Planet of the Blind

Some Poor Writing About Syracuse in the Chronicle of Higher Education

There's an article by Robin Wilson in the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "Syracuse's Slide" that seems, at first glance, to be a substantive news article. In a nutshell Wilson's piece asserts that under the leadership of Chancellor Nancy Cantor, SU has declined academically, dropping some five points in a recent ranking by US News & World Report--a rating mechanism that is relatively non-transparent and which is highly contested within higher education. What's troubling about the article is it's reliance on the rhetorical device known by the Greeks as "pathos"--it asserts a decline is underway at one of the nation's premier universities, thereby raising the emotional temperature of the Agora. Pathos is an excellent tool and it's the one you want if you seek histrionics and readerly credulity. Wilson seems to have been duped by a minority group of faculty who are increasingly unhappy because they do not share the Chancellor's vision of "scholarship in action"--a plan to make the pursuit of higher education and engagement with local educational and civic organizations into a model for 21st century American colleges. That such a plan would have it's critics is hardly surprising. Certainly the histories of contention in higher education would make a generous, if unreadable book. But it's the pathos of the Chronicle piece I find most surprising and disappointing. Pathos is distinct from facts (logos) but it pretends to facts. Enter Wilson's reliance on a disgruntled minority--they assert that funding dollars drawn from tuition have gone up for the administration at the expense of teaching. That this is untrue and that the claims come from an unreliable source seems to have evaded Ms. Wilson who also seems to have failed to question the assertion that Syracuse University's bold embrace of community based scholarship and civic engagement is responsible for a five point drop in the US News index. There is no evidence for this, only pathos, and the latter belongs both to bad writing and to the evident angst of the oddly selective group of faculty who Wilson seems to have consulted. It's interesting that she didn't talk to Deans or faculty with endowed chairs or University Professorships. In fact the article is so unbalanced that one simply returns to pathos in the absence of careful reporting. One wonders who is really responsible for the claim that Nancy Cantor's administration engages in "divisive" leadership? I can attest that having taught at two Big Ten universities and at a first tier liberal arts college I've never and I mean never been a part of such a diverse and energized intellectual community before. All of which makes me wonder about the term "divisiveness"--that can't be code for saying we're concentrating too much on the poor, can it?

 

SK

Lunch

 

America is a big prison.

The Los Angeles county jail is the largest psychiatric hospital in the United States.

I am horrified by what my nation has become.

These are my thoughts in the morning.

These are my thoughts in the evening. 

In the mezzo giorno I will eat an apple. 

 

Amerikka on iso vankila.

Los Angeles County Jail on suurin psykiatrinen sairaala Yhdysvalloissa.

Olen kauhuissani, mitä minun kansakunta on tullut.

Nämä ovat minun ajatukseni aamulla.

Nämä ovat minun ajatukseni illalla.

Vuonna mezzo giorno syön omenan.

At noon I feel better.

I don't think about the prison industrial complex.

There is a yellow butterfly in my garden.

I was completely blind two years ago. Now I can see the butterfly.

I am not in jail making art from mattress stuffing. 

 

Puoliltapäivin voin paremmin.

En ajattele vankilan teollisen kompleksin.

On keltainen perhonen minun puutarhassa.

Olin täysin sokea kaksi vuotta sitten. Nyt näen perhonen.

En ole vankilassa tehdä taidetta patjojen täytteet.

 

In the mezzo giorno I will eat an apple.

Vuonna mezzo giorno syön omenan.

Some Thoughts for my Friends in Finland and My Poet Pals in America

Olen kyllästynyt minun hallitus. Haluan rauhaa. Sanoin tämän, kun olin nuori ja olen edelleen sanovan näin. Kunnes ihmiset Amerikassa ymmärrä rauhasta he eivät nautivaurautta. Ja se ei voi tapahtua ennen kuin amerikkalaiset hyväksymään taloudensorrettujen. 

Kuten Paulo Freire sanoo: "On välttämätöntä, että heikkous voimaton muuttuuvoimana, joka ilmoittaa oikeudenmukaisuutta. Jotta näin tapahtuisi, koko irtisanomisestaon fatalismia on tarpeen. 

Olemme transformative olentoja eikä olentoja majoitusta."

