For the Bible Tells Me So

The Trump Administration’s policy of separating detained “illegals” from their children apparently now has the endorsement of The Man Upstairs.

In a speech late last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited Romans 13: 1-3 as justification for the detention policy.  Actually, Sessions quoted the Apostle Paul out of context.  Paul did enjoin Christians to obey the temporal authorities as they would the spiritual; but he tells them to welcome strangers as well.

The Bible is notoriously open to interpretation.  In the various news stories about Sessions’ speech, we’re reminded that the same passages were used to justify slavery in the United States and that the Lutheran clergy drew upon them to instruct Germans to acquiesce to Nazi policies.  Normally, Godwin’s Law would make me hesitant to mention the latter fact.  However, the passive role of churches in 1930s Germany has received considerable attention from contemporary historians and so bears special mention here.  Given the xenophobic bent of our own Christian Right, the invocation of Romans 13 in this controversy is unsurprising.

Donald Trump’s appeal to religious conservatives is, well, puzzling.  As Bill Maher once described him, Trump is the world’s “least godly man.”  He’s dishonest, crass, profane, proud to the point of hubris, unkind, uncharitable, and bigoted.  Then again, maybe that’s why he’s appealing.  Some of the angriest, most resentful people I’ve known have been evangelical Protestants who proclaimed their faith in Blue-Eyed Jesus at every opportunity.  These folks are livid at the social changes of the past few decades and would love to see the calendar turned back to 1955 with everything that that implies.

Evangelicals have a particularly strong authoritarian streak which turns to the Scriptures for justification even while cloaking it in the Christian message of love and forgiveness.  An uncle used to like to quote Isaiah 1:18 to me.  “Come now; let us reason together,” it begins.  (Lyndon Johnson also liked to quote this particular phrase to his political opponents.)  “Though your sins be of scarlet, they shall be white as snow.”  So far, so good; this sounds like the Message I recall from Sunday School.

But let’s remember that this is the vengeful God of the Israelites speaking and not Jesus of Nazareth.  The next verses are downright chilling, for you are given no alternative.  “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land / But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword…”  Yikes!

I always wondered why my uncle always left the second part out.  It spoke so strongly to his conservative values, and he was a gun-loving, pickup driving, blue collar Nixon and Reagan man.  A kickass line like that should have appealed to his overbearing, my-way-or-the-highway nature more than its namby-pamby preamble.

For the denizens of Walmart-like megachurches, the thought of an action hero God is undoubtedly a selling point.  (An impromptu Google search tells me that there are actually action hero movies and comics marketed to Christians.)   Their resort to fantasy is understandable, since their fictional conception of a God-fearing U.S.A. is dissolving like a wet tissue.  Media chimeras such as the “War on Christmas” help them maintain a relentless sense of grievance.  And the presence of people with darker complexions speaking a language other than English is a reminder the country has changed and is changing still.  Tie all these factors—authoritarianism, revealed religion, an aversion to change, and xenophobia—and Mr. Sessions’ claim sounds convincing.

The White House is standing by its man, despite the President’s recent complaints about Sessions.  Sarah Sanders, when confronted with the Attorney General’s remarks at a press conference, retorted that “it is very biblical to enforce the law.”  (Well, she is a preacher’s daughter after all.) 

At least on this issue, the administration is presenting a unified front.  But Sessions' and Sanders’ pronouncements ring hollow when we hear of nursing mothers being separated from their babies, children being herded en masse into cells, and families being unable to ascertain the whereabouts of detained relatives.  We are witnessing an appalling lack of empathy for the less fortunate, and I have a sinking feeling that there is a dead silence on that subject these days in our houses of worship.  If so it’s a damning commentary on our society’s character.

© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar

You Anew

I didn’t anticipate writing three posts in a row on the unending furor over public speech.  However, after Roseanne abruptly lost her newly rebooted sitcom over a bizarre late-night tweet I felt I had to cover the same terrain once more.

Free speech has become something of a crapshoot lately.  Offensive statements—and just about anything can be offensive to someone when it reaches a large enough audience—can cut even the most successful public figure’s career short.  Just like that. 

