Monthly Archives for November 2009

A Pessimist Recoils from the Glare of Brilliance

“When it comes to foreign policy, Obama’s accomplishment has been less tangible but hardly less significant: He has put America on a new footing with the rest of the world. In a series of foreign trips and speeches, which critics deride as trips and speeches, he replaced George W. Bush’s unilateral, moralistic militarism with an approach that is multilateral, pragmatic, and conciliatory. Obama has already significantly reoriented policy toward Iran, China, Russia, Iraq, Israel, and the Islamic world. Next week, after a much-disparaged period of review, he will announce a new strategy in Afghanistan. No, the results do not yet merit his Nobel Peace Prize. But not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodeled America’s global role.” (Jacob Weisberg, Slate)

I don’t usually write about international affairs, because my interests lie largely in the domestic arena, but I cannot resist commenting on Jacob Weisberg’s hilarious weekend column in Slate. Let’s do a close reading of the passage quoted above from the Weisberg essay. You might be surprised to learn that I agree with almost every word of it—yes to “significant” in describing the president’s mark on US foreign policy; yes to a “new footing” for America in the world; yes, yes, yes to “reoriented policy toward Iran, China, Russia.”

Item: Iran’s government has approved plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, according to state media. The government told the Iranian nuclear agency to begin work on five sites, with five more to be located over the next two months. It comes days after the UN nuclear watchdog rebuked Iran for covering up a uranium enrichment plant. (BBC)

Item: On topics like Iran ([China President] Hu [Jintao] did not publicly discuss the possibility of sanctions), China’s currency (he made no nod toward changing its value) and human rights (a joint statement bluntly acknowledged that the two countries “have differences”), China held firm against most American demands. With China’s micro-management of Mr. Obama’s appearances in the country, the trip did more to showcase China’s ability to push back against outside pressure than it did to advance the main issues on Mr. Obama’s agenda, analysts said. (New York Times)

Item: Poland and the Czech Republic had based much of their future security policy on getting the missile defenses from the United States. The countries share deep concerns of a future military threat from the east — namely, Russia — and may now look for other defense assurances from their NATO allies. “At the NATO summit in April, we adopted a resolution focusing on building a defense system against real, existing threats, i.e. short-range and medium-range missiles,” Fischer said. “We expect that the United States will continue cooperating with the Czech Republic on concluding the relevant agreements on our mutual (research and development) and military collaboration, including the financing of specific projects.” By contrast, Russia may view the move as a diplomatic victory after complaining about the program consistently for years. (CNN)

And just one more:

Item: President Barack Obama has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House as the US struggles to revive the Middle East peace process. The talks in Washington came amid heightened tension over Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem. (BBC)

So, indeed, the facts as reported by the BBC, the New York Times, and CNN support Weisberg’s description of the president’s take on foreign policy as “multinational,” but then again that’s kind of a tautology, isn’t it? The facts would also support “conciliatory,” if what Weisberg means is that the president is amiable in his acquiescence to putting America’s interests second.

But “pragmatic”? In what way, Mr. Weisberg, can presidential policies and pronouncements that have been ignored, scorned, or both by foe and friend alike be construed as “pragmatic”? If I were a pessimist I would conclude that the only pragmatism evidenced here is that of a defeatist who has assumed his country’s interests have already been vanquished on the international stage. If I were a pessimist I would agree with you, Mr. Weisberg, that “not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodeled America’s global role.” If I were a pessimist—and I am—I would see that new role as devoid of the inner light that has made the United States a shining star, a beacon of freedom and opportunity for all people. I would consider that new role one of a second-billed player on the global stage.

As pessimists are wont to do, I look backward from time to time in yearning for the good old days, when American foreign policy was one of “unilateral, moralistic militarism.” For I do believe that heads of state should put the safety, well-being, and liberty of their country’s citizen first, and if that means unilateral thinking, so be it. I would like to think that I am a citizen of a nation that is moralistic, that uses its founding principles of justice and equality to guide its policies, domestic and foreign, rather than the here-today-gone-tomorrow make-it-up-as-you-go shibboleths of pragmatism. I would like to take comfort in knowing that my country’s allies and enemies know where my country stands and more importantly what it stands for. And as a pessimist I’ll take my chances with the big stick of militarism—better to have it than not, and in place of a robust defense simply hope for the best.

If you have read this far, you might be asking yourself—I hope you are asking yourself—just what is so hilarious about Weisberg’s column. Why, its title, of course: “Obama’s Brilliant First Year.”

