And yet….
I have smoldered and simmered this past week over the cheating scandal, worrying about what it says about higher education today and where we as a country are going tomorrow. But I have also discovered I am not the only one distraught about this momentous event for our university which has ultimately tarred all of us with the brush of 200 malefactors. In this case, misery does, indeed, like company.
The students in my Encountering the Humanities course were largely of the mind that the second chance given the cheaters in the business capstone class was too lenient. Many described it as a slap on the wrist. While I’m not sure a four hour academic integrity course and the possibility of coming out of college with a disciplinary record of dishonesty is really a slap on the wrist, clearly the consequences could have been more stringent and may yet be for the handful of students located by electronic tracing who refused to admit to cheating. We shall shortly see what the university administration is made of.
What was particularly gratifying about their responses was the theme that the argument that students did not know the “study guide” they mysteriously received in email unsolicited was a means of cheating was simply unbelievable. “No one is that naive,” one remarked. And most agreed that at the point they had begun to take the exam and recognized the questions were the same, they had an obligation to report it. At least some of our university’s 56,000 students are willing to call a spade a spade here.
But what moved me most this past week was the short conversation I had with a former student who is now a resident advisor in one of the dorms. This is a bright young man with LSAT scores high enough to get him into top ranked law schools but now becoming concerned that the name UCF on his diploma might actually work to his detriment.
One of the major newspapers sent a reporter to campus last week to do a story on the cheating scandal. My student was one of the many interviewed. But what became clear to him almost immediately is that the reporter did not want to hear about the accomplishments of honest students or the candor with which most recognized the problem with cheating. Instead, the reporter sought the dirt, the juicy quotes from “slackers” (my student’s description). “It was a hack job from the very beginning,” he said.
The problem is, he said, is that these students don’t represent the university. And they don’t represent the student body. There will always be cheaters and those seeking to take the easy way out. But most of the students he had talked with recognized the problem with cheating and what such behaviors say about the character of those involved. “It really makes me angry,” he said, “to be misrepresented by the business students who cheated. It’s not fair to those of us who would never cheat.”
It is heartening to hear this. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that slackers who provide sound bites to local media suggesting that everyone cheats somehow speak for an entire generation. They don’t. But it only be when the students thus misrepresented themselves speak out that this generalization will be brought into question.
There are days when I hold out a little hope that what I do makes a difference in the world and that the students I teach offer some hope for a better future than the current sense so many of us have that higher education is devolving into factories producing amoral working drones. Thank you, students for the reality check. You have your work cut out for you.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Academic Honesty in the Garden of Eden
‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ 12 The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’ 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I ate.’ (Genesis 3:11-13)
This past week a major cheating scandal broke at the university where I teach. In a business capstone course, designed to bring together the four years of business curriculum for seniors nearing graduation, a mid-term exam was given in the business school’s testing center for the 600 students in the class. The professor noticed a double peaked curve in the grades with the peak of a normal bell curve centered in what should have been the statistical norm for the class but with a second peak located in the top grades of the class. Clearly, something was wrong here.
In a taped lecture, the professor observed that this pattern is evidence of an external force intervening in the testing procedure, academic jargon for cheating. The test questions had been taken from a test bank prepared by the publishers of the textbook. Such test banks offer potential questions which have often been tested by reviewers and sometimes in actual class applications before being released. It is a common practice in academia to use such test banks and I use them myself. However, I do frequently modify the questions before using them not so much out of fear for their adequacy as the desire to reflect my own particular approaches to course materials.
Apparently college instructors are not the only ones with access to such test banks. According to students in this class, a copy of the test bank from which this professor’s exam questions were taken was anonymously circulated to students in the course before the exam under the title “Study Guide”. And one of those students was conscientious enough to slide a copy of said Study Guide under the door of the professor’s office alerting him to the cause of the pattern he had noticed.
Technical capacities being what they are today, the 200 students who used the guide to cheat on their exams were fairly quickly identified. The professor delivered an emotional lecture in class in which he described what had happened, how he figured it out and what the result would be. Because the exam had been compromised, a second exam was created by the professor and his teaching assistants and all students were required to take a second exam. Those students who had cheated the first exam were encouraged to identify themselves within the week after which they would be allowed to take the second exam and their grade in the class would not be affected. But they would also have to complete the four hour academic integrity course offered through the Office of Student Conduct in order to graduate. Those who completed the course and did not get into trouble again would have their record sealed upon graduation as if nothing ever happened.
It was a generous response. Indeed, I have wondered if I would have been as generous in his shoes. And many of my students felt it was too generous.
But the response to this event has been absolutely astounding. One student, interviewed by the local ABC affiliate said, "This is college. Everyone cheats. Everyone cheats in life in general. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this testing lab who hasn't cheated on an exam. They're making a witch hunt out of absolutely nothing, as if they want to teach us some kind of moral lesson."
As if.
Some of my students defended their classmate when I read them this quote saying his comments had been taken out of context. No doubt, in a media world which tends to regularly confuse entertainment with the vocation of informing the public, racy comments like these may well have been taken out of context.
But these comments are substantively similar to a significant portion of the comments on sites ranging from the local news channel website to the LA Times and Washington Post sites. Over and over so many of these comments suggest the professor was somehow in the wrong for not writing a completely original exam. As the quotes attributed to the UCF student would suggest, everyone cheats and so it’s somehow the duty of a professor to find ways to avoid that.
Of course, such arguments fail on a number of grounds. First, they suggest something that is demonstrably not true here – that the professor knew or should have known that the students could gain access to the test bank provided by the publishers. In fact, the opposite was the case. Indeed, I was shocked to read that test banks are apparently available online at sites ranging from ebay to the publishers’ sites themselves.
