My Analysis of Dead Poet’s Society

Posted on February 28, 2013

Better late than never. I blame myself for never watching it before an educational psych class
senior year of college. This was a truly inspiring movie!

There was a clear clash between the traditional and conservative values espoused by Welton
Academy as an institution, and the progressive teaching methods of John Keating. Welton
Academy’s ethos of “tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence not only discourages but makes
it a crime for a student to exercise a critical political consciousness. Professor John Keating, on
the other hand, is concerned with the political and moral quality of his students. He challenges
them to question the social and political norms that defines their lives at Welton. As a result, he
inspires Charlie to publish an article in the school newspaper, arguing for why Welton should be
coeducational. In the end, Headmaster Gale Nolan, was so unwilling to even consider the
possibility that Neil Perry’s suicide was a product of the intellectually and political repressive
atmosphere at Welton, that he compelled every member of the Dead Poet’s Society on threat of
expulsion to sign a form stating that Keating’s “destructive” teaching method was the true
culprit. By the end of the film, it was clear that what transpires at Welton Academy is not true
learning, but rather an insidious form of social and political control in which the dynamics of the
dominant, established society, as exemplified by Neil’s father’s suppression of his son’s desire to
pursue acting, reproduce themselves in the classroom. In this type of society, children are
treated as mere objects or tabulae rasae, without feelings, without desires, without willpower,
without dignity, without knowledge. They are to remain docile, unthinking, predetermined
automatons subject to the moldings of wiser adults who are the creators, possessors, and
dispensers of all necessary knowledge. They are the passive receptacles of information,
the Oppressed, in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of The Oppressed. They are the sufferers of Welton
Academy’s most hateful and repressive representation of Freire’s “Banking” method of
education. While Keating is not their savior he enables them to discover the savior within
themselves and thereby free themselves from the context in which they suffer. In his mind, an
affective teacher is an active enabler of his or her student’s inner potential for growth and
learning. By virtue of his teaching method and stated objectives, he rejects the ethos radical
conformity disguised as harmless tradition. In a tense conversation with the Headmaster, he
expresses that he a wants the students to be able and willing to think for themselves. The
student’s embrace Keating’s methods and overarching message of critical thinking and
intellectual freedom, and by the end of the movie, are courageous enough to openly defy
Headmaster Gale Nolan spurred by knowledge of the true circumstances surrounding Neil’s
suicide and Welton’s shameless attempt to suppress it. This moment represents the most
powerful point of the film, because Todd, Charlie, Knox, Pitts, Richard, and Steven by standing
on their desks and addressing Professor Keating with the title of Walt Whitman’s poem
“O’Captain, O’Captain” at last, come to the full realization that “schooling is a political process
because it is produced and situated in a complex of social and political relations from which it
cannot be abstracted.” Welton Academy is all about the politics of dominance and control. The
school issues directives to the teachers on the curriculum and the manner in which it is to be
administered, while the students are expected to follow it unquestioningly. A culture of silence
and conformity ensues, and the students are compelled to accept that, at Welton, nothing else
matters as long you do what we tell you to do without protest. Professor Keating enables his
students to not only recognize their own individualities but harness them into a collective unit
that is capable of challenging the status quo. The final scene reveals his success.

The Willingness To Express Insecurity

I wrote this after watching Finding Forrester. I tried to follow William Forrester’s advice, and
just write my first draft with my heart. I don’t think I have ever written over 1,000 words this
quickly. Sorry William, but my head sees no need for a second draft. That’s what my heart said.
Too often, because of our insecurities, we perceive conflict where there is none. That is how
conflict arises. Sometimes I wonder, how willing will a stranger be to open up to me. Why am I
so afraid of being turned down? Am I as afraid of being turned down as I am of turning someone
down? Perhaps not equally afraid, but I am certainly afraid of both dearly. The only time I ever
turn people down is when they have already turned me down, except not in such an overt
manner. In that case, I do not believe it is an insecurity on my part. It is the other person’s
insecurity which causes them to turn me down, at least that is what I perceive or perhaps it is
what is true. Perhaps that explanation helps me better deal with my own insecurities. But what
is our friendship worth if we can not share our insecurities. Indeed, that was the source of my
original insecurity about the relationship and the reason I felt the need to express myself in a
more overt manner. If most of what I have to express are insecurities then, as a friend, you
should permit me to express them. Permit is the wrong word. You should embrace. You should
relish that I trust you enough to express them. You think I am being egocentric? How
so? Frienship is a two way street. I am open to all your insecurities as well. I am open to your
insecurities even if you are not open to mine. In that case, I get to keep all my insecurities
bottled up and bottle up yours as well, which I will do. Because what is yours is mine even if
what is mine is not yours. Perhaps I can help alleviate your insecurities so that they no longer
remain insecurites but rather roots of strength in which you find purpose and meaning. From
that meaning you extract a sense of power and agency which you will use to transcend your
current circumstances, of course never forgetting where you came from but always capable of
transforming where you are going. And then, what then? Then you spread your wealth of
knowledge and experience to others, others who are held down by the internal and external
structures which foster their insecurities. Encourage them to critically think, to question what is
considered normal and neutral and radical,to formulate their own views of what is normal,
neutral, and radical, then to actively intervene in their own lives and the lives of those who are
suffering with so that there is a normal, neutral, and radical of the past, and therefore a new
normal, radical, and neutral of the present and the future. If this is not allowed within the
confines of our relationship, then our relationship is worth nothing. To you, it is neutral, blank,
undisturbable, impenetrable, and bland. You are constantly reticent, on the lookout, ready to
pounce, prepared to dig in your spiked heels and resist progress, growth, change, and most
importantly, love. Love has not conquered all and until it has your herculean efforts to
perpetuate the status quo represent a gross act of violence against the desire of the human spirit
to transcend its current state and enable love to conquer all. No, I am not some idealistic
freak. To be skeptical of idealism and simultaneously relish in that skepticism is cruel. If it were
not cruel and guided by evil intentions, then you would just agree to join me and banish your
skepticism right then and there. After all, one is the way to two and two is the way to two
hundred and two hundred is the way to two million and two million is the way to twenty million
and twenty million is the way to two hundred million. In our democracy, a critical mass has
more power than all the concentrated money in the world. The primary enemy of idealism being
realized by a critical mass is your skepticism to join and help me rally the critical mass in the
first place. The fact that it is idealistic does not imply that it is impossible. Indeed, you are the
only one standing in its way. Idealism is hope. Acting on idealism is love. Idealism without
action is not emptiness. It is a constant and paralyzing insecurity that is enabled by other
insecurities. Internal conflict ensues, and you feel as if you are divided against yourself. Indeed
you are. Are you depressed? You told him that you did not feel depressed, that the magic elixir
had done its job. Perhaps you are depressed, but maybe you are not as aware anymore. You
have lost your sense of self, your sense of caring about belonging that used to define
you. Whatever floats your boat, run of the mill, whatever happens, happens, let it run its course
and there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. But will that course ever stop running if
you do not stop it? What is the end result of that course? Or is there an end result? No, you are
stuck in a course of perpetual paralysis of which you are not aware, and if you are not aware then
you have no power to stop it. Ah, perhaps skepticism is not the problem then. Complacency is
then the enemy of idealism. But consider from where does your complacency origninate? Your
complacency originates from ignorace. That would be the ignorance which originated from the
magic elixir. That would the magical elixir which originated from the powers that be, the powers
that exist to keep you, their host, in a state of parasitic complacency which they relentless feed
off of to fuel their greedy and selfish ambitions. Now which one of us is egocentric? There is
conflict. You do possess many insecurities But you do not gain strength, power, agency, a sense
of idealism, the ability and willingness to actively intervene, to banish structural inefficiencies, to
spread love, by not sharing them, by not expressing them openly. What would you do without
your insecurities and the willingness to express them?

Congressman Scott Garrett Balks At The Opportunity To Go On the Record

About Corruption

This is my first post for the Rootstrikers campus team blog. Rootstrikers is a nonprofit,
grassroots organization that strives to reduce the influence of dirty money in politics. Led by the
efforts of the campus teams, Rootstrikers is currently working in conjunction with the huffington
post to get politicians “On the Record” about the corrupting influence of money big money in
politics. Here I discuss Congressman Scott Garrett’s (NJ-5) response to my attempts to get him
“On the Record”. FYI, Congressman Garrett, I will not cease my efforts.
Anyone who has ever listened to a hard-hitting interview with a politician, comes to realize that
there is no other profession in the world whose members are quite so adept at evading the tough
questions with circuitous rambling and ultimately inconclusive answers. But can you really
blame them? Thanks, in no small part, to our nation’s corrupt system of funding elections,
America’s lawmakers remain caught right in the center of the endless tug of war being waged on
Capitol Hill between the interests of the “funders” and the interests of the people. So despite the
fact that nearly 90% of Americans think decisive action needs to be taken to eliminate corruption
in our political system, I sympathize with the fact that Congressman Scott Garrett of New
Jersey’s 5th District is just not yet willing to give the American people his straightforward
opinion on this defining issue of our time. Representative Garrett’s response to my requests for a
brief phone interview to discuss this urgent threat to the survival of our democracy was short,
sweet, and to the point.
He chose to frame the issue of the corrupting influence of money in politics around the recent
referral of the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 269) to the House Administration Committee where
it is currently undergoing review. If this piece of legislation was to become law, it would allow
federal candidates to run competitive campaigns for office without having to depend on large
contributions, big money bundlers, or lobbyist donations. They would do this by raising a larger
number of small contributions, no more than $100 per contribution, from their local
communities. Once a House member has amassed 1500 contributions or $50,000 he or she will
receive $1,125,000 from the fair elections fund. Forty percent of that amount is earmarked for
the primary, while sixty percent is reserved for use in the general election. In addition,
candidates who reach the sought number of 1500 contributions qualify for additional matching
Fair Elections Funds as long as they are able to continue raising small dollar donations from their
home state. Five dollars is matched from the Fair Elections Fund for every dollar House
candidates raise from small-time contributors. The formula for determining Fair Elections
funding for Senate candidates is slightly more complex, but nonetheless works towards the same
goal of eliminating Congress’ dependence upon the funders and restoring political power solely
to the people.

After pointing out that he is not a member of the House Administration Committee,
Representative Garrett concludes his response by saying that if the H.R. 269 is able to make it
out of committee and to the House floor for a vote, he will consider it with the concerns of one
New Jersey Rootstriker fresh in his mind. I will say that even if this bill comes out of committee
with modifications, there is no concrete reason why Representative Garrett should be dead set
against taking a stand on it right now. If this bill does make it to a vote on the House floor, I can
guarantee you one thing Congressman Garrett. My fellow Rootstrikers and I, along with the
people of the fifth district of New Jersey, and the rest of the American people will be watching
and you will be held accountable. That is a promise.

Stop Curving! Stop Lecturing! Stop Grading! Start Teaching So We Can Start Learning!
Two weeks ago my genetics class received the results of our second test. The class average was
a 48, and to my amazement, our professor, whom I will refer to as Dr. James decided to curve
the test by 29 points, consequently raising the class average to a low C. In response to what I
consider to be “the easy way out” and a great dereliction of duty by a professional educator, I
sent him the following e-mail,
I am contacting you now to express concern over your curving of our second test by 29
points. Now I have no illusions about why you curved this test so drastically. It was certainly
not for our benefit, because if one goes by the standard of us learning the material than curving
the test by 29 points does nothing for us. If the class average is a 48 with little most people
doing poorly and failing, then it is your responsibility as a professional educator to critically
interrogate your teaching methods and pedagogy and find out what is going wrong and involve
us in that discussion. Curving the test 29 points is his easy way out. School is not a marketplace
for grades, and that should not be how the teacher views his or her job. Just because curving is
common, does not mean that it is proper. I am aware of the fact that there is probably not one
other student in the class who minds you curving a test so drastically and actually welcomes
it. But that is only because we have been socialized by the college and more generally the
American school culture to covet grades more than real learning. That is not our fault. It is the
fault of the American obsession with grading, multiple choice style testing regimes which
encourage this unethical and ultimately self-serving practice. Could it be possible that instead
of interrogating your own teaching methods and pedagogy to find out where you could have
possibly gone wrong for the entire class to perform so poorly, that you proceeded to choose the
easy way out? I ask you is that the mark of good educational practice? I am sure you are aware
of the recent cheating scandal in Atlanta in which 35 former school officials including the former
Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Halll, have been accused of inflating student test scores
in order to continue to get funding and lavish cash bonuses. Minus a few technicalities and the
fact that I don’t believe you are getting any special funding, how is his practice of curving our
grades so drastically any different from what has happened in Atlanta. Per my desire to become
a different kind of educator once I enter the teaching profession, I read a lot about critical
pedagogy, constructivism, and postformal educational psychology. I want to share with you a
passage from the book, Students as Researchers : Creating Classrooms That Matter. by the
architect of postformal educational psychology, Joe Kincheloe.
“Viewing cognition as a process of knowledge production presages profound changes in
education. Teachers who frame cognition in this way see their role as creators of situations
where student experiences could intersect with information gleaned from various bodies of
information. In contrast, if knowledge is viewed as simply an external body of information
independent of human beings, then the role of the teacher is to take this knowledge and insert it
into the minds of students. Evaluation procedures that emphasize retention of isolated bits and
pieces of data are intimately tied to this view of knowledge. Conceptual thinking is discouraged,
as schooling trivializes learning. Students are evaluated on the lowest level of human thinking—
the ability to memorize, the ability to follow directions. Thus, unless students are moved to
become knowledge producers who connect such information with their own lives, schooling will
remain merely an unengaging rite of passage into adulthood.”
This is the problem with the traditional lecture style pedagogy that nearly all teachers at this
school, including you, employ. But it is especially prevalent in the biology department. Its
amazing to me that educators are so willing to ignore, in their teaching methods, the
psychological underpinnings for how human beings actually learn and construct
knowledge. These classes should not be about covering the greatest amount of information in
the shortest amount of time. It should not be about students memorizing and spitting back
seemingly disconnected bits of information. That’s not learning , and all of that information is
inevitably forgotten. What value does this form of pedagogy have to the learner? Sure, it’s the
easiest way for a professor to go about the business of teaching, if you want to even call it
“teaching” because in the words of Brazillian educator and critical pedagogy theorist Paulo
Freire “There is no teaching without learning.” but doing things the easy way should never be
the motivation here. I don’t mean any disrespect or malice. But as a student, I think I should be
concerned with the quality and rigor of my and my fellow student’s education.

I expressed these concerns to the Chair of the Biology Department, and asked why pedagogies
never seem to change. I think students have been conditioned throughout their school careers to
think that this is what education is and what it will always be, and that is why they never raise
concerns. They are not aware that education could be so much more than it is right now, and
actually be emancipatory, critical, joyous, and rigorous at the same time. They are not aware
that we should be fighting for it, and as long as they are not aware nothing will ever change. A
lot of that lack of awareness rests with the type of pedagogy that you employ. I am only aware
because I had one great Philosophy of education teacher back in junior year who opened my
eyes to the theoretical underpinnings behind my frustration with school. Now I devour as much
educational philosophy and theory as I possibly can in the hopes of being a better educator once
I enter the teaching workforce. Without him, I would be lost right now. The Chair of the Biology
Department told me that changing pedagogies is a very slow process. If that is indeed true, what
are the forces holding you back?

Yesterday Dr. James and I met to discuss my concerns. He appreciated the strong and passionate
tone and subject of my correspondence and the conversation was cordial, respectful, and
candid. That being said, I left our meeting feeling overwhelmingly despondent and defeated. On
the subject of curving, he admitted that he was very uncomfortable adding 29 points to all of our
scores, and agreed that treating a class merely as a marketplace for grades does great harm to the
learning process. I was even surprised to hear from him that some students, though not in our
class, had expressed their desire to learn the material without curving. Nonetheless, curving is
just a mere symptom of the more systemic problem here which is the dominance of traditional
lecture-style pedagogy coupled with the proliferation of multiple-choice style testing
regimes. On these two matters, it was quite a bit more difficult for the two of us to reach any
sort of consensus. I got the feeling that even though Dr. James wanted to employ varying
assessment strategies and teaching pedagogies to get students more engaged in the material, he
just did not know how to go about doing this. Of course he did not say this overtly, but once he
told me what I would call his ” inadequate and instant gratification solution” to the problem, I
knew that there was no possibility of this professor thinking outside the box to improve his
teaching practice. His great solution was to assign us more word problems from the end of each
chapter. Need I even explain the inadequacy of this “quick fix”? Obviously, to commit to a
change to changing one’s pedagogy takes quite a bit of effort and foresight and I do not expect
our class to really change in any substantial way this semester, but knowing what I know about
why student’s hate this class and more generally the dominance of lecture-style teaching in the
biology department at Felician College, it doesn’t help anyone to only be concerned about my
own education. I am genuinely concerned for the future. As the department chair said when I
first voiced my concerns to him, Whether or not he changes his grading and testing policies at
this point in the semester, I cannot say. However, your input will probably help to change that in
future semesters.” Coming out of our meeting, I seriously doubt that and here’s why.

Just like most university professors, Dr. James holds an advanced degree in his field which
happens to be genetics. As all seasoned college students know, that expertise does not
automatically translate to sound teaching practice. Teaching is an art, and it requires not just
knowledge about one’s subject area but also knowledge about teaching. Our higher education
system should require prospective college professors to go through the same formal teacher
training and obtain teaching certificates just as elementary and high school teacher
candidates. Right now, most states require high school teachers without a master’s degree
(MAT) to earn one after certification. This requirement should also be extended to university
professors. I am not entirely sure why, but the role of the college professor as a mere lecturer
has absolutely taken over the American university culture. Its the only role that most of our
professors expect themselves to fill, and consequently it’s what most of us students expect of our
professors. Dr. James sees himself primarily as a lecturer, and consequently he finds it very
difficult to imagine himself being anything more than that. That needs to change. “Teacher” and
“lecturer” are not synonyms and never will be.

Now I recognize that just because Dr. James would be required to earn a masters degree in
teaching and obtain a professional certificate in order to become a college professor, that does
not automatically mean he would cease to be a lecturer. Teacher education programs in America
tend to emphasize methods over theory in the classes that they offer. The course content of the
teacher education program at Felician College exemplifies this problem perfectly. One
philosophy of education course is all that is required for students to get their Bachelors in
Education. The rest are methods courses ranging from “Secondary School Science
Methodologies” to “Secondary Social Studies With Field Component” to “Reading in the
Content Area”. Now I am not saying that these methods courses are unimportant and indeed
they are necessary to have in the course sequence. What I am saying is that more often than not,
their course objectives fail to stress the relationship between theory and facts, consequently
falling into the behaviorist trap of ignoring questions of educational ends and goals. These
questions include, “My students are doing well, but what is the value of what they are doing?”
“Why is this knowledge being learned?” or, “Why is this particular pedagogy being used to
transmit information in the classroom?” “Why this assessment?” even “Why are we doing what
we are doing?” As college students mired in the oppression of traditional lecture-style pedagogy
and multiple choice testing regimes, we ask these questions seemingly everyday to ourselves, to
our classmates, and hopefully to our professors as well. The problem lies in the fact that, in
these methods courses, prospective educators are not taught to ask these questions of their own
practice. In other words, theory would allow Dr. James to understand how the way in which he
defines knowledge informs his practice and ultimately hurts his students. Dr. James believes that
knowledge is a series of fragmented and isolated facts and processes privileged by the teacher
and transmitted to the students by way of their passive listening, what Paulo Friere calls the
“Banking” system of education,

[Under the banking system, the teachers views his purpose] as to fill the students with the
contents of his narration–contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the
totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their
concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and alienating verbosity.] (“Pedagogy of the
Oppressed”)

Now, as a student I want you to compare your experience of the two and half hour college
lecture, to Friere’s bleak and rather uninspiring description of the “Banking” system. You are
the object. Your professor is the subject. He acts on you, sharing his stores and stores of
disparate facts, definitions, theories, laws, and processes while you sit in quiet and unassuming
submission trying desperately to copy down every little thing you think you’ll need to know for
the next test. Perhaps he’s using a powerpoint or smartboard technology, perhaps he just talks,
or perhaps he makes use of the chalkboard. But these are relatively trivial matters compared to
what a real change in pedagogy would mean for the learning process. Switching back and forth
between any of these modes of information transmission won’t make the class any more
engaging, any more purposeful, and more empowering and emancipatory. The point is you can
not wait to get out of there, and even though the reasons why aren’t clear to your professor, they
remain obvious to you. Your voice is silenced. Your subjectivity and individuality is ignored
and rendered irrelevant to the learning process, despite the fact that it can never be so. Words
and ideas are disconnected from their larger societal implications. Any capacity for critical
thinking and the potential for knowledge to be liberating, emancipatory, and empowering is
squashed under a regime of rote memorization and recall. Superficial learning is the name of the
game. Knowledge goes about as far as filling in A, B, C, D, or E on a Scantron sheet. The life
cycle or more appropriately what I would call the death cycle of a trash can is the perfect
metaphor for how you feel. Knowledge gets tossed in, stays a while until the next exam, gets
emptied out, and the process just repeats itself over and over and over again. What is the
solution to making college professors realize the blatant inadequacy of what Henry Giroux calls
this “learn more and suffer” approach to education. Michael Apple, Professor of Education at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, makes his case that,
[Prospective educators need to be taught to] examine critically not just “how a student acquires
more knowledge” (the dominant question in our efficiency minded field) but “why and how
particular aspects of the collective culture are presented in school as objective, factual
knowledge.” How, concretely, may official knowledge represent ideological configurations of
the dominant interests in a society? How do schools legitimate these limited and partial
standards of knowing as unquestioned truths? These questions must be asked of at least three
areas of school life: (1) how the basic day-to-day regularities contribute to students learning
these ideologies; (2) how the specific forms of curricular knowledge reflect these configurations;
and (3) how these ideologies are reflected in the fundamental perspectives educators themselves
employ to order, guide, and give meaning to their own activity. (as cited in Giroux, 1988, p. 46)

I want to take the groundwork that Apple lays out here for critically analyzing the knowledge
presented in a classroom and use it to examine the knowledge presented in Dr. James genetics
course. First, Apple refers to how the “basic day-to-day regularities” of the classroom, otherwise
known as the hidden curriculum contributes to students learning certain “unstated norms, values,
and beliefs. Within the parameters of Dr. James traditional lecture style, “banking” approach to
teaching and learning, the hidden curriculum works its magic in rather insidious ways. Dr.
James uses a lot of images, diagrams, and concept maps from the textbook in his
teaching. Often, rather than making eye contact with his class, he lectures while continually
staring at these diagrams. Incredibly enough, he will sometimes teach for long periods of time
with his back facing us making it seem like he is talking more to himself than to us. One often
gets the sense that he is unprepared for a lesson before he enters class, because, he is constantly
trying to negotiate the meaning of these diagrams in the classroom. For example, he will be
looking at a diagram and then suddenly say, “This looks wrong” and then stare at it for five or
ten minutes trying to figure what he thinks is wrong. I recall one instance where he spent more
than half the class period doing this while we all sat in stone cold silence. At times he will even
try to enlist our help in trying to understand what he is supposed to be teaching us. Now there
would be no problem with this if it was done within the context of a democratic classroom where
student voice actually matters and affective learning was taking place, but in this instance it just
seems like he was using us to bail him out of an embarrassing situation. Now what I have
described so far, represent specific Dr. James hidden curriculum, but notice I didn’t even
mention the aspects of the hidden curriculum which are present in every classroom where the
professor employs traditional “banking” lecture-style pedagogy. These aspects include the
foward-facing seating arrangement, the non-stop one-sided lecture, and the widespread use of
multiple choice assessments. All of these characteristics and practices of the traditional hidden
curriculum not only derive from certain unspoken assumptions about how students learn but also
serve to cultivate certain “unstated, norms, values, and beliefs” within students that define the
lens through which they view the institution of schooling and its relation to their lives. Brazilian
educational theorist, Paulo Friere, in his most famous work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,states
the “unstated”,
 the teacher teaches and the students are taught;

 the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;

 the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;

 the teacher talks and the students listen — meekly;

 the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;

 the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
  the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the
teacher;

 the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt
to it;

 the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority,
which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;

 the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.
(“Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

I want to comment on Dr. James 29 point curve in the context of Friere’s seventh bullet point,
“The teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the
teacher.” In my email to him, I acknowledged that there was probably not one other student in
the class who cared one iota about the negative implications of the curve as I did. That is
because the overwhelming majority of students, especially in college, now treat school solely as
a marketplace for grades. I can’t tell you how much I tire of hearing my fellow students
constantly badgering their professors about “Whats going to be on the test?” “What format is the
test?” “Are you going to send out a study guide?” “Do you give out extra credit assignments?”
“Will we have numerous chances to boost our grade?” “If I do bad on the tests will I still be able
to pass if I perform well on my quizzes and lab reports?” What annoys me the most is when
students start asking me these same questions about professors I’ve taken before. I usually
respond by asking whether the difficulty level of the professor is the only thing they really care
about. Invariably they respond in the affirmative, and then I either politely decline to answer
their questions or feign memory loss regarding the professor in question. Some self-righteous
conservative pundits who graduated from university a long time ago (or perhaps didn’t) will
blame this obsession with grading on lazy students who possess a toxic “ends justify the means”
attitude toward schooling. It is this same myopic, naive, and ignorant attitude that lays the blame
for school wide cheating scandals on individual students and administrators with no moral
compass. For various reasons which I prefer not to focus on in this post, America possesses this
long and nasty tradition of blaming systematic societal and institutional problems on individual
shortcomings. Henry Giroux terms this insidious phenomenon, “the politics of disposability”
because the negative consequences of such an attitude towards society’s problems are endured
primarily by marginalized populations viewed as disposable by the wealthy and politically
powerful people of this nation. I want to argue that college students represent one of these
forgotten and abandoned populations suffering under the thumb of this market-based notion of
schooling where nothing matters except what’s good for your GPA. Grades, far from being used
as an effective measure of assessment (I would argue that it’s impossible for them to perform this
function adequately anyway), have metastasized into a currency by which students and their
professors arbitrarily negotiate over which knowledge is important and which isn’t. Knowledge
(Not talking about disconnected facts and ideas here) has become a means to an end rather than
an end in itself. But these are not even the worst aspects of a college culture obsessed with
grading. Recall that, in my email to Dr. James, I cited the American obsession with multiple
choice style testing regimes as one of the wellsprings of our obsession with grading. In order to
illustrate the truly oppressive nature of this practice I would go one step further and argue that
here America’s narrow conception of educational achievement acts through the teacher and then
acts through the student to produce this poisonous pedagogy which relegates students to the role
of passive information receptacles obsessed with testing and grading policy. And what is the
easiest way to assess whether or not a student has become the best superficial learner he or she
can possibly aspire to be? That would be using multiple choice, fill in the blank, and matching
test formats. So to put it in Friere’s terms, it is not only the student who has the illusion of acting
through the action of the teacher but also the teacher who has the illusion of acting through the
action of the larger society. These fanciful illusions represent the ways in which both teacher
and student have become marginalized and disposable in America. Knowledge has become
commodified under the dominance of traditional lecture-style pedagogy and and has
consequently lost its emancipatory and liberating power, and hearkening back to my original
point it is Dr. James inability to critically analyze his own practice within this larger theoretical
context, as a result of never having gone through a teacher education program which emphasizes
the connection between methods and the theory which informs those methods, that basically
rendered him unable to respond to my concerns in a substantial and meaningful way.