Sarah Palin Goes Viral…

…and she’s infected NPR, pundits, and intellectual discourse!

This morning I woke up and smelled the coffee. I figured out why everybody’s in an uproar over Sarah Palin. Some because they love her. They’re boring. Others, because they can’t stand her. Now, those are the interesting ones…I believe they are suffering from APV, Anthropogenic Palin Virus. I don’t think there has been enough research yet on APV to determine whether it mutated from simians to homo sapiens, but there is strong evidence, in the form of “monkey see, monkey do,” to suggest that it has.

ITEM ONE: How often have you noticed over the last several weeks fired-up bloggers and their gaggles resorting not simply to words of one syllable to make their points, but sentences of one syllable? Like. This. Like a rapidly multiplying virus, one-word sentences are quickly supplanting tried-and-true combos of subjects, verbs, and objects. To. Make. A. Point. Scientists tell me that this utter simplification of prose is symptomatic of APV in that the afflicted begins communicating in a manner in which his germ-addled mind believes resembles Ms. Palin’s style, direct and to the point.

ITEM TWO: Do you remember when pundits and other talking heads would opine loftily about this or that “paradigm” when what they were talking about was a widespread attitude, perception, or opinion? Did you notice the pundits’, um, paradigm shift in usage to “theme,” a savings of two-syllables and three letters? Have you realized that “theme” has been traded-in for “meme,” an even shorter one syllable word? Looks like APV to me: substitute simple words for big ones that are hard to pronounce and harder to spell.

ITEM THREE: On Morning Edition this morning there was a lengthy story about NASCAR (full disclosure: any mention of NASCAR is already too long in my view). At noon there was an All Things Considered promo about an upcoming story on bowling. NASCAR+bowling=NPR? This does not compute. I can only conclude that either the assignment editors at NPR have succumbed to APV, or they cynically believe that their listeners have. It’s either or both, I suppose. But it got me so curious that I checked and found that NPR’s done 195 stories about NASCAR in the last year or so. And this, I think, is the smoking gun: the APV has been dormant for just about a year, but just like that other virus, the flu, it’s been there all along, biding its time, just waiting to till the moment was right.

I guess that moment has come.

With Age There is Understanding

I was a kid for most of the fabulous Sixties, but by the very end of the decade I was in high school, and by the time the Seventies began I was at university. So I missed some of the good parts—the free speech movement, the early days of the civil rights movement, the free love movement—and what I remember best about the years of 1968 through 1974 was how tense everybody was, all the time.

Divisive politics—hardhats versus hippies—were on everybody’s mind, and back then the stakes were high. Tens of thousands of mostly blue-collar kids went off to fight a war without the support of the citizens they were serving; many of those kids never got the chance to grow up. Other kids, smart enough or at least well-off enough to go to college, used student deferments to postpone or avoid the draft. From that latter group, here and there sprang up groups such as SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Weathermen. Most of the men and women in these organizations were not terrorists of the Bill Ayers-Bernadine Dohrn variety, but they were passionate in their opposition to the Viet Nam War, vehemently “anti-establishment,” and united in their hatred of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, who inherited the mess President Kennedy made when he diddled with the balance of power in Southeast Asia.

I shared none of these deep emotions, and I did not understand them. I’d flee the campus scene if a large demonstration was in the offing. I never chanted “hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today.” I didn’t feel the visceral, soul-draining hatred of Richard Nixon that ate at the gut of so many of my contemporaries even unto today. For me, politics was somewhere between a sport and an intellectual challenge: I watched, I listened, I formed opinions, I mouthed off—but I did not dwell in a house of doom. It seemed to me that the United States had weathered centuries of good interrupted by bad, very bad, times and would therefore continue as at always had, an imperfect union ruled by imperfect law imperfectly administered at times but with built-in mechanisms for righting wrongs.

When the Sixties finally wound down in the mid-Seventies, with Nixon “in exile in San Clemente” and President Carter presiding over eighteen percent inflation rates, I’d occasionally wonder why Nixon was still a punching bag, but occasional wonder was about it. When Reagan ran for president I was skeptical and a little embarrassed to tell the truth that an actor could aspire to “the highest office in the land.” So I was at least prepared for the spew of venom that drenched him and Nancy Reagan after the election. In 1980 it seemed as if the end of days were at hand. The country was being governed by an “out-of-touch” “Teflon” old geezer and his shrew of a wife. Reagan delegated too much. As old as he was, he nevertheless provided fresh meat for the Sixties squad—Nixon’s history, now let’s hate Reagan. Reagan’s “morning in America” became “mourning in America,” for many a clever leftie.

