Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Professor Melissa Harris-Perry Explains How Going from Bad to Worse Equals Racism. Sort of.

Published September 25, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 11 Comments
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There is nothing like a good double-take to get the weekend off to a great start. And so it was on Saturday morning as I clicked from Real Clear Politics to “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama,” an essay appearing in the October 10, 2011 edition of The Nation. The essay is written by Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Have a look at her impressive credentials on the Tulane website.

In the classroom of Professor Harris-Perry, it is anything but brief.


Professor Harris-Perry’s essay begins, “Electoral racism in its most naked, egregious and aggressive form is the unwillingness of white Americans to vote for a black candidate regardless of the candidate’s qualifications, ideology or party.” Professor Harris-Perry goes on to explain that such cancerous racism appears to have gone into remission in the body politic. But, she hastens to point out, all is still not well.

Because President Obama’s re-election in 2012 is looking less and less like a shoo-in, Professor Harris-Perry has diagnosed a new and equally terrifying form of racism to explain the president’s dimming prospects:

the tendency of white liberals to hold African-American leaders to a higher standard than their white counterparts. If old-fashioned electoral racism is the absolute unwillingness to vote for a black candidate, then liberal electoral racism is the willingness to abandon a black candidate when he is just as competent as his white predecessors.

Let’s, shall we, examine the symptoms that have led Dr. Harris-Perry to her diagnosis. “The relevant comparison here,” she says, “is with the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton.” Fair enough. According to Harris-Perry, “liberal electoral racism,” as practiced by progressive white voters, gives Clinton a pass while holding Obama “to a higher standard”:

  • “Today many progressives complain that Obama’s healthcare reform was inadequate because it did not include a public option; but Clinton failed to pass any kind of meaningful healthcare reform whatsoever.”
  •   “Others argue that Obama has been slow to push for equal rights for gay Americans; but it was Clinton who established the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy Obama helped repeal.”
  •   “Still others are angry about appalling unemployment rates for black Americans; but while overall unemployment was lower under Clinton, black unemployment was double that of whites during his term, as it is now.”

Please remind yourself, as I have had to do repeatedly while attempting to fathom Harris-Perry’s arguments, that the author of them holds a) a PhD; b) a tenured faculty position at a top-tier university; and c) a directorship of a university institute. So busy was Harris-Perry collecting her academic credentials that somewhere along the way she forgot how to make a lucid argument.

“Progressives” are “complaining” about Obama care. So what? Does that mean they’ll pull the lever come November 2012 for somebody else? Does Harris-Perry really believe that complaining equals racism? Can this possibly be true? Has it possibly not occurred to Professor Harris-Perry that those same whining progressives might’ve griped about Clinton’s healthcare debacle? And what does the fact that Clinton’s scheme for healthcare reform never became law twenty years ago have to do with a flawed plan in the here-and-now, anyway?

“Others” (unnamed, unsourced, uncounted) take the president to task for his supposed failure to advance gay rights, even though Clinton “established the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy Obama helped repeal.” While I understand that political scientists such as Harris-Perry are not historians and therefore not necessarily familiar with the record, I do feel inclined to point out that both Clinton’s and Obama’s polls on the public’s attitude toward gays in the military coincide with their respective decisions—in 1993, 55% of the public, according to a Time-CNN poll, disapproved of gays serving in the military; by 2010, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 72% of adult Americans were favor of gays serving in the military.

As for her observation that people are rightfully disturbed at the appallingly high unemployment rates among blacks during Obama’s administration, she neglects to mention that unemployment—for blacks, Hispanics and whites—fell steadily during the Clinton administration, but has grown steadily under Obama’s. And what about her suspect implication that it’s OK to be critical of black unemployment numbers under a white president, but not under a black’s? Hmmm…methinks the pot…oh, never mind.

America's first and second black presidents, side by side.

Can YOU tell which one's the pot and which one's the kettle?


Harris-Perry concludes her essay with one last distortion of the truth:

President Obama has experienced a swift and steep decline in support among white Americans—from 61 percent in 2009 to 33 percent now. I believe much of that decline can be attributed to their disappointment that choosing a black man for president did not prove to be salvific for them or the nation. His record is, at the very least, comparable to that of President Clinton, who was enthusiastically re-elected. The 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.

Rodney's PhD is from the School Of Hard Knocks. Literally

Rodney King speaks to Perry-Harris and racist white progressives everywhere.