This event will certainly cause me to rethink ever using a test bank again. Even so, creating exams worth giving, particularly the multiple choice exams amenable to administration in factory classes in testing labs, are inordinately time consuming. I am an instructor and thus have some limited time for test construction since I am not charged with publishing or perishing or pursuing grants for corporately sponsored research. For professors charged with the equivalent of bake sales and car washes to locate grants and provide the moneys necessary to operating a university system no longer appropriated by a socially irresponsible public – not to mention the research needed to attain tenure - this becomes a burden.
The willingness of publishers to make these test banks available to willing buyers (translation: students seeking to cheat on exams) is ultimately a breach of trust. There is an implied contract in the willingness to adopt texts and use the accompanying instructional materials that test banks will not be made available to anyone other than the instructor adopting the text. What an irony that the destructive power of compulsive greed driving global corporations today that recognizes no ethical limitations in its pursuit of profits should make itself known in this very immediate manner in the seminaries of free market fundamentalism which go by the name of business colleges.
Of course, just outside the door of every classroom in our own business college is a television monitor blaring the Fox entertainment channel. This is a network which routinely fabricates information and repeats it frequently enough that willing audiences begin to think it’s news. Dishonesty in the name of fun and profit is the name of the game at Fox. So it’s not terribly surprising that the response from so many students on a steady diet of the same would be to blame the instructor for failing to anticipate his students would cheat and thus write an entirely original exam to avoid that inevitability. Fox is big on finding fault with others, particularly as a means of avoiding scrutiny of unethical behaviors of its staff and its own true believers.
But I have to wonder if the students who insist that cheating is inevitable, that professors must anticipate their students will be dishonest if given half a chance, really want to be seen that way. Does one really want their child to marry someone who believes cheating is inevitable and it’s the duty of anyone in relation with that cheater to guard against it? What business truly wants to hire an employee who sees cheating as an acceptable if not predictable pattern of behavior? What kinds of liability arise from hiring such an employee?
Ultimately, this scandal is not a question of job performance of college professors. It’s not even so much a question of the ethics of publishers. Under the banner of caveat emptor, American culture has long since agreed to give white collar crime a pass while pounding common criminals and demanding individual responsibility. While we shouldn’t have to, we’ve come to believe that dishonesty in business and its governmental hirelings is a given in our culture.
But this scandal is not about either of those concerns. Rather, it is about the character of an entire generation of students and the virtues that inform that character.
It is not unexpectable to see those accused of wrong doing blaming others for their malfeasance. It’s a fairly ancient pattern of human behavior as seen in the excerpt above from ethics laden story from Hebrew Scriptures set in a mythical garden. Adam, the prototypical human being, blames the mother of all living (Eve) for his own behavior, eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve, in turn, blames the serpent, the symbol of the competitor goddess cultures of the middle east. No one takes responsibility for their actions here (perhaps with the exception of the poor ole snake who has no one else to blame).
At some level, those behaviors are predictable. Prior to eating from the tree, neither of these prototypical human beings have knowledge of good and evil. Morally, they are children. And holding them responsible for their actions prior to maturing into adults capable of adult moral reasoning is unreasonable (and hence one of the numerous problems with Augustine’s construct of original sin based on this passage). But, as their response to G_d after eating the fruit suggests, adult human beings no longer have the luxury of naïveté. We are responsible for our behaviors even as we often attempt to avoid that responsibility.
In the current situation, it is possible that some of these students did not know the sources of these questions or the implications of a “Study Guide” emailed to them. In all fairness, that is not terribly likely, students today are simply not that naïve. And the moment they reached the third question which was identical to their “study guide,” they either knew or should have known they had been provided a cheat sheet and thus had an obligation to report it.
But in an academic world in which procuring degrees for jobs has supplanted becoming an educated human being as the raison d’etre of universities, any means to that end could readily be seen as acceptable, even if not clearly honest. Bottom liners rarely tend to think beyond the bottom line.
There are some sobering lessons here for any who have ears to hear. At some level, our college students are a reflection of the culture which has produced them. What does their willingness to cut corners, their laziness in avoiding study, their bottom line (what’s in it for me? – Kohlberg pre-conventional stage 2 moral reasoning) mentality and their willingness to engage in unethical and dishonest conduct to attain that bottom line say about us as a people?
From the perspective of the academy, can we in good conscience assume that our students will act in good faith and ethical integrity when given ever increasing opportunities to cheat? Does the increase in cheating incidence, the exponential increase in its sophistication and the rationalization of those behaviors once apprehended not suggest to us that we must approach our jobs as educators differently than in the past? Is the inquisitorial presumption - guilty until proven innocent - mandated under these circumstances?
As for the corporate interests with whom we must deal, do we have the luxury of trusting that materials provided us as instructors can be used without question? Can we honestly believe that the obsession with profits will not overcome integrity in assurances that these materials are not compromised?
These are troubling questions. . This event points to much deeper problems than a mere cheating scandal at a mega-university factory producing degreed worker drones. I do not have any answers this day. It is precisely this kind of event which produces the increasingly jaded cynicism about higher education I feel myself slipping into despite my best efforts to maintain a semblance of Pollyana in the mix. I wonder if there are others besides me who count down the day until retirement.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ 12 The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’ 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I ate.’ (Genesis 3:11-13)
This past week a major cheating scandal broke at the university where I teach. In a business capstone course, designed to bring together the four years of business curriculum for seniors nearing graduation, a mid-term exam was given in the business school’s testing center for the 600 students in the class. The professor noticed a double peaked curve in the grades with the peak of a normal bell curve centered in what should have been the statistical norm for the class but with a second peak located in the top grades of the class. Clearly, something was wrong here.
In a taped lecture, the professor observed that this pattern is evidence of an external force intervening in the testing procedure, academic jargon for cheating. The test questions had been taken from a test bank prepared by the publishers of the textbook. Such test banks offer potential questions which have often been tested by reviewers and sometimes in actual class applications before being released. It is a common practice in academia to use such test banks and I use them myself. However, I do frequently modify the questions before using them not so much out of fear for their adequacy as the desire to reflect my own particular approaches to course materials.