George Bush was elected on Reagan’s coattails and suffered much of the same irrational emotional response. His notion of a “kinder, gentler nation” was ridiculed; his ideas about community service—“A Thousand Points of Light”—mocked or ignored by the left, who prefigured their portmanteau “[GW] BushHitler” with “ReaganBush,” as if the two administrations were a monolith of fat-cat politics out to get the little guy. By this time I was working and living in a community that prides itself on politics so left-of-center that it once declared Linda Jenness its patron saint. So President Clinton’s election was greeted with joy in the streets, and sweetness and light obtained until nasty Congressional Republicans took out their “contract on America.” Newt Gingrich was evil incarnate, and forget about monsters like Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and other Republicans in the House and Senate who ganged up on the president to impeach him for—well, you know what for.

The eight years of BushHitler that followed President Clinton’s two terms in many ways brought me back to the Sixties, more so certainly than any of the preceding decades. Bush was stupid. Bush was evil. Bush was crooked. Bush was a cokehead. Bush was Cheney’s puppet. Bush knew about 9/11 and did nothing to prevent it. Bush suspended our civil liberties. Bush wanted to know what library books you were checking out. Bush wanted to avenge his daddy in Iraq. Bush dodged the draft. On and on and on…if you could say it, think it, or make it up, about George Bush it was probably true…after all, he was a traitor to his class: in spite of two Ivy degrees, he’d somehow avoided drinking the Kool-Aid of socially acceptable leftism, so that was strike one. And he espoused bourgeois values of home, hard work and religion so that was strike two. No matter that he wore none of them on his sleeve. And he pretty much didn’t give a damn about America’s enemies, excepting for wanting them stopped. Strike three. The pulsating, consuming, ice-hot hatred lavished on Richard Nixon at long last had a new prince of darkness on which its practitioners could fixate.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not wrap my mind around the genuine emotional investment of the haters. Many of them were colleagues, some friends. In other areas of life they seemed like good people, stable and kind, but mention the B(H)-word and they’d start foaming at the mouth. Although I did not understand them, I did not doubt the sincerity or the depths of their emotions. These people really and truly thought one man and his gang of political cronies were using the United States as their piggy bank and plaything. I didn’t get it.

But now of course I do, and I owe all of them an apology. For what I had been reading as hatred for forty years was something else entirely: terror. These people weren’t eaten up on the inside from hatred; they were terrified for the future of their country. Afraid of the fragility of their American way of life. Anxious that their Constitution was imperiled. I am sorry that I didn’t understand these people. Ces’t moi.

When You Can’t Laugh With Them, Laugh at Them

I don’t watch Bill Maher on TV; I don’t follow his tweets, and I don’t much care for his brand of humor. I don’t pay a whole of attention to him. But last month, driving aimlessly around Wellfleet, I tuned the radio to one of those breathy readers on NPR having a chat with a physician about some dust-up Maher’d created about the swine flu (and, no, I am not going to use the clarifying “H1N1” in parenthesis) vaccine. Apparently he’s of the body-heal-thyself school or perhaps the tiny-transmitter-in-the-injection school when it comes to preventative medicine, I don’t know, but he’s been counseling folks to skip the swine flu jab.

Even though I don’t pay no never-mind to Bill Maher, evidently many others do, so much so that Maher has chosen to explain his views on medical care in his Huffington Post blog. If you are capable of overlooking his numerous faulty pronoun references and other grammatical homicides, then you can focus your attention on the shambles that are his logic and argument. Fair warning: it’ll be tough to force yourself not to count the number of times he misuses gerunds, but give it a try. Here’s a typical excerpt; the emphasis is added:

“Scott Pelley on 60 Minutes asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services what she thought about the fact that ‘Bill Maher told his viewers anyone who gets a flu shot is an idiot.’

“Well, not quite. It was twittered, which I guess doesn’t make a huge difference, but as 60 Minutes is the last bastion of TV journalism, accuracy is appreciated. And I see that counts for Twitter, too — my bad — so yes, some people are not idiotic to get a flu shot. They’re idiotic if they don’t investigate the pros and cons of getting a flu shot. But, come on — it was a twitter from a comedian, not a treatise in the New England Journal of Medicine, that’s not what I do.

