Commenters, Read Thyselves
Posted on January 30th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »
I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in the comments section of the post below, but it sure makes for interesting reading. Who is the mysterious jogger? Is Standing Eagle taking peyote? Is the suspense of the presidential search getting to everyone, or is there just a full moon in Cambridge?
13 Responses
1/30/2007 9:47 am
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!
1/30/2007 11:13 am
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.
1/30/2007 7:01 pm
Tortoise, not turtle.
1/30/2007 11:43 pm
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 âpolitics of victimizationâ 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 youâre convinced of the absence of racism here, you should have attended slamâs recent forum on that very topic]; the gender/âraceâ imbalances in our faculty; our syllabiâs preoccupations with âWesternâ 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 universityâs hallowed halls.
on a slightly different note: while i agree with you that harvard students are very tolerant, by and large, itâs important always to remember that that âtoleranceâ 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.
1/30/2007 11:49 pm
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
1/30/2007 11:51 pm
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
1/31/2007 12:00 am
Cornel West, among the nationâs most provocative public intellectuals, will deliver Brown Universityâs 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 âThe Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.,â is free and open to the public.
1/31/2007 12:21 am
Will Evelyn Hammonds attend?
1/31/2007 9:04 am
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)
1/31/2007 9:21 am
Standing Eagle needs a shrink
1/31/2007 10:08 am
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?
1/31/2007 12:13 pm
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)
1/31/2007 4:50 pm
goes to show what study abroad in Germany can do…