Witch-hunts in academia

Columbia University students pay dearly for the privilege of obtaining their Ivy League diplomas. I'm not sure what the price tag is, but I'm sure it's somewhere in the range of $40K per year. Apparently, freedom of speech is no longer part of the curriculum, however.

Columbia President Lee Bollinger vowed to take swift action against professors and lecturers who dared to speak out against Israel. Bollinger, caving in to pressure from the Zionist Anti-Defamation League, promised ADL national director Abraham Foxman that "the matter will be handled immediately".

The right-leaning New York Daily News published an article in Sunday's paper naming names and publishing photographs of the school's transgressors.

While university presidents have never been known for their ability to stare down alumni threats, particularly from wealthy benefactors, to threaten "swift action" means what? Will Bollinger demand resignations? Fire the tenured professors? This all smacks of academic McCarthyism.

Not all agree with Bollinger's plans to take action. Jewish Rabbi and Visiting Professor of Humanities at New York University, Arthur Hertzberg takes issue with the possibility of limiting academic freedom.

According to Hertzberg, "Certainly some blood does boil within the veins of concerned people, but I am very much afraid that those who would like to win arguments by charging that adversaries have limited their academic freedom may soon discover that those who would win by this sword can also lose in the same melee. "

If $40,000 doesn't buy you an education that instills critical thinking, then what's the purpose of education at all? When the supposed highest institutions in the land haven't the academic backbone to stand up to censors and demagogues, then why are we sending our best and brightest to these places at all?

Arrested for Nothing

In a news item that could only be considered weird, if it wasn’t for the reaction that it caused; three women, dressed up as marketers for “Nothing”, were arrested at their local shopping mall. Apparently in America, if you ‘ain’t shopping at Xmas time, you are asking for trouble.

The local rent-a-cops—seriously lacking in any measure of humor—got freaked out and called for state police backup. In the course of the exchange, the three women, all sisters, were handcuffed and taken to the state police barracks for processing.

One of the sisters, Anna White, had the following thoughts on the entire affair, which were posted at Atrios’ site, Eschaton.

“Our small action and the drastic response to it raises a variety of important questions and issues, such as: What is so very dangerous about a humorous promotion of purchasing NOTHING? In an era of declining public spaces and the rise of malls as the new "town centers" (and many actually naming themselves such), should not "freedom of speech" extend to these quasi-public commercial spaces? Why are taxpayer-funded state police protecting private commercial interests from citizens' free speech? How much longer can the devastating environmental and social impact of voracious American-style consumerism be ignored?”

White raises some pertinent questions that ought to be answered, but probably won’t. Americans want their freedom, as long as it doesn’t cost too much. And please, don’t you dare to encroach upon their right to consume a little more junk made in third world countries by exploited workers. That would be so gauche and anti-American. Good lord! That might even be communist!!

What this little episode illustrates loudly and clearly for me is this; you can get away with many things in America including murder, if you are the government. But if you are a member of the hoi polloi, don’t ever fuck with capitalism and commerce, or you’ll probably end up in the klink.

An accepting faith

Religion has always been a losing proposition for me. As I’ve written about before, the organized variety of faith I have encountered has often left me confused, hurt, angry, or some combination of these emotions. Without resetting the scene, let me just say that while I consider myself spiritual, I no longer consider myself religious.

My father and mother-in-law had the opposite experience when they joined a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in a nearby town. My late father-in-law, one of the most intellectually honest men I’ve ever met, found the UU community a comforting way station for the end of his life’s journey. For the last 20 years of his life, he and my mother-in-law found this church to be a place that allowed them to continue their quest for knowledge and truth in an affirming and non-judgmental environment. My mother-in-law still attends regularly and today, I went to the morning service as the congregation dedicated a new sound system in my father-in-law’s memory. Since he believed that all people had dignity and were worthy of a hearing, my father-in-law had encouraged the church to look at upgrading their sound system in 1998. After he passed away from cancer in 1999, a fund was set up to purchase a new system “so that all may hear”. With the recent purchase of the new sound system, with engraved plaques on each of the speakers, it is a fitting way to remember this man and what he stood for.

Being part of the service this morning with my extended family was rewarding. It made me reflect upon the wonderful people that my in laws are (and were)—committed to the worth and special qualities of all people—as well as recognizing that not all faith communities force you into a narrow box.

With the moral values of fundamentalist Trinitarians supposedly guiding voters during the election, I found the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism to be a welcome contrast to the absolutism of many religious leaders currently basking in the media spotlight. For those unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism, here are the seven principles that all congregations affirm and promote:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Not a bad set of guiding principles, if I do say so myself.

Cultural twilight

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I’ve run out of library books (just finished David Halberstam’s wonderful October 1964), so I began scouring my own bookshelves for reading material. I read several essays by the late Neil Postman (from Conscientious Objections) and then began skimming through my own bookshelves looking for other nuggets. I came across Morris Berman’s book, The Twilight of American Culture, which I bought back in 2001. Berman, a cultural historian and social critic, offered a fascinating prescription for dealing with the cultural rot that seemed prevalent in America at the time. Having seen things shift perceptively more negative since my first reading, I’ve begun pulling fascinating material from my second trip through the text.

While Berman spends plenty of time detailing our cultural race to the bottom, I think he paints a prescriptive option for maintaining our dignity, intelligence and preserving the best of Western ideals. His concept draws upon the monastic movement of the Middle Ages to illustrate ways individuals can ward off the onslaught of McWorld and corporate hegemony.

Berman gives many anecdotes and quotes statistics, as well as drawing upon the work of other writers and researchers to illustrate our dropping levels of literacy, critical awareness, and general intellectual awareness.

One statistic he quotes from Paul Fussell’s book, BAD, Or The Dumbing of America that shocked me was the statistic that only six percent of Americans read one book per year, with “book” being anything from harlequin romance novels to self-help books. Berman cites the depressing statistic that 60 percent of Americans have never read a novel! I know we are not a nation of readers, but these numbers are terribly deflating.

I have not been able to substantiate the numbers that Berman cites, but they have certainly whetted my curiosity to do more investigation.

Buy, buy, buy!!

With Thanksgiving over 'cept for the pile of leftover turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and other assorted items, it's on to our next holiday--the Christmas retail season.

Starting very early, with some stores open before sunup, shoppers will flock to buy alot of stuff
that they don't need, for people who won't appreciate it.

I've always had an aversion towards the commercialization of Christmas. For me, whether I have any warmth for religion/xianity or not, the day has always had some kind of deeper significance--the whole "peace and goodwill towards man" thing. I love the carols, Charlie Brown's Christmas special, the something magical that hangs in the air, the ringing of the bells by Salvation Army workers, etc.

With each successive year, holding on to the spiritual significance of Christmas becomes harder and harder. I detest shopping from Nov. 26-Dec. 24 and since I'm a procrastinator, I never get any of my shopping done prior to this. While my wife and I no longer do the crazy Christmas dash to dispense cash any longer, some sanity has returned to the day. However, I will go out and pick up a couple of rather inexpensive items and I'm brought face to face with the shoving, pushing, screaming consumers trying to pick up that last gift for Aunt Millie. God forbid that you get in their way!

For those of you who would like an alternative to your consumeristic Christmas past, here's a suggestion for making Christmas a little less frantic.

If you are going out to the mall today, be careful and don't get hurt.