“I’m just trying to represent an under-reported medical point of view in this country, I’m not telling a specific pregnant lady what to do.”

So, within the space between two paragraphs, two sentences if you want precision, Maher morphs from a comedian to a medical reporter. What a Renaissance man!

His blog continues, “Is it worth it to get vaccines for every bug that goes around? Injecting something into my bloodstream? I’d like to reserve that for emergencies. This is the flu, and there’s always a flu. I’ve said it before, America is a panicky country. It’s like we look for things to panic about. The reports from Australia, where they’re over their flu season, is that its [sic!] not a terribly virulent flu. The worldwide numbers support that. But you’d never get that impression from the media in this country.”

It’s hard to know where to begin with a paragraph so rife with errors. First of all, a smart guy like Bill Maher who we know is well-informed because, as he says, he “read Microbe Hunters when I was eight, I have a basic idea how vaccines work,” is surely aware that the vast majority of bugs that go around do not, in fact, have vaccines that prevent them. Norovirus, anyone? Rhinovirus? Vaccines tend to get developed for lethal or life-limiting diseases, or those illnesses that can exacerbate existing conditions or open a door of vulnerability to more lethal strains of microbes. The flu fits into at least two of those categories.

Then Maher goes on to attack what I assume is a favorite topic, the common sense of average Americans: “I’ve said it before, America is a panicky country.” And the evidence he cites in support of this claim? Why, the swine flu is not “terribly virulent….But you’d never get that impression from the media in this country.” So, this time without even the caesura of a paragraph divide to separate his contradictory assertions, Americans are working themselves into a frenzy because the media (in bed with Big Pharma, of course) is whipping up unnecessary fears.

How about we try another explanation. I’ve not noticed any panic where I live, and I live in a college-university town, the kind of ground zero for human-to-human transmission of disease, where all manner of germy things are spread by all manner of careless adolescents. What I have heard, and read, are mainly questions from mothers of school-aged kids or mothers-to-be asking when the vaccine will be available. Maher ought not to confuse the slight disappointment in the tones of these mothers, who after all were assured earlier this year that plenty of vaccine would be available come fall, with panic.

Besides, if America were truly a “panicky country” shrinks from coast to coast would have waiting lines out the door and around the corner. We’ve got plenty to panic about; Maher’s myopic focus on bugs just eliminates his ability to see the big picture.

The Cheap Talk of the “Apology”

Yesterday brought news of yet another “official apology,” this time from the British and Australian governments for a program that ended some forty years ago. The program shipped orphans down under from the mother country, in the hopes of giving them better lives. “Better” being an ambiguous term, given the cruel life that apparently awaited many of these children in the outback, but perhaps appropriate given the grim circumstances they were guaranteed were they to remain in Britain. Octogenarian participants were duly trotted out, given their moment to tell their sad stories, and left to await a decision as to whether Great Britain will cough up a few pounds as recompense for their suffering.

Group apologies for transgressions committed by past generations have grown in recent years. President Clinton apologized to Americans of Japanese descent who were interned during World War II. Less than two years ago, the Australian government apologized to its aboriginal people. A while before that the British government apologized for its countenance of the slave trade, as did the Anglican Church and France. There are periodic calls for the US government to make similar statements. However sincere these expressions of remorse might be, it seems to me that the energy that goes into lobbying for them, crafting them, and delivering them might be better directed at calling for the end—and working toward the end—of 21st Century slavery. According to the non-profit Free the Slaves, some 27 million people, mainly in Africa and India, are enslaved. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with cleaning up this blot on the conscience of humanity first, so our ancestors won’t have to apologize for our tolerance of the slave trade? But it’s easier to talk than it is to act.

Easier still is an apology for a transgression you did not yourself commit. What animates the impulse to apologize for someone else’s actions, let alone those of a different generation, mystifies me. Oh, I get it when a frazzled mom apologizes for her toddler’s crashing his tricycle into your shins. That’s not the kind of apology I’m talking about. I mean the kind of cringe-inducing apologies that presume the guilt of an entire citizenry, that overlook any examination of the historical context in which the alleged offense is said to have occurred, and that in fact are inadequate substitutes for the only way a present generation can ameliorate the sins of its fathers: by learning from their mistakes. Sounds easy, I know, and maybe even a little facile, but history cannot be apologized away. Stubborn facts remain. A nation’s history stands as both a beacon to light the future and guard rail to save us from the pitfalls of the past. Attempts—such as mealy-mouthed apologies—to “put it behind us” or “lay it to rest” are the first steps down the road of rewriting history. We’ve apologized, so we’re absolved. But then we wonder why everything isn’t all of a sudden magically OK, like the kid who spills his milk but gets dessert anyway because he apologized for splattering his sister.