Apparently college instructors are not the only ones with access to such test banks. According to students in this class, a copy of the test bank from which this professor’s exam questions were taken was anonymously circulated to students in the course before the exam under the title “Study Guide”. And one of those students was conscientious enough to slide a copy of said Study Guide under the door of the professor’s office alerting him to the cause of the pattern he had noticed.
Technical capacities being what they are today, the 200 students who used the guide to cheat on their exams were fairly quickly identified. The professor delivered an emotional lecture in class in which he described what had happened, how he figured it out and what the result would be. Because the exam had been compromised, a second exam was created by the professor and his teaching assistants and all students were required to take a second exam. Those students who had cheated the first exam were encouraged to identify themselves within the week after which they would be allowed to take the second exam and their grade in the class would not be affected. But they would also have to complete the four hour academic integrity course offered through the Office of Student Conduct in order to graduate. Those who completed the course and did not get into trouble again would have their record sealed upon graduation as if nothing ever happened.
It was a generous response. Indeed, I have wondered if I would have been as generous in his shoes. And many of my students felt it was too generous.
But the response to this event has been absolutely astounding. One student, interviewed by the local ABC affiliate said, "This is college. Everyone cheats. Everyone cheats in life in general. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone in this testing lab who hasn't cheated on an exam. They're making a witch hunt out of absolutely nothing, as if they want to teach us some kind of moral lesson."
As if.
Some of my students defended their classmate when I read them this quote saying his comments had been taken out of context. No doubt, in a media world which tends to regularly confuse entertainment with the vocation of informing the public, racy comments like these may well have been taken out of context.
But these comments are substantively similar to a significant portion of the comments on sites ranging from the local news channel website to the LA Times and Washington Post sites. Over and over so many of these comments suggest the professor was somehow in the wrong for not writing a completely original exam. As the quotes attributed to the UCF student would suggest, everyone cheats and so it’s somehow the duty of a professor to find ways to avoid that.
Of course, such arguments fail on a number of grounds. First, they suggest something that is demonstrably not true here – that the professor knew or should have known that the students could gain access to the test bank provided by the publishers. In fact, the opposite was the case. Indeed, I was shocked to read that test banks are apparently available online at sites ranging from ebay to the publishers’ sites themselves.
This event will certainly cause me to rethink ever using a test bank again. Even so, creating exams worth giving, particularly the multiple choice exams amenable to administration in factory classes in testing labs, are inordinately time consuming. I am an instructor and thus have some limited time for test construction since I am not charged with publishing or perishing or pursuing grants for corporately sponsored research. For professors charged with the equivalent of bake sales and car washes to locate grants and provide the moneys necessary to operating a university system no longer appropriated by a socially irresponsible public – not to mention the research needed to attain tenure - this becomes a burden.
The willingness of publishers to make these test banks available to willing buyers (translation: students seeking to cheat on exams) is ultimately a breach of trust. There is an implied contract in the willingness to adopt texts and use the accompanying instructional materials that test banks will not be made available to anyone other than the instructor adopting the text. What an irony that the destructive power of compulsive greed driving global corporations today that recognizes no ethical limitations in its pursuit of profits should make itself known in this very immediate manner in the seminaries of free market fundamentalism which go by the name of business colleges.
Of course, just outside the door of every classroom in our own business college is a television monitor blaring the Fox entertainment channel. This is a network which routinely fabricates information and repeats it frequently enough that willing audiences begin to think it’s news. Dishonesty in the name of fun and profit is the name of the game at Fox. So it’s not terribly surprising that the response from so many students on a steady diet of the same would be to blame the instructor for failing to anticipate his students would cheat and thus write an entirely original exam to avoid that inevitability. Fox is big on finding fault with others, particularly as a means of avoiding scrutiny of unethical behaviors of its staff and its own true believers.
But I have to wonder if the students who insist that cheating is inevitable, that professors must anticipate their students will be dishonest if given half a chance, really want to be seen that way. Does one really want their child to marry someone who believes cheating is inevitable and it’s the duty of anyone in relation with that cheater to guard against it? What business truly wants to hire an employee who sees cheating as an acceptable if not predictable pattern of behavior? What kinds of liability arise from hiring such an employee?
Ultimately, this scandal is not a question of job performance of college professors. It’s not even so much a question of the ethics of publishers. Under the banner of caveat emptor, American culture has long since agreed to give white collar crime a pass while pounding common criminals and demanding individual responsibility. While we shouldn’t have to, we’ve come to believe that dishonesty in business and its governmental hirelings is a given in our culture.
But this scandal is not about either of those concerns. Rather, it is about the character of an entire generation of students and the virtues that inform that character.
It is not unexpectable to see those accused of wrong doing blaming others for their malfeasance. It’s a fairly ancient pattern of human behavior as seen in the excerpt above from ethics laden story from Hebrew Scriptures set in a mythical garden. Adam, the prototypical human being, blames the mother of all living (Eve) for his own behavior, eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve, in turn, blames the serpent, the symbol of the competitor goddess cultures of the middle east. No one takes responsibility for their actions here (perhaps with the exception of the poor ole snake who has no one else to blame).
At some level, those behaviors are predictable. Prior to eating from the tree, neither of these prototypical human beings have knowledge of good and evil. Morally, they are children. And holding them responsible for their actions prior to maturing into adults capable of adult moral reasoning is unreasonable (and hence one of the numerous problems with Augustine’s construct of original sin based on this passage). But, as their response to G_d after eating the fruit suggests, adult human beings no longer have the luxury of naïveté. We are responsible for our behaviors even as we often attempt to avoid that responsibility.
In the current situation, it is possible that some of these students did not know the sources of these questions or the implications of a “Study Guide” emailed to them. In all fairness, that is not terribly likely, students today are simply not that naïve. And the moment they reached the third question which was identical to their “study guide,” they either knew or should have known they had been provided a cheat sheet and thus had an obligation to report it.