But not all offensive speech is created equal.  Roseanne, for reasons peculiarly her own, tweeted that former Obama Administration official Valerie Jarrett was the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes.  (Figuratively, I’m sure.)  A furry of apologetic follow up tweets did nothing to save her; Roseanne then compounded the problem by claiming that she wasn’t responsible because the Ambien she took made her do it.

Just as the Roseanne controversy was escalating, Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”  Bee was referring to a photo Ivanka tweeted showing her with her son.  Bee attacked the hypocrisy of the photo while the Trump Administration’s deportation policies separated mothers from their children.  A fair criticism, I thought, though Bee’s choice of epithet was wincing.

So, what’s the difference between the two cases?  Roseanne’s out of a job.  Bee lost a couple of sponsors but at least her show wasn’t canceled.  It’s up to you whether this outcome is fair.  The conclusion you come to probably depends on which side of the Trump Divide you sit.  Take your cue from the top: President Trump expressed regret over Roseanne’s firing; his press secretary, the godawful Sarah Huckabee Sanders, demanded TBS cancel Full Frontal. 

Running in the background are conflicting narratives.  One is that so-called political correctness is unnecessarily ruining people’s lives for exercising their First Amendment freedoms.  The other is that certain individuals are hiding behind the First Amendment to justify hate speech.  Either way, it’s clear words matter.  But to what extent do they reflect or shape belief?

A linguistic theory of sorts, known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis even though neither of the men it’s named after ever formally stated it, says that words shape our worldview.  Ideas vary over whether words are merely an influence or are a determinant.  The conceit that one can shape thought through language is controversial but it extends into the current debate over speech.  More on point, there is the matter of whether we can change not only discourse but social relations by changing how we talk about them.

Left and Right alike accuse each other of intolerance.  It’s true that progressives, especially on college campuses, are sometimes overzealous taking on perceived social ills, and I suppose that is a kind of intolerance.  But if both sides are intolerant, what they’re intolerant of differs demonstrably.  Conservatives target people and groups for characteristics they cannot change, such as race, ethnicity, disability, gender, and sexual orientation, or for cultural differences like religion and language.  Progressives oppose behavior and language which diminish the rights and dignity of others.  Conservatives want to preserve existing oppressive hierarchies while progressives want to uplift the oppressed.  

The kerfuffle (or covfefe?) over Samantha Bee’s takedown of Ivanka Trump underscores this polarization.  Ivanka is a privileged woman who enjoys a safe existence while ICE and the immigration courts break up Latino families.  The paradox becomes even more bitter when we consider that the First Daughter is herself the child of an immigrant mother.  How we square the circle of who is worthy in the conservative universe is dependent upon a simple heuristic.

It goes like this.  Whiteness is superior to all other races, but it is particularly superior to the black race.  Masculinity is superior to femininity.  Heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality.  Cisgender is superior to transgender.  The able-bodied are superior to the disabled.  Christianity is superior to all other faiths (except perhaps Judaism).  English is superior to all other languages.  Western culture is superior to all other cultures.  Depending where you fall on any one continuum, you will be fully accepted socially or be otherwise subjected to a range of abuses from verbal insults and microaggressions to the full coercive and punitive power of the state. 

In this calculus Ivanka Trump may be a daughter of an immigrant, but her mother was a European immigrant so that’s okay.  Immigrating to the U.S. the “right way” is particularly important.  A colleague serves in the state legislature, and in her campaign literature she likes to mention her parents were immigrants who “came here the right way” (which is to say from Europe).  The “right way,” if you haven’t figured it out already, is code for Europeans Only.

The alleged weakness of our immigration laws, such as the President’s latest concern over so-called chain migration, is itself subject to double standards.  Please indulge me in a short personal digression.

In graduate school I was a teaching assistant in my university’s teaching and learning center.  Our director was an aging, absent minded woman I’ll call Marilyn.  Marilyn was an inept administrator and, despite being our institution’s alleged subject matter expert, was herself a poor classroom teacher.  Marilyn was in way over her head and quickly became defensive about her work.  Instead of taking the advice of those who suggested improvements, Marilyn began instead to depend on the other grad assistant in the office, an international student from Eastern Europe named Katya.