Obama’s record—as indeed any president’s sitting or otherwise—is indeed “comparable” to Clinton’s, and, in Obama’s case, suffers from the comparison. Badly. And were I a student in one of Professor Harris-Perry’s classes, I would ask her how it is possible that a president elected with less than a majority, as President Clinton was for his second term, can be said to have retained his office courtesy of an “enthusiastic” electorate.

There is a saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics. There are also good faculty, incompetent faculty, and faculty ideologues for whom the truth is an inconvenience easily set to one side. Do you wonder what kind of faculty member Professor Harris-Perry is?

Note to readers: In addition to Harris-Perry’s essay for The Nation, sources for this essay include the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Presidential Responsiveness and Public Policy-Making by Jeffrey E. Cohen.

Paul Krugman, Jimmy Hoffa, Barack Obama: Paragons of Cultural Decline?

Published September 11, 2011 Life and Culture , Politics 8 Comments
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Much ink has been spilled over the last few weeks about Junior (“Take Them Out”) Hoffa’s death threat to those of the Republican persuasion. That it comes as a surprise to anyone that a union goon should talk like a union goon is as baffling to as it is unsurprising that President Obama, with his eloquent silence, condones Hoffa’s lethal orders to the rank-and-file. We live in a time in which man’s political nature, red in tooth and claw, reveals just how debased our culture has become.

Paying their union dues.

But Jimmy told me to, and Barry said it was OK.


In the sub-basement of our decline resides the New York Times‘s Paul Krugman, who has chosen the tenth anniversary of September 11 to add his voice to the many who have spoken out in memory and reflection of that terrible day:

The Years of Shame
Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?
Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.
What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. Te [sic] atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.
A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?
The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.
I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Paul Krugman speaks out.


Where I come from, week-long NPR special reports on a single topic, week-long programming on myriad broadcast and cable channels, and 21 (i.e., every single one) of the Huffington Post’s “Featured Blog Posts” hardly add up to a “subdued” recognition of September 11. Perhaps, however, in the dark reaches of societal decay where Krugman hangs his hat, news of these commemorations has yet to penetrate.

When Mayor Giuliani raced to Ground Zero and gave New Yorkers a glimmer of hope that their city would not be torn asunder, I sincerely doubt he was thinking about cash. When George Bush assured the recovery workers that he—and the world—heard them he was not working the crowd at a political fundraiser.

Whatever poison has tainted the memory of September 11 leaks from the pustules bubbling up from the caldera Krugman calls home. Safely ensconced in his cesspool, Krugman spews his bile, insulting his readers by claiming they “know” he speaks the truth—then with the courage of one who hides in the cover in darkness takes his final shot: “I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.”

And this is where we live today. In a country that tolerates a president who thinks it’s OK to make death threats to US citizens. In a country that gives a platform to a writer who tells one lie after another then taunts readers for their lack of recourse.

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

Entrance to Krugman's condo.

Home, sweet home

Standard & Poor’s Recalculates Obama’s Grade Point Average

Published August 6, 2011 Higher Education , Politics 8 Comments
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Way to go, Barack! An "A" for Attendance!


So Standard & Poor’s has downgraded our bond rating from AAA to AA+. In the language of academics this means that the US’s GPA has dropped from 4.0 to 3.98, still worthy of summa cum laude but no longer the best of the best—and a bitter pill to swallow for the smartest kid in the room who heretofore had never gotten a grade lower than 100%. Yes, Mr. President, I am talking about you.

Few faculty would see a difference between the student whose grade point average was 4.0 and the one who achieved a 3.98. Many faculty, in truth, scoff at the whole idea of grades, dismissing them as impediments to learning, inaccurate indicators of a student’s performance because they measure achievement as opposed to effort. And so it will likely be with President Obama: the history-making decline in America’s credit-worthiness merely an assessment of his achievement in office, but no indication at all of how hard he has been working on our behalf. Not to worry, Mr. President, you still get AAA for effort.

You’ve been working so very hard, how can you not deserve top honors? True, your most herculean effort has been to talk out of both sides of your mouth about rich folks who pay no taxes so that they have plenty of dough to fill your campaign coffers. Or maybe it’s your relentless attempts to shave a point or two off your handicap. What matters is that you have been trying.

Learning is complicated. By its very nature it destroys as much as it creates. If you don’t believe me, just look at the economy our president has destroyed and the mess he has created.