But in an academic world in which procuring degrees for jobs has supplanted becoming an educated human being as the raison d’etre of universities, any means to that end could readily be seen as acceptable, even if not clearly honest. Bottom liners rarely tend to think beyond the bottom line.
There are some sobering lessons here for any who have ears to hear. At some level, our college students are a reflection of the culture which has produced them. What does their willingness to cut corners, their laziness in avoiding study, their bottom line (what’s in it for me? – Kohlberg pre-conventional stage 2 moral reasoning) mentality and their willingness to engage in unethical and dishonest conduct to attain that bottom line say about us as a people?
From the perspective of the academy, can we in good conscience assume that our students will act in good faith and ethical integrity when given ever increasing opportunities to cheat? Does the increase in cheating incidence, the exponential increase in its sophistication and the rationalization of those behaviors once apprehended not suggest to us that we must approach our jobs as educators differently than in the past? Is the inquisitorial presumption - guilty until proven innocent - mandated under these circumstances?
As for the corporate interests with whom we must deal, do we have the luxury of trusting that materials provided us as instructors can be used without question? Can we honestly believe that the obsession with profits will not overcome integrity in assurances that these materials are not compromised?
These are troubling questions. . This event points to much deeper problems than a mere cheating scandal at a mega-university factory producing degreed worker drones. I do not have any answers this day. It is precisely this kind of event which produces the increasingly jaded cynicism about higher education I feel myself slipping into despite my best efforts to maintain a semblance of Pollyana in the mix. I wonder if there are others besides me who count down the day until retirement.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Signs of Basilea in a Sea of Fearful Portents
The smoke has cleared from elections 2010 and I would guess most Americans are feeling a bit fatigued from this latest assault on our senses - and our good sense. I feel no small amount of gratitude that the assault has ended. This past campaign was marked by a decided misanthropy. Beginning with all the ad hominem advertising, the tendency to demonize designated scapegoats was particularly pronounced.
Immigrants provided an easy target for many candidates. But the adherents of Islam were particularly targeted by pundit and candidate alike. In the heat of the campaign, Time Magazine asked Americans if we are Islamophobic. And for good reason.
One of the darkest moments of this campaign came when PBS reporter Juan Williams remarked that seeing people dressed in Muslim garb at airports made him nervous prompting PBS to fire him and Fox to just as quickly offer him a job. In all honesty, many of us might be willing to admit to the same sort of unbidden nervousness that Williams spoke of. It’s hard to erase the programming that our media has implanted in our minds equating Islam with terrorism, particularly in the post 9-11 context of airplanes.
But for most of us, repressing irrational phobic responses to the other is something we’ve learned to do as adults. And most of us are capable of quickly engaging in the real life calculus that reminds us that the odds are that the Muslim in line in front of us is about as likely to be a terrorist as we are.
It was into this twilight moment of suspended rationality surrounding William’s firing by PBS that Bill O’Reilly interjected a comment that would make my blood run cold: “The world has a Muslim problem.” You see, calling an entire group of people a “problem” has a pedigree. It was a trick that Joseph Goebbels and his Third Reich propaganda apparatus used to perfection. When human beings are problems, the only rational response is to solve that problem. In Goebbel’s case, it was the Final Solution. Clearly this insanity did not go away with the Nuremberg Trials.
As I recoiled from my computer screen after reading O’Reilly’s comments, I thought of my Muslim students at the university. I thought of their aspirations, their talent, their dreams. I thought of how much they had taught me in the process of teaching them. I did not sleep well that night.
This misanthropic rhetoric is a good example of a phenomenon Harvard law and ethics professor Cass Sunstein details in his recent book Going to Extremes. Sunstein observes that when groups of people already inclined in a particular ideological direction circle their wagons, speak only to each other and shut out all competing understandings, the tendency is for their views and thus their rhetoric to become increasingly extreme in tenor. That is particularly true in an age of internet which allows a tailoring of one’s sources of information and feedback.
Those who know me well will readily say that my generally progressive leanings are rarely disguised. I tend to be up front with my biases with others, particularly my students. This is a function of my pedagogical philosophy that acknowledging one’s biases (and thus disabusing oneself of the inevitably self-serving belief that an entirely objective approach is possible for anyone) allows others to account for them. I see that as an exercise in intellectual honesty.
I am also clear that students need not share my leanings to learn in my classes though, in all fairness, some who find their own understandings drawn into question often experience it that way. I try to make it clear to them that it is often from hearing from those with whom we disagree that the nuances – and sometimes fallacies – of our own beliefs come into focus. We all need each other fully present for learning to occur.
One of my acknowledged biases is my appreciation of racially and ethnically diverse settings and, correspondingly, my aversion to being in all white - particularly all white upper middle class -settings. The gated communities of suburbia constitute one of the rings of hell for this Dante. The striving, the need to validate oneself through incessant – and often cut-throat – competition, the smarmy sentimentality, the superficiality and the sense of entitlement that marks this existence drives me nuts.
Ironically, it is precisely the white professional middle class which I represent. And yet, I find myself most drawn to the majority-minority realities of the Bay Area in California and now parts of Florida. In these new realities, whites do not make up the majority of the population. The demographic tapestry combines strands of a rainbow of human faces accompanying my own white, male face. I experience life in such Technicolor settings as much richer, deeper and ultimately more fully human than the black and white realities of my childhood.
I acknowledge other biases emerging from my spiritual journey. Two of the remaining vestiges of what was once a fairly vibrant Christian faith are the image of G-d and the kingdom of G-d. The former comes from Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures and charges all human beings with the duty to recognize the image of G-d residing on the face of human beings. My Franciscan lens reminds me that I am not relieved of the obligation to seek out that image even – perhaps especially – when it is hidden beneath the distressing disguises of poverty and disease. Francis also reminds me that the image of G-d is not relegated to human animals, and that all of creation bears the image – if not the glory – of G-d.