Katya quickly established herself as Marilyn’s confidant while alienating everyone in the office except Larisa the administrative assistant who was not too bright and also overwhelmed by her job.  Katya managed this because she was dishonest and manipulative and because she was willing to tell Marilyn what Marilyn wanted to hear in the face of contradictory evidence.  Katya would show one face to Marilyn and administrators and clients.  She would show another to everyone else whom she thought were beneath her, which was…just about everyone else.  It’s fair to say I despised her, but when you read what comes next you will see she was a despicable person. 

After a couple of years Katya finished her degree which meant her student visa was to expire.  It wasn’t fair that she was expected to go home when she had become so used to the good life in America.  What was a girl to do?  Enter Tobias, a warehouse worker with an easygoing disposition and oatmeal for brains.  Katya swept him off his feet.  After a whirlwind courtship, they wed just as Katya’s student visa was to turn into a pumpkin.  

Did they live happily ever after? you wonder.  Sure, for the first 24 months.  After that Katya could keep her green card even if she divorced Tobias, which is naturally what she did.  Katya had realized her American Dream by signing a paper and peeling off her panties.  Meanwhile desperate mothers and children are dying in the Sonoran Desert for no better reason than that, unlike Katya, they don’t have the advantage of blonde hair and blue eyes.

Ah, you say, but Katya immigrated the “right way,” even if she did stretch the rules a bit.  Sure, but the chain migration bogey that the Trump base is wringing their hands over can also be construed as rule bending.  Refer to the heuristic I mentioned earlier; if their complexion is sufficiently pale foreigners are not really foreigners.  On the other hand, everyone else is implicitly less human and must be barred, forcefully if necessary, as a consequence.

Conservative hypocrisies are a given in the national conversation.  Progressives are hardly perfect, but they know that self-awareness can guide them through ever-changing mores as we move toward a more inclusive society.  Last weekend, I was lucky enough to attend Comedy Central’s second annual Clusterfest in San Francisco.  (Think of it as a Woodstock for smartasses.)  The closing act on Sunday night was Jon Stewart, who I’m happy to say is making a return to standup. 

Stewart talked a little about the Roseanne / Samantha controversies and about how his own views have changed as he realized from time to time that maybe he wasn’t as enlightened as he thought.  He pointed out that the conservative hysteria about speech being policed is basically bullshit.  Stewart said the only changes he made to his own speech was dropping a few words from his vocabulary and stopping for a moment to think before saying something stupid. 

Is this an argument for the draconian censorship conservatives are so afraid of?  All that is expected is a modicum of consideration of the rights and persons of others.  Not difficult.  Not difficult at all.  And yet for half the country this small concession is a bridge too far.

It may be a bridge impossible to cross for some elements of Trump’s America, however, particularly economically distressed white working-class men.  The establishment has long counted on keeping the masses distracted by setting them against each other.  Referring again to the rules described up-page, straight white males, no matter how humble, have traditionally had an advantage. 

For these whites on the lower end of the economic scale, however, social change is a threat to their slim privilege.  The end of legal segregation in the South is one example of this; the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s and 60s was a reaction to this social reordering.  As one man interviewed at the time lamented, “If I’m not better than a n----r, then who am I better than?”  This statement is sad on several levels, the least of which is that it reflects how contradictions in the system victimize everyone on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in some form or fashion.  Basic civility is perhaps a luxury for such people when their “right” to dominate someone even less fortunate is in question.

We’ve only considered public discourse so far.  A thornier question is whether changing minds through changing words can lead to the inferential leap of changing hearts.  It is an open question as to how much we can actually shape character.  Past attempts are an unsettling guide.  Consider the Stalinist era ideal of the New Soviet Man.  A propaganda exemplar more than anything, the NSM nevertheless sought to leverage cultural diversity whilst presenting a single national identity.  If you believe that words can shape thought for the better, perhaps a New American really is conceivable. 

But now that we’ve decided we can shape the ideal individual, that raises the question of how we do the shaping.  Self-monitoring one’s speech is a good step forward, but that won’t work in the absence of social pressure.  Slipping down the logical slope, maybe public struggle sessions reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution would have a salutary result.  It would dovetail well with our penchant for public humiliation as a spectator sport, that's for sure. 