Sick and Tired of Your College Professor Lecturing at you everyday? Postformal
Psychology May Just Be the Answer To Your Woes

Today I gave a presentation on postformal psychology and critical thinking for my educational
psychology course. It was a long presentation, nearly 30 minutes, but even though the
recommended time was 10-15 min, I didn’t make it so long for the grade. As you can expect ,
most of the people in the class are prospective teachers and I felt that it was critically important
to get the message of postformal psychology out there to get us teacher ed. students to really
think about how our own educational experiences will influence our future practice. Postformal
psychology is obviously much more extensive that what I present here, and I encourage all to go
out and do further research on this amazing and awe-inspiring topic.
This is the script I used for my presentation. Since it is nearly 3,000 words long, I am going to
share it with you in three separate blog posts.

If you’ve never watched the movie Freedom Writers starring Hilary Swank or read the book, The
Freedom Writers Diary, which the film is based on, I kindly suggest you do at least one of the
two to understand this presentation in context.
Knowledge is power. A well-known phrase with the well-known implication that with
knowledge and education your potential and abilities in life will increase dramatically. Now
when I say potential, I’m not talking about money-making potential. In this scenario, we are
talking about a far greater power. Power means something different, whose definition you will
gradually come to understand as we go through this presentation. Now school is the institution
where you supposedly “acquire” knowledge….its the place society has designated as the
knowledge imparter, giver, transmitter, bestower….whatever you wanna call it. Now if
knowledge is power and the school is the place where you “acquire” knowledge then it follows
logically that school should be the place where the students, you and me….feel most
powerful. Now I want you to think for a moment…think about the totality of your high school
and college experience, your long careers as students. How many times have you strolled out of
a classroom at the end of an hour and fifteen turned to your friend and said, “Man that class was
so…empowering. Dude I can’t believe it, knowledge really is power.” Just as I suspected, none
of you have ever had this feeling of being empowered by the knowledge you learn in
school. With just one or two exceptions I can’t say that I have either. Honestly, how can we
exercise power if we’re never given the opportunity to say a word, if we’re constantly given the
impression that our opinions, our experiences don’t matter, if the only knowledge that matters is
that which is held and privileged by our professors who lecture endlessly, droning on and on
while we mindlessly copy down every little bit and detail we think we’ll need to know for some
mid-term or final, or maybe not, maybe you aren’t writing any notes, perhaps you’re just sitting
there like I do most days staring at the clock, twiddling your thumbs, reading a book or playing
with your I-Phone, with the knowledge that everything your professor is saying is right there in
the textbook and that going to class is just something you do just because…well because you
have to. In either circumstance, it is fair to say that knowledge does not equal power, at least not
under the current regime of traditional lecture-style teaching that dominates nearly all of our
classes.
Our voices are silenced, our subjectivity, our individuality is ignored and rendered irrelevant,
any capacity for critical thinking and the potential for knowledge to be liberating, emancipatory,
and empowering is squashed under a regime of rote memorization and recall, superficial learning
is the name of the game…as this photo so perfectly illustrates knowledge goes about as far as
filling in A,B,C, or D on a scantron. After that, who the heck cares what social learning theory
is? Who the heck cares how a bacteria infects a virus? Who the heck cares about the history of
Communism or Capitalism? It was a great philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, who once said
“A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth. Scraps of information”
are worth something only if they are put to use, or at least “thrown into fresh
combinations.” And yet I ask you what is school mostly about? Its about you the student, the
trash can, and let’s call me the professor doing this…(throw crumpled paper in trash
can). There, there’s your scrap of information…now go try and pass my test. The life cycle of a
trash can is the perfect metaphor for what traditional lecture style teaching does to
us. Knowledge goes in…stays a while…knowledge gets emptied out….new knowledge goes
in…stays a while…new knowledge gets emptied out and the process just goes on and on and
on…..until….until what…? A critical mass of people have the courage to stand up and say this
process does not constitute affective teaching and this way of teaching does a huge disservice to
our students from elementary school all the way to college and we should stop this….this
unbelievable madness. I honestly do not know when that moment of mass realization will come,
but hopefully with this presentation I will leave all of you with some ideas about why this
madness needs to stop and how it can be stopped.

Postformal Psychology Continued

This blog post is a continuation of my last post entitled “Sick and Tired of Your College
Professor Lecturing At You Everyday? Postformal Psychology May Just Be The Answer To
Your Woes.”
We begin with the psychological theory that, if implemented, promises to take all levels of our
educational system far beyond their current boundaries. Postformal educational psychology begins
with the fundamental premise that the definition of intelligence needs to be democratized. What does
this mean? It means that we have to stop thinking of intelligence as something that is fixed and
innate, immovable and inborn-in other words one size fits all and if you don’t fit than too bad for
you. We have to remove ourselves from this fatalistic mode of thinking which dictates that some
kids just can’t learn and are doomed to fail in school no matter what. As prospective teachers, we
have to avoid saying “I did all I can, and now I just can’t do anymore.” We must not only willing be
but able to critically interrogate our own teaching practice, to constantly be rethinking and altering
our own pedagogies with respect to the needs of our students, and resist falling into the trap of
labeling some of our students as less than intelligent. To say that intelligence needs to be
democratized is to say that no one is less than intelligent and that intelligence is indeed learnable.
If you think this an overly idealistic notion consider this, do you think that Hillary Swank
in Freedom Writers would have been able to connect with her students via lectures, worksheets, and
didactic instruction . Absolutely not!! They would have tuned her out in second. But does that
mean we automatically label them as stupid and unable to learn like these two were so quick to
do? Again, absolutely not!! In fact, the success of Hilary Swank’s unorthodox teaching methods
leads us to the first key aspect of the mission to democratize intelligence. That is the necessity for
the teacher to appreciate that all knowledge is contextualized. What does this mean? It means that
knowledge can never stand alone. Knowledge becomes meaningless as long as it is abstracted from
the context in which it was formed. Recall one of the early scenes in the movie in which Hilary
Swank is trying to teach her students grammar and Eva responds by saying “You got us in here
teaching us this grammar shit, and then we gotta go out there and what are you telling me about that,
huh? What are you doing in here that makes a god damn difference to my life?” Post-formal
teachers recognize the necessity of connecting their student’s lived experience to the content at hand
which is exactly what Hilary Swank learned that she had to do. If she didn’t understand that all
knowledge is contextualized, she would have chosen Shakespeare as the class reading material. She
wouldn’t have been able to recognize and subsequently take advantage of the connection between the
troubled lives of her students and the horrors of the Holocaust. If she was a social studies teacher,
she would have taught the Holocaust as a fixed body of knowledge…facts, dates, people, events and
place for her students to memorize and spit back to her on a multiple-choice test.

If teaching for democracy is going to be your goal, then teaching and assessing for pure
memorization just will not cut it. In order for a democracy to work properly the citizenry must be
active and informed, able to analyze and think through important issues and then fight for what they
believe is right and just, as opposed to just taking for granted what is usually spin and insidious
propaganda coming out of the dominant cultural institutions of power. A democracy without an
informed citizenry, without knowledge of social justice and the courage to stand up to injustice,
leaves its people open to exploitation by the rich, powerful, and purposefully ignorant who only seek
to advance their own self-interest at the expense of the rest of us. Historical Analysis is also very
important. Using the past to analyze the present and potential future is an important part of this
educative process. Students become historical researchers and researchers of themselves as they
recognize how their lives are lived and their subjectivities are formed within various sociohistorical
and sociocultural contexts. They are able to consider new ways of thinking, new ways of analyzing
the world and their place in it. Most importantly, students gain that sense of critical agency which
allows them to resist oppression and imagine betters ways of life for themselves and their fellow
citizens.

This type of critical thinking cannot take place unless the teacher understands that he or she is
a“mediator” of knowledge not a “giver”, Swank provides her students with the tools necessary to
construct their own knowledge and feel empowered both inside and outside the classroom. In the
words of great Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, “Within this problem-posing
method, the students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with
the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers
her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the problem-posing educator
is to create, together with the students, the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa
is superseded by true knowledge at the level of the logos.” Now what do these two words
mean? Freire’s explanation of the difference between “doxa” knowledge and “logos” knowledge
leads perfectly into an explanation of the second and third key features of democratizing intelligence,
those are Etymology and Pattern.

Postformal Psychology and Critical

Thinking: The Finale
This is the third and final installment of my series of blog posts on postformal psychology and
critical thinking. The first one was entitled “Sick and Tired of Your College Professor
Lecturing at you everyday? Postformal Psychology May Just Be the Answer To
Your Woes.” The second one was very plainly entitled “Postformal Psychology Continued.”
Etymology refers to the origin of culturally validated knowledge. Where does it come from? How is
it formed? How does it come to be commonly accepted as truth? In the beginning of the movie, Eva
has a tense exchange with Hilary Swank in which she reveals her deep hatred for white people. She
says, “It’s all about color. It’s about people deciding what you deserve, about people wanting what
they don’t deserve, about whites thinking they run this world no matter what. You see I hate white
people. I saw white cops shoot my friend in the back for reaching into his pocket. I saw white cops
break into my house and arrest my father for no reason except because they feel like it, except
because they can….and they can because they’re white. So I hate white people on sight.” Believe it
or not, what Eva says in this quote is knowledge. It is knowledge that is validated by her culture,
knowledge that she herself has constructed and internalized based on her lived experience dealing
with white people. It is knowledge at the level of the doxa. But if Hilary Swank were to dismiss this
knowledge, to devalue it, to not recognize its significance would be amazingly irresponsible and I
argue destructive. In others words, it is radically important for teachers, in dialogue with their
students, to dissect and critically analyze the etymology of culturally approved knowledge. Joe
Kincheloe, architect of post-formal educational psychology, explains that “Without an awareness and
understanding of etymology, women and men are incapable of understanding why they hold
particular opinions or specific values. Without such appreciations, the ability for reflection and
analysis is seriously undermined.” Hilary Swank provides a learning environment in which this
critical reflection and analysis can take place, where etymology becomes a subject of learning and a
key aspect of how her students grow from the beginning to the end of the movie. In the words of
Paulo Freire, we see her “create the conditions under which knowledge at the level of the doxa is
superseded by knowledge at the level of the logos.”
All this talk of reflection and critical analysis of knowledge brings us to the third key aspect of
postformal psychology, that is pattern. Pattern refers to the understanding of the, often hidden,
connecting patterns and relationships that sustain our lived experience. Getting off the subject of
Freedom Writers for just a moment, I want to frame the concept of “Pattern” in respect to the Boston
Bombings. On April 23, just a week after the bombings took place, American-educated Yemeni
Youth activist, Farea al-Muslimi, testified at the first public congressional hearing on President
Obama’s secret drone war and targeted killing program. In his testimony, al-Muslimi provides a
moving first-hand account of the untold suffering that this secret war has caused not only in his
village but across the entire country. Five people were killed in his home village of Wessab by a
U.S. drone strike just a week before his testimony. But the story of his villages suffering does not
even begin to scrape the surface of how U.S. drone strikes have affected Yemen’s people. To
paraphrase Mr. Al-Muslimi, “it is more than just numbers, its more than just how many people died,
who was a civilian and who was a terrorist. These drone strikes are making people angry, and they
are becoming America’s only face in Yemen. For every unverified enemy that America is killing, it
makes many more new enemies.” Jeremy Scahill, National Security Correspondent for the Nation
magazine and author of a newly published book detailing the Obama administration’s use of drones
in the War on Terror, explains that the U.S. does not actually have any intelligence on the ground in
Yemen. America is conducting these pre-emptive strikes on people who “fit some kind of pattern of
other people we believe to be terrorists. Our government does not know the identities of the people
we are killing. We don’t know whether they are involved in terrorist activity, and yet the
government is targeting them for who they may be or who they might become.” For anyone who
may claim, that America’s War on Terror is as simple as the good guys against the bad guys, as
simple as “the Tsarnaev brothers hate our freedom, hate our American exceptionalism they hate our
way of life and that’s why they murdered three people and wounded 170 others, remember
Pattern. We feel empathy and sympathy for the victims of these bombings and their families and I
am not arguing that we shouldn’t but remember these types of events happen everyday in Iraq, they
happen everyday in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen. Here in America, we are very adept at
blaming individuals and individual groups for society’s systemic problems. Poor people are
lazy. Muslims hate freedom. Public school teachers are greedy union thugs. Labor Unions are
hurting our economy. To reduce the complexity of life, to these simple phrases, I argue, is the
biggest crime of all, because it serves to fragment knowledge into little bits and pieces when it is
clear, that in order to solve the problems of the world, we must comprehend the systems as a
whole. If we honestly think that the problem of Islamic extremism can be eradicated by dropping
indiscriminate bombs on people who may or may not be terrorists, well then I guess it’s not very hard
to conclude that the problem of Islamic terror will never be solved.

This leads us to the fourth and final aspect of postformal psychology, what it means for teachers and
students to process knowledge. To put this concept in terms of what it is not,“processing” does NOT
mean memorization and therefore it does Not mean teaching for memorization. Joe Kincheloe,
architect of post-formal educational psychology, defines “processing” as “the cultivation of new
ways of reading and researching the world that attempt to make sense of both ourselves and
contemporary society”. He says further that the post-formal thinking process “attempts to break the
mold, to rethink thinking in a way that repositions men and women as active producers, not passive
receivers of knowledge”. Like I said before, Hilary Swank doesn’t just have her class read the Diary
of Anne Frank for the sake of reading the Diary of Anne Frank. Nor do I remember her ever testing
students on their ability to recall the plot, symbols, themes, and various other literary devices of the
book, which is what you typically do in a high school English class. Instead, her choice of the Diary
of Anne Frank as literature for the class derived directly from her research of her students, research
which she obtained by having them keep reflective journals in which to document and interpret their
experiences outside of class, research which she obtained by having her students engage in
transformative in-class and out of class learning experiences such as paying tribute to friends who
were victims of gang violence by speaking their names and raising enough funds to bring Miep Giles,
the woman who sheltered Anne Frank from the Nazis, to their school as a guest speaker. By
researching the tumultuous lives of her students, she was able to choose content that challenged them
to re-interpret and reformulate the progression of their own lives based on new perspectives about
hatred, group loyalty, gang violence, bigotry, and race relations

The End Results: Eva rethinks her plan to lie during her testimony, and, at great personal risk, tells
the truth about her boyfriend accidentally shooting Sindy’s boyfriend to death. Towards the end of
the movie you see the two become friends. Marcus, who had previously been cycling in and out of
Juvenile Hall after witnessing his friend accidentally shoot himself to death, goes back to live with
his mother. Each student’s life is transformed in remarkable ways. Thus by researching the day-to-
day reality of her student’s existence Swank was able to formulate a curriculum that afforded her
class the opportunity to perform critical research into their own lives and ultimately lend true
credence to the phrase “Knowledge is power”.

Critical Thinking vs. Memorization

This is the first in a series of blog posts in which I will tell you about my experience taking an
educational assessment techniques course completely dictated and dominated by a Pearson textbook
curriculum. Throughout the course, I engaged in a series of email correspondences with my
professor, in a passionately desperate (or desperately passionate…whichever way you prefer to see
it) attempt to escape the confines of classroom discussion which centered around inane technical
questions of “How to administer a test” or “Why a True/False exam should have a balanced number
of True/False answers” or “Why multiple choice test answer choices should avoid unintentional clues
so that students will not be able to answer correctly without actually knowing the knowledge or skill
being tested”……as if that’s the only reason a multiple choice test could be an inaccurate assessment
tool….give me a break.
I wrote this e-mail in response to one of our rare intellectually stimulating discussions in which the
class discussed the value of teaching and assessing for memorization vs. teaching and assessing for
critical thinking. Admittedly, the only reason it turned out to be intellectually stimulating was
because we finally managed to get off the Pearson curriculum for a while, but nonetheless the
direction this conversation took still troubled me because, in my opinion, it demonstrated the
shortcomings of the teacher education program at Felician College in regards to challenging its
students to question American educational orthodoxy.

Now I will let the e-mail speak for itself, and I would love your opinions on what I wrote to my
professor,

Dear Dr. Anonymous:

I apologize for the long e-mail. I feel very passionately about our discussion in class today, and I
wanted to continue it outside its confines. Inevitably in a class that is pressed for time , in the
process of trying to defend my positions, I was unable to say everthing I wanted to say. Its just that
certain aspects of the curriculum of this class really make me worried for the direction in which our
educational system is headed, and I need to express those concerns as well as further elaborate on
some of the positions I took in class today. I very much appreciate this discussion.
Memorization is not a skill comparable with critical thinking. Critical thinking is a learned skill, and
currently our educational system is not doing enough to teach and assess it. Contrary to what John
(my fellow classmate) said today, I do not see how memorization is a learned skill. School does not
develop the capacity for memorization. It’s already built into our brains. We are all capable of
memorization once our brains become mature enough. What’s the difference between memorizing a
shopping list and memorizing the causes and effects of the American Civil War in a history class or
the four basic principles of social learning theory in a social psychology class? Our educational
system can test memorization as much as it wants, but that doesn’t mean its learned and that
certainly does not mean its worth testing. In addition, you can also fashion a more complex multiple
choice question to test whether a student is able to remember the causes and effects of the Civil
War. That is still memorization. Your teacher can connect a series of concepts together in his
lecture and then ask you to regurgitate it in a short answer question on a test. That is still pure
memorization. There’s no critical thinking involved in that. It may not be “Columbus sailed the
ocean blue in what year”, but it is still simple recall. Whether you go to school or not, you are
capable of memorizing information, whatever kind of learner you are, just by the virtue of having a
mature, functioning brain. Someones reads a book or watches a t.v. show and then tells someone the
plot, that’s memorization. Why is it so important to test that by itself? Memorization is not a
worthwhile end in itself. Neither is critical thinking an end, but it is certainly a worthwhile
component for educating our youth to participate in a democracy, to analyze assumptions and
problematize theories, to challenging existing balances of power, and work for social justice and the
common good, to exercise power and agency. Memorization serves none of those purposes, but
unfortunately traditional, instrumentalized, lecture style pedagogies indoctrinate our students to
become superfical learners and nothing more, always caring more about the grade than about real,
authentic learning. This is about more than just changing a matching question into a multiple-choice
question.

Of course, my disagreement with testing for memorization and ability to regurgitate given bodies of
knowledge does not in any way presuppose the devaluation of content. Of course content is very
important, or else you have nothing to problematize and critically think about. But we have made
memorizing content an end in itself and for what justifiable purpose? This is exactly why I disagree
with the notion of separating a methods class, which our class is, from the theory that inevitably
informs those methods. Yes we do have discussions about the methods presented in the Pearson
textbook, but we never problematize them based on the theory that informs them. We only discuss
these methods within the confines that Pearson has set forth for discussing them…whether a test has
validity or not…whether a test has reliability…why a test should have a balanced number of answers
to true/false questions etc. Unbelievably, we never problematize the fact that this is exactly the trap
that a standardized testing company like Pearson wants us to fall into. The testing regime is blindly
accepted, just so they can continue to make more and more money and maintain undue influence
upon our educational system. They operate on the basic language of profit. There’s no concern with
student learning or ability to critically think and become constructors of knowledge and active
interveners in society. If students were actually able to realize how absurd these standardized testing
regimes are and consequently refuse to take them, that would spell the death of these companies. So
in a way, the notion of critical thinking and the ability for students to exercise agency and power
actually works against the interests of a company like Pearson. Of course, there are separate
movements across the country consisting of students, parents, and teachers who refuse to kowtow to
a company like Pearson, but so far the resistance is very scattered. Pearson sees America’s
obsession with testing and responds by creating a massive market of testing materials, test prep
centers, and textbooks that promote the supposedly virtuous ideology of curriculum
instrumentalization. Its the corporatization of American public education at its finest. How can we
justify instrumentalizing and dumbing down curriculums all over this nation just to benefit
companies like Pearson when we see the positive results from curriculums which emphasize
creativity and critical thinking such as at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and Bronx
High School of Science?

Consider this passage from Students as Researchers: Creating Classrooms that Matter, by the
architect of post-formal educational psychology, Joe Kincheloe,
The Role of Student Research in Mainstream Schooling

“There is no doubt that the easiest way to teach is for teachers to give students answers to questions
contrived by experts far away from the classroom. Still, at the turn of the twenty-first century this
easy form of teaching still dominates schools —public and private. Such teaching fits seamlessly into
the dominant epistemology of western science that has fragmented the world to the point that many
people are blinded to particular forms of human experience. This fragmentation is the antithesis of
our critical notion of student research, as it weakens our ability to see the relationships between our
actions and the world. Contemporary schools still emphasize quantities, distance, and locations, not
qualities, relationships, or context. These epistemologically guided assumptions about the
fragmented nature of knowledge are deeply embedded in various aspects of school life. The exams
typically given in North American schools, for example, prepare students to think in terms of linear
causality and quantification—the foundation of a scientific modernist epistemology. Such ways of
thinking squash efforts to develop a research-oriented curriculum, hidden assumptions in school
conventions and everyday life. Though it takes place in the name of scientific neutrality, such
teaching promotes a specific ideology, a specific way of looking at knowledge and the world. The
epistemology, the way of knowing that underlies mainstream practice is an arrogant point of view.
Condescending toward other ways of knowing, mainstream educational apologists contend that
students come to school to learn the true nature of reality, a body of knowledge that has been
neutrally gathered by objective scientists. Such a perspective is antithetical to our notion of students
as researchers.”

Even though this entire passage is relevant, I want to focus particularly on this sentence in the
context of our discussion today, “The exams typically given in North American schools, for example,
prepare students to think in terms of linear causality and quantification—the foundation of a
scientific modernist epistemology.” This is what I meant when I said that designing a more lengthy
and seemingly more difficult multiple choice question still does not constitute an assessment of
critical thinking ability. Just because a student is able to remember the supposedly linear causality
of the American Civil War that a teacher taught to him as a fixed body of knowledge and reproduce it
on a multiple choice question, does not mean that student can critically think and problematize
knowledge. Again it’s the same problem of treating the student like he or she is a passive trash can,
as opposed to an active producer of knowledge Since history is constantly written and re-written by
people with different perspectives on the same event, it is important that students are taught to
problematize popular accounts of history and analyze them for their purposeful inaccuracies, biases
towards and against certain groups of people, and hidden agendas. You can not possibly assess this
kind of higher-order thinking with a multiple choice question because it involves the student being
able and willing to construct his or her own knowledge. That is what we do. No matter what, we
construct knowledge based on our experiences. Human beings do not passively absorb bodies of
knowledge, and yet our educational system treats us like that’s all we are good for. Consider your
class. I have constructed my own view of the material you put forth based on my own oppressive and
repressive school experiences as well as the educational psychology and philosophy in which I have
been immersing myself for the past two years. In theory, I have not passively absorbed what you
wanted me to passively absorb. I can still do relatively well on your tests, but does that really tell
you what I am really learning from your class? I have taken it upon myself to problematize the
material you put forth in class, but that is because I have learned how to be a critical thinker and I
am always learning how to be a better one. That’s far more valuable than memorization.

Politics and Dialogue in Education, Students As Researchers,

And Do Any of Us Have A Right To Our Opinions?
Absolutely Not!! And in one sentence here’s why,
Whenever people use this phrase, it is usually to say that they have a right to have their opinion
considered as truth, even if their argument is logically demonstrated to have serious holes in
it. You see the problem here???
Now I understand the assertion I have made here may irk most people because most tend to get very
defensive when it comes to arguing for the sanctity of their opinions. Nonetheless the forthcoming
explanation of my answer to this question is not meant to satisfy raw emotions. It is an appeal to
logic…nothing more, nothing less.
My critical consideration of this question came to fruition as the result of a discussion with a fellow
blogger about the viability, efficacy, and overall mission of charter schools in the American
educational system. There’s an extensive backstory with plenty of other opinions woven in so I ask
you to please bear with me. He cited what he called the “ideological instransigence” of the public
schools as one of the reasons for why some people support the continued proliferation of charters and
tax-funded vouchers for private and religious schools. According to him, the public school system
shamelessly indoctrinates its students into the ideological dogmas of secular humanism, socialism,
and communism. Just by virtue of it being public, he views the public school system “as a system
aligned with the political religion that the state should provide everything to everyone, not just
regulate the basic interactions between individuals.” Since not every parent believes in this
government-dependent communitarian ideology, he argues that public school officials should not be
surprised that some parent’s opt to enroll their kids in charters and religious schools. Indeed, he goes
so far as to say that, “public school teachers who try to capture the souls of their students for the
religions of environmentalism, global warming, and the like should expect parents to want to take
their kids out of such an environment.” My fellow blogger goes on to say that some parents feel that
Darwin’s theory of evolution should not be taught as dogma in biology class, and that is why they are
justified in supporting tax-funded vouchers “usable at schools which reflect their particular flavor of
religious conviction.”

Now after making all these assertions, John (I will call him John now) goes on to ask the question
“Who has a right to educate one’s child? Oneself, the parent, or does some other entity in the society
have a claim on one’s children’s character and intellect formation? Many here (many meaning the
people who regularly comment on the blog on which were engaging in this discussion) seem to me to
think that they have a legitimate claim on my child’s time and thought.”

From my vantage point, John is asking the wrong question in regards to his previous statements
about the ideological nature of American public education. The question is not who or what entity
has the distinct right to educate America’s children. No one reserves the “Right” to
educate. Education is a right, but certainly there exists no right to educate just as basic medical care
is a right but certainly no one has the right to administer healthcare. Furthermore, John’s argument
seems to suggest that education is only a political act when it has a leftist, socialist, communist,
communitarian flavor. Obviously, this notion could not be farther from the truth. Education is
always going to be a political act. Imagine if we were to fully return to the instrumentalized and
mechanical pedagogies of the back to basics movement, in which the only purpose of education was
to produce students trained to be obedient workers that would passively assimilate into the status quo
of the society they were entering. Imagine if social studies teachers all across the country were
instructed by the state to whitewash the history of America and the world, to present our past as
relatively benign and devoid of conflict, controversy, and suffering. I suppose that if you were an
ideological patriot who believes in the infallibility and general moral excellence of America and
American values, you would view this type of education quite favorably. But to claim that this type
of education is not political is wholly insincere and ignorant. Why should parents be expected to pull
their children out of a learning environment in which global warming is regarded as a major issue
and environmental stewardship is a key aspect of the curriculum, but sit idly by while their kids
experience an education such as the one I just described? Your answer could only be ideologically
driven.

The question we should be asking in regards to the political bend of American education is, “What
should be the purpose of education in a democratic society?

