Are We All Really Alike? The Strange Marketplace of Louis Menand

Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (New York: Norton, 2010). 174 pp., index, 24.95 hardcover.

I realize that I am a little late to the party here. But let me just say – whether you like Louis Menand or not, whether you think that folks who spend most of their lives in a very comfy chair at Harvard are better qualified to talk about education or not – people like Louis Menand matter and it is best to keep up with them. I guarantee you that you will be at a meeting with your president, provost or dean, and something is going to come out if his or her mouth at some point, and you are going to think: “Where the frack did that come from?” Your confusion will not be resolved either -- unless you read this book.

Don't worry. It's short. In fewer than two hundred pages, Menand discusses what he considers to be the four central questions for higher education in the United States that we were left with at end of the twentieth century: general education curricula and the difficulties of implementing them; the crisis of legitimacy in the humanities; the meaning of conversations about interdisciplinarity; and the question of why “professors all have the same politics.” (16)

Menand is one of those people who knows a lot about some things and not so much about others, and speaks about both in the same authoritative tone. This can be annoying, but you have to separate out your annoyance about the things he is bloviating about from the ideas that are truly thought provoking. I liked the first section of the book best, in which Menand discusses the origins of liberal education and why general education curriculums were devised in the first place as a reform and a response to the rise of professional education. The answer to this question is worth knowing, since it explains a lot about why discussions about great books and curricular requirements come up in the first place, why they are so often perceived as a corrective to cultural decline, and why they are so contentious. Gen eds emerged at moments where intellectuals were most concerned about the relationship of elite institutions to citizenship (Columbia devised its program in 1919; Harvard produced its in 1945.) “A college’s general education curriculum, what the faculty chooses to require of everyone,” Menand argues, “Is a reflection of its overall educational philosophy, even when the faculty chooses to require nothing.” Columbia’s not-so-hidden agenda, Menand claims, appears to have been anxiety over the integration of the large numbers of Jews and other first-generation Americans matriculating at the university: the Great Books curriculum, they hoped, could serve as a mini-melting pot. (23,35)

Since I teach at a college that has no requirements (we have “expectations” that students will take six courses across the three “divisions,” humanities, social sciences and hard science.) I’ll come back to this in my next post, but Menand’s statement that the choice to require nothing is a choice impressed me enormously. I think he is right about this, I think it is intellectually lazy not to have a core curriculum of some kind, and I think it has consequences for how our students perceive the work of attaining a B.A..

One of the curious features of the book is that Menand’s investment in the university as an engine of progress badly skews his view of the recent history of higher education and the enormous changes that resulted from putting an end to gender and race segregation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Menand’s view, bringing women and people of color into elite institutions – as students and as faculty was a natural outcome of a late Cold War market imperative to broaden the talent pool. Not only does this sever the diversification of the university from post-war social movements almost entirely, it attributes the entrance of women and people of color into the university as a direct consequence of the National Defense Education Act, a position for which he offers absolutely no evidence. We have women in formerly male elite institutions because some men fought other men about it quite bitterly; we have women's studies programs because of feminism, not because university presidents thought they were a buttress to democracy; and we have equal access because laws were passed and lawsuits were filed. “If the nation seeks to maximize its talent pool in the name of greater national security or greater economic productivity or both,” Menand argues, “It will not wish to limit entrants to that pool on the basis of considerations extraneous to aptitude, such as gender, family income, and skin color.” (73) Can we apply this model to the admission of Africa-Americans to the University of North Carolina? I think not.

Personally, I think Menand's model is a far better description of the Soviet Union in the 1920s than the post-war United States, and I wonder why Skip Gates – the editor of the series in which this book is published – did not ask him to rethink this chapter. It is a historical fact that it took numerous lawsuits to desegregate higher education by race and gender. Until 1972 it was absolutely legal to discriminate against women applicants to law school on the basis of their gender; and it took the enforcement of Title IX during the Ford and Carter administrations to ensure that once women arrived at university they had equal access to what was offered.

Even more peculiarly, Menand argues that the inclusion of these new bodies and the scholarly work they did had no real impact on the academy or on the liberal arts. If you believe that people like Edward Said, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Gayatri Spivak, Joan Scott, Paul Gilroy and Lisa Lowe have transformed intellectual thought, think again. It’s not that Menand thinks their work isn’t important; it’s just that he doesn’t think it is terribly original. In his view, these lines of thought have already been fully established by (white, male) scholars like Paul de Man, Thomas Kuhn, Hayden White, Clifford Geertz and Richard Rorty. (82, 84)

Which gets to a critical, bizarre and perhaps the least well informed, part of this little book: that the interdisciplinarity claimed by post-colonial, queer, critical race and feminist studies isn’t really methodologically based. Rather, it is a kind of public relations strategy to establish the reputations of individual scholars by being ornery and by posturing a lot about how passé discipline is. These fields are interdisciplinary at all, he argues: they are only anti-disciplinary. (85) How do we know this? Because their faculty all hold tenure in disciplines. Furthermore, investment in interdisciplinarity is not really intellectual, Menand argues: it’s all about status anxiety, and the fear that college professors have that they have ceased to be relevant anywhere but among other disciplinary scholars. It stems from the need “to feel we are in a real fight…with the forces that make and remake the world most human beings live in,” Menand notes, and we who are interdisciplinary displace our desire for a “real fight” onto institutions that are ideologically tilted towards discipline. “The institution is not inherently a friend to innovation and transgression and creativity,” he says, and you can nearly feel the friendly pat on your shoulder. “But it is not inherently an enemy, either. Interdisciplinarity is an administrative name for an anxiety and a hope that are personal.” (125)

One wonders exactly how familiar Menand is with the world of interdisciplinary thought, since the following chapter – “Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety” – is muddled in a way that is uncharacteristic of the rest of the book and uncharacteristic of Menand’s writing in general. One is constantly reading along and having things jump out – “you cannot take a course in the law (apart from legal history) outside a law school” (105) – and thinking, Well that’s actually not true. Further along, he suggests that the appeal of interdisciplinarity “is that it will smooth out the differences between the empirical and the hermeneutic” by getting two scholars that represent these forms of thought “in the same room together.” (118)

The chapter is full of tautologies that make you really glad that Louis Menand is not your dean, and that he is safely lodged at Harvard where he can do little harm to others. For example, try htis idea on for size:

“Interdisciplinarity is not something different from disciplinarity. It is the ratification of the logic of disciplinarity. In practice, it actually tends to rigidify disciplinary paradigms. A typical interdisciplinary situation might bring together, in a classroom, a literature professor and an anthropologist….This methodological contrast is regarded as the intellectual as, in fact, the intellectual and pedagogical takeaway of the collaboration.” (119)