None of us alive in the here and now either inflicted the wounds of centuries past nor fell victim to them. We bear neither scars nor blame. But if we scar our children by bringing them into a world addled by false guilt assuaged by empty apologies, then the blame truly will be ours.

Mr. President, Leggo My Eggo

My Sunday post is a bit late today. I had to make an unexpected dash to the supermarket after scanning today’s on-line headlines. I know that many of you will be as aggrieved as I was to learn that Kellogg’s—the company that brings you the best from Battle Creek each morning—has announced an Eggo shortage that will last through the middle of 2010. Apparently Mother Nature, in the form of floods, and a Tennessee factory on the fritz have conspired to leave our toasters bereft of pop-up waffles. So off I went to the Stop ‘n Shop to stock up before the mad rush of panic buyers cleaned out the freezer case. I snagged my boxes (plain and blueberry) and headed home with a deep sense of mission accomplished and a warm feeling of security. Let the shortage begin; my larder overfloweth.

It wasn’t until I returned home, though, that I remembered that I don’t eat Eggo waffles. I don’t even like them. So why the frenzied trip to the grocery store? I think maybe it might have something to do with the times we live in. Right now I can afford to buy Eggos, but with unemployment on the rise and no end in sight to that trend by the time the Eggo recovery kicks in, I might not be in a position to afford them. And then what would I do if faced with an Eggo emergency? Better to be prepared.

Furthermore, it appears I am being called upon by my president to “consume less,” according to a story in this morning’s Washington Post. Ordinarily I’d bristle at such a suggestion, even though I consider myself a patriotic American, but the president says it would be for a good cause: “‘The recession we’re just now recovering from has clearly taught us the limits of depending on the American consumer to drive economic growth,’ Obama told a summit of Pacific Rim nations…. Future prosperity, said Obama, depends on ‘a strategy where the United States consumes less and exports more. This won’t just lead to more balanced growth — it has the potential to create millions of new, well-paying jobs.’”

Eggo-wise, I don’t understand what the president means. When the shortage is over, will the Eggos that used to fuel schoolchildren in Bayonne be shipped to Beijing? Is the president’s plan perhaps a twofer, designed to curb our spending and our consumption of calories? How does consuming less lead to growth? Without their morning Eggos, will Americans have the stamina to partake in the creation of “millions of new, well-paying jobs”? It just doesn’t make sense.

The Post story continues, “Obama’s comments…hammered home what has become a leitmotif of his eight-day tour of Asia: the need for ‘sweeping change’ in the way the world economy works.” I agree, although I also think change, sweeping or otherwise, begins at home. Here are my suggestions: first address the Eggo shortage. Then, reduce taxes so that small business owners in particular can start hiring again. Next, invest in a strong military. The best defense is the best defense—and also a creator of good, well-paying jobs. After that, have that broom of change sweep away the impediments to R&D for realistic fuel alternatives, open up Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling, and start fast-tracking nuclear power plants. With an economy that is truly on the mend and sufficient energy to power my toaster, I’ll be all set.

Free Speech TKO

Yesterday, in “Higher Ed Hotline” I bit off more than I could chew by taking on the vexed but always fascinating subject of free speech in the academy. One post on that topic is not enough, and I expected to return to it at some point. But I didn’t think it would be this soon, or so intimately connected to the raison d’etre of “Call Me Miss”; colleges and universities being what they are, though, for bloggers in search of something to write about, campuses are simply gifts that keep on giving.

You may have read here or here about the Columbia University professor, male, who punched a female Columbia staff member in the eye. Over drinks. In a bar. At the zenith of a lively discussion about race and “white privilege.” The professor is black and the staffer is white. But that’s about all that is black and white about this lopsided slug fest. Just for fun, let’s establish the hierarchy of victimhood. The professor gets plus points for being African American, for teaching urban planning and for having been an “activist” in his youth. He even gets points for his manhood, given the scarcity of black men in higher education in general. But he loses points for holding senior academic rank and a named professorship at an Ivy League institution, giving him significant power real and perceived over the likes of a mere staff member. The staff member (was she punch drunk? I don’t know.) of course loses points for the privileged color of her skin, but makes up the deficit by being female, single, and outranked by the professor. So here we must give the edge, victimhoodwise, to the woman.