The other vestige of a faith that once sought to embrace the world with the Good News of Jesus is his teaching of basilea, a Kingdom of G_d, a realm in which the poor are blessed, the captives freed and the little ones are assured of having what they need. This is a kingdom in sharp contrast with empires whose currencies are power and privilege - empires which manifest themselves in exploitative relationships between those with power and privilege and those exploited to obtain and maintain it, empires like Caesars in Jesus’ time and the global corporate realm of Citizens United in our own time.
The basilea of G_d calls human beings to their highest potential. The image of G-d is recognized and honored. Right relations between human beings are driven by respect for the humanity of the other and play out in fair, honest dealings. Citizens of the basilea recognize their duties to others as well as themselves. They stand in stark contrast to the grasping, atomistic and never satisfied consumers of empire whose only pertinent inquiry is “What’s in it for me?”
The Kingdom of G-d did not occur in Jesus’ lifetime nor is it likely to ever be fully realized in ours. It is always already here yet still coming. But occasionally one gets glimpses of it. In the past month, I have seen two.
Last week I attended a Japan Festival in a development south of town. It was a celebration of Japanese culture complete with dance, music, lectures and food. Clearly, it was an opportunity for Japanese restaurants to market their wares and perhaps gain some customers. But the parade of young Japanese children and their proud adult mentors onto the stage to demonstrate the culture of a Japan far away both in distance and time was amazing.
As I looked around me in the audience of about 1000, I saw many Asian spectators including my friend from Taiwan who had invited us to the event. But I also saw the diversity that has become Orange County – white, Hispanic, black, Caribbean. Here was assembled a cross-section of this community - and ultimately of the world’s people’s – to learn and appreciate the culture of one of those peoples. The embrace of the other that cool, sunny afternoon provided just a peek at a basilea in which there truly is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free. It warmed my heart.
The other glimpse of the kingdom came two weeks ago in perhaps an unlikely setting. One of the many hats I wear is soccer uncle. My nephew, Cary, plays on a soccer team which is largely Hispanic and my husband and I often attend his games. After an early Saturday morning game here in Orlando, I went with my sister and nephews to a Burger King for breakfast.
My nephew had two of his teammates with him, Garren, a young African-American boy, and Victor, a child of Mexican heritage. Of course, the boys wanted to eat at their own table and so I sat with my sister and her older boy at another table.
At one point, the giggling at the other table had gotten particularly boisterous and I turned to see what they were up to. There was my nephew, his arm around the shoulder of each of his friends, laughing, a beautiful blue eyed white face framed by two beautiful children of color, a miniature of Central Florida diversity and a stunning rejection of the misanthropy of their elders this election season. There was no fear of the other in the horseplay of these young boys, just sheer joy. It took my breath away.
These are the moments that I dare to hope for our world. These are the glimpses of the basilea of which Jesus spoke that reminds me of my debt to seminary and to the Christian tradition from which I come. These are snapshots of life that I find myself treasuring, smiling and telling myself that perhaps the O’Reillys and Williams of the world will not have the last word.
There are the days that the kingdom of G-d comes just a tiny step closer to reality. And for that, this weary heart is truly grateful.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The smoke has cleared from elections 2010 and I would guess most Americans are feeling a bit fatigued from this latest assault on our senses - and our good sense. I feel no small amount of gratitude that the assault has ended. This past campaign was marked by a decided misanthropy. Beginning with all the ad hominem advertising, the tendency to demonize designated scapegoats was particularly pronounced.
Immigrants provided an easy target for many candidates. But the adherents of Islam were particularly targeted by pundit and candidate alike. In the heat of the campaign, Time Magazine asked Americans if we are Islamophobic. And for good reason.
One of the darkest moments of this campaign came when PBS reporter Juan Williams remarked that seeing people dressed in Muslim garb at airports made him nervous prompting PBS to fire him and Fox to just as quickly offer him a job. In all honesty, many of us might be willing to admit to the same sort of unbidden nervousness that Williams spoke of. It’s hard to erase the programming that our media has implanted in our minds equating Islam with terrorism, particularly in the post 9-11 context of airplanes.
But for most of us, repressing irrational phobic responses to the other is something we’ve learned to do as adults. And most of us are capable of quickly engaging in the real life calculus that reminds us that the odds are that the Muslim in line in front of us is about as likely to be a terrorist as we are.
It was into this twilight moment of suspended rationality surrounding William’s firing by PBS that Bill O’Reilly interjected a comment that would make my blood run cold: “The world has a Muslim problem.” You see, calling an entire group of people a “problem” has a pedigree. It was a trick that Joseph Goebbels and his Third Reich propaganda apparatus used to perfection. When human beings are problems, the only rational response is to solve that problem. In Goebbel’s case, it was the Final Solution. Clearly this insanity did not go away with the Nuremberg Trials.
As I recoiled from my computer screen after reading O’Reilly’s comments, I thought of my Muslim students at the university. I thought of their aspirations, their talent, their dreams. I thought of how much they had taught me in the process of teaching them. I did not sleep well that night.
This misanthropic rhetoric is a good example of a phenomenon Harvard law and ethics professor Cass Sunstein details in his recent book Going to Extremes. Sunstein observes that when groups of people already inclined in a particular ideological direction circle their wagons, speak only to each other and shut out all competing understandings, the tendency is for their views and thus their rhetoric to become increasingly extreme in tenor. That is particularly true in an age of internet which allows a tailoring of one’s sources of information and feedback.
Those who know me well will readily say that my generally progressive leanings are rarely disguised. I tend to be up front with my biases with others, particularly my students. This is a function of my pedagogical philosophy that acknowledging one’s biases (and thus disabusing oneself of the inevitably self-serving belief that an entirely objective approach is possible for anyone) allows others to account for them. I see that as an exercise in intellectual honesty.
I am also clear that students need not share my leanings to learn in my classes though, in all fairness, some who find their own understandings drawn into question often experience it that way. I try to make it clear to them that it is often from hearing from those with whom we disagree that the nuances – and sometimes fallacies – of our own beliefs come into focus. We all need each other fully present for learning to occur.