In reality, though, any attempt to coerce good behavior is likely doomed to failure.  By extension, it's not possible to recreate the national character as a whole.  Social engineering ignores the truth that human nature is complex and nuanced even if the idea of free will as it’s commonly conceived of is not literally true.  The best we can do is to improve our own attitudes and behavior towards others in the hope it may encourage others to do better.

© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar

All against All

I was in the faculty workroom doing paperwork when Darrell walked in and slumped into a chair across the table from me.  He looked dejected and worried.

This was unusual.  Darrell, a retired career military man who incongruously wears a utility cover with his customary shirt-and-tie ensemble, normally projects a confident aura.  Whatever was bothering him, I didn’t want to pry.  After exchanging laconic greetings, we sat in silence for a few minutes even though it seemed he really wanted to talk.  Finally, he spoke up.

“I got an email from my department chair.”

“Yeah?  What about?”

“She didn’t say.  I’m supposed to see her Monday at four.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

“I don’t know…”

“Did something happen?”

“Well…”  Darrell described the uncomfortable reaction he thought he saw from a student in class.  Like most vets, Darrell is a conservative.  During his lecture that morning he put forth his view that the War on Poverty had failed because of the personal shortcomings of the people it was meant to help.  The student’s demeanor became quietly hostile, though s/he said nothing at the time.  Whatever it was, it left Darrell rattled.

“I’m sure it’s nothing.”

“I hope so.”  Darrell got up to leave.

“Good luck,” I said.

“Thanks.”

Catching up with Darrell a few days later, it turned out the student in question had in fact made a formal complaint.  The ensuing discussion with his chair was awkward.  According to Darrell, she hemmed and hawed and said while faculty have academic freedom we have to be sensitive to phrasing, student sensibilities, etc., etc. 

Predictably, nothing came of the matter.  I’ve been an adjunct instructor longer than Darrell.  I see the department chair’s summons for what it was: A passive-aggressive nonresponse to a student gripe about something which does not merit disciplinary action but still looks to the student as if the college has done something.

While I disagree with Darrell’s views on the subject which brought the complaint, I believe in academic freedom.  These ominous summonses have a chilling effect.  Common sense and good manners dictate a sensitivity to the feelings of others.  However, I have found myself self-censoring and at times avoiding particularly controversial topics even though I teach in a discipline which cannot avoid these completely.  The things I see happening in academia do little to ease my anxiety.

And so I was unsurprised by an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education which encapsulates the strife of the campus ideological wars.  The piece documented an incident last fall at the University of Nebraska.  It’s a story without heroes in which almost everyone involved behaved badly.

It began with a student who set up a table on the campus quad.  The student, a recent alumna of a summer training program for young conservative activists, was canvassing for a group called Turning Point USA.  Perhaps you’ve heard of them; they’re the organization behind the “Professor Watchlist.” 

Turning Point encourages students to identify (or target) liberal and progressive faculty.  Having the temerity to speak against corporate malfeasance, pointing out white privilege and denouncing racism and sexism, favoring reproductive choice and LGBT rights, promoting peace over war, suggesting that human activity just might be responsible for climate change, criticizing the Religious Right, and being “anti-Israel,” among other sins, can get a proffie’s name on the Watchlist. 

Back to our budding young activist.  Having set up her table, a university employee reportedly told her she could not disseminate propaganda in that part of campus and that she would have to move to a predesignated free speech zone.  Fair enough, though the employee’s use of the word “propaganda” to describe the student’s activity could only further agitate the rage junkies who would latch on to the ensuing incident as an example of the lefty subversion of ‘Murican values.

Safely ensconced in the free speech zone, a passing doctoral student and English instructor caught sight of the Turning Point table.  Outraged by its presence on what she would later declare to be “her” campus, the instructor made up a picket sign denouncing the student as a fascist. 

Things went rapidly downhill.  As she had been taught by her Turning Point mentors, the student took out her phone and began recording the picketer.  They began circling each other.  At one point the picketer flipped off the student on camera.  She called the student a “neo-fascist Becky.”  She denounced the student as a white nationalist and white supremacist.  She swore at the student.  Finally, the student began to cry.