Two years into office, President Obama is in his sophomore slump, impatient for Commencement two years hence and dreaming all the while about getting admitted to graduate school in 2012. If he is, just think about what he’ll try then.

Laurie Essig: I’m a Professor and a Prevaricator

Published June 18, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 7 Comments
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Call the EPA! There’s something polluting the water of Otter Creek, and it’s affecting the behavior of Middlebury College’s faculty. The evidence is indisputable: first ethics expert Kateri Carmola is busted for embezzlement; next professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies Laurie Essig boldly ventures into the realm of political commentary, a field she amply demonstrates is well outside her area of scholarly expertise.

Or maybe merely demonstrates lack of scholarly expertise in general. The author of American Plastic: Boob Jobs, Credit Cards, and the Quest for Perfection lards her June 14 Chronicle of Higher Education “Brainstorm” essay, “I’m a Husband and a Mother,” with inaccuracies and distortions so profound one can only conclude she’s imbibed of a substance that has destroyed her ability to adhere to the most basic principles of scholarly practice.

Take, for example, how Professor Essig characterizes Michelle Bachman’s autobiographical statement at the beginning of the June 13 Republican candidate’s NH debate: the congresswoman, Essig writes, “introduced herself as a mother and a foster parent,” and compare it to what Bachman actually said:

Hi, my name is Michelle Bachmann. I’m a former federal tax litigation attorney. I’m a businesswoman. We started our own successful company. I’m also a member of the United States Congress. I’m a wife of 33 years. I’ve had five children, and we are the proud foster parents of 23 great children.

What Essig has written, some may argue, is perfectly true; Bachman, after all, did mention her kids in the final sentence of her seven-sentence statement. But it is scarily reminiscent of the bad old days before the second wave of feminism:

Essig's dismissive description of Michelle Bachmann is a reminder that women still have a long way to go.

Some may also argue that what Essig has written is defensible, since she is extracting from Bachman’s entire statement the information that supports the thesis of “I’m a Husband and a Mother”:

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the past few decades of American Presidential politics, being a “good” husband qualifies you to be the Executive in Chief.

If what Essig contends is true, then she must be hard-pressed to explain the presidencies of John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton. These former chief executives were men of many parts, but one role they emphatically did not excel at was that of “‘good’ husband.” But, like the first few sentences of Bachman’s introduction, the fact of the lack of marital fidelity by one-third of the “past few decade[s]” of American presidents does not support Essig’s thesis, so the good professor simply ignores it. Instead, she lambasts the public, the media and President Obama:

whether it is the Dems or Republicans, the mainstream media or the blogs, all that really matters is whether you are a good husband or a mother, not whether you’re wrong, stupid, and even downright dangerous. That’s why Obama has asked Representative Weiner to resign, despite the fact that Weiner’s leadership on progressive issues is untainted.

It is interesting to note that Essig apparently does not consider former congressman Weiner’s behavior neither wrong, stupid, nor dangerous. Actually, Laurie, according to your own thesis, it was all three. It cost Weiner his job and deprived him of the base from which to pursue progressive issues. Whether sending fulsome pictures of one’s sexual apparatus is inherently wrong, stupid or dangerous, however, I leave my readers to decide for themselves.

Her hagiography of Weiner knows no bounds:

As the Weiner case reminded us, the personal is political when it comes to sexual practices (and somehow only sex—we never ask about a candidate’s food politics, how he or she treats their aging parents or yapping dog, or even whether they are kind to their spouses).

Hey, Laurie: Call the ASPCA! Millions of American did back in the '60's. Or didn't you know that?

We never ask about a candidate’s “food politics”? Two words, Laurie: farm subsidies. We never criticize a politician’s treatment of animals? Too bad LBJ can’t testify from the grave about the pummeling he suffered from press and public when he lifted his beagle up by its ears in front of the cameras. We never notice whether politicians are “kind to their spouses”? Edwards and Clinton might beg to differ. Gary Hart and Richard Nixon, too.

Yo, Laurie: Read up on the issues before you open your yap.


Professor Essig concludes her lightly reasoned, historically inaccurate essay with a hat trick of egregious scholarly transgressions:

Muslim and homo-hating GOP candidates get taken seriously by the media because of their normative sex and gender roles, as huband [sic], as mother, and possibly as the next president of the United States.

Ad hominem? Check. Hyperbole? Check. Spelling error? Check.

I implore the good administrators at Middlebury College to test the water in Otter Creek. If not for the faculty, then at least for the students.