Eric Gould, author of The University in A Corporate Culture, argues that a democratic education
must do three things:
“First it must be an education for democracy, for the greater good of a just society–but it can not
assume that society is, a priori, just. Second, it must argue for its means as well as its ends. It must
derive from the history of ideas, from long-standing democratic values and practices which include
the ability to argue and critique but also to tolerate ambiguity. And third, it must participate in the
democratic social process, displaying not only a moral preference for recognizing the rights of
others and accepting them, too, but for encouraging argument and cultural critique. In short, a
university education is a democratic education because it mediates liberal democracy and the
cultural contradictions of capitalism.” (as cited in Giroux, 2007)

Now here Gould is describing education for democracy at the university level but I believe the same
goal and consequent objectives needs to be applied to our public educational system as well. After
citing Gould’s quote, I began to critique further John’s viewpoint that parents have the distinct right
to pull their children out of a classroom which they find ideologically objectionable. What John is
essentially advocating for is a neoconservative-parent led ideological assault on academic freedom
which would no doubt be a requirement in maintaining a fascist society. Now this kind of assault on
academic freedom has occurred and is even occurring in our society today, but it hasn’t been led by
neo-con parents. Rather it’s been engineered by this massive neo-con/neoliberal ideological machine
that came into fruition back in the 1970’s with Lewis Powell’s, a man who would later become an
Associate Justice of the U.S. Court, authoring of the infamous Powell Memorandum. I will let
Professor Henry Giroux, one of the victim’s of this infamous document’s vicious ideological assault
explain its gist,

“Powell identified the American college campus “as the single most dynamic source” for producing
and housing intellectuals “who are unsympathetic to the free enterprise system.” He was
particularly concerned about the lack of conservatives on social sciences faculties and urged his
supporters to use an appeal to academic freedom as an opportunity to argue for “political balance”
on university campuses. Powell insisted that “the basic concepts of balance, fairness, and truth are
difficult to resist, if properly presented to boards of trustees, by writing and speaking, and by appeals
to alumni associations and groups.” The Powell Memo was designed to develop a broad-based
strategy not only to counter dissent but also to develop a material and ideological infrastructure with
the capability to transform the American public consciousness through a conservative pedagogical
commitment to reproduce the knowledge, values, ideology, and social relations of the corporate
state. For Powell, the war against liberalism and a substantive democracy was primarily a
pedagogical and political struggle designed both to win the hearts and minds of the general public
and to build a power base capable of eliminating those public spaces, spheres, and institutions that
nourish and sustain what Samuel Huntington would later call an “excess of democracy.” (Giroux,
2007)

What has the Powell Memo wrought in the hallowed halls of American academia and beyond?

 Persecution of Leftist Academics as well as foreign students, scholars, and American citizens
critical of U.S. foreign policy during the Bush years (ex. Professor Tariq Ramadan, Professor
John Milios, Professor Waskar Ari, Professor Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, Hamid Dabashi,
George Saliba…among others)
 Proliferation of Right Wing groups such as Campus Watch, ACTA, Target of Opportunity,
and discoverthenetworks.org-their purpose to reveal and shame radical professors who
criticized the Iraq War
 The inspiration and ideological basis for the Heritage Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the
foundations of Richard Mellon Scaife, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Castle Rock
 Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation all associated with Koch Oil Family and
other large corporations
 These foundations financing over 500 neo-conservative/neoliberal think tanks over the last
thirty-six years including the AEI institute, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institute, the
Manhattan Institute, and the David Horowitz’s Center For the Study of Popular Culture
(Giroux, 2007)
How has this network of think tanks served the American people? Again, I will allow Professor
Henry Giroux the floor,

“An ultra-conservative re-education machine—an apparatus for producing and disseminating a

public pedagogy in which everything tainted with the stamp of liberal origin and the word “public”
would be contested and destroyed.” (Giroux, 2007)

Think about the way in which our government operates today. Think about the attack on public
education being waged by both the corporate left and the corporate right. Think about the
demonization of public sector workers. Think about the huge profit margins of large
corporations. Think about the austerity being imposed on the middle and lower classes while the big
banks and financial elite who precipitated the economic meltdown enjoy the benefits of
deregulation, massive bailouts, and the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing. Think about the collapse
of what should be public, systemic concerns into private problems. Think about our growing wealth
inequality, the 1% growing and growing at the expense of the 99%. Think about the perfectly legal
corruption of our political system and ordinary American’s overwhelming feeling of apathy towards
the fact that their dying democracy is rapidly becoming a flourishing plutocracy. Would you say that
these think tanks and the wealthy foundations which fund their operations have largely succeeded in
their ultra-conservative/neoliberal re-education? I certainly would.

So if you want an educational system based on the guidelines set forth by Mr. Powell here, well then
say goodbye to any semblance of democracy and say hello to a corporatized neoliberal fascist
America. Just please stop trying to argue that this type of education is somehow devoid of an
ideology and political agenda relative to an education for democracy which may include in its
science curriculum, units on global warming and environmental stewardship……because that’s just
plainly false.

I proceeded to comment further on the impracticality and irrationality of John’s notion of

allowing parent’s to have ultimate ideological authority over what their children learn in school. I
used Columbia University’s investigation of Professor Joseph Massad to put this issue in
context. Back in 2004, he came under intense politically motivated scrutiny as a result of being
featured in a pro-Israeli film called Columbia Unbecoming, produced by the David Project, an
organization linked to the Israel on Campus Coalition. In the film, an ex-Israeli soldier and
Columbia student, Tony Schoenfeld, contends that Massad answered one of his questions in class by
asking “How many Palestinians have you killed?” Later accusations were made by a second student,
Deena Shanker, that Massad had said in class “If you’re going to deny the atrocities being committed
against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom.” Now under pressure from various pro-
Israeli American media, Columbia brought together a faculty committee to investigate these
allegations as well as others accusing Massad of intimidation, spreading anti-semitism, and
penalizing pro-Israeli students with bad marks. The committee found Massad innocent of these three
charges, however it did lend credibility to Shanker’s accusation even though she provided three
different accounts of the incident to three newspapers and three other students in the class came
forward to say that it did not occur. In addition, it turns out that most of the complaints against
Massad were never lodged formally probably because they originated from students who never
actually took his class. All in all, after the investigation ended, the situation just proceeded to get
uglier and uglier. The right-wing media endlessly lambasted Massad. Pro-Israel students started
attending his classes just for the purposes of stifling intellectual debate. It was documented in the
Columbia faculty committee report that Massad had good reason to think that a fellow faculty
member was surveilling his classes and encouraging his students to provide information on his
lectures as part of an operation to get him fired. The story of this muddied and tarnished academic
even made it onto the New York political scene when Congressman Anthony Weiner publicly called
upon Columbia’s president to fire him in the name of academic freedom. Funny huh…..the idea that
promoting academic freedom means firing the leftist professor for his political views?
Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University, wrote this in regards to
Columbia’s decision to investigate the allegations against Massad,

“It is unclear why students’ emotional reaction to information or analysis presented in a classroom
has any bearing on its factual accuracy or intellectual legitimacy. Undoubtedly many white student
supporters of Jim Crow practices at universities throughout the American South in the 1960′s were
distressed to learn that these practices were illegal and despised by many Americans. This did not
make them any less so….Politically motivated groups, using evidence that was not made available to
the public, pressured a major university into investigating its faculty based on criteria completely
alien to academic procedures. Most of those who complained about professors were not students in
their classes (and some were not students at all). As the Ad Hoc Report notes, some faculty members
apparently recruited students to spy on their colleagues. But this was of less concern to the New York
media than Columbia’s failure to prevent the teaching of courses critical of Israel, irrespective of the
scholarly validity of the course’s content.” (as cited in Giroux, 2007)

Now Beinin is talking about protecting academic freedom against student’s emotional reaction. The
same case can be made for protecting academic freedom from neo-conservative parent’s
ideologically driven emotional reactions to their kid’s learning about global warming or stewardship
of the environment or the theory of evolution. I imagine most in America would say the parent has
ultimate authority over the child. What people often don’t realize is this response is problematic
because it assumes that the parent always has the best interests of the child in mind in respect to his
or her education. Now if a parent has this proper understanding of the difference between
indoctrination and teaching as a political act, and simultaneously sees a teacher trying to indoctrinate
his or her child than by all means he or she should pull that child out of that class because it is in the
interests of the child, but not because he or she has a right to do so. However, if the subject matter
turns out to ideologically objectionable to the parent, such as a christian evangelical parent being
opposed to a unit on evolution, than that parent absolutely does not have any right to pull that child
out of that classroom. Now in a society such as ours, one can not force that parent to let that child
remain in that classroom or else we risk becoming rather totalitarian but nonetheless the right still
does not exist. To put creationism up against the theory of evolution and treat them as if they have
equal claim to intellectual legitimacy and therefore should be taught side by side in a science
classroom is absurd. This concept of fairness and balance never being able to be applied to pedagogy
applies to public school teaching as well as university teaching.

The real goal of the neoconservative and neoliberal ideology, very similar, is to prevent students
from thinking analytically and synthetically because of course then students would feel compelled to
challenge the power structures that define their existence and perpetuate injustice while making the
rich richer, the rest of us more docile and submissive, and the politicians more corrupt. It’s an
insidious ideological project that is driving this, not a desire for balance or fairness. Those words are
only a facade used to advertise their goals as ultimately benign and harmless.

John then proceeded to ask me to elucidate my position further on the teaching of environmental
stewardship. He posed the question, “Does teaching “environmental stewardship” include teaching
the often disputed claim of man-made global warming? John qualified this question by saying,

“I can easily imagine a responsible elementary school teacher, convinced that industrial activity and
the burning of fossil fuels is putting an excess of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which must
naturally increase the greenhouse effect and result in man-made global warming and that she or he
might with the best will in the world teach from a “save the planet” perspective and try to get kids to
“use less energy,” “bike instead of drive,” “support solar and wind energy,” and so forth. Would
that sort of teaching seem desirable to you and would it seem—not fair and balanced—I know you
think it is not possible to be fair and balanced, but would such an approach seem “scientific” to you
rather than ideological?

Now teaching for environmental stewardship would no question have to include the topic of man-
made global warming. The real question is how do you teach students about this subject which
combines both science and politics. What I would absolutely not do to my students is start preaching
about the evils of global warming and the ignorance of climate change deniers. I would not impose
one set of facts or one set of viewpoints on my students, and then test them on their memorization of
those viewpoints and those facts. That method of teaching conforms to what Paulo Freire dubbed the
“banking system” of education in which students are treated as passive receptacles to be filled with
and then tested on the contents of the teacher’s narration. I have read enough about and experienced
enough of the banking approach in my career as a student to be intimately familiar with all its pitfalls
and problems. Never do I intend to fall into its trap once I start teaching, and if I do well then I hope
I will be aware enough to extricate myself from its clutches. The banking approach to education
teaches students not to take ownership of the learning process more than it teaches them about
whatever subject they are supposed to be learning. In my classroom, one of my objectives would be
to teach students to be researchers of whatever topic we may be studying. Now John says that global
warming is controversial. Indeed it is. But the question I would pose to my students is why is it
controversial. Whose interests would a real and serious acknowledgement of man-made global
warming by our government work against? Whose interests would it work for? Is the controversy
legitimate or is it fabricated? How does the mainstream media cover global warming as opposed to
the alternative media and why? What is the scientific research on global warming? How valid is it,
and if is indeed valid then why are there so many forces working to discredit it? I would not answer
these questions for the students in a lecture. Of course this is a very general account of how I would
conduct the class (Please don’t start picking it apart and accusing me of not having it all planned out
because that’s plainly obvious and its not my goal with my writing here), but instead of listening to
me lecture, the students would do some kind of research project in which they would locate the
answers to these questions themselves within various primary and secondary sources. I would also
incorporate classroom presentations, small group discussions as well as a series of larger teacher-
guided discussions in which students would discuss and debate the implications of their
findings. Time would also be dedicated to connecting the issue of global warming to my student’s
lived experience by for example, exploring the ways in which global warming affects our local
community. Now besides teaching students about global warming, a unit formulated in this manner
also has many other invaluable lessons attached to it. Students will now regard the process of
teaching and learning and the formation of knowledge in a different manner than they would under
the banking system. In the words of Paulo Freire,
“The students, no longer docile listeners, are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the
teacher. Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing
education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion
of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in
reality. Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world
and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that
challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total
context, not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical
and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed
by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed. (Freire,
1970)

Within the problem-posing method and regarding students as researchers, learning no longer
represents a chore. External motivators such as grades and extra credit which have actually been
proven to distract from the process of authentic learning, cease to be the center of the student’s
attention in respect to the educative process. Now students focus on the ways in which their
education is a practice of freedom, meaning that they are now able to critically and reflectively
analyze “the way they exist in the world with whichand in which they find themselves; they come to
see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, a transformation.” (Freire, 1970) I
would add that students no longer view themselves as powerless, passive receivers of the status
quo. They now seek to transform their lives and the lives of others through the praxis, the process of
reflection and reflective action.
I sought to describe further the role of the teacher in the context of a critical classroom
dialogue. The teacher’s job is to keep the dialogue authentic and true to the praxis. What does this
mean? According to Freire, the word is the core of dialogue. The praxis, reflection and action,
constitute the word. If one is absent, the other suffers and as a result the word becomes false and the
dialogue becomes empty. Reflection without action is empty and meaningless, that to complain
about injustice without taking any action to end it, to lament the various social forces that shape your
very being and dehumanize you without taking any action to counter them. Freire calls reflection
without action, verbalism. (Freire, 1970) Action without reflection has its pitfalls as well. It is rash
and impulsive. It does not take the time to stop and reflect on itself. Indeed, Freire says, it is “action
for action’s sake”. He calls action without reflection, activism. (Freire, 1970) Now I am not saying I
disagree with Freire on these points, but certainly every classroom dialogue will not elicit action in
the form of reflective action. I do, however, believe that a series of classrooms dialogues should
culminate in some form of action. It is not enough for students to reflect, because, in the end, they
will ask what they are reflecting for, and then what will you tell them? As the teacher, you have
helped create an environment with them in which reflection has brought them to a greater
understanding of themselves and the world, and now they have this overwhelming desire to change
it. Verbalism is never enough. Here is the argument for why our schools, especially in marginalized
areas, absolutely need to be more integrated and connected to the social workings of the greater
communities that surround them. They are not their own separate and isolated entities, and it does
our student’s a deep disservice to make them think that what they do in the classroom only matters in
the classroom. Classroom dialogue needs to be conducted as a practice of freedom in which
students become aware of “the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find
themselves.” If they are able to view all aspects of their lives as dynamic processes in
transformation, then they will be better equipped to take control of those processes through the
praxis. They will have discovered their own power and agency within their world. What more could
you ask of education?
Now finally, here’s where I get to the question of “Do Any of Us Have A Right To Our
Opinions?” I have written a bit on what a reflective classroom dialogue should achieve. But how
does a classroom dialogue come to be reflective, and what role does the teacher play in making sure
that it is truly reflective? Obviously it can not just be a haphazard and disorganized discussion in
which students talk over each other and try to impose the will their findings and opinions on
others. That would be wholly unproductive and eerily similar to the kind of commentary one hears
from mainstream media talking heads such as Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity
etc. These are people who believe that they must always be correct just by virtue of them being able
to shout louder then the person they may disagree with. In a serious dialogue, the people
participating must not only be willing to hear different points of view, but they must also be open to
being transformed by the people with whom they are dialoguing. Yes, this means that, in an
authentic dialogue, no one is allowed to say, “I’m entitled to my opinion and your entitled to
yours.” What in the world does that oft-used phrase mean anyway? Can anyone logically argue that
opinions are entitlements on par with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? It’s a wholly
illogical statement. As I said at the very beginning of this post, this phrase is used as a convenient
and seemingly polite escape from a conversation in which one’s views are being logically
challenged. Whenever people say, “I have a right to my opinion and you have a right to yours”, it is
usually a way to end a conversation that has the potential to be uncomfortable, liberating, and
transformative. I believe this is wrong, and it is not in either party’s to be so close-
minded. Certainly, within an authentic dialogue, this phrase has no place and it is the teacher’s job to
ensure that it is not used by students as a mechanism to silence one another and thereby foreswear
any further exploration of the topic at hand. Indeed quite to the contrary, one of the primary roles of
a critical educator, through the dialogue process, is to guide students in understanding the origins of
their viewpoints so that they may engage in a self-reflective and critical interrogation of these
viewpoints. If the student can no longer argue for something, well then he or she has to be able to
come to terms with that. Obviously this job is not reserved for the teacher. In an authentic dialogue,
students also challenge each other to engage in this type of critical self-reflection. Within this
dialogue, students are even encouraged to challenge the teacher thereby severing the characteristic
dominance that defines the teacher-student relationship within the banking mode of education,
Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a
new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-
who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being
taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. (Freire, 1970)

Class, Just Call Me Ephraim: A Word

On Authority
Posted on June 22, 2013

I have made the decision that once I become a teacher I will introduce myself to my students by my
full name, Ephraim Hussain. Consequently, they will have the option of either calling me Ephraim
or Mr. Hussain. My feeling is that they will opt for the former, and that is indeed my intent by opting
not to impose the conventional “Mr.” title. Now this may seem like a relatively minor aspect of my
future teaching practice, and indeed one might view my concern with the matter of how students are
to address the teacher as completely inconsequential and silly. Here is why I would strongly disagree
with that sentiment.
A while back, a fellow blogger and I engaged in a riveting discussion about a host of issues relating
to the American educational system. At one point, Diana (not her real name) made the point that I
did not appear to place much value on most of my college professors and their respective
classes. She based this assertion off of my previous comments in which I expressed my deep
frustration with three things: college professors that place undue emphasis on rote memorization and
superficial learning through one-sided teacher lecture and multiple choice testing regimes, plainly
incompetent professors who may have be experts in their respective fields but really have no idea
how to make course content meaningful to students, and the presentation of controversial content in
an uncontroversial and supposedly objective manner that foregoes the possibility of students
engaging in critical, liberating, and potentially uncomfortable dialogue around research and
exploration into opposing viewpoints. Indeed, Diana, was spot on when she made her point, but
unfortunately she was trying to use it as a springboard to disagree with me and say that it is primarily
the student’s responsibility to find meaning and purpose in a class no matter how many legitimate
faults he or she can find with the way the professor is conducting the class. In other words, this was
her justification for rationalizing the performance of a bad teacher in a bad system. Of course there
are students who are capable of making meaning out of a classroom and indeed I have done that
numerous times, but that is no rationale for not changing the system, and the flip side of this is that
there are many students, even well-performing students, who become disenchanted with their lives as
students because of teachers who use authoritarian practices, who do not believe in them, and do not
respect them. I must however qualify her statements so far mentioned by saying that when I asked
her whether I should be questioning and critical of my professors and the content they put forward,
she answered emphatically in the affirmative. But nonetheless I feel I must point out the
contradiction between that and her subsequent rationalization of a broken system. I am not trying to
be condescending, just commonsensical. If ever there was a legitimate justification for us not taking
steps to improve teaching as a profession in this country by first, clearly stating and outlining the
goal and objectives of education in a democratic society, second, upgrading the coursework and
quality of teacher education programs to reflect those goals and objectives, and third, requiring
college professors to procure teaching degrees and undergo certification processes before being
allowed to teach, saying that it is the primarily the student’s responsibility to make meaning out of a
poor classroom environment is not one of them. This represents yet another example of how
Americans in general tend to be so adept at collapsing the public into the private and the systemic
into the personal even when said system is directly hurting their lives. Of course, it is easier to blame
a student for refusing to be unquestioningly obedient and accept the dysfunctional status quo that
continues to shortchange him and all his fellow students out of a truly democratic education, because
then the people in power will be absolved of any and all responsibility to make the necessary changes
that the system demands. But anyway back to business here. This was my response to Diana’s
statement/rhetorical question,
I am not going to place value on my classes and professors just because they are my classes and my
professors and are in a position of authority. Authority is earned. It is not blindly given. That would
be wholly uncritical and rather anti-reflective. For example I had a genetics professor who used a lot
of images, diagrams, and concept maps from the textbook in his teaching. Often, rather than making
eye contact with his class, he lectures while continually staring at these diagrams. Incredibly enough,
he will sometimes teach for long periods of time with his back facing us making it seem like he is
talking more to himself than to us. One often gets the sense that he is unprepared for a lesson before
he enters class, because, he is constantly trying to negotiate the meaning of these diagrams in the
classroom. For example, he will be looking at a diagram and then suddenly say, “This looks wrong”
and then stare at it for five or ten minutes trying to figure what he thinks is wrong. I recall one
instance where he spent more than half the class period doing this while we all sat in stone cold
silence. At times he will even try to enlist our help in trying to understand what he is supposed to be
teaching us. Now there would be no problem with this if it was done within the context of a
democratic classroom where student voice actually mattered and affective learning was taking place,
but in this instance it just seemed like he was using us to bail him out of an embarrassing situation.

Should I value this teacher? Should I value the college professor who just views his or role as a
lecturer and nothing more, which is the great majority of them. Should I value a class where my
voice and my fellow student’s voice are not given any chances to be heard in the context of the
content at hand? Lecturer and teacher are not synonyms, but at least in the college which I attended,
this is the underlying assumption of nearly every professor. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t
disrespect these professors. I actually make it a point to express my concerns with some of them in
casual discussions in their offices especially with those in the biology department since I was a bio
major. Surprisingly most of them share my concerns, and they do happen to be genuinely concerned
with the dominance of traditional lecture-style pedagogy and multiple choice testing regimes and
marketplace for grades mentality that dominates my particular college…and then when I ask them
what is being done to change this culture they invariably say its a very hard and long process
changing culture and pedagogies. Not much more of an answer is given than that. But I have my own
theories on why things don’t change. Lecturing is easy for the teacher. Adminstering and grading
pre-written multiple choice exams is the easiest way for a teacher to conduct his or her class. In
addition college professors, are not required to have teacher certification and go through a teacher
certification program in order to teach. So they really have no knowledge of educational theory and
varying pedagogies and all the knowledge that would come with going through a quality teacher
education program. Again, I don’t blame them individually. They’re the product of a larger system
that is deeply flawed.

And here is her response to my response,

“Authority is earned. It is not given”

Actually, that is not true. Authority is given, in many cases, whether it is earned or deserved. It is one
of life’s lessons. You can either accept it to the extent that it exists or you can let it make you bitter
and disrespectful of all authority.
Unfortunately, some of the worst teachers are the brightest minds in their field. If you are at a top
university, that Genetics professor is probably one of the top in his field. TA’s, while accessible,
could be even worse, in my opinion, because they didn’t have the teacher training either and they
were usually overwhelmed with their own studies. However, they were usually pretty bright and
could help you if you ran into a problem. I didn’t utilize my professors or my TAs the way I could
have while in college. Wish I had handled that differently. BTW, the problem with you Genetic’s
professor seems to be common among the biological sciences and math. I had some pretty awesome
professors in other areas.

“Should I value this teacher? Should I value the college professor who just views his or role as a
lecturer and nothing more”

Should? I don’t know if you “should”, but I “would”. You have to look at the whole package. That
professor probably didn’t choose to be a professor to “teach”. It is unfortunate, but that is the way
big universities work, possibly many small ones, too. You are there to learn, so it makes you upset
that he/she is not a better teacher. But are you receiving any benefit from being in that class or that
school? Does getting through that class allow you to take a higher class that has an exceptional
teacher? Will graduating from that school benefit you in your pursuit to be a history teacher? If not,
then perhaps you are taking the wrong classes and/or you are going to the wrong school – for you.

This is not the entirety of her comment, but it is the part that I will be responding to in this post. Just
to be clear, I did not respond to this comment primarily because I got drawn into other discussions
within the same comment thread, but nevertheless I have never quite forgotten what she said here
about the nature of authority and I feel I need to address it, albeit indirectly because it’s a month too
late to anymore to the comment thread.

I probably should have used exact language in my comment, but nonetheless I thought my meaning
was clear enough based on my previous statements. I stand by the statement that authority is earned,
not given. If it is blindly given and uncritically received or if it is given and received under threat of
force, intimidation or various other forms of extrinsic motivation, it is not true authority. A person
who holds true authority does not need to use force to justify it. He or she holds authority by virtue
of being authoritative. What does this mean? It means that the person who wishes to gain authority
does so by forging relationships of mutual love, trust, respect, and care with the people whom he or
she desires to gain authority with…..with not over. This is the difference between being authoritative
and being authoritarian. An authoritarian does not have true authority over the people he or she rules
over because that authority was not gained through relationships of mutual love, trust, and
respect. The oppressed who suffer under authoritarian rule despise the authoritarian. Their only
reason for not demanding an immediate end to their oppression is fear of reprisal. For the student,
grades are that extrinsic motivator, that source of fear, that gatekeeper of oppression, whether the
teacher perceives it or not. Certainly, it is not as serious as would be the teacher holding a gun to a
student’s head and ordering him to complete his homework, be quiet and listen to the lecture, and
complete this test or else, but the point is not lost on the relative lack of severity of the threat. And
indeed the threat of a bad grade and all the consequences, whether perceived or real, that stem from
that result, can bring much stress and anxiety into a student’s life. A classroom in which a teacher
uses various extrinsic motivators in order to “motivate” his or her students to complete the boring
worksheet homework assignments, listen and memorize the contents of the one-sided lecture, and
then regurgitate that same contents on a multiple choice exam is an authoritarian
classroom. Why? Because what these students are learning more than anything else, more than any
of the course content their supposed to be learning is that to get through life, one just has to obey,
obey,obey. Life after school is just about following orders and doing as you are told no questions
asked. It does not matter if what is being done to you is wrong and unjust. It does not matter if the
system, the status quo you live under is inadequate and oppressive and screaming out for radical
change. You just have to slog through it, because guess what kids. In the words of my fellow
blogger, Diana, “Authority is given, in many cases, whether it is earned or deserved. It is one of
life’s lessons. You can either accept it to the extent that it exists or you can let it make you bitter and
disrespectful of all authority.” Diana’s rationale here for why I should uncritically accept the unjust
forces that shape mine and other’s existence is so flawed, I hardly know where to begin.” Firstly, it’s
the perfect rationale for a system of education in a fascist regime that requires blind obedience to its
supreme leader and ideology. Therefore, automatically, it is incongruous with a system of education
that seeks to produce citizens of a properly functioning democracy who must be not only able but
willing to challenge the power structures which perpetuate an unjust social order. Secondly Diana’s
rationale utilizes a false binary to make its argument. I do not have to nor should I accept the fact
that positions of authority are bestowed upon people who absolutely do not deserve them. I am
thinking primarily of our politicians who more often than not rule against and on us rather
than for and with us. I will acknowledge it as a product of our flawed democratic system of
government, but that does not mean I accept it. And if I do not accept that, it does not automatically
mean I am disrespectful and bitter of all authority. Again, even though I detected no malice in Diana
and, indeed, I did enjoy our discussion, I can not stand by and accept these accusations of absolutes
as a legitimate constituent of intelligent dialogue. It’s like accusing me of being a liberal or a left-
wing loony-tune just because I’m not a conservative. Those kinds of accusations just lead the
discussion into anti-intellectual waters and if there is ever a discussion I refuse to engage in it is one
that devolves into name-calling by way of leveling false binaries. Authority that is not legitimate
according to the conditions I stipulated earlier is false, and therefore it does not merit my
respect. Bitter is the wrong choice of words to describe my view on authority. It implies that I do
not give careful consideration in discriminating between the people who deserve authority and the
people who do not, and that is just plainly false. In line with the feelings of most Americans, I do not
view our members of Congress, Republican or Democrat as having any legitimate authority, and if I
were to meet one of them, I would not start off by saying “Thank you for serving our
country.” Granted, I would be cordial but only to the point that they are willing to seriously answer
my serious questions and engage in serious and meaningful dialogue. If they are not willing , as so
many of them show themselves unwilling to be when asked a tough question by journalists (I’m
talking about the real journalists, not the talking heads, who actually ask tough questions), or they
begin to show disrespect towards me by skirting the question, lying, or getting argumentative, then I
would first inform them of what they are doing, why it is wrong, and why I refuse to engage in it, and
then that would be the end of that. Do you, the reader, consider this analysis of authority to be
bitter? I consider it well-reasoned enough.
Out of this blog discussion about the nature of authority, springs my decision to introduce myself to
my students as Ephraim Hussain. If they want to put a “Mr” title in front of either my first or last
name when addressing me, they will be perfectly able to do just that. But they will not be required
to, and here’s the short answer after the long answer for why. As a student, placing a Ms. or Mr. in
front of a teacher’s name before addressing him or her is so widely practiced that it has basically
become an unwritten rule. But why has it become a rule at all? One reason is because there exists a
relatively unquestioned cultural norm which dictates that the older you are, the wiser you are and that
teachers just by virtue of their being older are automatically assumed to be wiser than their
students. This assumption is internalized by both the teacher and the students. But the more
important reason points to the dominant cultural belief regarding the nature of authority that Diana
expressed so eloquently and which I will repeat once more, “Authority is given, in many cases,
whether it is earned or deserved. It is one of life’s lessons.” Now when people use the phrase “It is
one of life’s lessons”, it most often translates to “Suck it up and deal with it. This is how the world is
and how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future whether you like it or not.” But of course
reasonable people know this argument to be false in most if not all cases. If we believe one thing
today, we can believe something else tomorrow. It may take some serious self-reflection, but it can
be done. Indeed it’s how progress happens. There are positions in our society which we term
“positions of authority” and it is taught to us at an early age and vigorously reinforced through our
student careers that the people holding these positions deserve unequivocal respect just by virtue of
their holding that position. Teachers, principals, and various forms of school administrators are
examples of those positions and indeed they are the positions of power which students most often
come into contact with besides their parents. And one of the ways we display this unequivocal
respect and deference towards our teachers is by putting a Mr. or Ms or Mrs. in front of their
names. But if one subscribes to the more rational view of authority I have put forward in this post,
then, indeed, there is every reason to discontinue this “gut” practice. When I use the term “gut, I
mean to say, we do it because we feel it’s right to do based on cultural norms pushed on us by
various forces, not because it actually is.

