Man of the People?

The Ivy League colleges were notorious for antisemitism and "Jewish quotas." Who knew that FDR was in the thick of things. Rafael Medoff in an op-ed in the LA Times states as a known fact that Roosevelt was instrumental in instituting Jewish quotas at Harvard. How firm is the evidence for this? I had never heard this before. I tried doing a Google search. It is certainly also stated as fact also here and here. Presidents are reflections of their times. One can consider, for example, the pluses and minuses in Dwight Eisenhower's record on civil rights, which almost certainly reflect his rearing in Kansas. John Kennedy engaged in cover-ups of health and personal issues that no President could get away with today. And Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton; well as we say in the South, bless their hearts. Nevertheless, I don't think it is appropriate to avoid discussion of these issues. All of the cites regarding Roosevelt above are attempting to understand how his personal views shaped his attitude towards stopping (or not stopping) the Holocaust. It's an important historical debate. When I attended CalTech, I learned how they missed the chance to have Albert Einstein as a permanent faculty member because of residual antisemitism among the leadership of the 1930s. That's not pretty. Having prejudices can be costly. Loving everyone without regard to their "group" is at the core of Jesus' teachings. But if that was hard for everyone from FDR to IKE and to the brilliant minds who ran CalTech, it's going to be hard for us all. Nobody should believe that Jesus' teachings are easy. His road is hard.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like...

Probably more 1970s college Bible study groups than anyone cares to remember spend way too much time dissecting lyrics for "Meaning" in popular songs. I'm certain that included the Eagles' iconic "Hotel California." But if you want a real trip through time and space, go watch "Thanatos Palace Hotel" on the reruns of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. I raced to Google, and couldn't find anything relating the two from any quote from the Eagles, but about a half-dozen people besides myself noticed the similarities

SPOILERS ALERT

It was a hotel in California

In the Desert

The guests could "check out" any time they liked, but they could never leave

There was champagne on ice

There was a reference to knives

There was a reference to dancing in an outside courtyard

Angie Dickinson was a central character, and she had a lot of "customers" she called men

A wine steward played an important role

Guests were "visited" in the middle of the night

The phrase "We are all prisoners here" was a line of dialogue.

After I heard that. I thought: what if I hear "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"? Not quite, but just a few minutes later, one of the characters said "He's just as much a captive of his own devices." I just about fell out of my chair.

Unfortunately, besides the six or so actual human beings writing comments about the similarities, by far the most common cross reference entries on Google are "fee for service" school essays whose theme is comparing "Hotel California" with "Thanatos Palace Hotel." Sigh. The TV and music of my youth are now just the fodder for bad, ghostwritten highschool English essays.

Jesus Stomping

As a professor, I'm rather intolerant of attempts to infringe upon the academic freedom of faculty. So what, then, to make of the "Jesus Stomping" incident at another university. First, from what I have read in the media, the assignment was taken completely out of the original context in which it was developed and that context was so important that it should never have appeared in a widely dispersed textbook. The purported original author of the assignment was a faculty member at a Catholic university. Being a Catholic university, the paradox of the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and a piece of paper with the name "Jesus" would have been obvious to the students. And, again purportedly, the largely Catholic population of students would rarely actually stomp on the paper, that being the point, and the process would have ended there, morphing into a discussion of words as symbols. It presumably could transition into a discussion of the fact that, in Christianity, the Bible is the uniquely inspired word of God, but a copy of the Bible is not a holy relic. It is the ideas in the Bible that are Holy, not the pieces of paper on which they are printed. In this context, I can totally understand the intent of the original development of the assignment. I was an undergraduate at Jesuit-affiliated Georgetown University, and an assignment like this wouldn't have seemed out of place to me.

But at secular, public university like Florida Atlantic University, there would not have been the Christian "canopy" over the entire process. Students would have every reason to wonder why the word "Jesus" was chosen. Why not "Barack Obama" or "Gandhi" or "Eleanor Roosevelt"? The possibility that there would be more "stomping" on "Jesus" than at a religious university should have been anticipated. There is already an intense suspicion by many Christian students that the American academy treats religious Christians with less respect than the faithful of Islam, Buddhism, and so forth. Entire infrastructures of American military and diplomatic power have been upended over alleged mistreatment of the Koran. This assignment easily fed the narrative that American public institutions can feel uniquely free to insult Christianity.

Does this mean that I think that the instructor should be disciplined or fired? No, not unless there a) is some parallel evidence that the instructor chose the assignment specifically for the purpose of harassing Christian students, or b) the instructor stubbornly insists that there's nothing here that needs re-thinking. I have not seen any evidence of this, and indeed the instructor says that he is a devout Christian . Christians, of all people, should understand repentance and practice forgiveness. People make mistakes, and the mistakes of a college professor are in full public view. Should the assignment be discontinued? Yes.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that an assignment such as this has the potential to go beyond simply having students leave their comfort zone to becoming  personally insulting to Christian students. I understand the point of the former. I have lectures and assignments that are designed to have students look at the world in a different way. Academic freedom should be a steadfast defender of that right. I have a colleague who teaches a course that requires reading both Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. Just because some students are libertarians or Christian socialists shouldn't be a reason to delete Marx or Rand. Academic freedom also means that my colleague should be free to teach both Marx and Rand, not only if students are not fans but also regardless of which blogger or opinion columnist or politician gets their nose out of joint. But if I found that a student was personally insulted by my lectures or an assignment, I would feel terrible and would try to find a different way to make the same point in a less offensive way in the future. Maybe this isn't always possible. I know people whose relatives have been murdered by Hitler and others by Stalin, but that doesn't mean we can sanitize World War II. But with rights come responsibilities, and no professor should believe that (s)he has the right to insult students for his/her own personal agenda.

Now, there are many unanswered questions that need to be addressed on a different part of this story. Those questions involve the treatment of the student who protested the assignment. I'm not going to take a position here on what actually happened, because there appears to be so much dispute. But any student should have the right to convey concerns about an assignment to a higher authority without fear of reprisals. That is a value as important as academic freedom. To me, this is the really important part of the story that I will be following.

Yes, Take off Your Rainbow Shades

In case you thought my previous rant about how the California-Centric West Coast basketball establishment views Arizona ---as an interloper until the rightful return of UCLA --- was a bit over the top, I offer you for today's consideration the following headline from CBS Sports (via Deadspin): "Pac-10 Head of Officials Investigated for Targeting Arizona's Sean Miller." Read the whole thing.