I am tired of my government. I want peace. I said this when I was young and I am still saying it. Until people in America understand the dividends of peace they will not enjoy prosperity. And that can't happen until Americans adopt an economy of the oppressed. As Paulo Freire says: "It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation." 

Ruprecht the Monkey Boy

 If you'be ever seen the movie "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" with Steve Martin and Michael Caine you will doubtless remember Mr. Martin's portrayal of "Ruprecht the Monkey Boy" who, owing to his misfortunes must have a cork on his fork lest he hurt himself at table. Now of course if you're a sensitive person or a righteous one you will be properly apalled by the movie's strategems knowing full well that the world of people with mental disabilities remains a terrible outpost of conditional human rights to say the very least. Then again, within the dynamics of plot, Steve Martin and Michael Caine are scoundrels, and Ruprecht is a posuer, the putative burden that Mr. Caine must carry thorugh life--the unfortunate grown child that he must contain in a quaint dungeon filled with monkey toys--for what else is a good man to do? And Mr. Caine is hunting for a credulous rich woman to marry so he can steal her millions.

Well, thinking of Glenn Beck's march on Washington I was reminded a bit of Ruprecht for Mr. Beck and the Tea Party are the agents of the corporati, who are in turn the rotten scoundrels of our time, who in turn will bilk the old lady out of her last nickel in the name of responsibility--we the upright, we the moral and just shall save the nation by fiscal responsiblity. This of course will mean a return to America of the 1880's--see Ruprecht, be-dungeoned, as all the poor and dazed must be. Make no mistake the Tea Party is as dangerous as can be for its paths to the civic square are as devious as those of Mr. Caine and Mr. Martin in the film aforementioned. The aim of the Tea Party is to steal people's loot while simultaneously appealing to their poorly examined sentiments. If they succeed in developing a real electorate then we will be fighting over who gets to live in the sreet and who gets to live in a state sponsored dungeon.

This is not much of a joke. Still I love the image of Ruprecht above with his cork on a fork. I know what he feels like. I really do.

S.K.  

Thank God for my Friends

Who tell me not to despair, that America hasn't become a vast, anti-intellectual morass despite evidence to the contrary. Thank you my dear pals who remind me that America has always been a rude, rootin' tootin' frontier where the arrogance of the angry mob has often been successful, except to say that on occasion our nation elects Jefferson or Lincoln or the two Roosevelts or J.F.K.--that yes, just so often our better natures do prevail. Oh my friends from your lips to God's ears. May it be so.

S.K.

Fable

Fable

I was trying to stand for something so I talked in the streets. Strangers passed me on the sidewalks and they looked away as if I was a tramp. In these times men aren’t supposed to talk about civil liberties or human rights while walking alone on the ordinary thoroughfares even though this is the country of Jefferson and Paine and Frederic Douglas. “Aha!” I thought. “I’ll get me one of those mobile telephones—not a real one of course, but one that’s been thrown away. And I’ll hold it next to my ear and talk about habeas corpus outside this Laundromat and people will say:”Ah, there is a man speaking the truth to someone unseen, but not to me—just the way we like it in

America

.”

Let this be a lesson to you brethren. My dead cell phone began vibrating and Lo, I received messages from the mournful dead. Naturally some were frivolous, dead people are jokers like the rest of us, so Ladislaw from an undisclosed Hansiatic city wanted to know how antinomianism is faring in Cincinnati and what can you say to a dead man like that?

But my dead phone received some very serious dead calls. The best was from a long dead caller who asked to remain unidentified. He wondered why capital is not re-invested by the most successful capitalists and pointed out that Dick Cheney has moved his money to

Dubai

. “Reagan is here with us,” said this incognito ancestor of someone who could be my neighbor. “Reagan just keeps asking, “How can they screw up my trickle down idea so aggressively?” And none of the dead have an answer for Reagan. The dead don’t understand greed either. 

Class in Ten Minutes

I have a class in ten minutes--and so I've got to be fast. I'm 53 years old and went to public school  and then to college in the years before the ADA. Like all pwds in my generation I can report that geting an education was quite hard and that accordingly I found myself working even harder than my classmates.

Nowadays I see many students in higher education who, knowing they have accommodations and rights, will appear to use disability as a factor when explaining why they are doing less work.