Professor Ellen Lewin’s Civil Discourse SNAFU

Published April 21, 2011 Faculty , Higher Education , Politics 13 Comments
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Memo to the University of Iowa Class of 2015: don’t get Professor Ellen Lewin angry.  You wouldn’t like Professor Lewin when she’s angry.  Members of the current classes at Iowa recently learned this the hard way, when Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, let her opinion of them be known in a recent email.

As professorial emails go, Lewin’s was refreshing in its brevity.  No fancy academic jargon from Professor L.  She got straight to her point: “FUCK YOU REPUBLICANS” she wrote.  Needless to say, her use of such surprisingly gendered language raised more than a few eyebrows, and in the case of the student organization to whom she directed her suggestion, no little ire.

Professor Lewin keepin' it classy.

What prompted the professor’s outrage was a campus-wide email from the College Republican Club, exhorting

Conservatives in Iowa City it is now time to come out of the closet!

I know at times it feels like you are the only person that disagrees with this liberal town, but you are not alone! We are asking all Republicans, Independents leaning right, or just anyone slightly frustrated with the current one party controlling every level of Johnson County, and some levels of Iowa and U.S. government to STAND UP!

The club’s email was approved by the office of student affairs at the university, as required by school policy. It goes on to list a number of activities the club had planned for the coming week, and closes with an invitation to an “Animal Rights BBQ.” Undergraduate humor at its best–turning the cliches of campus life on their head, and using parody to make a deadly serious point.

Professor Lewin, however, didn’t see the humor. She saw red. When the president of the Republican Club complained to Lewin’s chair, the chair knew a losing battle when he saw one, and pretty much ordered the outraged professor to apologize for her lack of civility. So she did. Sort of:

This is a time when political passions are inflamed, and when I received your unsolicited email, I had just finished reading some newspaper accounts of fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government. I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities. I would really appreciate your not sending blanket emails to everyone on campus, especially in these difficult times.”

Uh-oh! Take cover! It's Professor Lewin's "difficult time" of the month.

Pay attention, class! Note the sarcasm in the Lewin’s apology. We will return to it shortly. Note that her emotions eroded her capacity to grasp the most basic of rhetorical no-no’s when she warps into overdrive to hector the students who were “sending blanket emails to everyone.” Care for a tautology, anyone? Note her willingness to curtail the rights of a student group that had followed university policy in order to get its message out, to use the campus’s email system. And, finally, note her reference to “these difficult times.” I might apprehend this an allusion to A Tale of Two Cities. I suppose Lewin would accuse me of sexism if I did.

One of the characteristics of deep-thinking faculty such as Professor Lewin is the fanaticism with which they defend their work. This is generally a good thing for scholarship and research, but in rare instances it leads to unintended consequences. Such is the case with Lewin. Incapable of letting anyone else have the last word, profane or otherwise, and unable to keep her own yap shut, Lewin took to her computer once again, firing off a second email, to “clarify” her apology. Not being much of a deep thinker myself, I, on the other hand, always thought the words “I’m sorry” pretty much covered all the bases. But deep-thinking Lewin had to footnote her apology, just like the good scholar of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies that she is:

I should note that several things in the original message were extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity. Despite the Republicans’ general disdain for LGBT rights you called your upcoming event “conservative coming out day,” appropriating the language of the LGBT right movement. Your reference to the Wisconsin protests suggested that they were frivolous attempts to avoid work. And the “Animal Rights BBQ” is extremely insensitive to those who consider animal rights an important cause. Then, in the email that Ms. Ginty sent complaining about my language, she referred to me as Ellen, not Professor Lewin, which is the correct way for a student to address a faculty member, or indeed, for anyone to refer to an adult with whom they are not acquainted. I do apologize for my intemperate language, but the message you all sent out was extremely disturbing and offensive.

In other words, Professor Lewin is free to question the “delicate sensibilities” of anyone who might have been offended by her language, but herself has an attack of the vapors when a student has the temerity to refer to the Professor by her first name. Oh, the incivility! Oh, the obscenity! And if that alone was insufficient to justify Professor Lewin’s retracting her apology, then surely the “appropriation” of “coming out” a term to which, according Ellen Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered students have exclusive rights (let’s pass over lightly the appropriation of the word “gay,” lest the top of Lewin’s head blow off) is enough for Lewin to affirm that her apology is indeed the joke she intended it to be. So afraid was she that the Republican students would be too stupid to figure out her apology was just another FU, Lewin felt compelled to spell it out for them.