Well, no. That is in fact, exactly wrong. What Menand is describing is a multi-disciplinary, rather than an interdisciplinary, paradigm, in which the point is to engage the object of study from multiple perspectives, rather than to reconsider the nature of its objectness altogether. Twenty-first century interdisciplinarity means, in short, putting the empirical and the hermeneutic, or any two paradigms, together in the same brain, not in the same classroom. Or try this idea:

“Professors are still trained in one national literature or artistic medium or another.” (120) Again, this is just wrong. There are interdisciplinary Ph.D.s, and there would be more of them if scholars were not required to adhere to disciplinary appointments in the hiring process....Until professors are produced in a different way, the structure of academic knowledge production and dissemination is unlikely to change significantly.” (121) This is precisely bass-ackwards: as those of us working on the ground in interdisciplinary programs know, until faculty are widely hired with full appointments in interdisciplinary programs, graduate students will be trained conservatively and with an eye to competence in a discipline, because otherwise no one will hire them. Similarly, the tenuous hold interdisciplinary fields like American studies, women’s studies, queer studies and critical race studies have in the academy has directly to do with university administrations being unwilling to challenge the influence of departments.

In the final chapter, “Why Do All College Professors Think Alike?” Menand muses about a study done by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, in which these scholars "discovered" that the vast majority of college professors really are registered Democrats, and really are liberal, or at least centrist. Shockingly, “the more elite the institution, the less likely the professors there are to be left wing,” and the faculty at SLACs are more likely to be left wing than faculty at research universities. (135) Except for pointing out the obvious, which is that just because people belong to the same political party doesn’t mean they actually think alike about much (think Strom Thurmond and Hubert Humphrey, circa 1948; or Barack Obama and Dennis Kucinish, circa 2010), I’m going to leave this one alone – except to say that actually, in denying that there is conformity in the academy, Menand’s evidence tends to suggest, falsely, that there is. Both things can, in fact, be true: that faculty tend to hew to certain kinds of truisms (for example, that “disciplinary scholarship” is rigorous and pioneering, and “interdisciplinary scholarship” is emotional an anxiety-ridden); they can all be registered in the same party; and they can simultaneously committed to a kind of radical individualism that means they can rarely agree on anything, much less a set of political ideas or intellectual approaches to those ideas.

Which brings me back to the question of general education, the thing that I wish Menand had stuck more tightly to, because it isn’t clear to me that relinquishing a core curriculum has been a good thing for American higher education. But this topic deserves a post of its own.

To Be Continued…..

Well If It Ain't Vacation: Tenured Radical Hits The Road

"But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before."

(Don't worry: we'll be posting from the lake in northern Minnesota.)

"Little Gels, You Are The Creme De La Creme:" Teach For America, Redux

It's been a big week at Tenured Radical. For reasons we are not altogether clear about, our Monday post about Teach For America went viral. According to our sitemeter, Facebook had a lot to do with that, perhaps because people who had a positive or a negative interest in TFA reposted on their own FB pages. Tumblr played a minor role in the last 24 hours, and as I told our dog yesterday, at least four sites (including Google) listed the post as trending ("Trending?" she said to me condescendingly, "You may be a famous blogger and talking head, but speak English, please.")

I must say, my readers deserve a lot of credit. The comments section represents one of the liveliest and most civil disagreements on this blog, ever. I deleted very few posts, and none for rudeness. You folks who are not very bloggy tended to repost the same comment, slightly edited, multiple times. In your case, I left the newest iteration up and deleted the early two or three. Work on that, ok?

I have intervened very little, in part because if I had kept up with this I would have gotten no other work done, but mostly because you all seemed happy talking to each other, and had very original things to say. But there are a few things to which I would like to respond.

First of all, there seems to be a lot of loyalty out there among TFA alumni/ae, which means that the organization is doing something right: it is fulfilling its promise to those people it recruits fairly well. Few people who have been in the program have much bad to say about it. Work hard, TFA promises, dedicate yourself, stick with the program and we will either turn you into a committed teacher or give you an experience of a lifetime -- or both. Clearly many of these people stay in teaching, but here let me inject a word of caution: I realize that I started it by citing statistics for how many TFA recruits stay in teaching and/or education, but I don't actually think anyone knows how many of these young people will remain in secondary teaching. There are many studies, many cite drastically different numbers. And the percentage being quoted in the comments need to have far better context to persuade me either that the studies I have looked at are drastically wrong, or that TFA is producing a significant corps of career teachers who are really turning education -- or even individual schools -- around. 65% still in teaching five years later? 65% of what? Those who started the program? Those who completed a year? Those who completed two years?

That said, I hope some people from TFA's management get it that there is a lot of bitterness out there too about the program's elitism, both from young people who have not gained the privileged (and free) access to a teaching certificate that it offers, and from career teachers (who are characterized as burned-out, unimaginative dinosaurs if they don't love being told what to do be a 23 year-old with a year in the classroom.) As Miss Bee puts it,

I became a NYC teacher in the pre-TFA, pre- NYC Teaching Fellows years. I resented that these teachers came and went, tuition fully paid, while I had to pay my own way. It created a two tier system having nothing to do with age, and everything to do with how we perceived teaching. Eleven years later I am still there AND paying off my loans all the elite corps (TFA, Fellows) are long gone and debt-free!

I think there is no question that TFA has billed itself all along as an organization that puts grads from the top private schools into teaching, and that the elite academic credentials of its recruits are a big part of what it is selling. And no, saying that members of your cohort went to a public university like Berkeley, UNC, Ole Miss or the University of Michigan does not make for class diversity, I'm afraid. These may be public schools, but they are also very selective and expensive (which anyone who has applied to or attended one knows.) As"Susan" notes,

If you look at Wendy Kopp's model and initial plan, it relied (and still relies) heavily on corporate sponsorship and sells itself as (among other things) a pathway to the elite world of business (TFA has agreements with several b-schools as well as other types of professional schools).

Does its elitism that make TFA uniquely evil, in a country where you have to be at the top nth percentile in one of about five laws schools to even interview to clerk for the Supreme Court? Not particularly. But -- and this is an important but -- it doesn't make TFA school reform either, and it doesn't make it's agenda (privatization of teacher training) and its allies (those who seek to privatize public schools like Rhee) progressive. In fact, TFA has a highly traditional view of education, in which those who have the good fortune to have been born with, or acquired, elite culture (the bourgeoisie, or haute bourgeoisie) transmit it to the children of those who are perceived to be without culture (working class and poor people.)

