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God fucking damn it
Jun. 22nd, 2005 11:33 amI can't believe I didn't know about this. This is someone I know and respect. This is someone I don't just know from conferences as is the case with most academics I intellectually admire. This is someone I know from political work. This is someone who broke it down for you when a preemptive criminalization of dissent was manufactured and amplified by The Media You Trust last summer. This is someone I interviewed and videotaped for the A31 Civil Disobedience piece during the RNC last year. This is the one academic I know who doesn't sit around and wank about the alienation of the ivory tower and the role of intellectuals in public life, but puts his money where his ethics are. This is soemone at the top of the cultural capital pyramid of privilege who lives his life in an ethical way without being a wanker meta-academic who make "theorizing about activism" their schtick. This is someone that I feel lucky and proud to be on the same AAA panel with this year. This is someone who, years ago penned an article that is still my go-to piece when I try to explain to people how "Buffy" really was the most subversive, anti-authoritarian and ethical-in-a-necessary-way show on television. This is someone I wanted to go and study with at Yale back in the day.
And now he is being dismissed from Yale. Which is not unexpected, I sort of wondered periodically how he managed to stay there for as long as he has. But it's yet another nail, and a particularly personal one at that, in the coffin of the once-hopeful idea of universities as fiat lux communities of public discourse and critical thought, one of the few cautiously constructive beams in Marcuse's grim, paralzying One-Dimensional Man model back in the 1960s. Ward Churcill, David Massad, Daniel Pipes' brainchild Campuswatch. I am lucky, my department is "left," but even so over the last couple of years, I have received "gentle"/veiled, but unmistakable in nuance comments from well-meaning academics about thinking through "choices" about who I choose to publically affiliate myself with.
David Graeber is right on: "If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said "academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue about. If I had to get analytical about it, maybe I'd put it this way. We're moving from the neoliberal university to the imperial university."
Please take a moment and sign the petition in his support. This IS someone you want to be teaching your peers/your kids.
And now he is being dismissed from Yale. Which is not unexpected, I sort of wondered periodically how he managed to stay there for as long as he has. But it's yet another nail, and a particularly personal one at that, in the coffin of the once-hopeful idea of universities as fiat lux communities of public discourse and critical thought, one of the few cautiously constructive beams in Marcuse's grim, paralzying One-Dimensional Man model back in the 1960s. Ward Churcill, David Massad, Daniel Pipes' brainchild Campuswatch. I am lucky, my department is "left," but even so over the last couple of years, I have received "gentle"/veiled, but unmistakable in nuance comments from well-meaning academics about thinking through "choices" about who I choose to publically affiliate myself with.
David Graeber is right on: "If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said "academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue about. If I had to get analytical about it, maybe I'd put it this way. We're moving from the neoliberal university to the imperial university."
Please take a moment and sign the petition in his support. This IS someone you want to be teaching your peers/your kids.