Obviously this is a dreadful generalization. But I swear I've been watching this development over the past 8 years and I see that pwds who are teachers and professors may have to stand for renewed rigor in new and unexpected ways.

In haste this morning I'm hoping to start a little dialogue with burning sticks...

S.K.

What Double Standard Are Yu For?

What Double Standard Are You For?

One can find over at Lance Mannion http://lancemannion.typepad.com/ some of the most trenchant writing about the decadent anti-feminist and racist symbolism that’s being employed by McCain-Palin as this presidential campaign enters the home stretch.

Decadence as a  literary term means the adoption of old ideas and manners—the trotting out of tired material. Writers who do this hope to God that their readers   will be sufficiently uninformed about literary history that they’ll fail to notice the mediocrity of the enterprise.

Lance Mannion, being a literary writer, sees how the McCain-Palin crew is working the engines of decadence for all their worth. I particularly like Lance’s observation that by associating Obama with the Weathermen—a radical group that most Americans probably can’t remember, the McCain campaign hopes to implant the idea that Obama is a direct descendant of one of those other “hard to remember” groups from the 60’s—the Black Panthers. You see the drift. If you’re using decadence and your audience likes it well you can just employ as much phoney symbolism as you like. There’s no bottom to that ditch.

Lance’s most recent posts are the best things I’ve seen on this nauseating and dangerous enterprise.

In the meantime I find myself growing more alarmed and humorless by the day. Last night I watched with horror as Minnesota Republican RepresentativeMichelle Bachmann asserted on the Chris Matthews Show that liberals in Congress should all be investigated to determine whether they are supporters of

America

. See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

Fascism relies on decadence both in art and in its symbolism. In turn I’d like to suggest the re-application  of the dunking stool for Rep. Bachmann.

S.K.

 

The TruthAbout Sarah Palin and Special Needs

 

AlaskaDuring last night’s presidential debate John McCain repeated one of the oft-pronounced assertions of his campaign: namely that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be a great supporter of special needs children should their ticket be elected. IN point of fact Gov. Palin has a woeful record of budget slashing for educational programs for kids with disabilities in Alasaka

 

For more information on this matter check out this post on MOMocrats.

 

I am perhaps too sentimental when it comes to old fashioned images of horse drawn sleighs and farmhouses decorated for Christmas but my sensibilities as a disability rights advocate are sorely abused by the kinds of falsehoods that John McCain and Sarah Palin are employing by suggesting that the Alaska governor is a genuine disability rights advocate. Nothing is so false as this canard and I point it out because this claim by the McCain team uses disability as a “feel good” opportunity—and alas the good feelings are entirely unwarranted.

 

S.K.  

Don't Hold Your Breath for Human Rights

What does it mean to witness if you’re an artist? IN the 1980’s the poet Carolyn Forche associated the craft of poetry with the political act of becoming a moral witness. Forche’s work in the arts of poetry and political witnessing lead her to edit an important anthology of political poetry which remains the standard volume on the matter.

I remain troubled by the absence of moral conversation in our current presidential campaign. IN fact it’s possible I think to view the antics of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a kind of anti-witnessing. She has recently been attacking Senator Barack Obama for having raised the issue of our military’s frequent involvement in incidents that have led to civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Obama was citing the U.S. military’s own findings that suggest that a lack of troops on the ground in Afghanistan has caused the U.S. to rely on air strikes against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds. In turn more civilians are killed than might otherwise be the case.

Senator Obama’s assertion was not unpatriotic or "anti-military" as Sarah Palin has loudly claimed, but rather an assessment drawn from our own top military leaders. It is fair I think to remind ourselves that in general terms the U.S. military does not like to kill innocent people. If you are on the left you may well laugh at my assertion; if you’re on the right you will quite possibly sneer at anything the military has to say—after all, that’s what the past 8 years have been about eh bien?

And so in this instance I am a witness to a mealy mouthed and unethical attack by Sarah Palin on the decency of our own military. And as seems to be the case so often, she is willing to confuse the messenger and the message for political gain while ignoring the real human rights issues.

And that’s my point of course: there have been no human rights issues in this campaign. I’m not holding my breath that we’ll hear about human dignity and freedom tonight.

S.K.