Furthermore, what is neo-liberal (as opposed to conservative, and there is a real distinction) about this model is two fold. First, it assumes that public management of education has failed permanently, and that the only hope of raising up poor people is for federal and foundation dollars to be funneled through a private philanthropy. Second, it assumes that what will fix education in the end is a market-based management model, in which those who will fix education will go from Harvard to the factory floor. I am grateful to takingitoutside for framing this so beautifully: "To me," s/he writes about the TFA volunteers' time in the classroom,

it's always been intended as a two-year commitment. One of the main benefits of it - to me, at least - is that it puts (often) privileged young people into poor, inner-city schools where they probably wouldn't have gone otherwise. I've thought of it as a way of teaching those young, privileged people just how hard educating people is, and what the obstacles are. Then, when they get older and have some pull in business/government/society, they will be more likely to support measures in favor of schools and vote for things that will really help schools.

Anonymous 5:38 also points out,

You misunderstand the TFA mission. The mission isn't to arm schools with legions of high-producing teachers through the TFA program (although that would be great). The mission is to make education a primary concern of college-educated, success-driven Americans so that policy change can be gradually enacted on the local, state, and national levels.

Student benefit, though significant during the commitment period, is hardly the end goal of the program. TFA aims to improve education in America through policy.

My quibble with Anonymous 5:38 is that I don't misunderstand this. I understand it, and I think it has nothing to do with school reform. Rather, it is a perfect recipe for funneling more public dollars into private hands: research, testing, bureaucratic overkill, private think tanks and the support of organizations like Teach for America. Unlike "Jane," I don't see how lengthening the school day and merit-based salaries constitutes a "revolution:" it sounds like speed-up to me, particularly when education has been de-funded to the extent that music, art, gym, and often school supplies themselves, have been removed from the school day

Real school reform would be organized around a social movement that is primarily focused on students, their families and their communities. It would link education to health care, housing and jobs in the community -- not importing outsiders to take those jobs. It would be about the creation of curricula that privileged critical thought rather than memorization of fact. It would entail a project of systematic public commitment to the training, the re-training, and the retention of teachers who were recruited broadly across the class spectrum. It would also include a political movement that was dedicated to ensuring that the state met this obligation; to organizing poor people and students around their right to an education; to teaching critical thinking rather than raising test scores; and to thinking about education as a commitment to real children -- not as a route to a policy or research career in education. JKD2 says it perfectly:

the students are NOT guinea pigs! They are not some ethnographic experiment for people who want to be policy makers to tinker around with for two years while they learn about the lives of people in poverty. Want to learn about people living in poverty, volunteer at a soup kitchen or a community organization.

Or get a job as a school janitor.

Sure there are people who shouldn't be in the classroom any longer. But it isn't an insoluble problem, and it isn't something to which elite schools are immune. There are burnt-out, tired folks who should probably retire at Harvard, Zenith, Williams, the University of Chicago, Phillips Exeter -- you name an elite school and I'll find you some people who would be better off wearing pastels and walking a golf course. I think the real shuck that groups like TFA have sold to us, hand in hand with the free market worshippers in both political parties, is that only they can solve this problem! Only the best and the brightest can fix it! Just look at what well-intended, Ivy League genius policy-makers did for Viet Nam in the 1960s if you don't believe me.

So what is it that TFA, the Gates Foundation, and other private philanthropies won't tell you? That government has disinvested in education, and it has burdened school districts with endless unfunded mandates, constant testing, year after year of mindless budget-cutting, and testable curricula that asks students to memorize rather than think. Teach for America supports this system, and trains its teaching corps to succeed within it. So while TFA may be getting energetic young people into teaching, and in some cases persuading them to stay, it is on a continuum with for-profit educational management organizations (EMO's), or corporate models like Mosaica Education and Edison Schools (which is egregiously ill managed and has wasted billions of public dollars), that view students as just another product that can be efficiently produced through education formulas.

Finally, there are not just two models -- bad old public schools with burned out teachers and "21st century" market-based schools that outsource teacher recruitment and training to "imaginative" private foundations and non-profits like TFA. There are excellent public schools in this country (try, for example, Edina, Minnesota; Berkeley, California; District 2 in New York City; and anywhere in Iowa.) And if you want to see what real education reform looks like, go here to the Coalition of Essential Schools.

The Politics Of The Classroom: Is It Homophobic To Teach About The Scriptural Basis For Homophobia?

Janine Giordano Drake, over at Religion and American History asks us to think about a university classroom inflected by sacred beliefs that do not coexist comfortably with contemporary cosmopolitan ideas about diversity, respect for personal dignity and human rights. In doing so, she raises the question of whether the absolute separation of secular knowledge from ideological or faith-based knowledge is desirable, or even possible. For those who want to read more of Drake's thoughts about being a Christian scholar, click here.

The incident which prompted Drake's post occurred at the University of Illinois which, as a public university, has special vulnerabilities around the separation of the sacred and the secular. In a nutshell, a Catholic theologian circulated an email to his class about why heterosexuality, and the gender binary system, are "natural" and "real"; and why consent does not provide a moral basis for performing sexual acts that ignore the divine reproductive function of sexuality. A student complained to the chair of the department about this and similar statements made in class that articulated a conservative Catholic position on sexuality. The professor, the student reported, "allowed little room for opposition to Catholic dogma." But to the best of my understanding no particular student, or students, were picked out to be shamed or personally degraded by the teacher; and the views expressed had directly to do with the subject of the course and the course readings. The teacher -- who was an adjunct connected to the Newman Center on campus -- was not renewed. It is unclear whether it was because of this conflict, or because of other pedagogical or budgetary issues.

Drake has linked to the original documents to help us think about this incident and the larger questions it raises. In doing so, she demonstrates one good strategy for teaching things that our students may find objectionable, and for helping students learn to disagree respectfully with each other and with us. When they provide primary documents, professors can speak out of a personal belief system, but also bring a range of voices into the classroom that allow students to attach their own beliefs to, and test their views against, knowledge and authority that is not internal to the classroom and to the student-teacher relationship.

Whether you decide you are on the same page as Drake or not after you read her piece, I think you might agree that she makes two generative points. She notes that theological positions which advocate for the divine role of reproduction in sexuality are often poorly or partially represented, even in the best scholarship (and by extension, in the best classrooms.) Because of this the influence of these views is often understated and perceived by students -- most of whom are (metaphorically) milling around in a vast political center -- as eccentric. Second, she very gently raises the question of why it is necessarily oppressive or wrong for students to be a captive audience to views that they find objectionable. An argument might be made on behalf of the email sent by the professor that goes like this: the views in question (sodomy is always morally wrong, and is the equivalent of pedophilia and bestiality, even when both parties consent), appalling as they may be to many of us, express a scripture-based point of view that many people in this country actually do believe, and that are the basis of a well-organized opposition to GLBT human rights. Furthermore, they provide the logic for powerful statements like "marriage should be between a man and a woman," "love the sinner, hate the sin" and "gay marriage destroys the family" that otherwise seem merely shallow and mean.