One of my acknowledged biases is my appreciation of racially and ethnically diverse settings and, correspondingly, my aversion to being in all white - particularly all white upper middle class -settings. The gated communities of suburbia constitute one of the rings of hell for this Dante. The striving, the need to validate oneself through incessant – and often cut-throat – competition, the smarmy sentimentality, the superficiality and the sense of entitlement that marks this existence drives me nuts.
Ironically, it is precisely the white professional middle class which I represent. And yet, I find myself most drawn to the majority-minority realities of the Bay Area in California and now parts of Florida. In these new realities, whites do not make up the majority of the population. The demographic tapestry combines strands of a rainbow of human faces accompanying my own white, male face. I experience life in such Technicolor settings as much richer, deeper and ultimately more fully human than the black and white realities of my childhood.
I acknowledge other biases emerging from my spiritual journey. Two of the remaining vestiges of what was once a fairly vibrant Christian faith are the image of G-d and the kingdom of G-d. The former comes from Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures and charges all human beings with the duty to recognize the image of G-d residing on the face of human beings. My Franciscan lens reminds me that I am not relieved of the obligation to seek out that image even – perhaps especially – when it is hidden beneath the distressing disguises of poverty and disease. Francis also reminds me that the image of G-d is not relegated to human animals, and that all of creation bears the image – if not the glory – of G-d.
The other vestige of a faith that once sought to embrace the world with the Good News of Jesus is his teaching of basilea, a Kingdom of G_d, a realm in which the poor are blessed, the captives freed and the little ones are assured of having what they need. This is a kingdom in sharp contrast with empires whose currencies are power and privilege - empires which manifest themselves in exploitative relationships between those with power and privilege and those exploited to obtain and maintain it, empires like Caesars in Jesus’ time and the global corporate realm of Citizens United in our own time.
The basilea of G_d calls human beings to their highest potential. The image of G-d is recognized and honored. Right relations between human beings are driven by respect for the humanity of the other and play out in fair, honest dealings. Citizens of the basilea recognize their duties to others as well as themselves. They stand in stark contrast to the grasping, atomistic and never satisfied consumers of empire whose only pertinent inquiry is “What’s in it for me?”
The Kingdom of G-d did not occur in Jesus’ lifetime nor is it likely to ever be fully realized in ours. It is always already here yet still coming. But occasionally one gets glimpses of it. In the past month, I have seen two.
Last week I attended a Japan Festival in a development south of town. It was a celebration of Japanese culture complete with dance, music, lectures and food. Clearly, it was an opportunity for Japanese restaurants to market their wares and perhaps gain some customers. But the parade of young Japanese children and their proud adult mentors onto the stage to demonstrate the culture of a Japan far away both in distance and time was amazing.
As I looked around me in the audience of about 1000, I saw many Asian spectators including my friend from Taiwan who had invited us to the event. But I also saw the diversity that has become Orange County – white, Hispanic, black, Caribbean. Here was assembled a cross-section of this community - and ultimately of the world’s people’s – to learn and appreciate the culture of one of those peoples. The embrace of the other that cool, sunny afternoon provided just a peek at a basilea in which there truly is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free. It warmed my heart.
The other glimpse of the kingdom came two weeks ago in perhaps an unlikely setting. One of the many hats I wear is soccer uncle. My nephew, Cary, plays on a soccer team which is largely Hispanic and my husband and I often attend his games. After an early Saturday morning game here in Orlando, I went with my sister and nephews to a Burger King for breakfast.
My nephew had two of his teammates with him, Garren, a young African-American boy, and Victor, a child of Mexican heritage. Of course, the boys wanted to eat at their own table and so I sat with my sister and her older boy at another table.
At one point, the giggling at the other table had gotten particularly boisterous and I turned to see what they were up to. There was my nephew, his arm around the shoulder of each of his friends, laughing, a beautiful blue eyed white face framed by two beautiful children of color, a miniature of Central Florida diversity and a stunning rejection of the misanthropy of their elders this election season. There was no fear of the other in the horseplay of these young boys, just sheer joy. It took my breath away.
These are the moments that I dare to hope for our world. These are the glimpses of the basilea of which Jesus spoke that reminds me of my debt to seminary and to the Christian tradition from which I come. These are snapshots of life that I find myself treasuring, smiling and telling myself that perhaps the O’Reillys and Williams of the world will not have the last word.
There are the days that the kingdom of G-d comes just a tiny step closer to reality. And for that, this weary heart is truly grateful.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Wednesday, November 03, 2010
Blue Islands in a Red Sea of Rich Retirees and Rednecks
The electoral map of Florida graphically illustrates the truth this morning. While the governor’s race has narrowed to 50,000 votes, it still appears that billionaire Rick Scott has bought himself a governorship. The map shows the handful of blue urban islands surrounded by a sea of red suburban and rural counties, the realm of the rich retirees in their gated communities and their bible thumping redneck cohorts. The breakdown by demographics details this reality: Scott voters were wealthy, white, Hispanic males and poorly to moderately educated people. Sink’s voters were poorer, female, Hispanic females and blacks, and those with four year degrees or more.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily working class men allow their masculinity to be pimped. They vote against their own interests with regularity. And they listen to steady diets of conservative pundits and fundagelical preachers who maintain the closed circle of the conservative drumbeat. It’s not hard to believe Obama is the antichrist when you never venture outside the circled wagons.
There are days I regret returning to this home state of five generations. Florida has generally voted in ways that I could rarely understand much less embrace. But the unholy alliance of wealthy retirees and the blue collar folk who maintain their plumbing is a deadly combination that appears to be largely the norm in Florida politics. I watch with some level of consolation as California turns back the same kind of billionaires attempting to buy their state’s elections and rejects amendments sponsored by Texas oil companies to gut their environmental laws. Why is it California can get their feces coalesced and Florida seems stuck on the toilet?