Would the professor have used his fists to make his points if his interlocutor had been a man? Or a woman in the company of a spouse or partner? My guess is, no, he would not have. Is a right hook to the cornea what a woman can expect if she has the temerity to voice an opinion? I guess so.

This unfortunate incident is a cartoonish example of how difficult it is for single women to make their voices heard in our society. Although most of us are fortunate enough that the threat of physical violence does not keep our mouths shut, woe be it to one of us who ventures a strongly worded opinion on a subject deemed off limits for people of our persuasion, i.e., spinsters. Our views on children are treated with careless dismissiveness at best. Our narratives of solo travels met with indulgent half-smiles until the conversation can revert to where it belongs, little Susie’s soccer match or son Johnnie’s lacrosse game. And for goodness sake, if you are single, don’t you dare complain about the cost of living or the debilitating effects of property taxes. What can you possible know of economic hardship? You get to spend all your money on yourself!

Dimly lit, wood-paneled hotel bars are among my favorite places. I’ve never seen fisticuffs erupt in any of these watering holes, and I doubt I ever will. But just in case, along with my New Republic and Spectator, next time I visit the Oak Bar I’ll bring along my boxing gloves.

Campus Free Speech

Excerpt from a September 30 press release:

Sponsored by the UMass Amherst Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), this year’s Colloquium on Social Change will examine how ideas about social justice have shaped American lives with speakers who represent distinctly different radical challenges to American society.

The press release continues,

On Thursday, November 12, at 7:00 p.m., Ray Luc Levasseur will speak on “Ray Luc Levasseur: Defendant in the Landmark Sedition Trial of Western Mass Returns after 20 Years,” with opening remarks by Bill Newman, the Director of the Western Regional Office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

The release then describes the speaker as follows,

In 1989, Ray Luc Levasseur and his associates Pat Levasseur and Richard Williams stood trial in Springfield, Mass., on federal charges of seditious conspiracy. After 10 months of deliberation, in the most expensive trial in Massachusetts history, a jury found all three not guilty of conspiring to overthrow the United States government. In his first public address in the Pioneer Valley after serving 20 years in prison for his involvement in a series of bombings carried out to protest what he viewed as U.S. backing of South Africa’s apartheid government and Central American death squads, Levasseur will reflect on his past and present, and the significance of the Springfield Sedition trial.

What the release does not say, according to masslive, a news website, is, “Levasseur, who spent several years in hiding, was part of the United Freedom Front, a group that was charged with eight Boston-area bombings between 1976 and 1979, the murder of a New Jersey state trooper, the attempted murder of a Massachusetts state trooper, several other assaults on law enforcement officers, and several armed bank robberies. Levasseur was not at the scene of the trooper’s shooting and never charged in the murder.”
You know what happened next. Police, state troopers, even the Governor of the Commonwealth, started screeching about a “cop killer” being allowed to shape the young, impressionable minds of UMass Amherst students, and, in something of a surprise move, the hosts of the event—UMass librarians—cancelled Levasseur’s talk. And I suspect you also know what happened after that—those brave defenders of free speech who populate university campuses sprang into action, and voila, just like that, the invitation was reinstated.

Lest you ever, ever doubt the courage and the principled, coherent stands academics take on issues of free speech, here’s UMass President Jack Wilson weighing in on the controversy:

“I am opposed to convicted terrorist Raymond Luc Levasseur speaking at the University of Massachusetts,” college President Jack Wilson said. “The University of Massachusetts stands squarely against the outrageous actions he has committed in the past. As a university, we defend the principles of free speech and of academic freedom. However, we deplore the example Levasseur sets for our students and the University community.” (Boston Herald)

Huh? I’m nominating that gem for the dictionary illustration of “doublespeak.” Bravo, President Wilson!

One of the reasons there is never a dull moment in higher education is that if things get to quiet around the quad, there’s always a free-speech controversy to stir up. Some group—usually but not always, as in this instance, a student group—seeks to bring a controversial speaker to campus. Another group—often but not always also students—gets offended in advance and starts beseeching the administration to shut down the event before it takes place. Need I point out that “administration” consists of those same busy-body bean counters that students and faculty usually keep at arms’ length. That is, until they want something.

