Richard:

Yes, it is fascinating with your most recent poster below suggesting the new President is already selected and already making decisions. If the Harvard presidency devolves upon an insider like Faust, the utter lack of imagination of the Corporation will be at least as obvious to the world as their efforts to appear progressive in selecting a woman President. Nothing against DF, but what has prepared her for this appointment? Where is the record of imagination? Accomplishment? Real leadership of a complex institution? What did she do with the Radcliffe Institue and its millions of dollars to move it off the dime of what it was? And furthermore, what greater evidence of the rudderless state of this university than the way it is governed---a secret presidential search with pernicious leaks along the way discrediting loyal Deans and a hard working Provost run by a small group of people largely out of touch with the place. SAD!
 

No - of far more interest is the string of comments on the turtle picture. A wonderful concoction of myth, fantasy, facts, absurdity. Everything this blog should be.
 

Tortoise, not turtle.
 

If the new President has indeed been selected she should quickly turn to addressing the growing problems with racial intolerance that have emerged at Harvard.

To suggest that the “politics of victimization” are out of place at harvard is to (a) ignore the indications that the opposite is the case (for example: the plights of those who clean/guard our classrooms [if you’re convinced of the absence of racism here, you should have attended slam’s recent forum on that very topic]; the gender/’race’ imbalances in our faculty; our syllabi’s preoccupations with “Western” civilization), (b) erect an imperpeable harvard bubble, which ignores the possibility that members of the harvard community respond to and reflect much more than what goes on within the university’s hallowed halls.

on a slightly different note: while i agree with you that harvard students are very tolerant, by and large, it’s important always to remember that that “tolerance” is self-selected, in a sense: it is precisely the people least affected by the most insidiuous, global forms of oppression (the existence of which you seem to admit) that attend our university.
 

This was a Forum that took place in Emerson Hall last month

When: Thu, Dec 7 at 8:00 pm to Thu, Dec 7 at 9:00 pm
COMMUNITY FORUM TO ADDRESS RACISM AT HARVARD AND WHAT WE CAN DO TO
FIGHT AND ELIMINATE IT

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7th @ 8:00pm in EMERSON 210
 

There are many areas where Harvard College can improve its race relations and work harder to end racism throughout campus. The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations functions as an awareness device for the University and, through its sponsorship and leadership of many student events on campus that serve its mission, works to bring about inter-racial and cross-cultural understanding. Much headway still needs to be made in this area, as the people who attend The Foundation's events are most often minority students and their diversity-embracing friends, hardly the majority of the college.

In terms of faculty appointments, the fact that most of Harvard's faculty members of color teach only about race and culture highlights the dearth of such professors in the departments relating to the arts and hard sciences. The core curriculum needs to be drastically re-worked to include courses related to the billions of people of Latin America, Southern Asia, and Africa (there are more Foreign Cultures courses offered on France alone than on the entire continent of Africa). Without measures to facilitate cross-community understanding, a faculty more demographically reflective of the student body, and more courses on areas of the world which many still harbor unsubstantiated or outdated images about, racism at Harvard will persist for countless commencements and convocations to come.

http://www.badideafactory.net/disguide/racism.htm
 

Cornel West, among the nation’s most provocative public intellectuals, will deliver Brown University’s 11th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on Friday, Feb. 2, 2007, at 4 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, Room 101. His talk, titled “The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.,” is free and open to the public.
 

Will Evelyn Hammonds attend?
 

Cornel West is not that provocative. That's a loaded word.

Provocativeness implies simplicity -- 'this is what I expect you to do or think.' West is much more methodical and respectful of his audience(s) than that.

'Provocative' has become shorthand for 'involved in controversy,' just as 'controversial' previously became shorthand for 'in the news even if the story is misunderstood by most people, and we don't feel like investigating or explaining it right now.'

It also has overtones of 'provocateur,' which -- again -- are unwarranted. Anyone who thinks West is intent on radical action or disrupting discourse should learn something about how very involved he was in Bill Bradley's campaign. This is mainstream action -- which is not to say it can't be undergirded by a well and freshly rooted (in Latin, 'radix') intellectual project.

Easy with the shorthand. It provokes more than real thought does.

Also, 'provocative' Anonymous, let me tell you something about your mom...


Standing Eagle (now THAT's provocative)
 

Standing Eagle needs a shrink
 

Standing Eagle,

Will you attend CW talk? Have you read any of his books, or did you make your judgements about his work based on hearsay or on the color of his skin?
 

Anonymous,

What do you think, nitwit? I make comments on 'how he treats his audiences' based on no data?

You assumed I was a knee-jerk politically correct exemplar of intellectual dishonesty based on what exactly? The color of Cornel West's skin?

If you're looking for thoughtless categorization of people according to superficial markers -- look in the mirror, buddy.

I took a West course, "Religion and its Modern Critics," and went to perhaps two dozen events at Harvard at which he spoke when he was there. (Please note -- and my assumption that you are likely to read that course title in a kneejerk way is based on more than hearsay, since you've given us good data about how you think -- that West is not himself a 'critic' of religion, but rather is a seminary graduate and unabashedly Christian.) I became a Christian because of his course.

West's writing is turgid and I never open the 'Reader' -- but his book on pragmatism is still very useful.

And he is not a hypocrite. At least one student who came to him for moral support / endorsement when founding a student group got, in addition, on the spot, a hundred dollars cash. Now THAT'S how to apply Marx. (And no, the group was not political in nature.)


Standing Eagle
(not crazy, just epistemically disabled in interesting ways)
 

goes to show what study abroad in Germany can do...