This morning as I walked around Lake Underhill, the elections seemed far away. The mist and fog left over from yesterday’s rains – the first in over a month – still swirled around the edges of the lake providing intermittent cover for the wading birds. The sun rising through that mist illuminated the lake and cast the bridge across the lake with its rush hour traffic a golden hue. It is a very peaceful place which I have come to love each morning, grounding myself in the real before entering the realm of the surreal.
As I walked this morning, suddenly I heard the words of Julian of Norwich in my ears: “And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well…” I suppose Dame Julian is probably right. As my father is so fond of saying, “This, too, shall pass.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The electoral map of Florida graphically illustrates the truth this morning. While the governor’s race has narrowed to 50,000 votes, it still appears that billionaire Rick Scott has bought himself a governorship. The map shows the handful of blue urban islands surrounded by a sea of red suburban and rural counties, the realm of the rich retirees in their gated communities and their bible thumping redneck cohorts. The breakdown by demographics details this reality: Scott voters were wealthy, white, Hispanic males and poorly to moderately educated people. Sink’s voters were poorer, female, Hispanic females and blacks, and those with four year degrees or more.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily working class men allow their masculinity to be pimped. They vote against their own interests with regularity. And they listen to steady diets of conservative pundits and fundagelical preachers who maintain the closed circle of the conservative drumbeat. It’s not hard to believe Obama is the antichrist when you never venture outside the circled wagons.
There are days I regret returning to this home state of five generations. Florida has generally voted in ways that I could rarely understand much less embrace. But the unholy alliance of wealthy retirees and the blue collar folk who maintain their plumbing is a deadly combination that appears to be largely the norm in Florida politics. I watch with some level of consolation as California turns back the same kind of billionaires attempting to buy their state’s elections and rejects amendments sponsored by Texas oil companies to gut their environmental laws. Why is it California can get their feces coalesced and Florida seems stuck on the toilet?
This morning as I walked around Lake Underhill, the elections seemed far away. The mist and fog left over from yesterday’s rains – the first in over a month – still swirled around the edges of the lake providing intermittent cover for the wading birds. The sun rising through that mist illuminated the lake and cast the bridge across the lake with its rush hour traffic a golden hue. It is a very peaceful place which I have come to love each morning, grounding myself in the real before entering the realm of the surreal.
As I walked this morning, suddenly I heard the words of Julian of Norwich in my ears: “And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well…” I suppose Dame Julian is probably right. As my father is so fond of saying, “This, too, shall pass.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Making sense of the latest black night in American politics
It’s been a long night for those of us who believed that America might possibly engage in some real, substantive change a mere two years ago. I look to the Hope poster on my wall with the stylized portrait of President Obama and my heart sinks.
The results from Florida are dire. Republicans have swept the mindless Tea Pots into office. Even the fraudulent medical corporate magnate Rick Scott seems to have won our governorship here in the once Sunshine State. How the buzzards hover over what is left of a once beautiful state. Across the rest of the country, similar results are coming in.
In many ways, I am not as alarmed this night as I have been on black nights like this in the past. It’s clearly not as bad as the night Ronald Raygun swept into power with his revolution that would ultimately empower America’s most selfish impulses: “Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?” And it’s hardly the devastating night that Gingrich and his mindless bunch of thugs inflicted their Contract on America upon the nation.
But, of course, the pattern of this mindlessness remains constant. Working class men get their masculinity pimped and vote for corporate candidates who oppose their very existence, much less their interests. Blacks and Latinos don’t vote at all or simply vote for a Spanish name, in this case Rubio, regardless of the fact he represents Latin America’s fascist impulse whose privilege comes at the expense of their own concerns. And the soccer moms, unable to get instant gratification from the Democrats, switch sides. Of course, Republicans rarely have any trouble knowing how to vote. When your moral reasoning is dominated by stage two (what's in it for me?) and stage three (What does the tribe say?) thinking, there are always candidates willing to play into your greed and fears.
To paraphrase the Gospel of John, Jefferson wept.
As I sat as calmly as possible at dinner eating my garlic and sun-dried tomato pizza, I said to my gentle husband of 36 years that we face two basic questions this night. The first is simply how we resist yet another episode of the compulsive fascist tendencies America periodically produces, shooting ourselves in the foot and then begging wimpy Democrats with names like Clinton and Obama to come rescue us from the self-inflicted pain. What does resistance look like in a world dominated by Tea Pots and their corporate sponsors?
The second question is more serious. At what point does the situation suggest that resistance is futile, that departure is warranted? This is the question folks like the Frankfurt School scholars asked themselves in the rise of the Third Reich and the closing of the German mind (and withering of the German heart). When does the scapegoating move from immigrants to the queers and the academics? When does the demand for conformity dressed up as patriotism become a red alert for anyone with an IQ over that of a rutabaga to get the hell out of Dodge?
I do not think America is at the latter point…yet. But I do not rule out its possibility. Tonight my husband and I talked of our love for our home, our desire to remain close to our families and the desires to make it to retirement in our jobs. Then we talked about which country would be the best place to which we could flee. Which would take our animals, if any? Which would allow us to continue tapping whatever resources we might have left? How would we survive without our families? Where would the remaining days of our lives be the least difficult should our presence in our homeland no longer be reasonably possible?
I have no crystal ball this night. But I do see major hard times ahead for America. Whether it will revise itself as it has done so many times before and find the will to deal with its problems , whether it will devolve into corporate sponsored fascism or whether it will simply dissolve into tribalistic competing feudal realms with little in common other than a history, time will tell. And this night, I have to say, I am glad I will not be around long enough to know the answer to that question. Frankly, this night, I’m just not too perky about the future of a country I once loved.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It’s been a long night for those of us who believed that America might possibly engage in some real, substantive change a mere two years ago. I look to the Hope poster on my wall with the stylized portrait of President Obama and my heart sinks.