Do you really wonder why Republican students at the University of Iowa are in the closet?

Oh, For God’s Sake Nicholas Kristof, Shut Up!

Published October 10, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics 2 Comments
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The other day New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about a recent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report concerning the level of knowledge Americans possess about the world’s great religions. As you might guess, we’re not, as a people, terribly well-schooled in the Talmud, or well-versed in the Bible, or able to recite the Koran.

Pew's thank-you gift to volunteers who completed the questionnaire.

That this should come as a surprise to anyone is, well, surprising. We are not a nation of readers and our schools are not big on acknowledging the central role religion has played in world, national and local histories. The Pew study, moreover, tested for possession of facts, not profession of faith, a distinction strangely at odds with the academy’s on-going love affair with “critical thinking.”

Get one more answer wrong and I'll smite you!

Unshakable though, is Kristof’s own hypocrisy. The writer excerpts portions of the Pew questionnaire to give his readers an opportunity to test not only their knowledge but also their biases. Kristof kindly provides a handicap to his faithful by introducing his version of the quiz with “given the uproar about Islam, I’ll focus on extremism and fundamentalism,” so straight off we know by not choosing “a,” we’ll have a fifty-fifty shot at the right answer to question three:

3. The terrorists who pioneered the suicide vest in modern times, and the use of women in terror attacks, were affiliated with which major religion?
a. Islam
b. Christianity
c. Hinduism

Kristof answers: “3. c. Most early suicide bombings were by Tamil Hindus (some secular) in Sri Lanka and India.” The answer to question 3 is actually d. None.

Mr. Kristof and his interns ready the facts to make Americans look bad and feel guilty. Click me!

True, in the late 1980′s the Tamil Tigers were the first to sport suicide vests; also true is the FBI (Kristof’s own link above) description of the Tigers as

among the most dangerous and deadly extremists in the world. For more than three decades, the group has launched a campaign of violence and bloodshed in Sri Lanka, the island republic off the southern coast of India. Its ultimate goal: to seize control of the country from the Sinhalese ethnic majority and create an independent Tamil state.

Although Kristof grudging concedes that the Tamil movement has “some secular” elements, he fails to note that it is a political movement animated by geographic and ethnic concerns—not by religion: At the nub of the war is the question of political rights of the Tamil minority.

And is true that although the Tamil Tigers originally weaponized patsies, Islamists perfected them as killing machines:

Suicide terrorism is rising around the world. From the onset of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 through August 2005, 151 Palestinian suicide bombing attacks have been launched against Israeli targets, killing 515 people and injuring almost 3,500 more. From 1987 to 2001, the Tamil Tigers launched 76 suicide bombing attacks in Sri Lanka and India, killing a total of 901 people, including two prominent national leaders: India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lanka’s President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993 (Pape, 2005). In Iraq, suicide bombers have killed thousands of people, mostly Iraqi civilians, since 2003. [Efraim Benmelech and Claude Berrebi, "Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide Bombers," Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 21, Number 3—Summer 2007—Pages 223–238.]

So what point is Kristof trying to make here? That Americans don’t follow late-breaking developments in Sri Lanka closely enough? I guess he’s forgotten the $400+ million Americans donated to private charities for 2004 tsunami relief. That Americans worry more about the victims of suicide bombers whose pyrotechnics are more likely to take out friends, family and soldiers in Israel and Iraq than they do about casualties however tragic they may be in a Sri Lankan civil war? I didn’t need to flunk a quiz to figure this out.

Nor do I need a report from Pew to tell me that Kristof’s smug, fatuous conclusion to his essay

the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts

speaks volumes about Kristof’s inability to recognize the cherry-picking taking place in columns that bear his name.

A young Nicholas wonders where his next fact will come from.

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Profiles in Academic Courage and Class: Robert Paul Wolff

Published September 17, 2010 Collegetown USA , Faculty , Higher Education , Life and Culture , Politics 9 Comments
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I have been following the kerfuffle surrounding a recent blog post by The New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz and the consternation it has caused within academic circles with amused interest.  The timing of this dust-up could not be more exquisite, for Peretz is about to be honored by Harvard, his alma mater and employer.  Marty, who is also a benefactor of Harvard, being as he is a major donor and a member of the faculty, landed in hot water because he wrote

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Needless to say, them fightin’words gave NYT opiner, sensitive Nicholas Kristof, a bad case of the vapors, which he relieved by firing back in his Sunday, September 12 column with incite-full words of his own, “For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider [Martin Peretz's] blog post in The New Republic this month.”