I remarked previously that my decision to not require my students to address me as Mr. Hussain or
Mr. Ephraim derives from the blog discussion I had with Diana. That is not true of course. It merely
provided me with the best anecdote with which to explain my reasoning. I have spoken many times
on this blog about the one professor who changed my life and inspired this passion in me to become
not just a teacher, but an activist teacher. It was my first semester of junior year and fittingly enough
he was my Philosophy of Education professor. Now he didn’t force us to call him Mr. Johnson (not
his real name) but every time a student would do that in the course of a class dialogue he would ask
them why they were doing so, and then we would get into the most interesting and enlightening
discussions on the nature of authority and respect as it relates to the relationships between students
and their teachers. He was the only teacher I ever had who explicitly came out and said “Guys, I
derive my authority from you. If am not teaching you and you are not simultaneously teaching me
and we are not learning from each other than my authority does not exist.” I couldn’t believe that
one of my teachers, one of my actual living, breathing teachers, was coming out and saying this on
the first day of class, something that I had wanted to scream out to all of my teachers since high
school but never had the courage to do so. Well now I have the courage and now I know fully, why
it is not only my right but my duty to challenge false authority wherever it lies and why my ultimate
authority as a teacher derives from my students. Indeed this responsibility resides in all of our hands,
in a democracy which demands the most critical, thoughtful, and intellectual civic engagement of its
populace in order to function properly. The only question that remains is will we, the people, answer
the call of a prosperous democracy., or will we continue to passively languish in an unjust order
which resembles nothing of the sort? Part of the answer to this question lies in whether we will
continue to educate our children to blindly obey, obey, obey or whether we will wake up and educate
them to engage in Paulo Freire’s definition of the praxis, reflection and reflective action. I choose to
educate them for the latter.
The False Binary of Hanlon’s Razor
And The Oppressed/Oppressor
Relationship
Posted on July 9, 2013

Hanlon’s Razor says that we should never attribute to malice that can which be adequately explained
by stupidity. I believe Hanlon’s Razor presents a false binary, one which suggests that if a person or
group of people is acting ignorantly, he or she can not be acting malevolently. This suggestion
wrongly places ignorance and malevolence in the same classificatory scheme, that of
motivations. While malevolence is a motivation, ignorance is not. To say a person or group or
institution is acting ignorantly is to say that entity is not acting in its true interests and that the results
of its actions will demonstrate that fact. That definition does not give you any information regarding
that entity’s motivation for acting in that manner. And indeed if you approach said entity and inquire
as to its motivation, regardless of whether it is telling the truth or lying to you, it will never say “I’m
doing this because I’m ignorant and stupid”. The motivation may be benign. It may be
malevolent. But the question of whether said action is ignorant or not is determined by the
outcomes. It’s relatively easy to locate concrete examples that indicate the false choice presented by
Hanlon’s Razor.
Trevor Aaronson’s book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War On
Terrorism, reveals how the FBI, under the pretext of engaging in real counter-terrorism since 9/11,
constructed a network of over 15,000 informants/agent-provocateurs whose main job was to first
infiltrate Muslim communities and then to compel certain members of these communities, who
otherwise never would have had the means, the desire, nor the will to committ a terrorist act, to
engage in phony terrorist plots that obviously never had any chance of succeeding in the first
place. The FBI then arrests the so-called perpetrators in massive sting operations, feeds the false
information to the mainstream media which these days has all the motivation in the world not to
question the spoon-fed official narrative, and declares more marvelous successes in America’s never-
ending war on terrorism.
Trevor Aaronson’s revelations indicate both malevolent intentions as well as ignorance behind the
FBI’s manufactured war on terrorism. The neoliberal order that has come to dominate our
government over the last thirty years but has really gained significant momentum over the last decade
requires either the unqualified support and/or the relative ignorance of its populace so that it may be free to
continue to advance its insidious agenda. Put very simply, this agenda enriches the very few at the expense of the
many, and the people at the top know this fact. They know that a society built on the foundations of the neoliberal
corporatist ideology is not meant to benefit the people. Rather society’s purpose is to ensure the elite’s unlimited
power and cash flow to the people’s detriment. The first question that the wealthiest and most powerful citizens of
our great nation have to ask themselves is “Why would the people go along with the kind of society we’re trying to
build here?” The obvious answer is that we wouldn’t stand for it and would take action to prevent it if we were self-
aware, well-informed, and mobilized in solidarity against the common enemy of neoliberalism. And the few at the
top know this fact as well, that we can not effectively challenge the status quo without meeting these three
conditions or some variation of them. So then the second question they proceed to ask themselves is how do we
keep the oppressed from meeting these conditions and endangering our position as oppressors. And the obvious
answers to that question are by 1) controlling the media and 2) utilizing the national security apparatus not to
promote security but to stifle dissent and in a sense promote a perverse form of stability. Trevor Aaronson reveals
just one of the ways in which the national security apparatus operates at the behest of the neoliberal order. Putting
the FBI’s operation within the context of the neoliberal agenda reveals its underlying malevolence.
Now even if I had not framed the FBI’s use of agent-provocateur’s to manufacture fake terrorist plots
within the context of the neoliberal agenda, it would have been apparent to most readers that the FBI
was acting malevolently. What would not be so apparent without this framing is that the underlying
purpose behind the operation displays complete ignorance by the people at the top about what is in
their best interests. For this assertion to be made, the neoliberal context is necessary or else there is
no basis for the accusation of ignorance. Yes, I am making the argument that neoliberalism is not
even in the true interest of the oppressors at the top who nonetheless work fiercely and with dogged
determination to maintain its dominance through insidious means. What the power elite fails to
recognize is that a society that is operated solely to their financial and power benefit at the expense of
everyone else will not last very long, and that eventually the oppressed will oust them from their
lofty perches. History has demonstrated this basic truth time and time again. The oppressed will
always find a way to subvert the subversion, to hold power accountable, and to challenge the status
quo. Now whether or not the oppressed succeed in their revolution depends on whether or not they
effectively dissolve the oppressor/oppressed relationship permanently. This is the sole condition for
a successful revolution, and indeed it depends on a myriad of factors which, unfortunately, do not fall
within the purview of this post. Suffice it to say that successful revolutions are few and far between
in the annals of human history, because the oppressed and oppressor most often just switch places
and the dichotomous relationship lives on. (i.e. Egypt under Morsi) Even though it is in the true
interest of the oppressors to shed the label, they perceive what is in their true interest as being
financial and power dominance. If a revolution has taken place and the formerly oppressed harbor
vengeful notions in their hearts, the formerly oppressed may assume the role of oppressor and vice
versa, and revenge becomes the primary motivation for resuming the destructive dichotomy. Put
simply, the oppressors are either vengeful or greedy or a combination of the two, and designing an
entire society on either basis is not good for the human being on either side of the relationship,
regardless of his or her perception. Thus the oppressors are ignorant of their true interest which
would be to fashion a society based on loving relationships, mutual respect and and mutual trust.

My Most Amazing Dream

Posted on July 30, 2013

I usually write about topics pertaining to education, philosophy, religion, and politics but last night I
had the most amazing dream, and would like to share it with you.

I was lying in my bed listening to a radio podcast on my mp3 player. Slowly but surely, I started to
drift into that wonderful realm between sleep and wakefulness. Despite entering this realm, I decided
to try to stay awake long enough to finish the ten minutes that remained on the podcast. But despite
my best efforts at trying to stay awake and with the commentators opinion on the state of the U.S.
economy still droning on in my ears, sleep overtook me.
Despite slipping from consciousness into the subconsciousness, I was still able to hear the words of
Professor Richard D. Wolff loudly and clearly. Quite unexpectedly, my brain did not interpret his
words as some sort of garbled, unintelligible, and cacophonous noise. Now when I mention here that
I didn’t expect to make out what Professor Wolff was saying, I am referring to my state of thinking
during the dream. Indeed, I came to the realization that I was dreaming during the dream which
rarely ever happens at least in my experience. But how could I have possibly come to this startling
conclusion? Indeed, the evidence would suggest otherwise given the fact that I could still make out
what Professor Wolff was saying. The answer to this question is what makes this dream so amazing,
at least in my opinion.

I decided that I was way too tired to listen to the last few minutes of Economic Update with Professor
Richard D. Wolff on the Progressive Radio Network. So I began to pull out my ear buds and
something absolutely terrifying happened. The ones I pulled out were instantly replaced by a whole
new set. I proceeded to pull this new set out and the same thing happened. I continued this process
over and over again, all the while Wolff’s tortuous commentary reigning in my ears. Eventually, the
ear buds became permanently attached to my ears. I began to frantically pull at the ear buds, now
permanently part of my body. I took the mp3 player and managed to break it in half with my bare
hands, but still Wolff’s voice would not cease and let me sleep in peace. At this point I realized that,
despite looking around and seeing my bedroom, despite Professor Wolff’s voice continuing to
remain clear and intelligible, that I was indeed dreaming. Upon this realization, I was delivered from
my agony to a state of full consciousness. I knew that it had been a seamless transition from sleep to
wakefulness since Professor Wolff’s voice did not catch, did not sputter, did not change tone or train
of thought.

So what is my conclusion here? Well I am not an oneirologist, (a scientist who studies dreams) so I
am afraid my commentary will not enlighten you from that perspective. But from my vantage point,
it would seem that my brain was stuck in a sort of limbo if you will, continuing to interpret an
auditory input from the material realm while simultaneously blocking any other sort of external
stimuli, the latter being what happens during a dream. Indeed, my brain seemed to incorporate the
external auditory stimuli into my dream and make it the subject of my torment. Of course I could be
completely wrong. Of course I could have completely misinterpreted and misremembered what
actually happened during the dream. Maybe there was no seamless transition of Professor Wolff’s
voice from consciousness to subconsciousness and back to consciousness. Perhaps my brain took my
underlying desire to take the ear buds out and go to sleep, and translated that into a minor nightmare
in which peace and quiet were rendered an impossibility. Personally, I find that explanation more
likely, and indeed it would jive with the normal definition of a dream as stemming from memory and
sensory experience. But I suppose it’s just more fun to think of my brain being stuck somewhere
between consciousness and subconsciousness. All right, that’s the end of my silliness.

Podcast Introduction
Posted on October 27, 2013

So I intend to start my own podcast, and this is the introduction I devised. Tell me what you
think. Too long? I definitely know it’s not too short. Too combative? To be totally honest, I like
that aspect. This is serious business and I’m not going to coddle anyone’s right/left bias. But that
doesn’t mean I’m a centrist either, in respect to the way the term is used to describe someone who
combines elements of both parties. I’m intending to use some variation of this introduction for every
show, but just for this first one I want to use the Juan Cole quote. Obviously, that’s not going to be
part of every intro. Just to be sure, there are some radio programs that give a broad slightly drawn
out introduction of what the general gist of the show is, on every show. One example is
the Progressive Commentary Hour starring Gary Null. Since I obviously won’t start off with many
listeners and there will always be new listeners, I think that’s the best road to take. Input is very
much appreciated.
Greetings everyone. How y’all doin today? My name is Ephraim Hussain and this is Reflective
Commentary. I want to thank you for listening in to what is the first installment of my show. To give
a short background on what this show will be about, I want to start off by saying that I am one of
those people who thinks too much and the things I think about are mostly political in nature. Often I
find myself getting very passionate about certain issues and this show will be my opportunity to air
that passion and hopefully for you to respond with just as much if not more in return. Now I want to
be very clear. I don’t pretend to be non-biased. I don’t pretend to be impartial. I don’t pretend to
be balanced or fair. Anyone who tells you they’re being non-biased or impartial or balanced or fair
with regard to politics is running a not so clever dog and pony show. They are being
dishonest. They are trying to pull the wool over your eyes. That is not the agenda here on Reflective
Commentary. My goal is to try to get as close to the truth as possible on whatever issue I may be
discussing. One of my favorite books that incidentally addresses this very topic is by Professor
Henry Giroux of McMaster University in Canada The book is called “The University In Chains:
Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex” In it he cites, Professor of Middle East
and South Asian history at the University of Michigan Juan Cole,
“The point of teaching a course is to expose students to ideas and arguments that are new to them
and to help them think critically about controversial issues. Nothing pleases teachers more than to
see students craft their own, original arguments, based on solid evidence, that dispute the point of
view presented in class lectures…..University teaching is not about fairness, and there is nobody
capable of imposing “fair” views on teachers. It is about provoking students to think analytically
and synthetically, and to reason on their own. In the assigned texts, in class discussion, and in
lectures, the students are exposed to a wide range of views, whether fair or unfair.” (as cited in
Giroux 2007)

The same principles that Juan Cole explains must apply to any sensible university classroom apply
here. I refuse to subject myself to a political litmus test for the purpose of staying balanced or
fair. First of all it would be wrong and a deep disservice to all you listeners, secondly it would be
impossible to do so while simultaneously attempting to pursue the truth, and thirdly we have what’s
called the mainstream media which already does an impeccable job pretending to be fair and
balanced. You don’t need me to give you what they present on a silver platter. Now that you know
where I’m coming from, let’s begin with today’s topic…………..

The War On Terror Is A Tool Of Empire

Not An Exercise of Security
Posted on October 31, 2013

The NSA does not protect the American people. The NSA does not help catch terrorists. The NSA
does not stop terrorist attacks.
The NSA does protect the American government from the American people. The NSA does threaten
the freedom and liberty of the American people. The actions of the NSA do display the ongoing
moral degradation of the American government. The NSA does work to extend and ensure U.S.
imperial hegemony across the globe.
There’s no reason to implicitly believe the words of “senior U.S. officials” ever. The burden of proof
is always on authority and centers of power to prove their worth to the people, and more often than
not they fail to meet that burden. Prove that all this spying is done to save us from potential terrorist
attacks. Prove that it’s for our security. Prove to us that it’s not just done to extend America’s global
hegemony in the service of the corporate elite. Your NSA director, Mr. Keith Alexander, has already
admitted lying to Congress and to the American people back in June when he claimed the NSA’s
phone surveillance program prevented 54 terrorist attacks. The idea that this country is interested in
combating terror is ludicrous, first of all because there’s no reason to keep it all secret if it was really
for our protection.
Second of all, if combating terror was really this nation’s topmost and I mean top most priority why
does our government continue to support Saudi Arabia, the most repressive regime in the Arab world
and a known sponsor of terror within other Arab nations (Syria for example)? Why does our military-
industrial complex support and fund Israeli oppression of the Palestinians which is known to inflame
plenty of ill will towards the U.S. government? Why do we engage in drone affair which experts
conclude, every time a missile drops, creates tens of new individuals who have all the reason to hate
our government? The war on terror is a war that is being prosecuted for propaganda purposes to keep
us afraid, to keep us xenophobic, to keep us hysteric, to keep us patriotic (in what is a clear
perversion of the meaning of patriotism), to keep us fearful of the outside so that we ignore the
crimes perpetrated by our government against us right here at home. Think about it. What has killed
more Americans? What has caused the suffering of more Americans? Islamic terror or the litany of
crimes perpetrated by the corporate sector, one of which happens to be laundering money for terrorist
groups, a crime which our government has taken absolutely no interest in for reasons that are obvious
to anyone remotely familiar with the hypocrisy of the corporate state? Islamic terror or the school to
prison pipeline? Islamic terror or the lack of universal healthcare? Islamic terror or the worst quality
healthcare system in the developed world? Islamic terror or the prison-industrial complex? Islamic
terror or a high rate of child poverty? Islamic terror or the decimation of the social safety
net? Islamic terror or corporate welfare? Islamic terror or “too big to fail banks”? Islamic terror or
the death of private sector unions? Islamic terror or the standardization and privatization of public
education? Islamic terror or PTSD that results from participating in and witnessing the horror and
brutality inherent in wars of empire? Islamic terror or the horrid treatment of our veterans upon their
return from these wars? If our government is and ever was taking the threat of terror seriously, why
does it engage in a war on terror? Does war ever solve anything? Is war ever intended to solve the
problems for which our leaders claim are the reasons it must be prosecuted? Look back at our
history. The answer is no!! The same lesson we give our kids that two wrongs don’t make a right
also applies here.
Ask yourself why shouldn’t Iran be afraid of our government? Our CIA already overthrew their
government once back in 1953? Since then, the mentality of empire has changed little. Why
shouldn’t they be afraid of a potential U.S. war of aggression against their people? Our
government’s record demonstrates that it is the best when it comes to prosecuting wars of aggression,
bar none. Engage in a thought experiment. Would you be willing to sacrifice yourself in order to
expel occupiers from your town or city or country, in order to give attention to the desperation and
suffering that arises from the exercise of unchecked power? Our government loves to condone
violence, when it’s not its own violence or that of its allies. This idea that it’s only terrorism if it’s
against the United States, against the Western world, against the so-called international community (
which is just a euphemism for the U.S. and the countries who support its horrible policies) is
absurd. America harbors terrorists it refuses to extradite. Look up the likes of Orlando Bosch and
Luis Posada Carriles, both veterans of America’s terrorist war against Cuba? America lionizes
Presidents who conducted terrorist wars around the world. See Ronald Reagan and JFK. What did
our government do in Iraq? Was that not terror? Ask the Iraqis who suffered through that occupation
whether or not it was terror? Ask the Palestinians in the occupied territories whether or not they
experience terror everyday at the hands of our unconditionally supported (Really? No conditions?
Well then, how in the world is peace supposed to be achieved?) client-state ally, Israel?

Most of the world (by that I mean the populations not the governments) is waiting for the American
people to unequivocally denounce the crimes of its government. When are we going to wake up and
realize that this civil liberty/security debate is a false one? When are we going to wake up and realize
that the NSA does not work for our security? When are we going to wake up and realize that the U.S.
having “strategic interest” in some part of the world, has nothing to do with our security? It has
everything to do with hegemony. It has everything to do with advancing the interests of the corporate
elite and the business classes, just as it did during the Cold War. It has everything to do with having
control and access to resources and markets just as it did during the Cold War. It has everything to do
with unchecked capitalism. It has everything to do with just plain economics. Islamic terror is the
new Communism and the sooner we realize that the better.

If you ask the regular person in the street, in their homes in these countries, they won’t tell you they
hate the American people. They will tell you they hate the actions of our government, plain and
simple. In fact, polls have been done which make clear the sentiment throughout the Arab world. It
can be summed up in one phrase “Nothing against their people, hate their government.” And then
some of us somehow buy our government’s explanation that they hate our freedoms. Open your eyes
and your ears. Exercise your mind’s critical faculties. Practice a thoughtful skepticism. Don’t
implicitly trust any message from anyone labeled as “Official”. Educate yourself on America’s past
and discern the key patterns. Understand that history is repeating itself. Things are complex but
once you start asking questions that nobody else is asking, once you break out of the strictures of
institutional dogma and propaganda, you begin to realize that things are not as complex as you
thought they were. Read something beyond the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington
Post. Stop watching/listening to Fox, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CNN, NPR, PBS. They are the
mouthpieces of the power elite. They are the purveyors of official propaganda. They set the
boundaries of the conversation and if you desire to step outside of those boundaries you are too
radical. It is they who are too radical. They exist to dumb-down the conversation. They see black
and white where the truth shows ambiguity and nuance. They report the statements of “senior U.S.
officials” and never ever bother to speak truth to power. I mean how could they? Do they employ
investigative journalists? Do they have national security correspondents who report anything other
than the lies of “senior intelligence officials”? Do they take the time and money and effort to report
on a alternative message from the one given by Washington elites?

Blackface and Bloodstains

Posted on November 1, 2013

Fall, the season of racism.

Every October people around the world get dressed up and attend various costumed parties or
functions, usually in some connection to Halloween. Inevitably stories and pictures emerge of white
people dressing up in racial or cultural costumes that some find racist and offensive.

People of many different cultures have been addressing this issue for some time. There are even
whole awareness campaigns based around it. Last year I did my part and I received my first
suspension on Twitter for calling out numerous people on their racist Native American
costumes. However, no matter how many times this is addressed, it happens again every single year.
This year I had not planned on writing anything but stories of racist costumes began to crop up on my
news feed.

Colorlines ran an article about a girl in Australia who had an “African” themed party. The result
was…
Blackface And the Irrationality of
Rationalization Within Systems of
Racial Oppression
Posted on November 1, 2013

This post is my commentary on some of the comments to this post entitled Blackface and
Bloodstains which I reblogged at https://ephraimseducation.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/blackface-
and-bloodstains/ The original post is located
here http://speakfaithfully.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/blackface-and-bloodstains/#comment-1315
No, some white people, you are not, never have been, and never will be victims of Black oppression
in this country.
No, some white people, some of you still do not fully understand the nature of the oppressor/
oppressed relationship. Evidence? You read James Baldwin, and you feel insulted. Evidence? You
didn’t really read and think about the implications and assumptions embedded in your comments to
this post before writing them Why don’t you read James Baldwin and actually THINK about what
he’s saying? Why don’t you read James Baldwin and try as hard as you can to put yourself in the
shoes of James Baldwin? Because if you haven’t, you haven’t really read James Baldwin. Why
don’t you read over your comments to this post and really THINK about the implications and
assumptions of your comments? Or perhaps I’ll do it, since there is very little chance you will.

Let’s start with this one.

1) “I don’t normally reply to these articles, but I have to speak up.
Just because an outfit is in poor taste, doesn’t mean that they can’t wear it. Flip the roles if you will.
Are you offended when a minority dresses as Hitler? or George Bush? By the rationale you propose
“Western-Europeans” should be. Your article is at the very heart is racist and segregationist at the
same time. The fact that people feel more comfortable today expressing themselves across cultures
and ethnicity is the true statement of their lack of racism and their willingness to express themselves
as they see fit.
You have a right to be offended, true. But I still have a right to express myself.
Also, if you look at the actual history of Halloween you will see that it is all about ACTUAL dead
people. Get your facts straight please. Stop perpetuating your racism and let human nature and
humor live on.”
Im confused. Does having a willingness to express yourself as you see fit (How else would you
express yourself?) mean that you can’t be racist? Are the two mutually exclusive?