For the reason I just described, in my "Politics of Sex After 1968" survey, I teach a documentary film produced by a Christian organization in which "former" gays and lesbians talk about the pain, confinement and isolation of their lives as queer people. They discuss how they came back to heterosexuality, and were able to marry, by being reborn in Christ. I teach this film in part because the vast majority of my students understand coming out as gay as an opposite experience, when in fact it is quite similar to what the Christain ex-gays describe: as the discovery and affirmation of a genuine self, as a release from isolation, and as being welcomed into a caring community of others "like them." I think students need to understand that any experience of the self is particular, not universal; and that profoundly different views about possible relationships to a sexual self are possible at the same historical moment.

Despite the fact that many of my students have suffered, and are struggling, with a variety of anxieties and burdens related to their sexuality, since most of them are pretty secular, I think it is also important for them to try to understand a relationship to sexuality, and to faith, that isn't just social. Many of my students find this film objectionable, and for that reason it is very hard to teach because I often have to overcome a refusal to engage. But another reason I use it, year after year, is to teach them that if you are going to be a really good historian, you can't be selective about who you listen to or have empathy for. I think our struggles over this film are worthwhile, but many of them just hate it. Some really let me have it in the teaching evaluations for bringing "hate speech" (the phrase used by the complainant at the University of Illinois) into class.

But here's something that has never happened to me. What Drake doesn't mention is that the student who complained was not even in the class. Rather, he claims to be writing on behalf of "a friend" who did take the class and passed the email, and information about the class, on to him. Identifying himself as a heterosexual male, but imagining himself as a gay man who would have been shamed by having to listen to such views, he writes:

I am in no way a gay rights activist, but allowing this hate speech at a public university is entirely unacceptable. It sickens me to know that hard-working Illinoisans are funding the salary of a man who does nothing but try to indoctrinate students and perpetuate stereotypes. Once again, this is a public university and should thus have no religious affiliation. Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one's worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation.

It's OK, in other words, to teach religion as long as you don't teach anything about it that I would find degrading or offensive.

Don't get me wrong: the point of this post is not some narcissistic desire to demonstrate how super-tolerant I am of homophobic, right-wing theology. My question is: do we think it is OK to do unto others as they would do unto us? Do we guarantee academic freedom for some people and not others? Most important, to avoid public controversy of all kinds, is higher ed simply going to give students permission to shut out things they find offensive as if they live in an entirely different country from the people they disagree with? Worse, should we not begin to talk about how students -- in their teaching evaluations and in complaints to the administration -- are now routinely urging that teachers be fired who do not provide suitable validation for their students' view?

Is Teach For America A Program For The Poor Or For The Rich?

I'm going to start with full disclosure: I have never liked Teach for America. If that's going to bug you, you might want to move on to the next blog.

Why do I dislike Teach For America? Because it has nothing to do with permanent investment in our schools, or thoughtful reform of education. Because it is one of many organizations that seem to exist more or less to give privileged young people the "life experience" that will qualify them to go on to their next advanced degree. Because it relies for its prestige on the idea that people who are middle or upper class naturally have something special and intangible to offer to the poor. Because it activates our not so thinly-veiled social contempt for people who chose the hard work of teaching public school as a career, often doing it for decades in places where they are forced to buy books and classroom supplies out of their own salaries.

I dislike TFA because public education does not exist to give graduates of elite colleges and universities a couple swing years so that they can later go on to great graduate schools and fabulously well paid careers. I dislike TFA because I am a teacher, and I am quite clear that you don't learn to teach in five weeks, much less teach students who have a range of social, economic and developmental problems; who are often hungry, in pain, angry or frightened; and who come in unruly waves of 40-50 every 45 minutes. So thank you Michael Winerip for interviewing numerous elite college grads who are struggling with the "stigma" of having been rejected by this glitzy non-profit because there aren't so many paralegal and entry-level Wall Street jobs this year; and thank you for using this as an opportunity to take a look at this popular NGO that makes a lot of claims for itself that are thinly documented.

As someone who is a career teacher, I am offended by the notion that anyone can step into a classroom and teach effectively, even though they are inexperienced and virtually untrained, because they are oh-so-smart and have successfully gotten into Harvard or Zenith. And teaching public secondary school is harder than teaching, or being a student in, college. Public school is open to the public, folks, and nobody does a sort for you to separate out the ones who are ready to learn, or who already speak English. Magnet and charter schools can be even harder to teach in, since in their initial years they are often the dumping ground for students who have been expelled from and flunked out of other schools.

But let's be clear: mostly I dislike Teach for America because it is not school reform and it claims to be. It is a neo-liberal romance about the ways in which volunteerism by elites can replace a political and fiscal commitment to lifting Americans out of poverty by supporting, and investing in, the schools that poor people attend. Worse, TFA is a spiritual extension of those internship programs that these eager young things with BA's larded their records with to get into elite colleges and universities in the first place. The logic is: if it looks good for me, then it must be good for "them." As Winerip comments, "Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching. And in a bad economy, it’s a two-year job guarantee with a good paycheck; members earn a beginning teacher’s salary in the districts where they’re placed."

And they don't stay in teaching. Perhaps the worst aspect of TFA is that it views teaching as a kind of boot camp for entering the leadership class. TFA's website claims that "corps members and alumni are creating fundamental change," but what that change comprises, and what counts as change, is not clear. The website cites research "that Teach For America corps members' impact on their students' achievement is equal to or greater than that of other new teachers. Moreover, the most rigorous studies have shown that corps members' impact exceeds that of experienced and certified teachers in the same schools." But in fact, if you click on the link that supposedly leads you to that research, you find that "Studies of TFA teacher vary widely in both their findings and the strength of their methodologies." Hmmm. And actually, although you can get citations for these studies, the documents themselves have not been uploaded to the website.

What the website doesn't tell you is how many of those teachers quit in the first six months. As Winerip notes, according to one study, “by the fourth year, 85 percent of T.F.A. teachers had left” New York City schools." That's change for you. My guess is the rate of attrition is higher and faster in the Mississippi Delta, currently identified by TFA as a location in great need of amateur teachers. According to one of my former students who entered the program over five years ago and is still teaching in the troubled urban system he was assigned to, his cohort lost half its membership in the first year, and he is the only original member of his team still in teaching.