There are always two sides to any free speech issue on a college campus. Side one: the free speech hardliners. The spirit of Votaire animates this group. One would be tempted to join their team were it not for the extraordinary narrow band of speech they defend. Case in point, the above-referenced lecture series, which purports to show “how ideas about social justice have shaped American lives with speakers who represent distinctly different radical challenges [emphasis added] to American society.” Never no mind that the deceased subject of one of the speakers and the other speakers themselves all are graying white male relics of the counter-culture ‘60’s, they “represent distinctly different radical challenges to American society.” That feminism was a radical force to be reckoned with in the 1960’s, as was the civil rights movement, as was the founding of the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group, is irrelevant, really, because, hey!, a bunch of warmed-over (except for the dead one) lefties from the most shameful decade in 20th Century American history are here to bring those bad old days up close and personal to the denizens of the W.E.B. DuBois Library. “Distinctly different radical challenges,” my arse. It is exactly the insidiousness of the fatuous platitudes of the free-speechers that riles me. They say one thing, and mean another under the protective albeit perverted mantle of free speech. But don’t get me wrong—I’ll defend to the death their right to do it.

One the other side of the debate, generally, are the sensitivity-censors, who seek to curtail the free-speech rights because somebody, somewhere, might be offended. In this instance, it’s the state police and the governor. They make a compelling case, murder being about as offensive a crime as one can imagine, but it’s also true that this particular jailbird has been set free. Presumably his debt to society has been paid, and his right to spew his invective in the village square that is a public university campus restored. I don’t fault him for trying to make a few bucks on the lecture circuit, although I question both the motives and the intellect of those who invited him.

It is, in fact, rare that the sensitivity-censors have such a clear-cut case, although occasionally they do, as when Columbia University (a private institution that can do as it pleases, unlike UMass) invited Iranian hate-monger/lunatic Ahmadinejad to speak. But the show went on in Morningside Heights, just as it will at UMass. No, more often the sensitivity-censors have an urgent need to prohibit the speech of somebody who might make a racially insensitive comment, who might want to critique the Palestinians, who might want to oppose gay marriage. Those wicked, wicked ideas have no place on a college campus, and if you do not understand that, then you, my friend, are part of the problem. There’s a case to be made for censorship, but hurt feelings or politics that fail to pass the political litmus test are not among them.

Having spent decades working at both private and public institutions, I have had a bellyful of the lot of them, free-speechers and sensitivity-censors alike. Censorship is practiced every minute of every day on college campuses. Every time an acquisitions librarian buys this book instead of that, she’s committing an act of censorship. Only it’s not called it that. It’s called “exercising her professional judgment” and she’s paid to do it! Every time a faculty member puts together a syllabus, she’s engaged in censorship: read this, not that, she’s telling her students. And once again, she is paid to perform this service, her “primary faculty responsibility.” Truly “free speech” on a college campus is a fiction, and that’s not a bad thing.

But when the banner of free speech is raised to the parapets, you can usually be confident that the faculty member hoisting it is also the first to make sweeping derogatory pronouncements about politicians right of Barney Frank, thus making abundantly clear to students just how free their speech really is. One memorable faculty member stands out in my mind. A radical/lesbian/feminist, she was a staunch defender of students’ right to disrupt or walk out of classes; she defended flag-burners (who chose to torch Old Glory during a 9/11 memorial service); and she was a proud and consistent voice for social justice and social change. That she also owned multiple homes in two different countries while living rent-free courtesy of da man, her employer, really does not speak to the sincerity of her radical beliefs, does it? This particular academic played a vicious game with students, colleagues and administrators. Any time she felt like making trouble, she’d gather a band of true-believing students, manipulate them into complaining to the administration, then—get this, I am not, making it up!—play double-agent, coaching the administration on how best to respond to the students. Of course, she’d never put her name to any of the agitprop she’d bamboozled her students into producing, leaving no doubt about the courage of her convictions. Or about how seriously she took the greatest gift of a free society: free speech.

Let me leave you with a few truisms about free speech on campus:
1) Campuses should be bastions of free and open inquiry. Too often they are not.
2) Free speech on a college campus does not mean, nor should it mean, rolling out the welcome mat to every writer or speaker. The educational purpose to be served demands that faculty organize and prioritize knowledge for students. However, there should be a concomitant responsibility to justify any censorious decision. There seldom if ever is.
3) Until the academy itself is willing to hold up the mirror of censorship to its own practices, there will never really be “free speech” on campus. Only invitations to “offensive speakers” that mask the deeper and more disturbing questions of free expression.