From the author, “Blackface is tied directly to minstrel shows and the larger exploitation of black
people during slavery and Jim Crow.”
I’m confused. You think treating this awful image and depraved caricature of Black people so
flippantly as to wear it as a costume constitutes “people feeling more comfortable today expressing
themselves across cultures and ethnicity.” That’s not expressing across anything. The culture you are
referring to was a shared or rather an imposed culture. Whites owned it. Blacks suffered under it. So
no one is moving across anything. This has everything to do with the perverse need to commercialize
every possible stereotype out there. It represents the commodification of culture. Did Julianne
Hough know anything about the culture represented in the costume she was wearing? No!!! You
can’t transcend cultures if you don’t know what culture your transcending. Transcending is not
synonymous with ignoring. Transcending is not synonymous with forgetting. Transcending is to
acknowledge and move to what would generally be called a higher state of being. It’s a comparative
term. You can’t move higher from nothing. You have to move higher from lower. That would mean
understanding what constitutes “lower” and why it is “lower” and why you want to move from lower
to higher. Your understanding of what it means to express yourself across cultures is severely lacking
and doesn’t even apply in this situation since it is a shared culture between Blacks and Whites. No
one can say we live in a post-racial society unless we make the effort to eliminate racial stereotypes
from our lives totally and completely. And that includes not treating them flippantly as to display
them as a part of commodified culture. Explain your logic. Is this an aspect of our culture that we
should admire? Is it an aspect of our culture that should be so normalized as to become
commercialized? I assume you have no problem then with someone dressing up in a costume
representing a Nazi caricature of Jewish people. I would. How about not just Blackface, but
Blackface in chains and with a person behind them carrying a whip and pretending to lash
them? Your argument is so weak. If you are all right with Blackface you automatically have to be all
right with those representations according to your logic.
The object of the exercise is to put yourself in another’s shoes which Americans tend to be very bad
at doing. How can anyone pretend to understand the feeling of intense racial oppression if they’ve
never felt it? How can anyone tell a person who is oppressed “Oh your just making up excuses,
you’re just overly sensitive, you’re just a big crybaby” when they have never stepped in that person’s
shoes and never lived a day or a week or a month or a year as that person? Well I can think of
several reasons why…self- absorption, ignorance, the illogical and irrational feeling that this person
is somehow implicating you for their oppression at the hands of others, the irrational need to defend
the immoral actions of a person who may have the same skin color or ethnicity or religious
background or any other superficial characteristic as you. As it turns out none of these reasons are
good reasons. I don’t pretend that I can ever fully comprehend the magnitude of the oppression that
Black people have suffered in this country and continue to suffer. I got a taste of Israeli oppression
and humiliation of Palestinians at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel when I was singled out for
my Arab/Muslim descent before I even stepped foot in the airport and got strip-searched and put
through a separate screening process that took an extra hour and a half long. Was that humiliating?
Yes. Did I feel dehumanized? Yes. Do I pretend you or anyone else who has not experienced the
same thing would fully understand? No. I don’t care what your intent was. I don’t care if you think
of yourself as racist or not. This is not about anyone individual. It’s not about you, and that is what so
many people who cry “overly sensitive” don’t understand. Stop thinking about yourself for one
second. It is about a caricature. It is about a system of oppression that apparently is now so forgotten
and so disregarded that it has become commodified. To forget is to ignore. And to ignore is to
devalue. And to devalue is essentially to say to Black people our shared history, and by that I mean
the shared history between Blacks and Whites, is not important. The object of the exercise is to
acknowledge that the stereotype is offensive no matter how it’s used, and when it becomes
commodified like in a costume that automatically means it is devalued for what it originally was,
which was a representation of the historical oppressor/oppressed relationship between whites and
Blacks. It’s not offensive because I think it’s offensive. It’s not unoffensive because you think it’s
not offensive. It’s offensive because it represents subjugation, no matter the intention of the person
wearing it or in your case, the person defending it. Slavery was offensive because it was the practice
of subjugation. Do we really care whether the slave driver thought it was offensive or not? Do we
care whether the slave driver thought it was wrong or not? And to be sure, he didn’t think that. He
thought he was inculcating Christian values. He thought he was civilizing the uncivilized. He thought
he was far more moral than the person he was exploiting. Put yourself in the shoes of a Black person
who has descendants who were forced to participate in these minstrel shows and experienced
oppression under slavery and Jim Crow. They were treated as commodities, not as human beings.
The image that was built up over time was of a commodity. It was part of white culture. The image
belongs to Whites, not to Blacks, and now Whites, by defending it are, in truth trying to distance
themselves from it. They are responsible for it, and they are responsible for eliminating it. How can
Blacks be expected to remove an image of them that was not of their own creation? It’s like saying I
created this product and it doesn’t work but you are responsible for it. Doesn’t make any sense. Do
Black people have to show that they are not worthy of the Blackface caricature? That’s equivalent to
asking, Did Black people have to show that they weren’t worthy of slavery? To the second question,
no, but many white people at the end of the civil war thought they did. To the first question no, but
white people certainly are obligated to work as hard as they can to eliminate the vestiges of that time
period. And no that responsibility doesn’t stop at eliminating the actual institution of slavery. It also
refers to the mindset, the modes of thought, the systems of rationalization that develop as a result of
the oppressed/oppressor relationship. To think that America has eliminated that mode of thought is to
ignore the facts (the image of the Have you ever heard of the image of the Black welfare queen an
image of an overweight Black woman on welfare who is getting goodies like food and housing
(serious luxuries there) that she doesn’t deserve, which is an entirely false and unjustly generalized
carcicature, just to name one). Furthermore to think that that this mindset could have been
eliminated by now is also absurd and naive (although of course that’s not an excuse to say we
shouldnt continue working to eliminate it). We are just 150 years removed from the abolition of
slavery and 60 years removed from the civil rights movement and its gains of solely political rights
for Black people, to say nothing of economic parity. These are very short periods of history when
one considers how long and the severe degree to which Black people of all ethnicities were
oppressed by white people not just in America but also across the world. The economic situation for
Black people happens to be much worse than it was 30 years ago. If anything human nature
demonstrates that it takes a very long time to eliminate poisonous ways of thinking from our
psyches. But according to your logic if it’s part of human nature it’s admirable no matter what we
are referring to. The burden is on the oppressor which happened to be white people to eliminate the
unequal relations because they are the ones who created them. The responsibility of creating a post-
racial society falls primarily, if not completely, on the shoulders of white people since they were the
ones responsible for creating a society of unequal race relations in the first place. That’s not a racist
statement. That’s called an acknowedgement of guilt. That’s called owning up to stuff. It doesn’t
matter whether you’re 100 years old or 20 years old. Attitudes are passed on. Culture is passed on.
Beliefs are passed on. We have the freedom and the responsibility to alter those poisonous attitudes,
that poisonous culture, those poisonous beliefs that came before us. That’s called taking
responsibility which some white people love to point to Blacks and say they’re not taking
responsibility, when in fact it is still the system of unequal relations that is oppressing them, although
not to the same degree as 150 years ago. The author is not being racist. He is placing responsibility
where responsibility lies, with white people. It is some white people who refuse to take
responsibility and prefer to shift blame. It is some white people who are stupid enough to believe the
caricature of the Black welfare queen without looking at the facts in an unbiased and objective
fashion. It is some white people who are stupid enough to believe that some Black people would
prefer welfare to the dignity of work that pays a good wage (there’s no dignity in work that pays a
crappy wage so stop criticizing people for not being willing to take the shitty wage job) It is some
stupid, entitled white people who are more concerned with poor Black people pulling themselves up
by their bootstraps (while they have a family to provide for) than with the corporations who employ
them paying them a living wage. It is some white people who are stupid enough to believe that
because there are Black obese and overweight people who are also on welfare, oh that means they are
living large (the cheapest food happens to also be the least nutritious and most processed and most
filled with saturated fats, high sugar, high salt etc) It is some stupid, entitled white people in this
country who believe that redistribution of wealth only applies when it goes from the poor to the rich,
when in fact we already have the biggest wealth redistrubution system in the entire world….from the
rich to the poor. Ever heard of corporate welfare? Ever heard of the shift of wealth from labor to
capital. If not, you must have willful blinders on. Now that’s living large. That’s the mindset of the
oppressor. It’s called rationalization. The slave drivers did the same thing. That’s what human beings
do when they can’t own up to the immorality of their actions, beliefs, attitudes, as well as the
immorality of the system. That’s a part of human nature. And is the freedom to offend really the
highest freedom you want to aspire to? There exists no right to be offended and there exists no right
to offend. There is the freedom to express yourself, but that’s not the same as a so-called right to
offend. You have the freedom. You don’t have the right. The author is not compelling you to stop
speaking your mind, as you seem to think when you proudly boast that you have a right to express
yourself. Um who’s stopping you? Who is stopping Julianne Hough from expressing herself? She
can go out in Blackface tomorrow if she feels like it (Is there a law against it? Because I think that
law would violate our constitution) , if she doesn’t care about what some other people think. She has
the freedom to not care. No one is disputing that and no one is trying to take away that freedom That
is what this is really about. It’s about not caring about what other people think. It’s also about not
wanting to care. It’s about sticking to your guns no matter what logic flies in the face of your faulty
reasoning that we’ve heard over and over again and it’s frankly nothing new. It takes a pretty
courageous person to publicly and even privately change their views on something in the face of
logic and facts and just plain empathy, more courage then it takes to stick to their guns. Who is
stopping anyone who shares your viewpoint from expressing themselves? The author is not taking
away your freedom, unless you think criticism of your viewpoint constitutes an infringement of your
freedom of expression which in that case, you really don’t care about freedom of expression
then…..do you?…unless it’s your freedom to express. He is however pointing out very real problems
with the logic and sentiment of your viewpoint as am I. Whether you want to acknowledge our
arguments or not is up to you, but don’t act like we are taking away your freedom to say and think
and do whatever the hell you want. Because we’re not. No one’s oppressing you. Get that straight.

2) While your post is spot on in many ways, that’s just what we need is a more sensitive nation! Of
course I say that sarcastically. Yes, the Trayvon costume was of horrible taste but why is it wrong for
Hough to dress as a black character. Is Hough a known racist? No. So, if I decide to dress up as
Lebron James next year, am I all of a sudden a horrible person? I’m tired of the actions of whites
being restricted by issues that occurred well before our time. No, I’m not a racist but I do despise the
double standard involved when throwing that term around. Again, I agree 100% with parts of your
post and it is very well written.”
I’m sorry. Is Lebron James an offensive caricature of Black people created by Whites within a
system of oppression? Do you think before you compare apples and oranges? There’s no double
standard. There’s no restrictions being place on your freedom of expression. There is criticism
being expressed of your viewpoint. If you think that constitutes restricting your freedom of
expression, then I guess you really don’t care about freedom of expression then, unless of course
freedom of expression is synonymous with the freedom to not experience criticism. On the contrary,
comments like yours apparently show that we have a long way to go in becoming a more sensitive
nation. That’s not sarcastic by the way. Next time think before you write, or do you feel that
criticism is a restriction of your freedom to express. That’s sarcasm, by the way.

3) “FWIW… Orange is the New Black is based on a book about a white woman in prison. If Native
American costumes are bad then I suppose people who wear green on St. Patrick’s Day are
insensitive to the Irish Potato Famine of 1845.
I agree with blackface, KKK, and other insensitive costumes, but you lose me at Native Americans.”
Native American costumes are a white’s caricature of Native Americans. born out of a system of
oppression. Enlighten us about the origin of the color green with regards to its representation of Irish
people. Apparently we can not get away from the tendency, in commenting on this blog post, to
compare apples to oranges. With regards to you being Native American, can a Black man who’s
very successful in life start to forget about the racialized system of oppression that exists in this
country, because he really no longer has to deal with it? Can there be a Black man who has absorbed
the mentality of the oppressor, who thinks that just because he has success that automatically means
the opportunity is open to every single poor Black person in this country to have success? Ever hear
of Congressman Allen West, the guy Republicans like to use as their token Black guy for proving
they are not racist? Ever hear of President Barrack Obama and his ignorant personal responsibility
speech at Morehouse College, while he, the damn first Black President of the United States, has not
done one thing to improve the economic condition of Black people in this country and has actually
done a lot to make it worse? I ask why is the burden of responsibility always on the oppressed rather
than the oppressor. Answer: Because that’s the way the oppressor likes it. Again, think before you
write.

4) ” guess I’m a racist.

” I don’t understand how dressing like another culture is a bad thing? Aren’t we supposed to
embrace each other? Why didn’t you show any ‘white-faced blacks’? Is it racist for a black man to
dress like Trayvon and a Hispanic male as George? I dressed like octi-mom one year, was that ok as
we were both white? What if I were black? Would that be racist? Or too close to reality?
Yes, I think your post is a bit too sensitive. Look at the facts, many of these costumes reflect things
that have happened in our history. Good for bad, if someone wants to represent it, they shouldn’t be
ridiculed for it. If you’re offended, look elsewhere.”
Oh this one’s a real doozy. It’s the best example of a person who doesn’t think before she
writes. Yes, embracing an offensive caricature of a Black person created under a system of
oppression constitutes you embracing the real culture of Black people, not a terrible aspect of white
culture. Blackface is not Black culture. It’s white culture. But then according to you all cultures are
equal no matter what they represent. How about for next year’s Halloween you dress up as a victim
of female genital mutilation, a practice common in some patriachal Arab cultures. How about next
year you dress up as a Nazi caricature of Jewish people? How about next year you dress up as a Nazi
concentration camp prisoner? I’m sure everyone at the party will laugh their socks off. I think the
author looked at the history. There’s no need to tell him to look at the history. You are the one who
has not examined the historical context. Octi-mom, as far as I know, is not an offensive caricature
created under a system of oppression. Again, stop comparing apples to oranges. Ridicule? Now
ridicule is synonymous with “criticism of a measured tone.” I’m sorry. Did it appear the author was
personally insulting and screaming at you through your computer screen? And with regards to a
Black man dressing up as Trayvon, why in the world do you even consider that a potential
Halloween costume? And yes that would be offensive, not least because it denigrates the memory of
a real person in its reduction of their memory to a mere commodity. Just because a Black man, in
your hypothetical example, would be doing it doesn’t mean it’s not offensive. The offense is in the
action, not the color of the person’s skin performing the action. What exactly should the author look
for elsewhere? White-faced Blacks? As far as I know, white-face doesn’t exist as a caricature of
white people. As far as I know whites were never systematically oppressed by Black people. You
can’t play the victim if you were never the victim. You talk about reality. Get in touch with it. No I
don’t think you’re racist. I think you have no idea what you are talking about. I think you fall into
that category of compulsive rationalizer.

“Why Teach” by Mark Edmundson And

The Dogma of New Criticism
Posted on November 13, 2013
Should a high school students, college student, or even an adult who has long since graduated from
formal schooling be expected to value what is termed the Western literary canon just because it is
held in such high regard by the individuals who first dubbed it the Western literary canon?

I pose this question after reading what I consider to be a semi-polemical work by University of
Virginia English Professor, Mark Edmundson, entitled Why Teach, in which he claims in the chapter
headed “Narcissus Regards His Book/ The Common Reader Now” that the devaluation of so-called
Western Culture and the Western literary canon is caused by a growing “culture industry” in the
United States in which the main standard by which society judges a work of literature is its ability to
elicit feelings of pleasure and satisfaction from readers,
“If Stephen King and John Grisham bring pleasure, why, then let us applaud them. Let’s give them
awards, let’s break down the walls of the old clubs and colleges and give them entry forthwith. The
only really important question to pose about a novel by Stephen King, we now know, is whether it
offers a vintage draught of the Stephen King experience. Does it deliver the spine-shaking chills of
great King efforts past? Is the mayhem cranked to the desirable degree? What’s not asked in the
review and the interview and the profile is whether a King Book is worth writing or worth the
reading. It seems that no one anymore has the wherewithal to say that reading a King novel is a
major waste of human time. No chance. If people want to read it, if they get pleasure from it, then it
must be good. What other standard is there?” (Edmundson 177)

I am not entirely sure how to react to this statement. On the one hand, it is incredibly insulting to
anyone who dares to read for pleasure. I do read for pleasure, however not as much as I used to.
These days I find myself reading more for discovery, more for what Edmundson calls “the pursuit of
influence”. I want to have my horizons broadened, my views shaped and altered, albeit in a critical
manner. I am aware that I am not perfect and neither is my outlook on the world. I agree with
Edmundson that “It takes a strange mixture of humility and confidence” to read this way. I also
believe that most people do not have this mixture. I agree with Edmundson that many people in this
country do not want to be influenced. They are dogmatic. They are ignorant. They are
irrational. They are set in their ways, and they simply do not care to listen, let alone to critically
analyze an alternate viewpoint. I also agree with Edmundson that, up to a certain degree, reading for
primarily for sensual stimulation as opposed to “Reading in pursuit of influence” is a product of this
culture. But, at the same time, human pleasure comes in many forms. Pleasure is not just immediate
sensory stimulation. I get as much pleasure from reading James Baldwin, Joe Kincheloe, Henry
Giroux, Noam Chomsky, Paulo Freire, and Rosa Luxemburg as I do from reading Stephen King and
Dean Koontz. Often times I experience two or three types of pleasure in reading one work. And
sometimes I recognize the same values, the same morals, the same ethics expressed in Koontz’
riveting, fast-paced, and creative story-telling as I do in Chomsky’s unconventional and unrelenting
political and media analysis. Yes these two authors express those values through different literary
forms, but does the literary form and style of Koontz as opposed to Chomsky, detract from the
meaning, the value, the moral and ethical enlightenment I experience from reading the former’s
brilliant works of fiction. Absolutely not!!! Yes, the works of Chomsky and Freire and Luxemburg
are more overtly political, more intellectual works then the works of King and Koontz. But does that
mean Koontz and King wasted their time writing? Does that mean I am wasting my time reading
Koontz and King? Give me a break. I implore you to critically examine your own simplistic
dogmatism, Professor Edmundson. If you bothered to do so, you would no doubt realize that you
explicitly argue for the idea of reading for pleasure in the exact same chapter in which you so
vociferously denounce it,
Now the people who were kids when the Western Canon went on trial and received summary justice
are working the levers of culture. They are the editors and the reviewers and the arts feature writers
and the ones who interview the novelists and the poets–to the degree that anyone interviews the
poets. Though the arts interest them, though they read this and though they read that–there is one
thing that makes them very nervous indeed about what they do. They are not comfortable with–errr–
judgments of quality. They are not at ease with “the whole evaluation thing.” They may sense that
Blake’s”Songs” are in some manner more valuable, more worth pondering, more worth preserving
than The Simpsons. They may sense as much. But they do not have the terminology to explain
why. They never heard the arguments. The professors who should have been providing them when
the No More Western Culture marches were on never made a peep (……) They never even cited
Wilde on the value of pure and simple literary pleasure. (Edmundson 176)
Oh I see. So if I decide to read Stephen King for pleasure because I read Oscar Wilde and he told me
it’s all right to read for pleasure then I’m in the clear because Oscar Wilde’s work is included in the
Western Canon. But if I decide on my own to read Stephen King because I find his work pleasurable
then I am an uncultured and uninhibited pleasure-seeker. Please Professor Edmundson, explain away
that fancy logic.

And let me get another thing straight. You put any work of literature, any piece of art, any musical
work, any film that is not included in the Western Canon, in the same category as…..The
Simpsons. Well of course….neither the works of Rosa Luxemburg or The Simpsons are included in
the Western Canon. As a result, both share qualities inherent in low culture. Please Professor
Edmundson, explain away that fancy logic.

Here is where Edmundson analyzes opposition to the canon,

“But it’s not only the division of experience between hard labor and empty leisure that now makes
reading for something like mortal stakes a very remote possibility. Not all that long ago– fifteen
years, not much more–students paraded through the campuses and through the quads, chanting
variations on a theme: Hey-hey, ho-ho, they jingled, Western culture’s got to go. The marches and
the chants and the general skepticism about something called the canon seemed to some an affront to
all civilized values. (Edmundson 174)

If students were marching against Western culture fifteen years ago it wouldn’t have been because
they were valueless, it wouldn’t have been because they were uncivilized, it wouldn’t have been
because they were uncultured, it wouldn’t have been because they were uninhibited pleasure-
seekers. If students were marching against Western culture fifteen years ago, it would have been
because they were being cast aside, treated as objects to be molded and shaped according to the
dominant ideology, disrespected and disregarded by a culture of normalized cruelty, alienation,
militant individualism, and inundated with commodified culture. It would have been because
Western Culture had betrayed them, their hopes and their desires, their dreams and aspirations, not
because they had betrayed Western Culture. Give your students some credit Professor
Edmundson. The ones who march are the ones who get it and seek to do something to change it, and
they don’t deserve your derision. They deserve your praise.

Professor Edmundson lionizes the Western literary canon and labels anyone who doesn’t
unequivocally appreciate its contents as an active participant in this “pleasure”. To think that this
could be the only possible reason, or even the main reason, that someone would disagree with the
labeling of the works of literature included in this so-called canon, as high and superior culture, is
extremely naive and frankly anti-intellectual. Is it an indication of my low culture that I find James
Baldwin more engaging, more thought-provoking, a more relevant author to my life and experience
then Shakespeare? Would Professor Edmundson call a Black teenager living in the midst of inner
city poverty in the United States, devoid of culture for not being able to relate to Homer’s
Odyssey? Reading, especially critical reading is a subjective process and the disagreement between
me and Professor Edmundson as well as others who lionize the Western literary canon is not over its
the value of its constituent works to shaping our society but the pedagogy that is used to convey,
explain, and relate that value to human subjects who bring their own experiences, their own values,
their own knowledge to the classroom. It is as if Professor Edmundson believes his students should
value a work of literature just because it is presented to them as high culture, the best our society has
to offer regardless of what they may think. You can’t just plop Shakespeare down in front of a kid
and expect him to value it, relate to it, be transformed by it just because you value it, you relate to it,
you are transformed by it. Does Professor Edmundson believe that his students are standardized?
Does he believe knowledge is standardized? Does he believe that one student experiences a work of
literature in exactly the same way as another student? Does he believe that every student should
experience the Western Canon as he does? Apparently he does. According to him, some of his
students just do not have the “wherewithal” to practice this unapologetic elitism. If this is his idea of
how affective teaching and learning should be conducted, by making the students realize how stupid
and uncultured they are, then he should not be a teacher. The view that Edmundson takes here is
extremely authoritarian and paternalistic. He disrespects his students by not recognizing that their
subjectivity is integral to the effectiveness of the learning process. If his pedagogy reflects his
reasoning for why his students do not appreciate Shakespeare, then he will forever be complaining
about what he perceives to be the low culture of his students. By doing this, he absolves himself of
all pedagogical responsibility for helping to make literature, any works of literature, whether they are
in the Western Canon or not, accessible, relatable, and most importantly potentially transformative
and liberating for his students. And that, Professor Edmundson, is exactly how you teach students to
passively and uncritically assimilate to the status quo which you, at times, eloquently criticize
throughout the rest of the book.

Professor Edmundson, you are not the supreme arbiter of all knowledge, not to your students and
certainly not to the readers of this book. Yes the intellectual and media culture in America is
severely degraded, but that is because of their service to corrupt power structures not because of your
erroneous belief that we have forgotten the value of the classics. I hated Shakespeare in high
school. I despised the Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I despised Dante’s Inferno. I did not
enjoy having to read Homer’s Odyssey in high school and then again in college. But do you know
why I despised them? It was not because of anything inherent in any of these works of literature. It
was because my teachers and professors, like yourself, thought they could tell me how and what to
feel about whatever I was reading, and if I didn’t feel however they thought I should feel, well then I
was stupid, I didn’t belong in an Honors English class They thought, like yourself, that they could
tell me to value one work over another just because some supposedly wise men who came before me
had already decided that these works of literature were just better than all the rest. It was all about
power for them, power over my heart and power over my mind. It was all about educating at me
and to me instead of withme. Well guess what. Now I prefer James Baldwin. I prefer Noam
Chomsky. I prefer Dean Koontz. I prefer Joe Kincheloe. I prefer Henry Giroux. I prefer Paulo
Freire I prefer Paramahansa Yogananda. I prefer Malcolm X. I prefer Martin Luther King Jr. I
prefer Rosa Luxemburg. I prefer authors that speak to me. And I will never pick up Shakespeare
again. I will never pick up Virgil’s Aeneid again. I will never pick up Homer’s The Odyssey or The
Iliad again. Why? Not because I despise them, but because I despise the idea of a Western Canon,
because I despise the unabashed elitism that is inherent in the creation and the advocacy of such a
repulsive power structure. Believe it or not, I have read and I have enjoyed and I have been
transformed by some of the titles in this so-called Western Canon. I have read John
Dewey’s, Experience and Education, ironically a work that argues for the value of the student’s
subjectivity in education. I expect that John Dewey, if he were alive today, would strongly criticize
this absurd invention known as the Western Canon, let alone the inclusion of one of his seminal
works in such a structure. Karl Marx, is another author whose Capital is included in the Western
Canon, and who would no doubt, in line with his denunciation of the oppressive rule of a tiny
minority over the great majority, denounce its creation as well. Perhaps Professor Edmundson
should re-read these works in order to get a better idea of why so many intelligent people within
American society oppose the Western Canon.

The Motivation And Purpose To Boycott

Posted on November 29, 2013

This commentary is in response to this recently “Freshly Pressed” Post entitled “I May Shop On
Thanksgiving.”
I say this respectfully and not with intent to draw ire but just to poke at your logic a bit…the problem
is simply “want”. What I mean by that is that we currently live in an economic system in which
workers in the jobs you reference are basically compelled to sell their labor to corporations in order
to just have the basic means to survival-food, shelter, etc Labor is viewed and treated as a commodity
just as a television or an xbox 360. The market is a disciplining force. It is a compelling force. It’s
maxim is maximization of profit at whatever cost. And one of those costs is labor. So if every
company in these sectors is offering shitty wages for long hours then the fact is workers have no
where else to go. If the exploitation existed with just a few companies then those companies would
quickly go out of business because no one would want to work under their conditions when they have
the freedom to choose better conditions. The problem is there is a monopoly on exploitation in the
sectors you reference, and so the conditions are set for the labor market to act as a compelling force.
People need to have access to the basic means of survival. This is the reality of wage labor. I mean
just think of the immorality inherent in a system in which the often-heard phrase which you used
“some people can’t afford the day off, so don’t judge.” Is used to justify this abhorrent relationship
between labor and capital which is completely contrived and not at all natural as some people like to
think it is. No one, no human being, should have to work in a job that requires them to say “I just
can’t afford the day off” cause what that phrase tells you is that they are being compelled to sell their
labor power, their blood, their sweat, their tears to a corporation just to have the ability to put food on
the table. And that is a big problem. That is a systemic problem. People aren’t hating on the company
for being open. They’re hating on the company (technically not just one company but the whole retail
sector) for creating an artificial system in which “I just can’t afford the day off or else I won’t be able
to pay my bills” is a commonly used phrase by workers who are exploited by these companies. At
it’s most basic level, that phrase can be summed up in one word….exploitation. And contrary to what
you are saying that hate is very moral. It does signal love and compassion.
“But instead of hating on the company for being open, why not turn your hatred into compassion for
the employees that probably are thanking their lucky stars that Kmart is open that day. It’s an extra
day they get to work and put food on the table. Instead of being such a jerk, why not drop $5
Starbucks cards off to all the employees, or embrace the needs of fast food workers to work on the
holiday by stopping by on your way to your Thanksgiving feast to get a soda and just wish the
workers a happy holiday.”

What your describing here is charity. It doesn’t get to the root of the problem which at its core is a
systemic problem. It doesn’t help to change the conditions in which these people work. It doesn’t
help end the system of exploitation that these workers are forced to suffer under in silence. I mean
why do you think fast food workers have been coming out in masse, boycotting their workplaces, and
demanding a raise in the minimum wage? The only way they’re going to be able to raise their
standard of living is by fighting for it and challenging systems of power. They don’t just want that
extra day or that $5 starbucks cards from a customer wishing them happy holidays. That doesn’t
change the reality of their lives. That’s charity. While charity is necessary in a society that contains
want and needless suffering and I am by no means denigrating charitable giving and actions, it
essentially does nothing to address the fundamental conditions in which that want arises. To fight
against these systemic conditions, well that is far more moral and displays far more compassion for
the basic dignity of the human worker, then any form of charity ever could, and that is just a fact. The
goal is to live in a society in which charity is no longer needed to sustain the basic needs of the
population. Just because that goal may be perceived as unreachable or too idealistic by some, does
not mean that we do not stop fighting for it. Indeed it would be deeply immoral to do so. What purer
form of love could there be?

A lot of people that work on holidays want to. I might go as far as to say that everyone I know of that
works on holidays, or have ever talked to working on a holiday, has said that they enjoy it and the
extra money, and that they wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I would go as far as to say
that.

So some people want to work on the holidays…that’s fine…no problem with that…but that fact
doesn’t really contribute to arguing either for or against the thesis of your post. The people who
boycott are not focusing their action on people who want to work for the sake of enjoying the work.
Their action is focused on people who are forced to work under a system of exploitation. Of course
people want that extra money. But they deserve that money and most likely a lot more for the hours
of work they are already putting in. That is the point boycotters are focused on. And there’s no
reason logical way to rationalize labeling them as immoral for that.
“Some people can’t afford to not work on holidays. If you don’t understand that, you have some
serious learning to do, and it will be done off your pedestal this time.”

With regard to this statement, again, it’s not that people don’t understand that. It’s that these people
understand the inherent immorality of a system in which this phrase is a widespread reality for too
many workers across retail and other exploited sectors. There is no moral high horse here, just a cold
look at reality. You will not see real and meaningful change unless this “Some people can’t afford to
not work on holidays.” becomes obsolete. Not all the people, and I would bet most of the people who
disagree with you are not privileged individuals. They hate that this phrase is a reality, their reality.