TFA has not helped to build a permanent corps of excellent teachers who will train other career teachers or use their classroom training to become effective principals. Hence, it has nothing to do with a program of fundamental, structural reform for our nation's public schools. It has nothing to do with how schools, and school systems, might use their centrality to communities to address issues that are currently crippling education, such as unfunded testing mandates, the effects of poverty and unemployment, teaching critical thinking rather than rote memorization, or state budget cuts that eliminate books and raise class sizes. TFA does, however, seem to be a training ground for education bureaucrats, such as Chancellor Michelle Rhee of the District of Columbia, who continues to blame most of her system's problems on undocumented teacher incompetence.

Rhee recently laid off over 250 teachers: how many of them will be replaced by TFA fly-by-nighters, whose salary is paid by a combination of private and federal dollars? I don't know about other states, but because of drastically reduced property tax revenues, Connecticut is currently laying off young teachers who have actually committed to teaching as a career, not as a temporary stopgap before law school. Other states are waiting anxiously to hear whether Congress will pass a bill that would fund the Obama Administration's new education initiative, and whether they will actually receive the millions of dollars they were promised for system-wide education initiatives. Will these funds be replaced by well-intentioned and untrained young people from elite schools who are here today and gone tomorrow?

Extra! Extra! It's Not Only Healthy To Be Born To A Lesbian Couple, It's Better than Healthy

In case you have been living under a rock, the big news this week in Gaylesboland is that a federal judge in Massachusetts (otherwise known as the San Francisco of the East) has ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the right of the states to regulate marriage. The second biggest news is that the children of lesbian couples are not only as successful as the children of straight people -- they are more successful! Whatever that means. According to Time magazine, a longitudinal study out of UC-San Francisco, published in the journal Pediatrics,

found that children raised by lesbian mothers — whether the mother was partnered or single — scored very similarly to children raised by heterosexual parents on measures of development and social behavior. These findings were expected, the authors said; however, they were surprised to discover that children in lesbian homes scored higher than kids in straight families on some psychological measures of self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression.

According to one of the lead researchers, Nanette Gartrelle, although 41% of children reported the teasing at school that is supposed to persuade gay and lesbian people not to parent (for the sake of the children), the home environments in lesbian households make up for it with higher levels of nurturing and by making their children "a priority." The outcomes do not change for children whose two mothers separate (lesbians split up at about the same rate as straight people, which is 43% within 15 years, although this is harder to track since in most states same-sex couples have no right to marry or divorce.)

Are the children of lesbians better adjusted because the parents are all women? Probably not, because all of our mothers were women at some point. Is it because there are no men in the children's lives? Also probably not: all the lesbian moms I know (particularly those with sons, which is about 90% of 'em) are super-fanatical about bringing daddy-types into the picture lest Junior spend his whole life without ever meeting another penis or learning to urinate mannishly. More likely lesbians treat their children better because if you are a lesbian, you really have to want children a lot, and you really plan, and you have to put up with a lot of crap from the law to actually get and keep them. You also need a lot of money, and although children raised with money are not automatically successful, it sure greases the wheels: money + making child rearing a priority is one sure-fire recipe for success. This means, of course, that gay men are probably raising children who are just fanatically successful, since they have to have even more money to get children in the first place by adoption or surrogacy, and have to be highly educated besides to navigate the homophobic legal hoops they must jump through.

It also means that the whole idea that we should have gay marriage because it's better for the children in lesbian relationships is a lot of hooey. The children in this study were raised by committed and unmarried lesbians, married as they surely might have been in their hearts.

In case you want a little fictionalized peek at lesbian life with children, the summer's hot movie for the gay and gay-friendly moving goer will be Lisa Cholodenko's The Kid's Are All Right: read the review by A.O. Scott here. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as lesbians? I'm lovin' it, and it's rumored that all the babies in that relationship are named Oscar.

Anger (Is Not A Good) Management (Style): A Meditation On The American Way Of Rage

Well, If LeBron James wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave Ohio, he knows it now, doesn't he? Historians, what does this picture remind you of?

I started thinking about why Americans feel entitled to their anger early this morning. At around 5:20 I turned right onto a road I normally take to go to my rowing club. As I approached a bridge leading to a major intersection, I saw that my lane was blocked with orange cones, and a sign that said "Road Work" was on the left hand sidewalk. I couldn't see over the bridge because it was arched, and there was no one there to tell me what to do. Proceeding slowly and with caution, I drove to the peak of the bridge in the oncoming lane (often what one is asked to do, at the direction of a worker designated to help) and saw that the intersection was completely blocked by people resurfacing the road I needed to cross.

At that moment, a DOT worker ran toward me, screaming angrily. When he reached my car, I rolled down my window to ask for instructions as to where I could cross and he yelled: "What's wrong with you?! Are you stupid? Get the hell out of here! You don't belong here!"

Frightened, but mainly interested in getting out of there, I raised my voice to interrupt him and said: "How can I get to the other side? Which bridge should I take?" Then followed a torrent of abuse, and no instructions. I asked again, more forcefully, and he replied:

"I don't care what you do, you c**t," he yelled. (If I am confusing you with my ampersands, think female body part used as an epithet.) As I began to back slowly down the bridge, hoping that no one would turn the corner and slam into my car, I will admit that almost involuntarily my middle finger separated itself from its betters in the universal gesture of contempt, at which point he screamed "C**T!" repeatedly until I was out of sight.

I mention this story because anger has been in the news a lot lately. It's something we are all encouraged to have nowadays, as if rage, like Adderall, increases our capacity for civilized problem-solving. Tea Party activists, for example, are united as a national movement by absolutely nothing but their anger, which journalists talk about as if it were a national resource. Some report on it in the midst of their own fits of mindless rage, while the more serious ones discuss Tea Party anger in hushed, admiring tones as if anger were a radical philosophical position rather than -- to point to more personal contexts for understanding rage -- symptoms of depression and paranoia. As Bob Bennett, the Utah Senator defeated by a Tea Party activist, said on the News Hour Wednesday night, honoring anger alone is like worshipping nihilism. "The concern I have about the anger that we're seeing that's being fed by talk show hosts and others," Bennett said about the anger vote, is that "it will be like a wave that comes in and smashes on the beach and destroys everything there, and then recedes back into the ocean, and leaves nothing behind it but empty sand....Anger is not a sound strategy for governing [and] once you are in office, you have to have some solutions."

Bennett has a good point here, and it reminds me why I admire some conservatives who I disagree with profoundly. It reminds me that the problem with anger -- displayed in the political arena -- is that it is often a way of diverting attention from the fact that you don't know how to solve a problem, and are offering a show of hyper-masculine belligerence in its place.

