Ideological Hate Games

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/shaffermemo.htm

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16590

I could not care less what the political perspectives (ideological) of a particular faculty member happen to be. One of my most stimulating courses at Yale was with Willmore Kendall, William Buckley's intellectual mentor and for a time contributor to Buckley's National Review. Kendall in fact used to hold class when I arrived late and it tended to consist mainly of a contentious dialogue between us -- and he loved to taunt the mainly jock political science members of the class with citations from, say, Plato's reactionary Laws such as the claim that 'children who deviate in the rules of the game should be monitored as potential future revolutionaries'.

However, there was another model of conservatism haunting the Yale of my day -- that of the personal attack on persons by (God and Man at Yale) William Buckley -- reputedly by supporters while he was at Yale a vicious anti-Semite a la Franco's fascistic Spain where his family spent their vacation time. Buckley actually taught Spanish at Yale as an undergrad, as I recall the lore. Particularly, Buckley had it in for our chaplain of those days, Sid Lovett, much beloved by all and a former pacifist during WW1 who had spent time in jail for his convictions in the absence of the alternative service options for conscientious objectors developed by WW2. Buckley was the one who successfully over the years (on the basis of his daddy's Texas oil monies) launched the attack on 'liberalism' that resonates now with Ruppert Murdock's hate trashing of our media -- Fox et al. I recall Buckley sitting uncomfortably on the stage with the odd general and "ladies in white tennis shoes" at the last gasp rally of One Million Americans for McCarthy at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 1954 -- an event that matched the Hitler's rallies in Nazi Germany with its mad fervor and manifestations of blatant hatreds. Buckley was the smirking starting point for all those right wing think tanks now spinning out their devious Schlockwerts to dazzle the unwary.

It occurs to me that what we are now seeing with the David Horowitz moves to intimidate and slander faculty, which are touching Brooklyn College in the form of attacks on any with the temerity to challenge right wing orthodoxies, e.g. Timothy Shortell assaulted this past summer for his quite valid critiques of much of modern religion with its bitter and murderous attacks on others reflected in our confrontations with Islam as a Christian nation, the Palestinian/Israeli impasse, the Muslim/Hindu killings in the Indian subcontinent, the Hindu (Tamil) Buddhist (Sinhalese) confrontations in Sri Lanka, the horrors in various African nations ranging from the Sudan to madness of Uganda and the Congo, the right wing U.S. fundamentalist attacks on women's rights, none too subtle enduring racism, gay bashing, etc. What Shortell challenged is precisely what the legitimate remnant of these various religions have been decrying as well. Brooklyn College's handling of academic freedom has been shamefully short of the mark.

I don't imagine that I would enjoy sitting down to a meal with K.C. Johnson. He strikes one as a being a vicious SOB and I am glad he is not a member of my department. But he has earned his place with us until he decides to depart elsewhere presumably by solid teaching and scholarship. Shortell, as the chair elect of his department, deserved respectful appointment to that post as well. As academics we all have full rights to tell it as we see it and more and more of us are blogging our concerns that can scarcely be disguised in our classrooms where our teaching subject matters cover the materials where we have developed our own interpretations of history, religion, ethical and legal values and a host of other things that involve norms in the process of development and implementation, hopefully in the interest of persons these days at ever greater risk from both the forces of nature and the extremes of religio-political ideologies.

All of this is early morning pondering in the wake of our latest hurricane at this very moment -- killing and tormenting some million or so people in our Southland. Were I a religious believer I would offer a prayer on their behalf. Instead I offer this comment as a starting point for discussion of things that we need to sort out lest we, too, become destructive forces through our impacts on vulnerable human lives.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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