This was a bit much for another faculty member who had joined the anti-Turning Point picket.  She walked over and tried to comfort the student and gave the student her email address, inviting the student to sit down later to talk about their political differences.  The student packed up her table and left and the incident ended.

Except it really didn’t.  Turning Point posted the video of the incident to its website, which went viral.  The tom-toms sounded throughout the conservative jungle, and soon angry letters and emails began arriving in the offices of Nebraska’s elected officials.  The university president was summoned by the state legislature.  The instructor, a woman in her late forties, was eventually suspended from her teaching duties as penance for her public overzealousness.  And our young conservative?  She’s become the Right’s darling du jour.

This incident was a set piece with strawpersons on both sides: The shrill social justice warrior shouting hyperbolic slogans.  The emptyheaded suburban Barbie hostile to a multicultural America.  Most people are content to leave it at that.  Predictably, there has been little discussion of what this episode means for campus discourse. 

For me, the Nebraska incident exemplifies what can go wrong when political strife in the larger society encroaches on academia.  Both sides are consumed with a righteous indignation.  Neither acknowledges the right of the other to express their views.   Making matters worse, the instructor’s confrontation with the student escalated from a simple difference of opinion to a situation where a grown woman bullied some poor kid to tears (something for which the instructor was unapologetic).  As a result my distaste for everything Turning Point represents conflicts with my deep-seated revulsion toward bullies, tempered by a sour satisfaction in the knowledge that the student Right has its own snowflakes.   

It’s tempting to blame Donald Trump’s political rise for the seeming resurgence of right wing Know Nothingism and the ideological war of all against all, but the truth is that the current campus wars are an extension of the social polarization of the last several decades.  As an undergrad in the 1980s, I remember the sniping over political correctness and speech codes on the one hand and the monitoring of liberal professors by conservative groups like Accuracy in Academia on the other, though this was more rumor than fact at my politically quiescent regional state uni, 

Even now, most educational institutions are backwaters of social consciousness.  It’s surprising whenever any of the community college students I work with express any kind of informed opinion let alone take a side on an issue.  Last semester I was startled when, during an unusually spirited classroom discussion of current events, a student declared that the only answer to our problems was revolution.  Several students murmured agreement.  No one objected.  I nodded gravely, simultaneously pleased and unsettled.  The discussion moved on.  There were no repercussions afterwards.

Sometimes apathy works in your favor.

© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar

Heads Will Roll

Watching Fox News a few weeks ago, on one of the inevitable year-in-retrospective programs which air the last week of December, an item in the news crawl caught my eye.  “Far-Left Professor Booted,” it read, or something like that. 

I had to think a moment to make the connection, then it hit me.  The reference was to Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher.  I name-checked C-M in a post a while back when he had stirred up a minor media storm by sending an angry tweet after a first-class airline passenger gave up his seat to a soldier in uniform.  That post wasn’t so much meant to discuss the good professor but to mull over the public’s media-conditioned attitudes toward the military and veterans.

Now I find myself asking what Ciccariello-Maher’s firing says about the present state of academia.  C-M had already landed himself in hot water before the soldier tweet by calling for a “white genocide.”   He was apparently suspended by Drexel last October after he blamed President Trump for the Las Vegas shootings.  Switching channels to CNN, I was informed C-M had actually resigned in the face of death threats against him and his family.

I confess I don’t know much about George Ciccariello-Maher in spite of his working in a discipline related to my own.  What I have been able to glean is that C-M belongs to a certain breed of academic whose public pronouncements tend toward sophomoric oversimplifications of complex issues.  Lots of heat, but precious little light. 

These kinds of statements may gain the rapturous attention of coddled undergraduates and the ire of the anger junkies on the political right.  But they make honest progressives like me wince.  As we slip further into a war of all against all in which we destroy the careers and lives of people we don’t like, such grandstanding further undermines the already precarious state of academic freedom.

I teach at a community college (two of them, actually).  I’m employed as contingent, or adjunct faculty.  No tenure.  No job security.  Just a feeble guarantee of academic freedom which will inevitably evaporate into thin air the moment some student with a wild hair up his or her ass and an axe to grind decides to lay waste to my livelihood.