Take, for example, the DOT worker's abusive behavior. A better example, to return to the burning jersey picture, is the outrage being expressed over LeBron James as he leaves the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami. Why on God's green earth should James have stayed in Cleveland longer than seven years? Why should he have had to earn his way out with a championship for a city that hasn't won a championship of any kind since 1964? I mean no disrespect to the city of Cleveland (I'm from Philadelphia, after all), but the man isn't actually an industry; and basketball is a mere sideshow to the actual political story of why Cleveland has been on its economic uppers since the 1970s. Although the city estimates that James generates $150 million a year in tourist dollars, I would really love to see where those numbers come from, and know why Cleveland doesn't have a better plan than basketball for bringing that money in. If LeBron James' career had been ended by an injury tomorrow, the money would have been gone too: wouldn't it have been better to invest in a high-tech sector than in a sports star? How much would Cleveland love a LeBron whose career was over? Would Cleveland think that it "owned" a white basketball star in this way, and that he should be so grateful to them that he would put their desires before his own?

And I hate to ask this, but don't a lot of people leave Ohio (nice as it is) to seek their fortunes elsewhere?

But it's the anger that seems to be the story here, since apparently LeBron James was responsible for Cleveland and can be justifiably treated as if he had left a wife and six children stranded at an SRO in Toledo. Why? Because the fans have a right to be angry! The Indiana, Pennsylvania Gazette agreed this morning that Cleveland "got played" by James; Cavs fans are publicly defacing LeBron posters and burning their souvenir jerseys in the street. One Cleveland sportscaster announced that James would "enter the hall of shame" along with Art Modell, the football owner who took his team to Baltimore without even announcing it (now it becomes clear why that was not such a bad choice.) The Cav's majority owner, Dan Gilbert, published an idiotic open letter to fans where, among other things, he calls James' departure "shameful" and a "cowardly betrayal." See Paul Harvey's analysis of the letter at Religion In American History.

You might ask, What about the circus that always overwhelms actual competition in professional sports -- isn't it a silly and unnecessary waste of time and money? The answer is yes. It isn't bricks and mortar, or high-wage jobs, that are being supported by superstar athletes. It isn't schools or hospitals. What is supported is a fantasy that the spiritual and economic well-being of working people (as opposed to say, the well-being of Nike, the team owner or the NBA) is related to the success of an athletic franchise. The idea that LeBron James has wronged the entire city of Cleveland belongs in the same category as the misimpression that Tiger Woods betrayed his fans and his sponsors as much as he betrayed his wife and children when he had (what sounds like nasty, impersonal sex) with dozens of women.

Anger is too much with us nowadays: it's become an easy alternative to thought, planning and the hard work that goes into creating tangible successes around things that matter. Worse, in a country where there doesn't seem to be a right to work, to a good education, to health care, to protection from corporate negligence, to family planning services or to food, "our anger" seems to be the only thing to which everyone seems to agree we have a right, and an obligation to perform, as a daily act of citizenship.

Dr. Radical, Your Liberal Media Membership Card Is In The Mail

Yesterday afternoon I was tending my email -- a precondition for fruitful writing -- after having dumped several boxes of old research with a young scholar who plans to make lemonade with it (in a metaphorical sense.) Up pops an email from MSNBC, asking me if I would like to come to New York -- like now --to be on one of those political news/opinion shows. It was the Dylan Ratigan Show, hosted that day by Cenk Uyger. Cenk is normally the host of a show called "The Young Turks," a name you probably couldn't use in today's climate if you were not actually Turkish, which Cenk is.

I wrote back and said perhaps I would be interested. Moments later a young feller was on the line and asked: "Can I send a car and bring you to New York now for a 4:30 air time?" Since I had come home from New York at 1:30 in the morning, and it was 103 degrees in Shoreline, I though that sitting in traffic, even in an air conditioned car was an unattractive idea. I suggested that we use a feed from Oligarch University's studios instead. Thus it was that, at 4:20, I found myself sitting alone in front of a robot camera, an audio feed in my ear and a mike threaded inside my shirt, in a nice, cool basement downtown, ready to answer questions about the shift to the right in American political culture in the past half century.

My self-critique (other than observing that a slightly twitchy face reveals nerves I was not aware of at the time) is that I failed to pick up on it that his interest was less a shift to the right than the proposition that the media had consistently failed to report the shift to the right. Instead, I stuck to explanations of the actual political history. A format like this moves very, very fast, and you literally have microseconds to decide how you are going to respond to what is usually a leading question, how to make the link to something you have prepped, and whether you can kick out a very complex thought without context or background.

An interesting follow-up media story is the report on this very minor media event in NewsBusters. It offers up a brief clip from the show (moi cracking a joke about Nelson Rockefeller.) NewsBusters has also provided a partial transcript (identified only as a transcript) that has edited out, among other things, remarks I made about Nixon establishing OSHA in 1970 only to use this government agency to pressure business into making contributions for his 1972 campaign. Moral of the story: what you leave out can be just as important as what you include, or for that matter, any editorial content.

Let's go to the videotape:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

She Started A Heat Wave By Making Her Seat Wave; Or, Having Fun With American Studies

Given that we are going into our third day of temperatures topping 100 degrees, I can't believe no one has posted this yet.



Since this is an academic blog, and a feminist blog, and since I am locked in my study with a small air conditioner roaring away, here is a brief teaching guide to this segment from There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). An utterly dull period piece about a fictional theater family, this movie is far is better remembered for Ethel Merman's belting version of the title song that valorizes the heartaches and spiritual rewards of "the business." The movie also starred legendary dancers Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor and Johnnie Ray (that's the group watching from the wings in the crazy pastel "Mexican" outfits) -- a who's who cast in what was even then a dying Hollywood genre, the big budget musical.

This little tidbit of Cold War popular culture, originally penned by Irving Berlin in 1933 for the musical "As Thousands Cheered," is a perfect way to spice up any class on the Cold War, whether you are teaching foreign policy, the crafting of South America and the Caribbean as a source of cheap goods and marketplace for American products, or the post-war sexual home front. I'm going to be using it for my Introduction to American Studies, to teach students how to read the politics of a film which they are just going to think, initially, is weird and racist.

Here, Monroe stalks the line between what remained of the Motion Picture Production Code after Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952), and the openly dirty. She whips her skirt back and forth across her crotch, dips her breasts back and forth and wiggles her fanny, all the while teasing a manic group of "Latino" dancers who sing, dance, and carry around various indeterminate boxes and burdens (one of which, you will note, is an old phonograph.) They pull close to the thing they cannot have, only to be shoved rudely away -- and be beckoned once more. What we will learn, of course, is that they are laboring purely on behalf of us, and that their only function is to excite Monroe enough that she will offer herself to: You.