The results from Florida are dire. Republicans have swept the mindless Tea Pots into office. Even the fraudulent medical corporate magnate Rick Scott seems to have won our governorship here in the once Sunshine State. How the buzzards hover over what is left of a once beautiful state. Across the rest of the country, similar results are coming in.
In many ways, I am not as alarmed this night as I have been on black nights like this in the past. It’s clearly not as bad as the night Ronald Raygun swept into power with his revolution that would ultimately empower America’s most selfish impulses: “Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?” And it’s hardly the devastating night that Gingrich and his mindless bunch of thugs inflicted their Contract on America upon the nation.
But, of course, the pattern of this mindlessness remains constant. Working class men get their masculinity pimped and vote for corporate candidates who oppose their very existence, much less their interests. Blacks and Latinos don’t vote at all or simply vote for a Spanish name, in this case Rubio, regardless of the fact he represents Latin America’s fascist impulse whose privilege comes at the expense of their own concerns. And the soccer moms, unable to get instant gratification from the Democrats, switch sides. Of course, Republicans rarely have any trouble knowing how to vote. When your moral reasoning is dominated by stage two (what's in it for me?) and stage three (What does the tribe say?) thinking, there are always candidates willing to play into your greed and fears.
To paraphrase the Gospel of John, Jefferson wept.
As I sat as calmly as possible at dinner eating my garlic and sun-dried tomato pizza, I said to my gentle husband of 36 years that we face two basic questions this night. The first is simply how we resist yet another episode of the compulsive fascist tendencies America periodically produces, shooting ourselves in the foot and then begging wimpy Democrats with names like Clinton and Obama to come rescue us from the self-inflicted pain. What does resistance look like in a world dominated by Tea Pots and their corporate sponsors?
The second question is more serious. At what point does the situation suggest that resistance is futile, that departure is warranted? This is the question folks like the Frankfurt School scholars asked themselves in the rise of the Third Reich and the closing of the German mind (and withering of the German heart). When does the scapegoating move from immigrants to the queers and the academics? When does the demand for conformity dressed up as patriotism become a red alert for anyone with an IQ over that of a rutabaga to get the hell out of Dodge?
I do not think America is at the latter point…yet. But I do not rule out its possibility. Tonight my husband and I talked of our love for our home, our desire to remain close to our families and the desires to make it to retirement in our jobs. Then we talked about which country would be the best place to which we could flee. Which would take our animals, if any? Which would allow us to continue tapping whatever resources we might have left? How would we survive without our families? Where would the remaining days of our lives be the least difficult should our presence in our homeland no longer be reasonably possible?
I have no crystal ball this night. But I do see major hard times ahead for America. Whether it will revise itself as it has done so many times before and find the will to deal with its problems , whether it will devolve into corporate sponsored fascism or whether it will simply dissolve into tribalistic competing feudal realms with little in common other than a history, time will tell. And this night, I have to say, I am glad I will not be around long enough to know the answer to that question. Frankly, this night, I’m just not too perky about the future of a country I once loved.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So, this is what Academia comes to?
On one of the lists on which I occasionally contribute comments there is an article about a racist work of fiction in which a thinly veiled Southern Poverty Law Center figure is murdered by a racist zealot which has been assigned by some professors at a handful of colleges for student reading. At least one of the professors, himself an avowed semite, hails this work as "an emotionally compelling account of Whites as historical victims of non-Whites--just the sort of thing we need to motivate a renaissance among our people."
Interesting assertion. Who might “our people” be? Other racists? More likely this professor of psychology at Cal State Long Beach is presuming to speak of all white people. That is how all misanthropy tends to work: Everyone shares my biases (including G-d, most of the time) or they ought to.
One of the comments responding to this article posed this question: "So this is what academia has come to." Here’s my response:
Academia has come to precisely what the public has allowed if not demanded it become. It has become degree processing factories at the public level and entitlement legitimating enclaves at the private level. It has become vocational schools producing unquestioningly obedient workers gaining skills with very short shelf lives while avoiding the production of reflective, critical thinking members of society at all costs. It has become producers of consumers, content to accept the limited range of consumer goods and services offered us along with the incessant advertising which conditionalizes our self-esteem to make us believe we actually need this schlock all the while avoiding the responsibilities of citizenship at all costs.
Academia is a reflection of our larger culture. It reproduces and reinforces the values we have imposed upon it. Those values do not include thoughtful, critically reflective human beings, the products of an academia which is actually living into its own vocation rather than that imposed upon it by a culture dominated by corporate interests.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (canonically resident, Diocese of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On one of the lists on which I occasionally contribute comments there is an article about a racist work of fiction in which a thinly veiled Southern Poverty Law Center figure is murdered by a racist zealot which has been assigned by some professors at a handful of colleges for student reading. At least one of the professors, himself an avowed semite, hails this work as "an emotionally compelling account of Whites as historical victims of non-Whites--just the sort of thing we need to motivate a renaissance among our people."
Interesting assertion. Who might “our people” be? Other racists? More likely this professor of psychology at Cal State Long Beach is presuming to speak of all white people. That is how all misanthropy tends to work: Everyone shares my biases (including G-d, most of the time) or they ought to.
One of the comments responding to this article posed this question: "So this is what academia has come to." Here’s my response:
Academia has come to precisely what the public has allowed if not demanded it become. It has become degree processing factories at the public level and entitlement legitimating enclaves at the private level. It has become vocational schools producing unquestioningly obedient workers gaining skills with very short shelf lives while avoiding the production of reflective, critical thinking members of society at all costs. It has become producers of consumers, content to accept the limited range of consumer goods and services offered us along with the incessant advertising which conditionalizes our self-esteem to make us believe we actually need this schlock all the while avoiding the responsibilities of citizenship at all costs.
Academia is a reflection of our larger culture. It reproduces and reinforces the values we have imposed upon it. Those values do not include thoughtful, critically reflective human beings, the products of an academia which is actually living into its own vocation rather than that imposed upon it by a culture dominated by corporate interests.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (canonically resident, Diocese of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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