My own interpretation of American history and society is not really that different from that of Ciccariello-Maher.  I just don’t express it in short bursts with my thumbs is all.  I am also careful to point out that there are other perspectives than mine, that there are many caveats and subtleties to any controversy, and that if a student disagrees with my conclusions that’s okay as long as their own are based in fact.

I don’t know if this approach is the reason, but I have had few strong disagreements with students over the years.  Even my openly conservative students seem to be okay with me for the most part.  It could just be that they’re taking the path of least resistance toward collecting three credits and a grade.   Probably so.  My fingers are crossed that that’s the case and that my luck will continue to hold.

Obnoxious proffies like George Ciccariello-Maher make high profile targets for conservative trolls compiling “watch lists” of faculty who don’t wave the flag or embrace the lay religion of American exceptionalism.  However, safeguarding the right of professors to express unpopular opinions is why we have tenure and academic freedom guarantees in the first place.  As someone who has lots of unpopular opinions I feel threatened whenever the ability to openly express them without fear of retaliation is challenged.

Higher education itself is an inviting target, and not just for right-wing media outlets.  This is nothing new; Richard Hofstadter famously laid bare the deeply ingrained anti-intellectual streak in our culture more than a half-century ago.  Even as credentialism has swollen the ranks of post-secondary students, popular skepticism over the whole enterprise hangs in the air.  (Or as a piece in The Onion once put it, school isn’t really America’s thing.  We just play the game to get what we want.)

The levelling of higher ed has resulted in the perception colleges and universities should be little more than elevated trade schools geared to training the public in marketable skills and nothing else.  We’re doers, not thinkers, so why waste time on useless crap like art history and poetry and sociology?  And while we’re at it, why should we listen to a bunch of overeducated jackasses tell us things we don’t like?  Besides, brains aren’t everything.  In the real world, they’d be working for C students.

(Hmmm…It seems I’ve digressed a little.  Apropos of the preceding paragraph, I should say a few things about myself.  Firstly, every paid position I’ve had since age 21 has required a bachelor’s degree or higher.  And no, I didn’t have rich parents to put me through school.  I worked lots of odd jobs to pay for my studies.  Secondly, while I did have to wait until my mid-thirties to actually apply my classroom knowledge in the workforce, at least I was able to make that happen.

Oh, and my major?  Humanities.)

Returning to the topic at hand, the firing (or forced resignation) of Professor C-M underlines the need for stocktaking within our own ranks.  The trend toward treating students as customers and learning as a commodity, a topic I’ve commented upon often in this space, is stifling the sacred endeavor of free academic inquiry.  We are letting this happen at our peril.  As for me, I’m holding my breath waiting for the next head to roll silently praying it isn’t mine.

© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar

Monday, 3:15 p.m.

“Okay, that’s it for today’s class.  Please review Chapter 5 for Wednesday.”

A hand goes up in the front row.  “Mr. Scholar?”

“Yes, Aubrey?”

“Thursday’s Thanksgiving.  Are we having class Wednesday?”

Requiem for a Spectre

If you’re under forty, you were raised to fear Middle Easterners and Muslims.  For my generation, the bogeyman was communism.

This week marks the centenary of the October Revolution.  Strangely, the anniversary has attracted little comment in the media which is funny when you consider how large the U.S.-Soviet rivalry loomed over 20^th century history.

The Cold War was, in retrospect, more about national rivalry and global power politics than ideology.  While it’s true that the collectivist ethos of the former socialist states was inherently antagonistic to Americans’ individualistic worldview, the East-West standoff was really about global hegemony on both sides. 

Still, throughout my childhood and youth my teachers and the media played up the threat evil communism posed to our freedoms.  Atrocities such as the Cambodian genocide were offered up as proof of the ruthlessness of communist rule and what might befall us should they succeed in their goal of defeating the United States.

This statement, which seems overly dramatic from today’s perspective, would have been credible to a number of people when I was a kid.  Once, in a high school history class, the teacher asked us what was the goal of the communists.  A student in the back of the room promptly answered in a loud, emphatic voice, “The goal of communism is world conquest!”  No one disputed him.  The teacher appeared pleased.