Nicholas Kristof (r) reminds Martin Peretz to watch his p's and q's.

Venomous? Debased? Aren’t those terms more rightly applied to the activities of certain Muslims, the activities that might’ve led Peretz to his conclusion? The sectarian violence in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Somalia, for example. The Muslim-on-Muslim attacks that generally result in bombed-out mosques replete with the late worshippers’assorted body parts in such disarray so as to suggest that the “religion of peace” is actually the “religion in pieces.” Peretz couldn’t possibly have had that in mind when he wrote those words. Nor is it likely he was thinking about the many ways in which Muslim girls and women are killed in the name of family honor. When it comes to the final solution for flirtatious females, only the imagination limits the choices available to the dissed fathers, sons and brothers: beheading, stoning, burying alive, hacking, flinging acid at the offender. Take your pick. They do. Nicholas Kristof apparently doesn’t like to think about that, so he resorts to name-calling those who dare state the obvious.

Also offended by what Peretz had to say is University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor Robert Paul Wolff.  In his blog, Wolff wrote:

Back in 1960, Marty was an egregious little wannabe hanger-on to the group of young proto-lefties who called ourselves “The New Left Club of Cambridge,” but subsequently, he married money, bought The New Republic, and turned that fine old progressive magazine into a flack for the State of Israel. Marty has done well for himself, if you ignore the sort of person he is. It seems there is a Martin Peretz Professorship of Yiddish Literature at Harvard, no less. A scholarship fund will now be set up in his name at Harvard, and he will be honored at the lunch.

When I heard that I was going to be sharing the podium with Marty, I thought seriously about canceling. I don’t know how much time I have left on this earth, and somehow spending even a lunch of it in the presence of Marty Peretz doesn’t strike me as a good use of my time. But I am genuinely proud of my small role in the establishment of Social Studies, and besides, Susie and I have arranged to have dinner Friday evening with our old friends, Milton Cantor and Margaret Taylor. So we will go.

The good professor will deign to accept his honor, but not without setting stern, non-negotiable conditions: “I told Anya Bernstein, the current Head of Social Studies, that I was well brought up and will behave myself at the lunch, but I begged her not to seat me next to Marty at the head table.” Can’t you picture Professor Wolff stomping his foot in high dudgeon and, yes, with righteous indignation as he laid down the law to Dr. Bernstein?

Professor Wolff: I get so jeal--er,--mad when I think about Marty Peretz.

There is no figure more risible than the academic whose tenured status relieves him of the obligation to be accountable for his behavior, or even to have the thought enter his head that the standards to which he holds others apply to him too. Well, maybe there is one more risible: the professor who won’t let his principles stand in the way of chowing down on a free lunch.

Dr. Bernstein agreed to Professor Wolff's demand to seat Martin Peretz elsewhere.

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Imam Rauf: Consummate Wordsmith

Published September 15, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics 7 Comments
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Many years ago, when I taught composition and literature to first- and second-year college students, I’d spend some time talking about what writers of prose could learn from poets: thrifty use of language, nuanced phrasing, the sound of the words and how they look on the page. I’d like to think those lessons served my students well, not only as writers but also as readers.

Looking for poetry in prose is my habitual way of reading, and, as is true in so many avenues of life, I often find what I seek. Such was certainly true when I settled down to read the remarks Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf addressed on September 13 to the Council on Foreign Relations. His words are exquisitely chosen, eloquent and evocative. His words, precise and economical, bespeak the gift of education America bestowed upon this naturalized son. No wonder, I thought, this man is a teacher; no wonder his influence spans the globe. Read his text along with me, and see for yourself.

Imam Rauf begins his address with his autobiography, the oft-told tale of upper-class-kid-comes-to-America-and-makes-good-following-in-his-highly-educated-father’s-footsteps.

The young immigrant steams into New York Harbor.

From there, to establish further context, he compares American Muslims with “other groups and faiths [that] have found themselves targets of such prejudice — Jews and Catholics, Irish and Italians, blacks and Hispanics.” He continues the comparison, enriching his point by quoting the civil rights anthem/gospel song “We Shall Overcome”: “in time each group has overcome these challenges, and [America’s] core values have been affirmed. We must overcome. We shall overcome. Now it is our turn, as Muslims, to drink from this cup.”