Of course some people have to work, like in the healthcare sector. I mean it’s common sense to
acknowledge that these people can’t take the day off. But retail? I mean why not just make everyone
do their shopping for the holidays long before the holidays by mandating these stores close on the
holidays. It’s that simple. But of course that doesn’t cross the mind of the corporate execs and higher
ups who treat labor as a commodity rather then as a set of human beings who would like to be
compensated well for their hard work and not have to worry about the consequences of missing a day
of pay to be with their families on the holidays. Again the need to get rid of want comes to the
forefront.

A commenter makes a very good point here,

“These openings on Thanksgiving are not to bolster the paycheck of the employee, but the coffers of
the corporation.”

You can’t just look at this issue in isolation. Sure the worker is getting an extra paycheck that isn’t
worth the blood, sweat, and tears he put into the work to earn that paycheck. And what is the
corporation getting? Another day of huge profit margins. There’s nothing moral about that picture,
and there’s nothing moral about supporting that picture.

I don’t think you are lacking in compassion. I’m certain you are a very moral person and a very nice
person. Nevertheless you are simply failing to see this issue in the context in which it arises and
therefore you fail to see this issue in the context I n which it must be eliminated, which will not
happen by charity but my prolonged social struggle. That is what some of the commenters here are
desperately trying to elucidate.

“Sure companies are greedy and don’t care about their employees, but that is irrelevant to what I am
saying.”

This is not irrelevant to what you are saying. Yes companies are greedy. Great concentrations of
power tend to abuse that power. The issue is controlling that power. The issue is not just corporations
being greedy. They have created a set of artificial conditions in this country which allow them to
maximize their power and tools of exploitation to satisfy that greed. You want to eliminate their
greed, then you have to eliminate those tools and you have to control that beastly power. That is the
context I am talking about. It is not immoral for people to oppose this system via boycott.

Finally, what I think you are really opposing is not the morality of boycott but the tactic of boycott.
In this I will concede that I think in order for boycott to be affective both exploited workers and
potential consumers have to participate. Together they can work to end this system. But this is a
technical issue, not a moral one. Workers used to be a very organized force in this country. They
were class conscious and politically active fighting for their rights. This needs to happen again. The
latent sense of being fed up with this shit is there. It just needs to be harnessed and organized into a
mass social force for change.

And finally the statement,

“I always wanted to work on holidays. I requested to work on holidays. A lot of people that work in
retail do.” is not sufficient to make your argument valid. You have to ask what is the reason that
people wanted to work on holidays. was it the “want”…was it because they needed access to the
basic means of survival. if that is the case, which it tends to be the case, then this desire to work is
not a real desire to work for the sake of the joy of the job….it’s a need to work created by the
corporation’s exploitation of its workers. if the conditions didn’t exist for this desire to manifest
itself, then that would mean that exploitation isn’t taking place…which is a good thing. A better way
to phrase it would not be “a desire to work” but rather “feeling that you have to work in order to meet
your basic needs”…which not coincendentally is exactly the way the corporation wants you to feel.
How else are they gonna compel you to work on Thanksgiving?

John Kerry on Iraq

Posted on January 6, 2014

On Sunday U.S. secretary of state John Kerry publicly assured the Shiite government in Iraq led by
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, that the United States will support its war against militants from the
Al-Qaeda-linked group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It has been reported that the ISIS
now largely control the major cities of Ramadi and Fallujah located in Anbar Province. In his
comments Kerry made reference to their “barbarism against the civilians in Ramadi and
Fallujah” and asserted that “these are the most dangerous players in that region.” In the course of
putting emphasis on his claim that the administration is not contemplating the return of U.S. troops to
Iraq, Kerry said,

“We can’t want peace and we can’t want democracy and we can’t want an orderly government and
stability more than the people in a particular area, in a particular country or a particular region,”
he said. “This fight, in the end, they will have to win, and I am confident they can.”

Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the fact that the primary threat to democracy, peace, order,
and stability in Iraq ever since the U.S. completed its troop withdrawal in 2011, has been the U.S.
backed regime of one Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. By pledging support to this regime, Kerry
refuses to acknowledge that this Shiite strongman has been largely responsible for igniting sectarian
tensions in Iraq by branding all legitimate Sunni opposition and protests as “terrorism” and
instituting vicious crackdowns against dissenters thus creating the environment in which Al-Qaeda
could gain the support of certain tribes. It is because of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s vicious
crackdowns and discriminatory policies against the Sunni minority that 2013 saw the highest number
of casualties in Iraq since 2008. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention that the strategy al-Maliki
is currently employing against the ISIS is largely reminiscent of the counterinsurgency strategy
which U.S. troops employed in Iraq in 2006; namely to enlist (mainly through bribes) the cooperation
of some local tribal leaders in his fight thus further inflaming sectarian tension and laying the
groundwork for the tragic mess that Iraq is today. The Secretary of State neglected to denounce the
most recent raid by Iraqi security forces on an encampment of peaceful Sunni protestors in
Ramadi. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the fact that the U.S. has never, is not, and will
never support democracy in Iraq. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the fact that the U.S. has
always supported strongmen in the Middle East as opposed to human rights and the development of
strong civil and political institutions and this policy of supporting al-Maliki is just an extension of
that commitment. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the fact that guns, tanks, helicopters,
fighter jets, and especially drone strikes have never, do not, and will never solve the problem of Al-
Qaeda. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to mention the fact that what Iraq needs from the United
States is not military aid funneled to a corrupt government intent on destroying all opposition but
rather massive reparations directed at the civilian population. Of course Mr. Kerry neglected to
mention the fact that this resurgence of Al-Qaeda and seething sectarian tension in Iraq is the direct
result of the invasion and subsequent occupation which he supported. Of course Mr. Kerry doesn’t
mention the fact that President Obama’s expansion and escalation of the Global War on Terror has
actually had the opposite of its stated intended effect and that this foray into Iraq will be no
different. And finally, Mr. Kerry doesn’t mention the fact that that anti-terrorism is just a cover for
the assertion of American global hegemony in the twenty-first century much like anti-communism
was just a cover for the assertion of American global hegemony during the so-called Cold War
period.

Disability Perspectives: Sound and Fury

Posted on February 21, 2014

I wrote this paper for one of my Masters Degree courses on special education for students with
disabilities. It analyzes the perspectives on disability expressed by the Artinian Family and featured
in the documentary films Sound and Fury (2000) and Sound and Fury: 6 Years later. You can find
both films in their entirety on Youtube.
At the beginning of the original Sound of Fury film, Peter expresses this fear that upon receiving the
implant, Heather will exist in a separate realm of existence, severed from both the deaf world and the
hearing world. I find this sentiment to be a largely incoherent and dishonest rationalization for the
impending decision not to allow his daughter to undergo the surgery. This point of the film
represents the justification stage for both parents. Before Peter and Nita can justify their decision to
Heather, they have to justify it to themselves. At one point, Peter even likens people with cochlear
implants to an army of robots implying that the surgery will somehow cause his daughter’s humanity
to be diluted or tainted. This is the only point of the film in which Peter and Nita express any
concern about the health and well-being of their daughter vis-à-vis the cochlear implant. Throughout
the rest of the movie and in their heated confrontations with the hearing members of the family, their
primary fear of the implant is that it will cause Heather to disengage from the deaf world and deaf
culture thereby alienating them from her life. In other words, their misgivings are born out of a crisis
of identity, a fear for themselves and the social cohesion of their family, not a fear for their
daughter. To be certain, I do hear contradictory messages being broadcast by both Nita and Peter at
this stage. For example, Peter does say that he just wants Heather to be happy and if she is happy
then he is happy. But I quickly learn that it is his version of happiness which he seeks to impose on
his daughter that fuels his decision-making process. Heather has no say in the matter. In fact, I feel
as if Nita and Peter have tricked Heather into saying she prefers not to have the surgery. Upon
learning about the surgery and how it could potentially change her life, Heather initially expresses a
strong desire to communicate with the hearing world while still maintaining ties to the deaf
culture. She understands that the cochlear implant will serve to broaden her experience, while still
allowing her to embrace her deaf identity. I view this as an extremely sophisticated and nuanced
position for such a young child to take. In fact, I am extremely surprised to hear Peter express
understanding of his daughter’s position. Unfortunately, that understanding does not carry through to
the eventual decision to forgo the surgery. At one point, even Nita expresses the desire to receive the
implant and begins researching the procedure. Peter’s response to his wife’s initiative is indicative of
how he views the deaf culture vis-à-vis hearing culture, “I thought you were proud to be deaf.” I
don’t believe that being deaf is something to be proud of anymore then being a hearing person is
something to be proud of. It is a mere aspect of human existence that some people are deaf and most
people are hearing. Certainly, Peter can and should be proud of his struggle to overcome oppression
and alienation in the face of the dominant hearing culture, but that is not the same as expressing pride
in being deaf. In fact, I would argue that an overwhelming sense of pride is the key ingredient in
forming an oppressive and discriminatory culture in which one sector of society is regarded as being
inferior to the rest of the population on account of some difference. The pride should rest in the
struggle and the culture that emerges from that struggle, not in the actual difference. In order to
understand this fact, all Peter has to do is engage in a simple thought exercise. Suppose deaf culture
was the dominant culture, and Peter was a hearing person in this hypothetical world. He would then
be obliged to overcome the same oppressive and discriminatory forces which he was forced to
overcome as a deaf person within a dominant hearing culture. The oppression does not stem from
anything intrinsic to the difference but rather humanity’s inclination to highlight difference as a
justification for enforcing unequal power relations between and among various sectors of the
population. Deaf culture is similar to any other minority, oppressed culture in that it is constantly
engaged in a struggle for power against the majority, dominant culture. Now in the context of this
struggle, the oppressed, unfortunately, sometimes assume certain unsavory characteristics of the
oppressor. Indeed this phenomenon becomes problematic once the revolutionary oppressed manage
to overthrow their oppressors and institute a new organizational paradigm. Often the former
oppressed will assume an unsentimental governing posture by engaging in the same practices which
caused them to rebel against their oppressors in the first place. As a result, different groups now
occupy both roles leaving the oppressor/oppressed relationship intact, a development which signals
the ultimate failure of the revolution. Peter, albeit on a vastly small scale, engages in this same sort
of role reversal. He takes such great pride in the deaf identify, valuing it to such a great degree, that
he is willing to deny his daughter the chance to become more fully human. Again, I stress that the
value that would come with Heather gaining access to the hearing world is not intrinsic to the ability
to hear itself, but rather the potential it offers for bridging the power gap between the deaf and
hearing worlds. I consider a deaf person gaining the ability to hear via cochlear implant surgery to be
on par with a hearing person gaining the ability to communicate with a deaf person by learning sign
language. The former does not imply the loss of deaf culture or deaf identity just as the latter does
not imply the loss of hearing culture or hearing identity. The goal is to maximize human freedom
and potential by eliminating the power differential thereby eliminating the oppressor/oppressed
relationship. The sociopolitical model of disability takes the viewpoint that disability does not define
the person and by defining an individual by his or her disability, society denies that individual his or
her freedom and autonomy. My contention is that the minority culture can and does fall into this
same trap. Yes, Heather is a child who is deaf and that is certainly one aspect of her identity but it is
only one aspect of a whole and complex individual. Peter and Nita, by refusing to allow their
daughter to receive the cochlear implant surgery, choose to define their daughter solely by her
deafness and by doing so they deny her basic humanity. I view this situation as just one example of
how the parent/child relationship can devolve into that oppressor/oppressed paradigm. Peter and
Nita’s fear for Heather’s rejection of the deaf culture as a result of cochlear implant surgery also
stems from their visits to the houses and schools of deaf children who had undergone the
surgery. What they see is that these children do not know sign language and have no deaf
identity. However, what they fail to realize is that these children have hearing parents and therefore
have never been immersed in deaf culture from the beginning. Consequently one cannot trace their
lack of familiarity with the deaf identity to the cochlear implant. Since Peter and Nita are of course
deaf and their daughter already knows sign language, the fear remains irrational, not grounded in any
semblance of objectivity. Peter’s mother is correct in saying that the real fear among deaf people is
that the hearing world is trying to make them hearing via the cochlear implant surgery. When I take
into account the discrimination that deaf people have faced from the dominant hearing culture, I can
understand this sentiment. Nonetheless, that does not mean I embrace its implications and
conclusions. Nonetheless, I still disagree with Peter’s father that deafness is a handicap. Deaf people
have their own language and their own culture. If the dominant culture was deaf, hearing would be
viewed as a handicap. Deafness as a handicap is a perception and it becomes a reality only once that
perception is embraced by the dominant culture. It is a human construct born out of the fact that
most people are not deaf. Nevertheless, I still believe that the Artinian family can embrace the
cochlear implant surgery for Heather without compromising their sociopolitical outlook on disability
as well as Heather’s deaf identity, and, indeed, by the time Heather reaches nine years of age they
have converted to that line of reasoning.

Peter’s parents are relentless in their push to convert their son and his wife, and three years after
moving back to NY, Peter and Nita change their outlook and Heather receives the surgery. I agree
with Peter’s decision and his ultimate reasoning that it was his responsibility to maximize the
opportunity for his child to be happy and free to practice two cultures that when integrated are not
opposed to each other. Her speech improves and she is enrolled in a hearing school. The school
furnishes her with an interpreter. Heather’s teacher speaks very highly of her desire to learn and her
ability to function well in class despite her speech difficulties. Heather’s principal highlights the fact
that she has no difficulty in making friends. Her classmates appreciate her for her lively and
enthusiastic personality. In summation, all the people that have an effect on Heather’s self-concept,
view her as an individual with a disability as opposed to a disabled individual. Now both the hearing
and the deaf world have embraced the sociopolitical model of disability. This includes her parents
who are thankful that their misgivings did not come to pass. Heather’s connection to the deaf world
and deaf culture is just as strong as it ever was. The only difference is now she can enjoy the best of
both worlds. Surprisingly Nita also decides to receive the implant despite the doctor’s low
expectations of speech development as a result of her being deaf her entire life. Upon seeing her
daughter’s enormous success, her desire to hear is rekindled. Bridges have been built. Fears have
been confronted and dealt with. In the end, the cochlear implant has been a blessing for the cohesion
of this family. It permits understanding and inclusion without sacrificing the deaf culture which was
so important to Nita and Peter from the beginning. This film was instructive in the idea that in order
for two cultures to coexist in harmony, both must apply the sociopolitical perspective in the process
of confronting discrimination and exclusion. It was not healthy for Nita and Peter to isolate the
family by moving to Maryland just as it is not healthy for society when individuals with disabilities
are discriminated against by the dominant culture. Although they did not explicitly express it in the
2000 film, the true source of Nita and Peter’s anxiety regarding the cochlear implant was their feeling
that it was just another way for the hearing world to express its dominance, to discriminate against
them. Now they realize that this was not true. As exemplified in this follow-up film, the cochlear
implant has functioned to eliminate that power gap not by doing away with the deaf culture but by
improving the ability to communicate across cultures. Indeed, in this sense, I believe that to embrace
the cochlear implant is to embrace the sociopolitical model of disability.

Disability Perspectives: The Junkyard

Wonders by Patricia Polacco
Posted on March 5, 2014

Here’s another paper I wrote for my Masters Degree course on special education for students with
disabilities. It analyzes the perspectives on disability expressed in The Junkyard Wonders, a
children’s book written by Patricia Polacco. You can find the book at a library or bookstore near
you.
Trisha had hoped to be able to keep her dyslexia a secret, but unbeknownst to her, the school’s
exclusionary policy on students with disabilities mirrors the one at her old school, and as a result her
fellow students have already been made aware that there is something different about the new
girl. Overwhelmed by her new surroundings, Trish asks two girls for help getting to class. They take
one look at her class card, and contemptuously inform her that she is in Mrs. Peterson’s class.
(Polacco 2010). From the outset, the author makes it clear that the general student body holds a
negative attitude towards students with disabilities. Based on the illustrations and the level of Mrs.
Peterson’s instruction, Trish and her schoolmates are approximately twelve or thirteen years of age,
old enough to have internalized society’s harmful prejudices regarding individuals who fail to meet
normalized standards of appearance, intelligence, and speech. In the opening paragraph, Trish
reveals how her self-concept had been damaged by her interactions with the kids in her old school,
“In my old school in California, the kids all knew that I had just learned to read….that I used to be
dumb. Everyone knew that I was always in special classes.” (Polacco, 2010) Trish’s conflation of
dyslexia and her level of intelligence reveal the extent to which she has internalized the negative
cultural attitudes towards disability. Unfortunately the stigma associated with being placed in
segregated classrooms all her school life has, to a significant extent, caused Trish to unconsciously
assimilate the culture’s perception of the medical model as essentially faultless in describing and
classifying her condition. As a result, she is determined to hide it from her new schoolmates, since
doing the opposite can only result in more of the same ostracism, bullying, and discrimination.
Trish’s new teacher, Mrs. Peterson, sets a rather auspicious tone to the first day of class by defining
the word “Genius”, asking that the students memorize it, and finally proclaiming that “The definition
describes every one of you.” (Polacco 2010). According to Mrs. Peterson,

“Genius is neither learned nor acquired. It is knowing without experience. It is risking without fear
of failure. It is perception without touch. It is understanding without research. It is certainty
without proof. It is ability without practice. It is invention without limitations. It is imagination
without boundaries. It is creativity without constraints. It is….extraordinary intelligence!” (Polacco
2010)

In delivering this message, Mrs. Peterson presents a unique challenge to Trish. Up until this point,
she has been socialized to regard her disability as the blight upon her existence for all the reasons
which society has dictated. While not de-emphasizing society’s treatment of her students as outside
the normal realm of existence, Mrs. Peterson clearly seeks to improve their self-concepts by
encouraging them to view their disabilities in a positive light. In the eyes of her teacher, Trish and
her classmates are unquestioned geniuses as opposed to dumb disabled kids. I find this
characterization of the disabled person as a “genius” to be somewhat problematic especially for the
impact it might have on children who read this book. One of the hallmarks of the American
educational system is its emphasis on competition. Our nation’s students are socialized by the
demands and expectations of this system to view their peers as competitors in a race to get the
highest marks. I do not favor adding another layer of competitive sentiment into this destructive
culture by encouraging children without disabilities to view their disabled peers as inherent
“geniuses”. Nor do I advocate for the flip side of that same coin in which students with disabilities
regard themselves as superior to their non-disabled peers. It is well-understood that the students who
perform well in school and by that standard are labeled “geniuses” are sometimes resented by their
peers. Anything which enhances the competitive nature of American education today is also likely to
enhance these feelings of resentment and disdain. By labeling one groups of kids as inherently
blessed with extraordinary intelligence, the author unwittingly encourages children who read her
book to develop this pre-conception thereby laying new groundwork for the germination of a harmful
stereotype similar to the one that prevails today regarding Asian-American students. Upon first
seeing the use of the term “Junkyard” by Mrs. Peterson to describe her classroom, “Welcome to the
junkyard, I am your teacher,” (Polacco 2010) I was quite repulsed and thought it derogatory towards
students with disabilities. However, this is not the understanding of “Junkyard” that the author seeks
to convey to her readers. Rather, she juxtaposes her image of the junkyard with Mrs. Peterson’s long
and triumphal definition of the word “Genius”, and so I can only assume that she wants me to agree
with her positive connotation of the term. That positive connotation is revealed by an exchange
between Trish and Thom, one of her new classmates in which Trish inquires as to Mrs. Peterson’s
motives. Thom responds, “Because we are….didn’t you notice…all of us are…different. You
know…odd. Like stuff in a junkyard.” (Polacco 2010). The junkyard is a repository for odd and
different items, items that fall outside the accepted definition of normal. The junkyard classroom is a
repository for odd and different students, students who fall outside the accepted definition of
normal. Rather than challenge the accepted definition of what constitutes a normal student, students
with disabilities should embrace their segregated status by asserting themselves as geniuses. On the
individual level, this strategy may work to improve a child’s self-concept. As the author once was a
young girl with dyslexia forced to attend school in a series of segregated classrooms and her purpose
in writing this book was to portray Mrs. Peterson’s classroom in a comparatively positive slant, one
can conclude that this strategy improved her self-concept in light of her disability. Nonetheless, on
the societal level, it remains woefully inadequate as are all attempts to remedy structural injustice by
focusing on the initiative of the individual or group of individuals who suffer injustice. As stated by
Baglieri and Shapiro, “Negative attitudes, prejudice, and discrimination are rooted in lack of
information, lack of experience with people with disabilities, and stereotypes.” (2012) Polacco posits
no solutions to these structural problems. On the contrary, I have already pointed out how in many
respects she reinforces longstanding stereotypes of students with disabilities. Her image of the
junkyard as well as her definition and application of the term “Genius” promulgate this idea that
students with disabilities are so unequivocally different from the rest of a school’s population that it’s
reasonable to say that they belong in segregated classrooms. In addition, Polacco describes
numerous situations in which Trish and her classmates are bullied and shunned by the other students,
yet Mrs. Peterson provides them with no useful strategies for attempting to reverse these negative
attitudes. One day at recess, Trish is verbally and physically assaulted by a boy named Baron Poole
for wearing a badge which identified her as a member of “The Junkyard Wonders”. (Polacco
2010). Fortunately her classmates come to her rescue, but back in the classroom, one of her rescuers,
Gibbie, expresses his frustration to Mrs. Peterson, “We’re all junkyard kids, even though you try to
make us feel better about it. We’re throwaways, junk, and everyone knows it.” (Polacco
2010) Certainly by grouping students with disabilities together and segregating their classrooms, one
can argue that certain schools do condemn these children to a metaphorical existence as homogenous
and unremarkable scrap. However, Mrs. Peterson disagrees and poses an alternate definition of the
junkyard as “a place of wondrous possibilities! What some see as bent and broken throwaways are
actually amazing things waiting to be made into something new.” (Polacco 2010). I have one
question for the author: How is Mrs. Peterson going to change the fact that the rest of the school
treats her students as “bent and broken throwaways?” As stated by Baglieri and Shapiro, “Activities
designed to build accurate knowledge about disability can be helpful. Helping children to have
experiences with persons with disabilities is also useful.” (2012). However, Mrs. Peterson does not
propose a project to achieve these goals. Instead she instructs the students to step into the scrap yard
and “collect everything that you think could be made into something new. Forget what the object
was…imagine what it could be!” (Polacco 2010). The message is clear. Students with disabilities
can overcome discrimination merely by redefining themselves in opposition to the dominant
culture. Certainly this constitutes a fine overall strategy for building positive group identity and
encouraging the students to escape the restraints of the medical model by viewing themselves as full
and rounded individuals. Nonetheless, the truth remains that all students with disabilities who read
this book still have to venture out into the world everyday and unfortunately the author posits no
solutions for altering that world’s negative attitude towards disability.

The remainder of the book focuses on Trish and the attempts of her class tribe to rebuild a wrecked
model airplane they found in the junkyard into one destined to fly all the way to the moon. The
intention is to enter the “Junkyard Wonder” into the school science fair, an event in which the local
university’s science department, the local media, as well as the entire student body will be in
attendance. Various trials and tribulations crop up along the way including the tragic death of one of
their classmates, but eventually Trish and her group realize their goal. The book closes with this
reflection from Trish, “Even though the science department from the local university was there,
along with the school board and the newspapers, for all of us, it was only Mrs. Peterson that
mattered.” Polacco 2010). Again, the implication of this statement is that the author does not care
how the dominant culture views students with disabilities. The question of whether or not it is even
capable of significant transformation is rendered irrelevant through this final reflection. At the
beginning of the story, Trish’s self-concept is profoundly damaged by the negative attitudes of her
classmates and her initial perception of Mrs. Peterson’s use of the term “Junkyard” to describe her
class, “Just as dad was tucking me in at bedtime, I finally burst into tears. ‘Oh daddy, I’ve been put
in a special class again. It’s called the junkyard.” (Polacco 2010). By the conclusion of the story,
Trish’s overwhelming feelings of resignation and defeat have been replaced with this recognition for
the necessity of defiance in the face of unrelenting odds. Mrs. Peterson teaches Trish and her new
friends to defy society’s labels and prejudices by recasting their relationships with their disabilities in
a positive light. Once again the author favors a strategy for raising the self-concept of the child that
fails to appreciate the importance of the structural discrimination which caused that diminished self-
concept in the first place. With this in mind, one can assume that the issue of medical model vs.
sociopolitical model never consciously entered into her mind in the process of recounting this
personal experience through the fictional medium. Although I am quite certain that if I were to ask
Patricia Polacco whether or not she favors inclusive education and a sociopolitical orientation
towards disability she would answer affirmatively, these questions are not addressed in the course of
this book. Consequently, I am reasonably certain that she does not intend it to be read by students
without disabilities. In fact, I remain highly pessimistic about the effect that this book will have on a
child who has had little to no prior experience interacting with students with disabilities. The
prevailing characterization of such a student is one who is free to ridicule his disabled peers without
facing any consequences. In addition, I have already indicated how the “Genius” label may serve to
engender feelings of competitive disdain among non-disabled students by furnishing them with the
impression that the primary job of the teacher of students with disabilities is to teach them how to
overcompensate for their negative self-concepts by convincing them that they all possess
extraordinary intelligence. These feelings may be especially enhanced among students who are
victims of low ability school tracking policies, and, as a result, already view themselves as
intellectually inadequate as compared with their higher-tracked peers. With regards to the potential
effects this book will have on readers with disabilities, I am simultaneously pessimistic and
optimistic. By portraying Mrs. Peterson as the maternal savior of this marginalized yet immensely
gifted group of students, Polacco unwittingly promotes the stereotype of the holy innocent or eternal
child to describe students with disabilities. As stated by Baglieri and Shapiro,

“Disabled individuals seen as holy innocents were generally considered to be “harmless children”
no matter their chronological ages. As a result families, caregivers, and professionals who work
with disabled persons frequently acquire the “Albert Schweitzer” or “Mother Theresa” syndrome,
and characteristics such as having outstanding patience and are “doing God’s work” are attributed
to them.” (2012)

This stereotype becomes readily apparent with the use of the possessive word “my” in this statement
by Mrs. Peterson, “Every one of you is my wonder!” (Polacco 2010). It is also apparent on the day
of the model plane launch when Trish, who is the narrator, says, “It was only Mrs. Peterson that
mattered.” (Polacco 2010). Children with disabilities who read this book might internalize this
stereotype and, as a result, start to believe that their only hope for raising their self-concepts lies in
seeking out an authority figure who will bless them with confidence. Polacco also reinforces a
variation on the “Superhuman” stereotype by posing Mrs. Peterson’s junkyard project as the means
by which Trish and her classmates will vindicate themselves. In order to compensate for their low
self-concept, they must demonstrate to the entire community that they are capable of achieving
extraordinary feats such as building a model airplane which can fly all the way to the moon. By
internalizing this stereotype, children with disabilities may start to believe that they have to achieve
some unbelievable feat in order to prove that they are worthy of respect and humane treatment. Of
course, the sociopolitical model is correct in saying that these children are already worthy of respect
and humane treatment, and it is incumbent upon society to change its negative attitudes as opposed to
forcing the child to prove his or her worth by conforming to an arbitrary standard of “extraordinary”
talent. Finally this book does contain one redeeming message for children with disabilities. By
filling the book with images and descriptions of the inspirational sense of community permeating the
atmosphere of Mrs. Peterson’s class, Polacco emphasizes the need for developing group solidarity
and positive group identity in coping with discrimination.