And You. And Maybe -- You.

This heat wave, we learn from lyrics added to the original Berlin song, was caused by Monroe herself. "She started a heat wave/By making her seat wave," the dancers sing in North American accents, as she is brought in on the shoulders of another group of male dancers stripped to the waist. "Gee, gee/Her anatomy/Makes the mercury/Jump!" they shout enthusiastically, as she alights and picks up the song:

"To ninety-three," the whiter-than-white Monroe sings richly, looking deep into our eyes, and ignoring the leers of these generic men from somewhere south of Texas, who have carried her in only to lose her to "America."

Why 93? I dunno -- because 69 is too cool for a heat wave and 96 doesn't rhyme? Monroe raises the temperature by teasing her "boys" -- who suddenly acquire "foreign" accents when speaking to her -- and pushing them away, because (of course!) they are only surrogates for us. They don't get to have this white woman, only help us possess her. Monroe makes it clear with skilled glances and winks, as the dancers flop to their bellies and knees around her, that it is only we -- each and every one of us -- whose temperature matters, as she struts back and forth across the stage gesturing to breasts and crotch. "What's your name, Honey" she inquires sweetly of the kneeling dancer leaning toward her, as her out-of-control behind starts to sway to the beat and her hands involuntarily pull her skirt apart in front.

"Pablo!" he whines in a hopeful voice. She whips the skirt closed abruptly, and turns away to another, and then another, calling for their names too.

"Pablo! Chico! Miguelito!" she repeats with rapid-fire ecstasy ("so many men! so little time," she is clearly thinking). Her eyes squeeze shut as she contemplates the sheer weight of their (our) lust.*

Perhaps the ultimate Monroe moment is when she snatches a newspaper from one of the dancers, and spreads it out on the ground to read the "weather report" as the ever-hopeful "boys" (who seem happy to share her) cluster around eagerly.

"Pabloooo," she croons, as he draws in; "It say....It say here under" -- and then she sniffs loudly as if they are all so obviously "in heat" you can just smell it through the camera -- "Weather report...."

That loud nasal inhalation --surely Monroe's own genius -- is. So. Deliciously. Vulgar: ditto the subsequent moment when she slams the skirt shut over her crotch at the exact moment that she informs us that "high pressure" will move in over "the Deep South."

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

OK. Reading list? I think this clip like could be best taught as part of a discussion about gender, sexuality and/or hemispheric politics in the 1950s. Depending on your course, and where you want to go with this, I would use it to lift out arguments from Elaine May's Homeward Bound: American Families In The Cold War Era (1990); Alicia Camacho's Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the US-Mexico Borderlands (particularly chapter 3, which contains an excellent reading of the left-wing labor movie Salt of the Earth also produced in 1954; or, if you want to make connections to the pre-war period, you might want to try Anne Rubinstein's Bad Language, Naked Ladies and Other Threats To The Nation: A Political History Of Comic Books In Mexico.

And if you want a really good book to read on the beach while we wait out the heat wave? Try Joyce Carol Oates' fictionalized biography of Monroe, Blonde: A Novel.

...............................................

*I am reminded of Norman Mailer who, like many odiously sexist men, was capable of startling moments of insight about American sexual culture. He described Monroe at such moments as "fucky" (a word the New York Times did not allow Pauline Kael to print in her review of this 1973 book, but which appears on nearly every page of Mailer's text.) As a feminist, I both deplore this, and also think that there is something profound to attend to here about how fuckability is produced over and through women's bodies in mass culture. And by the way? I dare you to use the word "fucky" in class. Double-dog dare you.

Going Postal: Publishing Industry, WaPo Blogger Get Whacked

Publishing as we know it may soon take another hit if the United States Postal Service gets its way. According to the New York Times this morning, Postmaster General John E. Potter (not a relative of mine as far as I know) wants to raise the rates it charges to deliver periodicals in 2011. Currently, the USPS loses $7 billion a year, and Potter notes that periodical rates do not actually cover the cost of delivery. As those of us who are subscribers to progressive magazines and journals know, periodicals that favor content over advertising will be particularly hard hit by a postage increase, and will have to raise their subscription rates -- thus risking cancellations.

The Magazine Publishers of America intend to litigate the increase, so with restraining orders and all, don't worry about Mother Jones having to bite the bullet yet. However, as publishing is groaning under the strain of lost advertising dollars and increased production costs, the cost of postage may be one more push towards Internet-only subscriptions.

The other side of this, of course, is that the delivery of mail is critical to what it means to be a nation, and a foundation for national culture. The founders recognized this when, in 1775, they appointed Benjamin Franklin Postmaster General of the United States -- even prior to declaring independence. In 1896, Congress marked the transition from empire building to nation building in the West and Southwestern states by establishing Rural Free Delivery.

But in 1982, in its wisdom, the Reagan administration decided that the USPS should run like a business and balance its books. Not that those things necessarily go together -- but the Postal Service had never operated without a healthy federal subsidy and there was no reason to think that it ever would.

Whether we need to have as many magazines as we do, and whether they all need to -- or should -- be delivered by mail, is another question, and it ought to be addressed in a comprehensive way that takes many factors -- not just cost -- into account. Already it is possible to get numerous publications by Internet only if you choose to do so, and the amount of paper and fuel saved would be significant if publishers and readers had incentives to move to electronic formats.

There are industry-wide decisions that need to be made in publishing about how the vitality of American national culture is going to be maintained in this fiscal, ecological and technological environment. Is driving publishers out of business by threatening their subscription and advertising base even further the way to do it? Of course $7 billion a year is a lot of money. But would it be rude to point out that in fiscal 2010, the federal government will be spending over $10 billion per month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Postscript: In case you didn't know that major newspapers don't really know what blogs are for, click here for the stuffy WaPo firing conservative blogger Dave Weigel for making rude and juvenile remarks about conservatives on a private list serve. According to David Carr of the New York Times:

In comments made mostly before he was hired at The Washington Post three months ago, Mr. Weigel used the term “Paultard” to describe followers of Ron Paul and also suggested that Patrick Buchanan was “an anti-Semite” and that Newt Gingrich was an “amoral blowhard.” More recently, he wrote that Matt Drudge, the conservative aggregator and blogger behind The Drudge Report, should “set himself on fire.”

Invoking the mentally disabled as the equivalent of Ron Paul supporters was mean and in poor taste, but what exactly did Weigel say about Buchanan, Gingrich and Drudge that any number of people might not agree with? While the weirdness of conservatives gnawing on each other is always entertaining, I'm curious as to when it was exactly that firing people for being rude became the corporate reflex? Probably around the same time that celebrities I don't know and don't care about began apologizing to me for marital infidelity. If idiocy that bloggers don't even post on their employer's website is now a violation of industry standards, don't you wonder why Maureen Dowd doesn't get fired every day?