This photo documents the sad history of racism in America.

So does this photo.

Prejudice knows no color lines.

The imam’s metaphor helps us to see that Americans who subscribe to the Muslim faith are no different in their suffering today than black Americans in Mississippi who nearly fifty years ago won their voting rights facing down a brace of attack dogs, or young black students in South Carolina who suffered mightily for the simple right to buy lunch at a five-and-ten counter. Reaching farther back into history, and using folks from another hue in the rainbow community of victimhood, the imam’s reference to Irish-Americans turned away from jobs because they “need not apply” recalls the torment of contemporary Muslim Americans who everyday must endure the humiliation of “no dogs, no Muslims” signs in every Manhattan shop window.

Proving that we all are in the struggle together, through his use of metaphor and allusion, the imam then makes his argument in favor of locating the Cordoba Institute in a building damaged on 9.11.2001 by flying debris from one of the two airplanes that was that day driven into the World Trade Center. Admittedly, the insult to the structure that had once housed a Burlington Coat Factory was nothing in comparison the fires caused by exploding jet fuel and eventual collapse of the twin towers, but Park 51 nevertheless bears the scars of that terrible day.

All of that is in the past, though, and we need to move on so as not to become mired in the gooey, overwrought fanaticism of the friends and families of those who died on 9.11. Says the imam of those who oppose his urban renewal plans, “We must not let the extremists, whatever their faith, whatever their political persuasion, hijack the discourse and hijack the media. That only fuels greater extremism.” By rhetorically linking the 9.11 survivors with the 9.11 pilots through careful, deliberate word-choice (emphasis added), the imam gives us an enlightening glimpse into his heart and mind. A glimpse that is augmented when he continues, “genuine understanding can only happen when there is honesty, sincerity of motive, and an open heart. For when issues are politicized or used as fodder for commentators on the right or on the left, we just pour fuels on the flames of misunderstanding.”

As a man of letters, Imam Rauf is aware of the significance of how he says what he says; in fact he comments on the importance of words during his remarks, stating “From experience, I can tell you, talking can be powerful. As Churchill said, better to jaw-jaw than to war-war.” He makes this point even more forcefully when he exhorts “You, the media, can fuel the radicals or you can limit their airtime.” The use of the word “airtime” is particularly poetic, in that it means “broadcast time” but is highly suggestive of in-flight time, or time spent in the air.

As his remarks draw to a close, the imam says,

In recent days, some people have asked is there really a need for an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan? Is it worth all this firestorm?

The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is a categorical yes. Why? Because this center will be a place for all faiths to come together as partners, as stakeholders in mutual respect. It will bring honor to the city of New York, to American Muslims across the country and to Americans all over the world.

Again, the imam’s choice of the poetic “firestorm” is worthy of a moment’s reflection on its dual meaning of protest and the intentional consequence of lobbing a bomb or other explosive device.

Readers tend to cut poets a lot of slack; we’re fascinated by the words they choose, and can spend many hours pondering why one word is chosen over another. When we see patterns in a text—“hijack” at least five times and “fuel” at least four appearing in the imam’s talk, for example—we wonder what point such repetition is meant to convey.

I wonder.

In the spirit of the imam’s call for spiritual partnership, I too will borrow some words from Winston Churchill, the same Churchill Imam Rauf quotes. History, Churchill said, is written by the victors.

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Abusing History Can Be Laugh-Out-Loud Funny

Published September 5, 2010 Life and Culture , Politics 6 Comments
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Just ask Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. He writes, magnanimously and patronizingly, that most of those who oppose building an Islamic center and mosque in a building damaged in the attacks of 9/11 aren’t “bigots”; they’re merely ‘fraidy cats in the long tradition of “patriots [who fear] that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.”

Sage Advice from Nicholas Kristof

These petrified patriots are just like their 19th and 20th century forebears who were terrified that gin-swilling Irish Catholics would snatch good Protestant babies out of their prams for a clandestine dip in the baptismal font. Today’s sissified citizens trace their ancestry to the good people who hid their daughters in fear of polygamist Mormons on the hunt for fresh woman-flesh. Or so says Kristof, who acknowledges that “[h]istorically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy.” Then, Kristof delivers his punch line: “And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women.”