An Open Letter To Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Posted on April 20, 2014

If I were you I would happily accept the invitation to debate and dialogue with people at Brandeis
who may disagree with me . I am sure that there are probably people at Brandeis who wholly agree
with your views on Islam. There is no reason to think your ability to actually say your peace would
be infringed upon. I would think that the people who disagree with you want their voices heard and
their arguments taken seriously. That would not happen if all they did was disrespect and shout you
down while you were saying your peace in an atmosphere in which real dialogue is supposed to be
taking place. Those individuals would also be thrown out by campus security and rightfully so. It is
much easier to accept an honorary degree in a forum in which you won’t be challenged, then it is to
accept a speaking invitation in a forum in which you know you will be challenged. By inviting you
to speak in a forum in which you could not have been challenged, a forum in which dialogue most
certainly would not have been taking place, which is what Brandeis did by initially choosing to give
you an honorary degree at a commencement ceremony, Brandeis chose to disrespect all the people at
the university who disagree with you and would have welcomed the opportunity to dialogue with you
in a neutral forum. Please explain to me how any university can tout itself as a marketplace of ideas
when it prevents its constituents from having that neutral forum to challenge a speaker. Please
explain to me why Brandeis should value your feelings and your disrespect more then that of all
those who just wanted the opportunity to debate you, an opportunity which Brandeis initially denied
them which any reasonable person would find profoundly disrespectful. Now they have that
opportunity and instead of feigning righteous indignation you should accept the invitation and say
your peace. No one is naturally entitled to have their views embraced. No one is naturally entitled to
speak in a forum in which their views will not be challenged…anyone who does not think of
themselves as the repository of all that is wise and true should understand that.
I would like to see the university conduct a referendum involving all the faculty and students on
whether or not the honor should be bestowed. There is certainly no reason why a university
president or board of trustees or whoever constitutes the small group of higher-ups who grant
themselves the power to make that decision, should be the only ones who get to make that decision.

Letter to the FIRE on Bill Maher

Posted on November 1, 2014

To Whomever This May Concern:

I would like to begin this correspondence by mentioning the fact that I greatly admire the work that
FIRE does to protect the free speech rights of students and faculty on college campuses. Your
organization was instrumental in helping a student organization of which I am a member beat back
reactionary forces on my campus. However, I am concerned with your stated position on the push by
students to disinvite Bill Maher as a commencement speaker at UC Berkeley. More generally, I am
concerned with your position on the recent push by students to disinvite a number of commencement
speakers at various universities across the country. This is not an issue of free speech, and by
claiming that it is one you are revealing your organization to not just be a protector of free speech but
also a reactionary force in your own right. Your deliberate obfuscation of the core issue here is
troubling and speaks to FIRE’s ideological leanings and values. The students leading the charge to
disinvite Bill Maher have made their justifications abundantly clear and not one of them has to do
with free speech. In fact, in several instances, in articles and blogposts they have explicitly stated that
their decision has nothing to with free speech.
http://www.dailycal.org/2014/10/31/mahers-invitation-shows-disregard-students/
“There is no question Maher has a right to speak on campus; but the question is whether
commencement, a time of celebration for all students, including those victimized by Maher’s
commentary, is the appropriate forum. UC Berkeley undoubtedly must remain committed to
principles of free speech. But this is not a matter of free speech — Maher can iterate his beliefs on
campus at a debate or club event. This is about granting Bill Maher the honor of being our
commencement speaker when he clearly spreads ignorance and intolerance affecting the very people
he would be addressing.
Though we strongly disagree with the substance of Bill Maher’s racist, sexist and homophobic
language, we value the university’s role as a public academic institution committed to preserving the
free exchange of ideas — even when those ideas are at odds with our own. If the administration
worries that it is discouraging debate by revoking this invitation, the administration is welcome
to invite Maher to an open forum on campus instead.”
I would encourage you to read the bold statements especially carefully. The same assertion was made
in the case of Ayaan Ali Hirsi, and still FIRE continues to characterize this recent movement to force
administrations to cancel commencement speakers as representative of an assault on free speech. The
notion that a commencement ceremony can be characterized as a setting in which the free exchange
of ideas is happening is patently absurd. The students are out the door. It is a celebration of their
accomplishments. The speaker and whatever they are about to say are being honored and endorsed
by the university. It is a choice to elevate one person’s voice above all others, and the notion that the
students, the students whose accomplishments are being celebrated, should not have a say in
choosing the speaker is anti-democratic. The plain fact of the matter is that they should decide who is
going to speak because it is a celebration of their accomplishments. FIRE draws a false equivalence
between commencement speakers and other speakers by asserting that this is an issue of free speech.
University administrations do not endorse the views of other speakers, and, in fact, when calls for
disinvitation erupt in response they are quick to assert that fact. The same can not be said for
commencement speakers.

Regards,

Ephraim Hussain

Film Review: West Beirut

Posted on April 27, 2015
 West Beirut depicts the trials and tribulations experienced by ordinary civilians during
the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in April 1975. The film begins with two feisty and self-
confident teenage friends, Tarek and Omar, and their schoolmates filming and staring mesmerized
and in awe of the aerial dogfight taking place directly above their heads. With this scene, one
immediately understands that the war has not yet touched the boy’s lives, and that, as a result, they
are able to view the battle in the sky with a sense of gleeful detachment. Indeed Director Ziad
Doueiri comments that “During the first years of the civil war, despite the anxiety that I could see in
my parents, I was incapable of feeling it myself. I wasn’t born with fear; I acquired it.”
(www.barbican.org) Through the development of his young protagonist Tarek, Doueiri effectively
captures the process of how a seemingly carefree, hormone-infested teenager comes to learn to fear,
for the first time, for his family and his future in a time of war. But not even his witnessing of a
massacre of a busload of civilians right outside his school nor the frantic scurry of he and the
inhabitants of his entire apartment complex into a bomb shelter in the middle of the night can dim
Tarek’s adolescent whimsy or his desire to locate a shop that will develop the super 8 movies he and
Omar surreptitiously took of Omar’s Uncle Badeeh and the old man’s attractive new
girlfriend. Nonetheless, Tarek learns gradually how the artificial division of Beirut into the Muslim
West and Christian will interfere with this sense of gleeful indifference. He, Omar, and his new
neighborhood friend May are prevented from entering into East Beirut from the Zeytuni District film
in a scary encounter with a group of Muslim militiamen. Tarek is shunned and branded a traitor by
his friend and neighbor Azouri for befriending May who wears a crucifix around her neck. Omar
complains to Tarek how his suddenly pious father wants his son to start praying in the morning,
attend Mosque every Friday, fast during Ramadan, study the Koran, and stop watching movies and
listening to rock n’ roll. Meanwhile the stress of living amidst a war manages to strain Tarek’s
parent’s relationship, with his mother consistently expressing her desire to leave the war-torn
Lebanese capital in opposition to her husband’s determination to avoid the racism and overt
discrimination which awaits them overseas by persisting in his native homeland. But the viewer does
not truly witness the extent to which Tarek suffers until about three quarters of the way through the
film when he proves himself willing to cross an open courtyard being targeted by sniper fire in the
Zeytuni District with only a lightly colored bra to protect himself. He does this in order to reach the
house of Beirut’s fabled Madame Oum Walid whom he naively believes can help to bring PLO
leader Yasser Arafat and Lebanese Forces Militia Commander Bachir Gemayel together to meet and
talk in her brothel in an effort to bring the war to an end. After she throws him out of her
establishment, he is devastated. For the first time, he expresses fear, anxiety, and sadness in regards
to the safety of his parents and his family’s economically precarious existence. To Omar he says,
“Have you ever seen someone struck by disaster and you say, thank God it’s not me? Now I feel like
I’m that person and everyone is saying, poor guy, thank god it’s not us.” At the very end, Tarek
stands outside the living room in the middle of the night sobbing after listening to a conversation in
which his father asks his mother whether or not they will stay together once the war is over. By this
point, gleeful indifference has been fully replaced by piercing grief and apprehension of the future
that lies ahead.
West Beirut is an incredibly human film. Its primary characters are not caricatures but
human beings who experience the full range of human emotions and display a wide range of
personalities. This is to be expected since Ziad Doueiri lived through the Lebanese Civil War as a
young teenager. Nevertheless Doueiri does not shy away from making political
statements. Resentment towards the French colonial legacy in Lebanon and Western imperialism in
general is demonstrated both through Tarek’s disdain for his French education as well as his father’s
expectations of discriminatory treatment the family will receive if it decides to flee Beirut. Also
interestingly enough, when his father tells him that he is Arab, Tarek responds by claiming that he is
not Arab but Lebanese and Phoenician. When his father asks him where he learned the term
“Phoenician” he says that learned it in Arabic History class. Through this scene as well as the scene
in which Tarek asks Omar “Who’s Kamal?” during their comical participation in the protest in
remembrance of Kamal Jumblatt, Ziad Doueir conveys the lack of historical and political
understanding as well as the confusion over ethnic and national identity on the part of young Tarek
and on the part of the young Ziad Doueiri. Tarek has learned in his French school that he is
Lebanese and Phoenician. Phoenicianism is a form of Lebanese nationalism which promulgates the
idea that the Lebanese people are descended from the Phoenicians and therefore are not pure Arabs
but rather are constituted of a mixture of both Phoenician heritage as well as other ethnic identities as
a result of constant immigration to the region over the centuries. Phoenicianism stands in contrast to
Arabism which promotes the idea that all the people of the Arab World make up one nation
connected by a common heritage. Arabism is an anti-imperialist ideology while Phoenicianism is a
form of Lebanese nationalism which seeks to celebrate the influence that foreign cultures have had
on the Lebanese people. Distinctions and conflicts between Phoenicianism and Arabism also contain
class and religious elements since it is the Christian middle class which identifies with Phonecianism
while the Sunni Muslim lower class identifies with Arabism and its anti-imperalist ideology. Apart
from making it blatantly obvious that Tarek is unaware of these labels, Doueri is trying to send
another message here. He is conveying the fact that the Lebanese Civil War was not a religious
conflict between Muslims and Christians, rather it was a class war. Prior to the outbreak of the war,
Christians, despite their slim status as a numerical majority which quickly disappeared, controlled the
government under the terms of the National Pact agreed upon at the time of independence. They
used their power to keep the majority Muslim population poor and subjugated. Civil conflict is
usually never about religion even if the opposing sides constitute distinct and separate religious
identities. Rather conflict arises in response to the domination of one religious identity by
another. The source of conflict is not inherent in differences between the content of the religions but
rather in the unequal distribution of political power between or among different religious identities.

David Frum, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Corey Robin, and

the Ideology of loss: On Conservatism’s Opposition
to Reparations For African-Americans
Posted on May 7, 2015

Before diving into a discussion on whether or not African-American reparations are satisfactory on
their own for rectifying the crimes of the past, it is important that one first methodically analyze,
dissect, and ultimately dispose of the nonsensical arguments put forth in opposition by individuals
such as David Frum and the multitudes who will eagerly lap up his illogic in order to justify their
own prejudice and bigotry. Frum’s essay centers on the idea that racial restitution for African-
Americans is an utter impracticality. His reasoning, if one wants to call it that, is not only far from
compelling but quite pompous and insincere. Read between the lines and one begins to recognize
that this author is masking a purely ideological opposition to reparations with completely nonsensical
appeals to its unworkability. To locate evidence of this deception one need look no further than this
outrageous line, “The reparations idea-so long politically outlandish- has become thinkable today
because of the gathering power of the Obama political coalition. But nothing would blow that apart
faster than the internal redistribution Coates contemplates from some constituencies to
others.”[1] Mr. Frum apparently forgets that Barrack Obama, while vying for the presidency back in
2008, stood firmly in opposition to African-American reparations, “I have said in the past-and I’ll
repeat again-that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for
people who are unemployed.”[2] In 2004, in the midst of his victorious run for the Senate, candidate
Obama told the NAACP, “I fear that reparations would be an excuse for some to say, ‘We’ve paid
our debt,’ and to avoid the much harder work.”[3] There exists absolutely no evidence to suggest
that reparations have become more politically palatable since Obama was elected president, not least
because Mr. Obama, at all stages of his political career, has never wavered in his staunch opposition
to this policy. Perhaps Mr. Frum should step back and consider how a nation which continues to
profit of white supremacy and Black oppression without a second thought can even begin to
contemplate reparations intended to redress historical wrongs committed against African-
Americans. After pondering that bombshell, Mr. Frum should consider the meaning of this statement
from Kibibi Tyehimba, co-chairwoman of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in
America, “Let’s not be naive. Senator Obama is running for president of the United States, and so he
is in a constant battle to save his political life. In light of the demographics of this country, I don’t
think it’s realistic to expect him to do anything other than what he’s done.”[4] One can imagine that
Kibibi Tyemhimba, if she were to read Frum’s article, would have a bit of trouble identifying the
“Obama political coalition” that he claims has ostensibly infused new life into the palatability of
reparations. If candidate Obama had made reparations a key part of his platform in 2008 he most
certainly would have lost the election. The majority of liberal whites in this country do not look
favorably upon reparations. It is highly doubtful that the 2008 Obama campaign would have raised
more money than the total amount of money raised by all the 2004 presidential candidates combined
if Obama had revealed himself to be in favor of reparations. So the question remains, why does
David Frum peg Obama and his political coalition as being in favor of this radical policy when, in
fact, all the evidence points to the contrary. In short, the answer is ideology. Even though Barrack
Obama has proven himself to be quite the reactionary and run-of-the-mill corporate Democrat, many
prominent Republicans and conservatives remain intent on portraying the President as an unabashed
and uncompromising leftist with a tendency towards socialism. In an interview with Micah Uetricht,
a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, Corey Robin, political scientist and author of The
Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin argues that “Conservatism is
not simply a backwards-looking philosophy-it’s also future-oriented. It’s not a simple, sunny
philosophy; it’s a philosophy in which the vision of a brave future is embedded in and grows out of
the experience of loss.” Robin goes on to say that “Conservatism is about a very particular kind of
loss-the loss of power.”[5] In his previously mentioned book Robin argues eloquently that, “People
on the left often fail to realize this, but conservatism really does speak to and for people who have
lost something. It may be a landed estate or the privileges of white skin, the unquestioned authority
of a husband or the untrammeled rights of a factory owner. The loss may be as material as money or
as ethereal as a sense of standing. It may be a loss of something that was never legitimately owned in
the first place; it may, when compared with what the conservative retains, be small. Even so, it is a
loss, and nothing is ever so cherished as that which we no longer possess.”[6] So what did
conservatives lose when Barrack Obama became President and what do they stand to lose if
reparations becomes a reality? Depending on who one talks to, Barrack Obama is either America’s
first Black president or this nation’s first biracial president. Either way conservatives have witnessed
the end of a long succession of solely white Presidents of the United States of America. That is a
loss but it is not enough of a loss. After all, every American, whether or not they want to admit it, is
perfectly aware of the fact that over the course of Obama’s presidency, the Black population of this
country has experienced negative improvement in nearly all if not all social and economic
indicators. The system of white supremacy which is as American as apple pie has flourished under
President Obama. So the question remains; what did conservatives lose when Barrack Obama
became president? Simply put, they lost the battle of campaign rhetoric. The majority of Americans,
even those who did not vote, appreciated that candidate Obama was calling for the wealthy to pay
their fair share in taxes. Their ears perked when candidate Obama called for an end to tax breaks for
companies which ship jobs overseas. Their eyes widened when candidate Obama called for the
creation of millions of new, “Green Collar,” American jobs. Of course all of this pontificating turned
out to be mere empty campaign bluster and showmanship, but that is irrelevant. What matters is that
candidate Obama was able to rally large swathes of the population to vote for him by convincing
them that, if elected, he would implement one of the most radical redistribution of wealth programs
this nation has ever experienced. The fact that he was elected on such a message scared Republicans
and the conservative intelligentsia, because it signaled to them that a Republican will most likely
never become President of the United States again unless they 1) campaign on the same rhetoric of
growing income inequality or 2) succeed in their efforts at voter suppression as they did in the
election of 2000. President Obama may not have governed as a progressive liberal, however both his
2008 and 2012 campaigns did tap into that desire among the general populace for policies which
would increase the general economic welfare of ordinary Americans. So what did conservatives lose
besides the near certainty that a Republican will never be elected president again? They lost the
ability to appeal to the majority of this country with the rhetoric of “class warfare,” the idea that in
order for those lower on the economic and racial totem pole to experience social and economic
mobility, the wealthy as well as the white working class will have to concede power and
privilege. One can easily identify the reinforcing ideological undertones of class warfare, racial
warfare, and white supremacy embedded in Frum’s essay. He decries racial restitution as an
inevitable internal redistribution of wealth from some of Obama’s political constituency to others,
“Does the Fujianese delivery man pedaling through the brownstones of Fort Greene owe a debt to the
people whose food he carries? How much?”[7] It is blatantly obvious that Frum fear mongers not
only in order to drive a wedge between Latinos and other disadvantaged ethnic and racial minorities
who voted for Obama and the Democratic Party but also because this “divide and conquer” strategy
is absolutely central to the appeal of conservative ideology to some folks. Pit the rabble against each
other so they do not direct their righteous anger towards the true masterminds of their misery, the
power elite. Instill in one sector of the rabble with relative privilege, the idea that such privilege is
threatened by the agitation of those lower on the totem pole. As Corey Robin so astutely argues
“Conservatism really does speak to and for people who have lost something.” He nonetheless
recognizes that conservatives do not have the best interests in mind of the subject classes to whom
they are appealing, “Conservatism is the theoretical voice of the animus against the agency of the
subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower
orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to
govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the
elite.”[8] So while conservatism survives and thrives on the fear generated by convincing one sector
of the subordinate class that it will lose power if another, perhaps less privileged and less wealthy
sector of the subordinate class gains power, the goal of this ideology is two-fold, the preservation of
economic and social hierarchy and the preservation of the outrageous power and wealth of the
elite. One will strain to explain Frum’s case against reparations outside of such a framework. His
arguments rest on no semblance of logic. He is banking on purely their potential to gin up a deep
sense of envy in the populations he is trying to reach, the Fujianese delivery man for instance who is
struggling to make ends meet and presumably would not want his hard-earned money going to pay
for reparations for African-Americans. But the question begs why does the money intended for
reparations have to come from the Fujianese delivery man. That money could just as easily come
from the corporations which profited from slavery, most of which are still raking in huge profits
today. These companies include Aetna, New York Life, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase,
Wachovia Corporation, E.W. Scripps and Gannett which is the parent company of USA Today, rail
company CSX, Brown Brothers Harriman, and the list goes on. The fact that Frum does not even
contemplate such an elementary conclusion, especially given the fact that Mr. Coates article
identifies several corporations which were complicity in maintaining white supremacy, speaks
volumes about his intentions with this article, and only serves to strengthen Coate’s argument that
“the problem of reparations has never been practicality. It has always been the awesome ghosts of
history.” Frum appeals to the same potential for loss here as he did with the Fujianese delivery man,
“And if the idea is that the new arrivals to America will be persuaded to accept paying reparations as
a cost of immigration-or that new Americans can be cajoled to pay a symbolic something because the
bulk of the burden will be carried by the dwindling white majority (a majority that already feels ever
more culturally insecure and economically beset) well, that’s a proscript for an even more dangerous
political explosion.”[9] The section of this sentence in parentheses, referring to the white majority
that is struggling both culturally and economically, is completely unnecessary unless one views this
essay within the framework of conservative ideology. Unless this man actually believes in his heart
of hearts that there is something called white culture and that such a culture contains positive and
redeeming qualities which are being threatened by the loss of the white majority in this country and
that reparations would threaten this culture to an even greater degree, then Frum should have
foregone the parentheses and all the words that he dared to place within them. The problem is that
Frum did not forgo publishing such a thought, and therefore one can only conclude that his belief
system made the publishing of such a thought not only possible but favorable within the context of
discussing reparations. White supremacy is a form of racial hierarchy which has consequences for
the economic and political hierarchy of this nation. Conservatives are intent on preserving all forms
of social, racial, political, and economic hierarchy, and white supremacy stands as one of the
foremost among those systems of hierarchy they view as integral to the proper functioning of this
nation. David Frum may not want to believe that he is a white supremacist, but by virtue of this line
of reasoning he certainly reveals himself to be just that. He willfully ignores the fact that whiteness
is a social construct, not a biological characteristic. Whiteness, so far as it manifests itself in skin
tone is not a color with any inherent meaning or value. The idea of whiteness or the concept that
individuals with lighter skin tones are inherently superior to those with darker skin tones was
constructed and has persisted so that individuals with lighter skin tones could qualitatively
differentiate themselves from individuals with darker skin tones in order to justify the domination
and oppression of the latter group for economic gain. If one was to distill the essence of so-called
white culture as if such a practice could be attempted as a science experiment, one would end up with
the constituent elements of domination, hierarchy, and profit motive. From a moral standpoint, none
of those elements are worth preserving. If one wants to, however, preserve the manmade hierarchy
of white over Black or light skin over dark skin, then subtly calling on white people or lighter-
skinned people of color to fear and prevent the loss of white culture, otherwise known as white
supremacy, is perfectly logical. Doing this within the context of discussing one’s opposition to
reparations makes even more sense. As Ta-Nehisi Coates so eloquently states in his reply to David
Frum, “The problem of reparations has never been practicality. It has always been the awesome
ghosts of history. A fear of ghosts has sometimes occupied the pages of the magazine for which
David and I now write. In other times banishment has been our priority. The mature citizen, the
hard student, is now called to choose between finding a reason to confront the past, or finding more
reasons to hide from it. Evidently Mr. Frum chooses the latter simply because he is a
conservative. The implementation of reparations would surely begin the process of eliminating white
supremacy in this nation, but Mr. Frum, however much he may argue that he is in favor of its
elimination just as candidate Obama was ostensibly in favor of the wealthy paying their fair share in
income taxes, desires its preservation. If one is unwilling to admit that reparations could be a part of
the cure and that methods of implementation have not yet been adequately studied, then one is simply
not in favor of the end result.

Lyndon Johnson & The Power of the Presidency

Posted on December 9, 2015

In response to Robert Caro and Lyndon Johnson’s other disparagers, Johnson historian Robert Dallek
cautions that “we need to see Johnson’s life not as a chance to indulge our sense of moral superiority,
but as a way to gain an understanding of many subjects crucial to this country’s past, present, and
future.”[1] Indeed, Dallek is correct in his implication that to view the decisions and the major
policy initiatives made by Johnson during his presidency solely as products of a single mind and a
single determination is an analytical mistake. Such an approach fails to take into account the fact
that the presidency, as an institution, is extremely limited in its ability to exercise effective agency in
order to resist, blunt, or alter historical conditions. Thus one cannot logically blame a president for
policy failures, nor can one logically credit him for policy successes that occur over the course of his
administration. Unlike Robert Caro and Johnson’s other disparagers, Dallek understands this basic
truth. He understands that the intention of the presidential biographer should be to situate a
president’s actions within the context of the time period. For instance, what were the political
limitations with which Johnson had to contend? What was the dominant ideology of the time both in
regards to foreign and domestic policy? What concessions did have make to Congress over the
course of his presidency and most importantly why did he have to make these concessions? Did
Johnson fit squarely into the dominant ideology or did he attempt to buck the trend? If he did, was
he successful? No president is ever able to achieve all that he sets out to achieve. In the case of
Johnson, how did this fact manifest itself with regards to the War on Poverty? How was the
realization of a liberal domestic policy agenda thwarted by the Vietnam War? These are all
questions which any presidential biography of Lyndon Johnson must answer. A good presidential
biography should, as best it can, leave it up to the reader to decide whether or not he or she
sympathizes with the subject or hates the subject. Unfortunately many presidential biographers get
caught up in the ideology and the fever of their times. As a result, they are either unaware or they
forget how the presidency functions and how our political system functions to severely limit the
agency of a president. And so they end up setting out to write a biography intended to make
undiscerning readers either love or hate the subject. As Dallek explains so perfectly, both writing
and reading biographies of Lyndon Johnson should not be occasions for us to indulge our sense of
moral superiority. The questions of love or hate, of sympathy or disdain, are ultimately
irrelevant. American presidents are vehicles through which one can learn about the American
presidency and our political system as institutions. Therefore, as a reader, the key point of inquiry
should not be does one love or hate this president, but rather, does one love or hate the institution of
the presidency and the American political system as it presented itself during this historical
period. With regards to Johnson’s War on Poverty, Dallek certainly lives up to his stated creed
in Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961-1973.
As President Lyndon Johnson and Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors,
were finishing up a conversation on pushing forward with an antipoverty program Johnson felt the
need “to say something about all this talk that I’m a conservative who is likely to go back to the
Eisenhower ways or give in to the economy bloc in Congress. It’s not so, and I want you to tell your
friends–Arthur Schlesinger, Galbraith and other liberals–that it is not so. I’m no budget slasher. I
understand that expenditures have to keep rising to keep pace with the population and help the
economy. If you look at my record, you would know that I’m a Roosevelt New Dealer. As a matter
of fact, John F. Kennedy was a little too conservative to suit my taste.”[2] As Dallek articulates quite
well, Johnson would quickly find his expressed appetite for New Deal Style Liberalism and large
public expenditures for helping poor folks thoroughly suppressed by a conservative Congress and the
conservative political climate of the nation. Both Elizabeth Wickenden, a social economist who had
worked in President Franklin Roosevelt’s Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Horace
Busby, one of Johnson’s White House aides, advised against the president signing on to anything
which would create negative rumblings in Congress and among local officeholders and middle-class
Americans. Hardworking and supposedly self-made middle class taxpayers would resent bearing the
costs of what would be perceived as new handouts to the lazy and undeserving poor while local
politicians would take exception to a federal program which circumvented their input. Here, Dallek
lays out the limitations on Johnson’s agency quite nicely. Anxieties about an overbearing and
overactive federal government trampling on the desires of state and local politicians coupled with the
time-honored American tradition of blaming those in poverty for their material conditions restricted
Johnson’s dreams for eradicating poverty. Unfortunately history does repeat itself. Old and worn
out tropes about the pathology of the poor and the sanctity of state’s rights do get recycled over and
over again whenever they are needed to blight the potential for radical change in America. This
situation was no different, and for the astute student of American history, Dallek sets the context
well. He cites Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union message as an indicator of just how far Johnson
intended to go with his War on Poverty. Before the eyes and ears of the nation Johnson exclaimed,
“This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America….Our
aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all to prevent
it.”[3] Dallek contrasts Johnson’s radical vision for eradicating poverty in America with the political
realities with which he was eventually forced to succumb. Nonetheless, in the beginning, Johnson
sincerely believed that by utilizing the skills of persuasion and cajolement which he had honed as
Senate Majority Leader, he could bend a recalcitrant and reactionary Congress to his indomitable
will. He was wrong, and in this sense, Dallek makes the reader understand how a president’s noble
vision and ambitious personality are no match for the obstructionist and conservative nature of the
American political system. Even though Johnson believed he could overcome the limitations of the
presidency, he harbored no illusions about the immense difficulty of the task before him, “Everything
on my desk was here when I first came to Congress.”[4] That date happened to be twenty-six years
ago. The author spends the next few pages of the second chapter articulating Johnson’s sincerely
held belief that his first-hand knowledge of congressional politicking would be enough to break a
seemingly unbreakable Congress. Indeed, on relatively minor issues such as the passage of a
provision to finance the sale of surplus wheat to the Soviet Union, Johnson was able to get his way
relatively easily. This was not the case, however, with the War on Poverty, and its associated
legislation. From the outset, Johnson was forced to make compromises in accordance with the time
period’s dominant ideology. Within Congress and among the majority white population of the
country, very little appetite existed for government action to help those languishing in poverty,
especially poor inner city Blacks. The president was forced to use the corporatist rhetoric of thrift,
wise investments, and savings in order to sell the nation and its representatives on the necessity of an
anti-poverty crusade, “Johnson’s several public references to fighting poverty emphasized that this
was a ‘sound investment: $1,000 invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can return
$40,000 or more in his lifetime.’”[5] Private discussion matched public pronouncements. There was
to be nothing included in the program which could be perceived as a downward redistribution of
wealth. In other words, the president could do anything and everything necessary to abolish poverty
except what actually needed to be done to abolish poverty. The reader’s expectations for Johnson’s
eventual success in this lofty endeavor are reduced even further in this exchange between Sargent
Shriver, the man responsible for leading Johnson’s noble crusade and Michael Harrington, author
of The Other America and a leading expert on poverty. Shriver asks Harrington to tell him exactly
how to eradicate poverty and Harrington replies, “You’ve got to understand right away that you’ve
been given nickels and dimes for this program. You’ll have less than a billion dollars to work
with.”[6] Not only did the Johnson administration not have the correct strategy for abolishing
poverty. It failed to even allocate the necessary funds to do so even though a group of social welfare
experts at the University of Michigan had predicted, in 1962, that the project would require a mere
two billion per year, less than two percent of Gross National Product.[7] Predictably, the final result
proved to be as disappointing as the process. On March 16, 1964 Johnson sent the Economic
Opportunity Act (EOA) to Congress. It was a hodgepodge of several initiatives. It introduced a loan
program to provide businesses with incentives to hire the unemployed. It requested funding for
Volunteers in Service in America (VISTA) which would act as a domestic peace corps. It
diagrammed the framework of a community action program which would provide local communities
with the tools necessary to overcome their own poverty. It proposed the establishment of a Job
Corps, work training, and work-study programs-all geared towards providing impoverished youth
with the opportunity to finish their education and gain marketable skills.[8] Johnson and his
economic advisors did not even believe in the community action part of the program. In fact, they
were not certain that any of it would work. Dallek provides the reader with the distinct impression
that the president was blowing a lot of hot air with this anti-poverty program, not because he had
failed to sincerely believe in the cause but rather because the ideological restrictions imposed on
devising a solution had proved too much to bear. Any debate on the bill’s substance would merely
devolve into partisan bickering, and so Johnson’s goal was to arouse an environment of sympathy for
doing something, never mind what, to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In the end, significant
compromises had to be made. The provision to provide incentive loans to businesses to hire the
unemployed as well as the program to help create family farms were abandoned. The bill passed
both the House and the Senate, but the author emphasizes that the entire enterprise was totally based
on faith, faith that the EOA would work and faith that it represented just the beginning of a war that
would last beyond Johnson’s presidency. Dallek leaves the reader with the understanding that
Johnson had very little control over the process and final outcome. He cites one historian who argues
that the Economic Opportunity Act might as well have been entitled “How Not to Fight
Poverty.”[9] Dallek writes, however, that neither Congress nor the majority of Americans were
ideologically prepared to take meaningful action on this issue. Certainly one important lesson which
Dallek teaches the reader in his accounting of Johnson’s War on Poverty is that when the American
population is ill-informed and ill-educated on any particular issue, democracy does not function well
and social justice is rarely achieved. But most importantly, it is not within a president’s power to
change such a dismal reality.