Election Day Special for First-Time Voters

The first thing you need to know is that the guardians-at-the-gate—the poll workers—will not shout out your party affiliation. This is an important fact, if, like me, you vote in a one-party town in a one-party state, and you are the lone red, or purple, or beige, where everyone else is blue.

The guardians will, however, shout out your name—usually they pronounce it correctly—and your address. When you vote, it’s only the ballot part that’s secret: the world, or at least everybody else within earshot at your polling place, will know that you are doing your civic duty. The fact that they will also know you’re not at home keeping an eye on the family silver should not trouble you. Too much.

If you are contemplating your first trip to the polls, I encourage you to go for it. You’ll be participating in the democratic process, which, as processes go, is one of the better ones. You’ll have a hand in making something that really matters happen, of course, but, if you are like me, you will be transported to another time and place.

Where I live, in Western Massachusetts, voters generally proceed to the polls through an unruly arbor of signs touting various candidates. This form of last-minute name-recognition is designed to help you decide your vote for county commissioner or governor’s council, or for some other office you’ve never heard of and suspect doesn’t exist. But the signs add color and pageantry to the moment and herald your entrance into the poll.

Which is probably a gymnasium, “cafetorium,” or library. You will think you are back in school. You must line up. You must state your name clearly. You must—and this is obligatory—be stared down by at least one poll worker old enough to be your great-grandmother. I promise that she won’t rap your knuckles with her ruler—mandatory equipment for poll workers—but she’ll want to.

By the time you receive the ballot, you may begin to have flashbacks to your last final exam. No peeking at anybody else’s answers. No stray marks on your paper. No changing your response. Work as quickly as you can. When you finish, turn in your work to the appropriate proctor, and have your name checked off as you exit.

And then, something unexpected happens. You emerge from the gym, or the library, and the musty odor of sweaty sneakers or moldy books dissipates. The unsettling feeling that all of the teachers you liked least were gathered in one place to monitor you evaporates. You give yourself a little shake: you aced that test by simply showing up.

My neighbor, the one who insists he can vote only if attired in his “lucky” three-piece suit, says that it’s probably a good thing that many Americans don’t vote—something about enhancing the value of his ballot. This view alone is enough to send me running to the polls, even if I do have to step in line, stand up straight, eyes forward, when I arrive.

Why Does Higher Education Cost So Much?

Today’s Washington Post has a great editorial about the costs of higher education. As you read it–and I hope you will–think about this: the number one item in any college or university budget is payroll. Higher ed is a labor-intensive effort, and trimming the operational budget will never reduce the rate of increase in tuition.

Any effort to reduce costs must recognize this, just as it must recognize that the costs of staff, as opposed to faculty, are driven by government “mandates” (e.g., somebody must make sure the campus is ADA-compliant, somebody’s got to make sure the crime stats are made public), by faculty shrugging off some of their responsibilities (somebody must advise all those freshmen, somebody’s got to provide tutorial assistance), and by the simple rule of consumer demand (somebody must maintain the landing strip for all of those helicopter parents, somebody’s got to keep the website up-to-date). So before proposing getting rid of staff to save money, think about what they do and more importantly why they do it before wielding the ax.

And as you examine faculty salaries think about this: once granted tenure, faculty have jobs for life. Most institutions do not have “post-tenure reviews” to evaluate performance, although the promotions’ ritual (assistant to associate to professor) provides the institution a chance to make, or not, appropriate adjustments in salary. Most institutions are loathe to raise the issue of an ineffective tenured faculty member, let alone tackle it. An administration so inclined does so at its peril, because the individual faculty members that collectively make up the faculty beast will rise as one and start squawking about “academic freedom,” abusing that term to cover everything from out-and-out oral abuse of students to out-and-out dereliction of duty. The self-interest of the group simply prohibits its members from being conscientious reviewers of their peers. It’s also true that academic administrators are engaged in a perpetual game of musical chairs: dean one moment, garden-variety faculty member the next; chair today, gone tomorrow. Under this very typical scenario, there is absolutely no incentive to make a tough or unpopular decision. Quite the contrary. It makes no sense to rile the troops, when you know you’ll be turning in your stripes in a year or two.

But you know what? There is no cure, let alone an easy fix. As long as students and their parents appreciate the real-world value of a liberal arts degree from an elite institution, there is no incentive for the college or university to change its practices. As long as an undergraduate degree that represents a skill (other than the highly debatable vaporware of “critical thinking”) learned or a technical expertise acquired from any other kind of institution guarantees a shot a good job and a better life, then the student has gotten his money’s worth.