This was in the early 1980s, when President Reagan was doing his level best to antagonize the Soviet leadership.  Anticommunism had become conflated with “patriotism,” and the popular rhetoric ignored realities on the ground.  The Sino-Soviet split had occurred twenty years earlier.  The recently concluded Vietnam War was more about national sovereignty than communism, a truth recognized by many scholars from its start though clearly not by most Americans and their poliicians.

We have a tenuous relationship with truth that goes back much further than the current debate as to whether we’re living in a “post-truth” era.  Our thinking tends toward either/or, black and white reasoning.  We categorically reject any evidence which contradicts our narrative, however manifest it may be to a less partial observer.  This tendency becomes pernicious when it results in defining ourselves not by what we are but by what we are not.

This is a recurring theme.  In our first century or so, we were not those corrupt, rotten Old World aristocrats.  During the Cold War our alliance with the Soviets against the Axis was forgotten as we proclaimed to the world that we were most certainly nothing like those godless commies.  Today, we are not those Muslims who hate our freedom, but this is a topic for another time.

Back to the dialectic between a free, virtuous America and a totalitarian, evil Soviet Union.  If you were with us, your country was a “democracy” and part of the “Free World.”  If you were not, your country was either enslaved or untrustworthy.  This fiction ignored two things.  First, many of the regimes in the so-called Free World countries were in fact corrupt and repressive.  Secondly, whenever the people of one of these countries dared assert their right to self-determination the U.S. and its allies would step in to stymie the attempt—witness the examples of Guatemala, Iran, Chile, East Timor, and Nicaragua.

All this sidesteps the question of the merits of the Soviet experiment, however.  Putting aside the chaos of the Civil War and the totalitarian excesses of the Stalin years, there were aspects of it which compare favorably with the capitalist West.  Many of the ills of capitalist economies were less manifest, such as fluctuating business cycles and unemployment.  The regime at least made the effort to attend to its people’s essential economic and social needs.  The state ideology encouraged the collective welfare over narrow self-interest. 

That last item probably doomed the system in the end.  The citizens of the Eastern Bloc were less interested in political freedom than in Levi’s and rock music.  During the so-called Era of Stagnation between the mid-1960s and the advent of Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s economic planners struggled to meet popular demand for consumer goods.  Appeals to the collective good fell on deaf ears when people stood on line for soap and razor blades.  Some Soviet clients, most notably Hungary, managed to satiate consumer demand.  Others, like Romania, were economically inept and politically crooked.

Watching from afar, the fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath did seem breathtaking at the time.  The West was vindicated.  It wasn’t long before the downside became apparent, however.  Ethnic conflict in Russia and other former Soviet republics.  Terrorism.  Economic turmoil.  Organized crime.  Vladimir Putin.

The Soviet Union did not fall for the reasons we use to congratulate ourselves.  It wasn’t the absence of freedom or because of the Reagan administration’s military build-up.   It was that our comparatively free market was more efficient than their planned economy.  What was portrayed as a clash of ideologies ended on a disappointingly prosaic note.  Then again, it doesn’t matter as we’ve long since moved along to newer, suitably evil enemies.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar

My Pal Trigger

An article in the New York Times Magazine this week addressed a frequently recurring issue in the educational discourse of late.

Namely, anxiety and its “triggers.”  It appears our youth are crippled by it.  Competition with peers, pressure to perform and succeed, and the specter of the future have converged to make them miserable.  Their parents and teachers are at a loss to help. 

Then again, maybe they’re doing too much already.  The article went on to say high school students with anxiety fear the prospect of college, which, unlike their schools, doesn’t have “safe spaces.”

Fear not, precious young ones.  At my institution, “Safe Space” decals have proliferated on office doors all over campus.  Guidance emails from the dean on this topic land in our inboxes with maddening regularity at the start of each semester.  The mental health services folks give the same tedious talks on warning signs a student may be in trouble at every in-service training.

Naturally students have taken full advantage of this climate of concern.  The number of them claiming learning disabilities and mental health issues requiring accommodation has soared in my classes and in those of my fellow proffies. 

