students for over 15 years and I had apathetic classes. I have to just keep reaching into my bag of tricks or talk to another cohort and see what they do about apathetic classes.