Is it just me, or is Kristof’s equation of 1) unfamiliarity with democracy and 2) the practice of bigamy with 3) mass murder just a little off the mark? Think about it: “Some” Catholic immigrants needed to adjust to a new form of government. Early Mormons had eccentric ideas about marriage. And today, Muslim extremists fly planes into buildings and kill their teenaged daughters for wearing blue jeans. Gee, I sure see the similarity among these put-upon groups.

Americans used to be afraid of this.

And this.

Today we are afraid of this.

His tortured analogy breaks down further when he writes:

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country.…Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others.

I can’t recall any incidents of Moslems being “killed” or “tormented” by American “hoodlums” because of the controversy over the cultural center/mosque. Can you? Do you, like me, find it offensive that Kristof insinuates that “most Americans…on the sidelines” of the debate about the proposed Islamic center are in reality enabling bad guys who would do harm to followers of Mohammed?

If you don’t, you should.

Reading Nicholas Kristof: so funny I forgot to laugh.

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Board of Governors, 1; Quincy College, 0

Published September 3, 2010 Higher Education , Politics 8 Comments
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In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

College presidents come and go, too. Some, as in the case of Liberal Arts College USA, blessedly sooner rather than later. As the door slams on his retreating derriere, let us pause to contemplate the achievements of his short-lived tenure. It’ll be but a brief pause, given that his meager accomplishments are easily summarized as 1) rooting out and eliminating all staff guilty of AWF—Administering While Female—2) larding the payroll with hangers-on, friends of friends, and parasitic common-law spouses of ill-advised trophy hires and 3) bloating the organizational chart with ever-more grandiose titles for exceptionally ordinary functionaries. But at least the talented new president has no need to sweep away any half-baked plans or initiatives as she takes on the daunting task of rebuilding LCA, her predecessor having thoughtfully left the planning tabula utterly, totally, completely rasa.

Sometimes, though, college presidents depart before they even arrive. Take, for example, the rollicking saga of one Philip Conroy, the man who until yesterday aspired to the top job at Quincy College in Quincy, Massachusetts. QC is a public two-year institution; this is important for you to keep in mind. Back in June, QC’s board of governors, in a tight 6-5 vote, recommended that Mr. Conroy be offered the college’s presidency. Mr. Conroy, a vice president at an independent two-year college in the Commonwealth eagerly accepted. The appointment seemed to make a lot of sense. After all, Mr. Conroy is a native son of Quincy, and he has administrative experience in both public and private higher education, including at the university level, which gives him an important dual perspective on transfer issues of students seeking to continue their educations after community college enrollment.

Yesterday, however, the Patriot-Ledger printed an excerpt from a letter Mr. Conroy had just written to the board: “’It has become increasingly clear to me that the board of governors is unable to unite behind a new president,’” Conroy’s letter reads. ‘(W)hile the offer of the position was extended there has been no movement toward a contract. Therefore, it is with a profound sense of sadness and disappointment that I respectfully decline the offer to serve as president of Quincy College.’” One might quibble about whether “decline” is the right verb, given that what the board offered Mr. Conroy included apparently nothing in return for the services he was willing to render.

A pirated copy of Mr. Conroy's contract, rescued from the briny waters of the Fore River.

The board members were too busy fighting amongst themselves to devise a contract for the hapless Mr. Conroy. The close vote that brought him to the brink of the presidency he was ultimately denied bespeaks the kind of high-stakes intrigue public institutions in Massachusetts are so famous for. It seems Mr. Conroy’s closest competition for the position was Peter Tsaffaras, Esq., Director of Employee Relations and Benefit Administration for the Massachusetts Board of Education, and former member of the Quincy College Board of Governors. Cozy, no? The summer months in Quincy sizzled from heat generated by the procedural maneuvers, scheduling chicanery, and character assassination that emanated from the board.

As one who has watch similar dramas unfold, I can say with great assurance that there are few fights as nasty, no tactics so dirty as those the bottom feeders feasting at the public chum in the Massachusetts pond politic employ when attempting to move themselves or their cronies up the food chain. It makes those who engage in the superfluous nepotism of certain private institutions look like the bush league players they are.

LCA's buy two, get one deal.

Mr. Conroy will remain the vice president of the college that currently employs him. I don’t know the man, but I wish him well, and would advise him and any other potential candidates for the presidency of Quincy College to stay far away until the board’s feeding frenzy is over and the ragged claws of the governors are busy scuttling across the floors of silent seas to the more hospitable waters of the Turnpike Authority.

Mr. Conroy meets his competition.

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