We swap horror stories in the faculty lounge.  There’s the kid whacked out on prescription pain meds, and the one who suffered violent seizures in class and became hostile when anyone tried to help.  Both were covered by accommodations issued by the college.  I have a young man in one of my classes this term who will get up from his seat from time to time and wander the classroom muttering under his breath before slipping out the door not to be seen again until next class.  Same situation.  At least he’s harmless.  I hope.

Certain afflictions seem to come in clusters, as if there’s a vogue for them in a given school year.  Last year, it was autism spectrum disorders. 

In one section, I had a student given to random, disruptive outbursts and odd, even inappropriate questions in class.  He had difficulty with metaphors and allusions, forcing me to speak in an unnaturally literal, just-the-facts style which the other students found excruciating and made lectures dull and lifeless.  We had several class cancellations due to winter weather conditions; after each one I had to distribute addenda to the syllabus to reflect the changed schedule because he took the original schedule at face value and couldn’t adjust to the changes without a written revision.

When I went to my dean hoping for some kind of relief, she cut me off flat and insisted I comply with the young man’s accommodation order.  The result was that my class of roughly 30 students became a tutorial for just one.  It goes without saying that I took a hit on my course eval.  Because, you know, it was my fault this kid chose to take my class.

After listening to me tell this story, a colleague sympathetically exclaimed, “We have rights, too!”

Yes, but not in the eyes of the careerists in the college administration.  It’s true we’re the adults in these situations.  But it’s not just the kids acting this way.  What do you say to a thirty-year-old who lashes out at you or at classmates and then defends herself with the excuse that she’s “stressed,” practically daring you to challenge her?   

I’m not saying these afflictions aren’t real.  But there has to be a line where faculty and staff have to say, “Enough.”  Anxiety is a fact of daily life.  I’m anxious, too, and so are my colleagues.  But there are ways of handling such situations which don’t involve acting out or whining to the higher ups.

Not long ago, I was working in my office while evening classes were going on.  An EMT course was using the hallway with the student teams assessing accident cases on practice dummies.  The team nearest my open office door were working the problem of a victim who had suffered a serious injury very closely resembling the one which hospitalized me for nearly two months and left me physically disabled for life. 

I was disturbed by the reminder of it.  I was triggered, if you will.  It got to the point where I could no longer concentrate on my work.

So, here’s what I did.  And, more importantly, what I didn’t do.  I did not run into the hallway demanding the students stop what they were doing.  I did not confront the instructor.  I most certainly did not make a beeline to the dean’s office seething that my rights had been violated.

Instead, I calmly got up and quietly shut the office door and went back to work.  Problem solved.

I don’t consider myself a particularly strong or resilient person.  And yet, I was able to handle my emotions in this situation.  I see and hear things that disturb me all the time, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at me.  How is it that I can manage this and you can’t?

Students with disabilities and issues ought to be accommodated within reason.  However, if the accommodations hinder the instructor’s efforts to instruct or the student poses a threat to others then it’s time for the instructor to draw the line.

Sadly, no administrator would ever allow this.  Enrollment and retention concerns have led to a customer service mentality. 

There is also a rising tendency I’ve noticed which takes advantage of the customer is always right principle, both in and out of the classroom.  Some people, rather than seeking satisfaction politely and rationally, instead take the bull in a china shop approach of angry, accusatory confrontation. Catch your opponent off guard.  Make him question himself whether or not he’s in the right in the heat of the moment.   

It’s bad enough when some jerk pulls this crap to grift a meal or a discount from a hapless manager.  It’s worse when professional standards are lowered as a result of such behavior.  When used to get unreasonable concessions from college administrators at the expense of other students, it casts a shadow of skepticism on those who legitimately need help.

I’ve encountered situations like this a couple of times in my career, and I expect to face more before it’s over.  Worse, colleagues, and damned good ones, have walked away from college teaching because they’re sick of the bullshit coming at them from both ends.  For my part, I’ve come to question our administrators’ commitment to quality. 

Naturally, they would hotly deny this and cast aspersions on my character into the bargain.  Like my friends who have left teaching I’m just a name on the schedule to them, my many years of service notwithstanding.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  If any of us quit, we’ll be promptly replaced and forgotten. Only administrators (and the dwindling number of tenured faculty) are forever.

Only administrators, and the hordes of students with no shortage of angles to work.

© 2017 The Unassuming Scholar