The Mythology of Bobby Kennedy

In his review of David Halberstram’s journalistic profile of Robert Kennedy, William Spragens
writes that the author “feels Robert Kennedy was a transitional figure in American politics, with an
understanding of the old politics but also with a rare feeling for the new politics.”[1] Indeed, in the
first chapter, Halberstram lays out this thesis quite matter-of-factly when he says that Kennedy
existed “at the exact median point of American idealism and American power. He understood the
potency of America’s idealism, as a domestic if not an international force, and yet he had also
exercised American power.”[2] It is difficult to disagree with the latter assertion; Bobby Kennedy’s
illustrious political career included stints on the McCarthy Committee and the Senate Racket’s
Committee, time as John F. Kennedy’s campaign manager and one of his most trusted political
advisors during his brother’s presidency, as well as an appointment to the most senior position in the
Justice Department. However, Bobby Kennedy’s evolving views on the Vietnam War from 1965 to
1968, ultimately reveal him to be, not an idealist, but, rather, a shrewd realist.
Bobby Kennedy had certainly exercised American power. He began his public career working for
the justice department and then, through family connections, gained a position on the McCarthy
committee. Subsequently, he joined the Senate Rackets Committee and led the investigations which
led to the eventual prosecution of Teamsters boss, Jimmy Hoffa. In 1960, he exercised quite a lot of
influence as campaign manager for his brother’s presidential run. As reward for directing an
excellent campaign, Jack Kennedy appointed his brother to the Attorney General position at the
justice department. Halbertram notes that Bobby did not merely act as Attorney General but became
the President’s right-hand man, advising him on almost every important issue. On the Cuban Missile
Crisis, Bobby acted as the reasonable and level-headed counter-weight to war-mongers such as Dean
Acheson. Jack Kennedy’s administration was heavy with political scientists, and yet it was Bobby
who displayed the most political acumen. Halberstram cites an instance during the Cuban Missile
Crisis when Khrushchev had sent a mollifying message to the administration and then a day later
made a more hostile and menacing broadcast. It was Bobby who counseled his brother to ignore the
broadcast and respond to the message. Halberstram also writes that Bobby was the leading author of
the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam. As evidenced, the author effectively
lays out the case for Bobby Kennedy’s exercise of American power.

What Halberstram does far less effectively, however, is lay out the case for Bobby’s understanding of
the potency of America’s idealism. Idealism rested with those who opposed the war on moral
grounds, and desired an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American troops from
Vietnam. During the period which began with the assumption of his Senate seat on January 5, 1965
up to his assassination, Bobby Kennedy pursued a daring, dissenting, and pioneering but not
idealistic course on the issue of Vietnam. Although he refused to question the the basic Cold War
logic which motivated the Truman administration’s initial foray into the internal affairs of the
Southeast Asian nation in the late 1940’s, he did criticize Johnson’s tactics, specifically the
president’s bombing of North Vietnam, his escalation of troop levels, and his policy of preventing
dissident South Vietnamese political organizations from sharing power in the South Vietnamese
government. With this tactical critique, Kennedy had staked a position far to the left of most
Americans; a Harris poll conducted in May 1965 showed that fifty-seven percent of Americans
supported Johnson’s prosecution of the war, which at that point included sustained bombing of North
Vietnam and a major expansion in ground forces.[3] Throughout 1965 and 1966, whenever Johnson
resumed bombing North Vietnam after a short ceasefire, his popularity surged. Meanwhile, the
mainstream press contented itself with playing backseat driver by continually offering the Johnson
administration supposedly better methods to destroy the National Liberation Front. The anti-war
movement struggled to get off the ground, and did not exist as a major influencer of public opinion in
1965 and 1966. Given this overall national context and the formidable bipartisan support which
Johnson enjoyed from the Senate, Kennedy’s dissent from the norm certainly represented a novel
force. However, it did not represent, as Joseph A. Palermo writes in In His Own Right: The Political
Odyssey of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a shift “steadily away from a technocratic or tactical critique
of the war to a more fundamental questioning of the United States’ ultimate goals in
Vietnam.” Early on, Kennedy understood that there was no military solution for Vietnam. He
comprehended the fact that the unequal distribution of land in the country prevented the United
States from winning popular support for its puppet government. He clearly articulated that the
National Liberation Front, the most powerful force battling the United States in South Vietnam,
attracted its support primarily from impoverished peasants, while the U.S.-backed regime
headquartered in Saigon represented the interests of the wealthy and landowning classes. Most
importantly, he understood that all these realities needed to change, historic injustices needed to be
rectified, and the political, economic, and social development of the country needed to be prioritized
in order for the South Vietnamese people to reject a Communist system. At this point, the people of
South Vietnam undoubtedly viewed the North Vietnamese government and its military as their
saviors against an imperialistic United States and its unrepresentative puppet regime. Kennedy
sought to win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people, and the only way to do so was
by temporarily ceasing military operations, recognizing the National Liberation Front, and allowing
it to participate in negotiations which would inevitably lead to its participation in a newly formed
government. However, Palermo misidentifies this, albeit, dramatic tactical disagreement between
Kennedy and Johnson as a difference in goals. Both men favored a non-Communist outcome in
South Vietnam. To this point, Bobby Kennedy never went so far as to call for a unilateral and
unconditional withdrawal of military forces and an end to any and all American involvement
whatsoever in the internal affairs of South Vietnam. Such a tactical stance would have been
concomitant with the abandonment of the United States’ Cold War goals in Southeast Asia. In a
speech delivered on the Senate floor on May 6, 1965, Kennedy explicitly opposed a unilateral
withdrawal and asserted that such a radical turn in American foreign policy would constitute a “gross
betrayal of those in Vietnam who have been encouraged by our support to oppose the spread of
communism.”[4] However, he added that “I do not believe we should be under the self-delusion that
that this military effort will bring Ho Chi Minh or the Vietcong to their knees.”[5] The Senator from
New York ultimately never questioned the altruism and supposedly good intentions of American
foreign policy with regards to Vietnam. He still sought to defeat Ho Chi Minh and the National
Liberation Front, but through the use of political tactics as opposed to military ones. He was a
pioneer but a pioneer with boundaries because anything more would have brought him into
agreement with the radical college student yelling “Victory for the Vietcong. Victory for the
Vietcong.” The same reality exists for Barrack Obama and Bernie Sanders. Both men can and do
disagree with the manner in which George W. Bush prosecuted the War on Terror but neither can
dissent from its basic ideological framework. Nonetheless tactics must still line up with goals, and,
for this reason, it seems right to interrogate whether or not Bobby Kennedy actually understood the
ideological framework of the Cold War and how Vietnam fit into this framework. In his speech on
May 6th, the junior senator from New York articulated a revealing connection between Johnson’s
prosecution of the Vietnam War and the recent American invasion of the Dominican Republic on
April 14, 1965. On this date, Johnson had ordered twenty-three thousand U.S. soldiers into the tiny
nation to suppress what he referred to as an anti-American revolution. In respect to this invasion,
Kennedy said our goal “must surely be not to drive the genuine democrats in the Dominican
revolution into association with the Communists by blanket characterizations and condemnation of
their revolution.”[6] Later in the speech, Kennedy criticized the administration for doing the same
thing in Vietnam with regards to the National Liberation Front. Now Palermo contends that
Kennedy’s drawing of parallels between Johnson’s Vietnam War policy and Johnson’s invasion of
the Dominican Republic revealed that he had repudiated the Administration’s increasing dependence
on military force in Southeast Asia. This point practically goes without saying. However, what
proves more intriguing is the fact that Kennedy considered the National Liberation Front, America’s
purported enemies in South Vietnam, to be a grouping of non-Communist Democrats which the
United States should allow to participate in any future government. Indeed, taken by itself, this
assertion could conceivably be construed as an indirect rejection of U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam
going back to the Truman administration. However, if this was the case, Kennedy would have
certainly followed this statement by calling for a total withdrawal of military forces from South
Vietnam. Therefore, one must logically locate another reason for why the Senator believed that it
was in the United States’ national interest to allow the National Liberation Front, its primary foe, to
participate in any future government. The Johnson Administration was quite literally bombing the
country into oblivion. Why would it have concerned itself with prioritizing the social, political, and
economic development of the country? Why would it have concerned itself with land redistribution
and advancing the self-determination of the South Vietnamese people? Why would it have cared that
the National Liberation Front enjoyed massive popular support? What epiphany had Kennedy come
to about Vietnam in 1965, which Johnson had yet to realize? The GVN operated a repressive
military dictatorship with zero popular support, and owed its entire existence to American
largesse. Bobby Kennedy understood this since he authored the failed counterinsurgency strategy
used to prop up the GVN and combat the National Liberation Front back during his brother’s
administration. The Senator also realized that the United States could not prevent the unification of
North and South Vietnam. Therefore it had to devise another method through which to influence the
future direction of the country and safeguard its national interests. That method was a negotiated
political settlement involving both the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese
government. Militarily, Vietnam was a lost cause. Counterinsurgency had not worked. The use of
massive American firepower and saturation bombing had proved ineffective as well. Johnson proved
himself unwilling to face this stark reality and remained fiercely wedded to a military solution. So
one can reasonably argue that Kennedy stood as a pioneer on Vietnam in 1965. Both the mainstream
news media and the general public, having been consistently and purposely misled by the Johnson
administration on the progress of the war, failed to comprehend that the military solution was no
longer a viable option for safeguarding American interests in Vietnam. From this standpoint, Bobby
Kennedy was always a realist, never an idealist. Indeed, it is hard to believe that the individual who
authored Jack Kennedy’s counter-insurgency strategy could ever transform into a moral dove. David
Halberstram wants his 1960’s reader to believe that Kennedy, had he not been assassinated and had
he won the Democratic nomination and then the election, would have been the nation’s savior. This
argument is unconvincing. Bobby Kennedy was no foreign policy radical. The fact that both
Halberstram and Palermo portray Kennedy as an idealist for his dissent on Vietnam stems either from
their lack of understanding of the larger Cold War ideological framework within which the war was
taking place or their simple refusal to include an explanation of this framework in their biographies
for fear it would not fit well into the idealist thesis.
In order to comprehend Kennedy’s role as a political realist on Vietnam, one must understand why
the United States fought the Cold War. In 1955, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and The National
Planning Association sponsored a study entitled “The Political Economy of American Foreign
Policy”. The study involved a representative portion of the power elite: economists, political
scientists, and businessmen who occupied positions of power and influence deep inside our
governmental institutions and largely dictated foreign policy regardless of who held executive
office. The study explicated how the U.S. would conduct its foreign economic policy going forward,
“The central objective of American foreign economic policy is to foster the construction of a better
integrated and more effectively functioning international economic system.”[7] Mary Bradshaw, in
her review of this study for The American Journal of International Law, cites its “series of steps to be
taken to make relationships more satisfactory between the industrial countries and the independent
underdeveloped nations. These steps include “private capital investment in foreign lands, [the
establishment of] an International Development Corporation [to provide] new sources of venture
capital [and open] up new opportunities for private investors, loans or grants by the U.S. government,
and [the use of] such devices as buffer-stock arrangements and certain commodity stabilization
agreements.”[8] Howard S. Ellis, in his review of the study for the international relations journal,
“World Politics”, cites its foundation as “the clear-eyed recognition that the survival of the free world
depends upon the United States–upon the contributions which it can make to (. . . ) rational lines of
economic development in the underdeveloped world.”[9] Most people with a basic understanding of
U.S. history will argue that America’s goal in fighting the Cold War was to defeat Communism
throughout the world. This is true, but it is only partially true. Nor does it get to the root of exactly
why the United States wanted to defeat Communism throughout the world. With regards to the first
point, the United States, throughout the period of the Cold War, orchestrated the overthrow of
numerous governments that no objective observer would identify as Communist. In order to
understand why this is the case, one must tackle the second point. As the aforementioned studies
explain, the primary motive behind the prosecution of the Cold War was economic. The intention
was to foster the development of an integrated international economic system led by the United
States and for the benefit of American corporations. If the government of an underdeveloped country
desired to exist outside of this system, if it did want to pursue so-called “rational lines of economic
development” then it was deemed a threat and had to be subverted by the United States regardless of
whether or not it was Communist. As members of the political elite, both Bobby Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson understood how Vietnam fit into this framework. They viewed Vietnam as an
underdeveloped nation ripe and ready for exploitation by American corporations, and the puppet
GVN government was supposed to facilitate this exploitation. However, in contrast to the opposition
which the United States encountered in most other countries which it sought to bring under its
economic tutelage, the opposition in Vietnam, the National Liberation Front along with their
sponsors, the North Vietnamese government, proved themselves to be formidable military
opponents. Johnson failed to understand this or at least one can say he arrived at this understanding
too late. By contrast, Kennedy understood not only their power but also the National Liberation
Front’s popularity among the Vietnamese people. He also comprehended the people’s hatred for
their GVN. Simply put, Kennedy realized that, because of these two factors, the United States could
not realize its ideological Cold War goals in Vietnam without including the National Liberation Front
in the process and somehow manipulating it into agreeing to a project of resource exploitation and
foreign investment. Taking this into account, one can reasonably argue that Bobby Kennedy bore no
resemblance to the young college student shouting “Victory for the Vietcong, Victory for the
Vietcong.” He was a malleable foreign policy realist, nothing more and nothing less.

An Open Letter to MSJP on the Left & Identity Politics

I cannot possibly overemphasize the essential role that love must play within an organization. And
when I say love, I’m not trying to be corny, and obviously I don’t mean romantic love. Perhaps the
best way I can explain what I mean by love is by explaining its antithesis, what I have seen and read
about happens in leftist activist spaces more generally. Self-righteousness….self-righteousness is a
big problem within context of people’s ideologies and beliefs. There is a strong tendency for some to
talk down to those who don’t share their ideology or their beliefs in a self-righteous manner. The
goal in this case is not to dialogue with the person, not even to convince them of your position
through reasoned argument, but rather to draw a line in the sand and then explicitly shame the person
for holding an opinion which is different from your own. Strong language is often used to condemn
your character. You may be called problematic, oppressive, toxic or disgusting. You may be told by
the other person that they are disappointed in you, they assumed better from you, and they thought
you were different as if they are your parent. Sometimes you are told that simply by expressing your
particular opinion, that you are silencing the opinions of others not even present in the room or the
conversation. Sometimes you are told that your opinion doesn’t matter simply because of your
identity. Sometimes you are told that you hold an opinion solely because of your identity. Even if
you try to tell the person the process by which you came to your conclusion, they won’t
listen. Sometimes you are told that by expressing your opinions, you are making the space
“unsafe.” Sometimes words are even stripped of their meaning and re-appropriated in order to
condemn you. So they you might be accused of acting in a “colonial” manner despite the fact that no
definition of colonialism concerns itself with the interpersonal dynamics of an activist circle. Some
people, even if they may not explicitly say so, consider themselves gatekeepers. Sometime entire
groups even act as gatekeepers, gatekeepers of the right way to think, the right concepts to believe in,
the right way to be a person of the left. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have principles or be
principled. Obviously as an SJP we are against Zionism as a principle. But you simply cannot enter
into a conversation thinking that someone has to agree with you just by virtue of you stating your
position. Then when they don’t, you impugn their character. I want to emphasize that we shouldn’t
be treating one another this way, when we’re tabling, at events, in meetings, and when we’re trying
to recruit people we shouldn’t be treating others this way. It is important to understand that there
used to be a time when you didn’t know what you know now, when you didn’t believe what you
believe now, and there will most likely be a time in the future when you know or believe the opposite
of what you do now or at least something slightly different. And just as this is the case with you, it’s
also the case with everyone else. Language and words, these are not the planes on which we are
fighting.

As Bailey Lamon writes, “There is a disturbing trend on the left nowadays of rejecting free speech
that could possibly be hurtful to someone, somewhere. This is not only dangerous but it also works
against us. As leftists we are often labelled as threats by the state and institutions of power and at the
very least, we are labeled as unpopular by society in general. Does this not mean that freedom of
thought and expression are crucial to our struggles? That we should always defend our right to
question what we’re taught, our right to be different? As Noam Chomsky put it: ‘If we don’t believe
in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.’”1
Obviously discriminatory behavior and language which is disrespectful to any identity group must
always be challenged and we should see it as our responsibility to challenge it within this space. But
the contemporary left, especially the contemporary student left too often expands the bounds of what
is considered disrespectful and discriminatory to include ideology and simple differences of opinion
on certain issues. For instance, let’s say you don’t agree with the academic concept of
privilege. You may be ostracized. You may be shamed. You may be accused of making a space
unsafe. You may even be expelled from a group because you have stepped outside the gate. There is
nothing progressive, there is nothing forward-thinking about acting in this manner. It is actually
extremely reactionary. I hope that leftists can continue having these conversations so that eventually
such practices will have been completely discarded at some point in the future. But in the meantime
and with regards to this group, we should endeavor to always make this a space for healthy debate
and discussion on any topic which concerns the group. We should endeavor not to silence and shame
one another for our beliefs. We should endeavor to speak to one another passionately but
respectfully. We should endeavor not to alienate and “otherise” those within our group and outside
our group who do not share our way of speaking our thinking about the world. People on the right
alienate and otherwise people on the left all the time….assassinating our characters for believing in
concepts such as social democracy, socialism, anarchism, and communism. We should endeavor not
to emulate their behavior. I want to foster a space in which differences of opinion will not lead to
fights, character assassinations, or personal attacks. I want to foster a space in which people are not
socially pressured to believe certain things. We are not gatekeepers, not as a group and not as
individuals. I want to foster a space in which we do not tokenize one another and treat one another as
the sum of our identities, but rather as complex individuals and human beings with opinions that may
deviate from some fictitious norm that exists primarily in people’s heads. We should endeavor to
make this a safe space but not in the way that leftists typically define safe space, a space in which
people are checking their privilege, policing the tone of one another based on the level of identity-
based oppression they face, excusing bad behavior just because someone may belong to a
marginalized identity, and generally engaging in practices which only serve to silence those who
some may disagree with and shut down debate. On the contrary, we should endeavor to make this a
safe space for healthy and vigorous debate and discussion on any topic which concerns the
group. Sometimes people may feel uncomfortable. Sometimes people may strongly disagree with
what another person has said. But this should not be a space in which we shame, silence, and call
one another oppressive for simply having differences of opinion. We should endeavor to make this a
space in which we treat each other as individuals not as identity tokens. In other words, we should
endeavor to make this a space in which we practice love towards one another.

Allyship vs. Solidarity

If a friend is engaging in activities which you believe are counterproductive to their health and well
being then you don’t simply remain neutral or worse encourage them to continue doing what they are
doing. You intervene in the hope that you can reverse their current path. That’s what a good friend
does. Now whether or not you are correct in your judgment that what they are doing is bad for them
is an entirely different question. But the point is that, as their friend, you not only have the right but
the obligation to intervene. That is solidarity in the context of a simple friendship. And such is the
fundamental difference between solidarity and what has come to be known as allyship.
Allies remain passive. An ally can not possibly be a friend, because a true friend does that not think
you are perfect. Allies don’t recognize that you have flaws just like themselves and everybody else.
They indulge you when they see you going down the wrong path. An ally is a terrible friend to you
because in the mind of an ally you are perfect. But guess what. You are not perfect. If I had to
describe the difference between political solidarity and political allyship using a simple analogy this
is it.
In regards to one’s own freedom of expression and autonomy, allyship necessarily involves an
infringement of both, because prior to even expressing your opinion, you are dubbed incapable of
even having a perspective that may be valid and consequently barred from expressing that
perspective solely because of your identity. And so while the adherents of the ideology of allyship
claim that they are raising the voice of marginalized groups of people, what they are actually doing is
silencing anyone who disagrees with them and their perspective on any particular issue. It only takes
the littlest bit of common sense to understand that not all voices within a marginalized identity share
the same politics, the same political orientation towards any particular issue. Since that is the
case, proponents of allyship can not logically claim to be elevating the voice of the marginalized
simply because the marginalized do not speak with one voice. What they are actually doing
is allowing the voices of those who agree with their particular brand of neoliberal privilege politics to
monopolize the space while shaming and silencing those who disagree. Whether or not those who
disagree with them are white, black, poor, rich, middle class, working class, transgender, gay,
straight makes no difference. Whether or not those who agree with them are Muslim, Christian,
Jewish, wealthy, bisexual, impoverished also makes no difference. No matter your religion, the color
of your skin, your sexual orientation, your class, your gender identity, Black Girl Dangerous and
Everyday Feminism are not going to allow you to use their platform to denounce neoliberal
identitarian privilege politics because such is their standard fare. Now of course there is nothing
wrong with that. Obviously they have every right to publish whatever they want and that necessarily
includes the exclusion of those voices which do not adhere to their politics. I only ask that such
online platforms and their counterparts in leftist social movement spaces stop promoting this absurd
notion that they are elevating the marginalized voice as if such a voice existed. You are promoting a
particular form of politics, and, as such, your ideas not only should be but have the right to be subject
to scrutiny and critique. Whether or not your critics are white, black, poor, middle-class, bisexual,
transsexual, straight, Muslim, Christian, Jewish does not matter. What does matter is the cogency
and validity of their critique. To judge someone’s argument based on their identity not only
represents the rankest form of anti-intellectualism, it is an affront to human dignity.

Marx, Science, and Moralizing

There is a moral value to thinking and philosophizing about what ought to be. But the more
important task “is to apprehend and comprehend what is” and how it came to be so. Cause if you
don’t know that you can’t change anything. This is what Marx did in Capital. It’s a science, a
beautiful science.

Decolonization & Privilege Politics

Decolonization is not a metaphor, not a rhetorical tactic, as much as many leftists like to use it as
such…i.e. when referring to decolonizing the mind….i.e. a fancy way of saying own your white
privilege….i.e. a method of self-congratulation and mental self-flagellation that does not actually
lead and may actually detract (I would argue it does) from confronting structural racism.

Just One of Pacifism’s failings

I do not concur with the pacifist and pre-figurative notion that in order to construct a peaceful and
non-violent future revolutionaries and radicals must practice non-violence in their organizing and
activism. Non-state violence i.e. terrorism, and armed struggle emerge from injustice, from an
economic system that necessarily creates and survives on varying degrees of injustice, suffering, and
institutional violence directed at the vast majority of people. By arguing that non-state actors must
practice non-violence in their opposition to the capitalist state and system, pacifists fail to apprehend
the reason why our society is already so violent in the first place. It is the system, its dynamics and
processes, and the social and political conditions which it generates that causes such immense
violence. We are not going to build a society that is non-violent by just thinking nonviolence and
then engaging in non-violent practices because that is simply not how our world became so violent in
the first place.

Russian and American imperial collaboration to bleed

Syria and deny the people’s right to self-determination
As Russian warplanes continue to pound rebel-held Eastern Aleppo and pro-government forces
including Iraqi Shia sectarian militias begin their ground assault on the sixth day of the Syrian
government’s offensive to retake all of the northern Syrian city, neither a political solution nor a
military solution seems likely to materialize in the short-term unless either Russia or the United
States alters its current approach to the conflict. Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moaellem,
speaking to the pro-regime Mayadeen TV, declared today that the government was still open to
participating in a unity government that included sections of the opposition. The opposition has
repeatedly dismissed this offer in the past and particularly at this moment when the Assad
government backed by Russian air power and Iranian ground forces is pursuing a strategy of “Offer
Surrender, Kill Whoever Stays” and escalating its tactics by raining ground-penetrating bombs
known as bunker-busters on the residents of…