Family, Flags and the Fourth of July: A Meditation

We at Tenured Radical are conflicted on the subject of July 4. We are not nationalists, much less homonationalists, whatever our critics might assert (although we will cop to being homos.) And yet, July 4 is one of the few secular holidays on the calendar, and cannot help but provoke thoughts about the national past.

My father always made a big production of hanging out the flag on Independence Day: in addition to having been an Eagle Scout and Jack Armstrong type of character, he was a veteran of several different government services in WWII and the Cold War. He knew how to tie all the knots on the flagpole so that the flag draped correctly, how it ought to be folded and put away, and how to perform a blind information drop using a newspaper. In my preteen years, when I announced my intention to have a career either as a spy or a private investigator, he bought me The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook for my birthday, which gave perfect instructions on how to do a two-man and a three-man surveillance, how to lift a fingerprint using items found around the house, and how to collect and analyze forensic evidence (which led to some derivative skills that remain useful to this day.)

While the maternal side of the family is far more likely to hang a flag on July 1, Dad's bunch got to New England early enough to participate in the gruesome business of colonization, expropriation of Indian lands, and Revolution. By the early 19th century, one member of the paternal branch was farming in southern New Jersey, and some historical research my late father did pointed to the probability that they did so with the forced labor of enslaved people. He was somewhat equivocal on this point, but -- aside from the ties between New Jersey and the plantation states, and New Jersey's failure to abolish legal slavery until 1866 -- I am pretty clear that a large black family and a large white family with the same surname, living in the same area well into the twentieth century, is not a coincidence. What do you think?

Another part of the family from which I am directly descended originally landed in Massachusetts and migrated west to settle in the NorthAdams-Pittsfield region (does this not point to probable participation in King Philip's War and other anti-Native American atrocities?) Evidence also shows that descendants of that group served in the American Revolution and in the Union Army during the Civil War: we have several elderly fowling pieces and a humongous sword in an umbrella stand at home as lasting tokens of their patriotism. Another North Adams ancestor is said to have participated in devising the blasting technology that was essential to completing the Hoosac Tunnel in 1875. This project, which sought to connect Massachusetts factories to the lucrative project of American territorial expansion, was initiated in 1819, but did not break ground until 1848 (ring any bells?) It was one of the deadliest, longest and most expensive railroad projects in United States history and was nicknamed "the bloody pit" for the number of (Irish immigrant?) workers it consumed. But the blasting technology had greater historical significance, since it eventually allowed railroads to be built through the western mountain ranges rather than over and around them.

Our virtues as a family are equalled by our flaws, I'm afraid. Flag rituals are a tradition that I do not perpetuate, in part because of the forms of flag worship that have been associated with war and right-wing patriotism in my lifetime, and in part because I simply know too much history. However, I do like the above photograph, and it is my contribution to today's celebrations. It is a flag garden outside the Columbus, Ohio Statehouse, snapped with the iPhone early last month when I was there for a conference. The flower flag was planted by the Columbus Garden Club; besides being a civic act of a kind rarely seen in Eastern Postindustrial Cities, I thought it was really clever in a kind of bourgeois chic way, and very Ohio -- like Jello molds with marshmallows, and massive fireworks displays, which I also like.

So happy July 4, everyone! Celebrate it in your own way, and stay safe.

Asian American Civil War History: Chinese Soldier Dies At Gettysburg

Reported in the New York Times, July 12, 1863:

Among the killed at Gettysburgh was a young Chinaman, known as JOHN TOMMY. He was attached to the First regiment Excelsior brigade, Capt. PRICK's company. JOHN TOMMY was the only representative of the Central Flowery Kingdom in the Army of the Potomac, and was widely known both from that circumstances and certain peculiarities of this own. JOHN TOMMY came to this country immediately after the breaking out of the war, and was induced to enlist in Gen. SICKLES' brigade, at that time being raised in [New York.] He was then a mere lad, entirely ignorant of our language. Being bright, smart and honest, he soon become a favorite at Red Hook, States Island, and was at once the butt and the wit of the whole regiment.

Before he became located on the Maryland shore of the Potomac opposite Aquia Creek, in one of the reconnaissances on the south side of the river, TOMMY was taken prisoner and soon become a lion in the rebel camp. He was brought before Gen. MAGRUDER, who surprised at his appearance and color, asked him was he a mulatto, Indian or what? When TOMMY told him he was from China, MAGRUDER was very much amused, and asked him how much he would take to join the Confederate army. "Not unless you would make me a Brigadier-General," said TOMMY, to the great delight of the secesh officers who treated him very kindly and sent him to Fredericksburgh.

Here TOMMY become a great lion, and his picture was published in the Fredericksburgh papers. Subsequently he was sent to the Libby Prison, Richmond, where he met his captain, BENJAMIN PRICE, who had been taken prisoner at Williamsburgh. After his parole TOMMY [returned] to New York City. where he employed his time in attending upon his sick and wounded comrades. He was the kindest of [nurses] and [spent] his little means in providing delicacies for sick fellow soldiers. In the subsequent engagements at Frederick and last at Gettysburgh. JOHN TOMMY was one of the bravest soldiers in that bravest of brigade, the Excelsior. He seemed not to know what fear was and was the universal favorite of all his fellow soldiers. He had not been wounded up to Gettysburgh, but in Friday's night he was wounded by a shell, which tore off both legs at the thighs, and he shortly [bled] to death. The company he was in went into the action with twenty eight men and lost twenty in killed and wounded. TOMMY's [service] is peculiar as he was the only representative of the Empire of China in the finest army on the planet [or in the] World.

***********

On this day in 1863, my ancestor, Charles Potter, Massachusetts 10th (Vols.), of North Adams, was in reserve to the east of Gettysburg, having marched 37 miles from Manchester, MD in 17 hours. At 5 P.M. his unit would be called to the defense of Little Round Top to reinforce the exhausted Union troops who had just repelled Pickett's Charge.

City of Cambridge to Gates: "The Whole Thing Was Your -- Uh -- A Big Misunderstanding"

Chauncey DeVega, over at We Are Respectable Negroes, has a few comments on the report issued by the City of Cambridge about the July 16 2009 arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Give it a look and think about what it must be like to be Skip Gates and suck this one up. Or, hypothetically, what it would be like to be you and suck this one up.

Gates, as you may recall, was arrested in his own house after having presented his Harvard identification and, subsequently, losing his temper with Sergeant James Crowley. The conclusion reached by the panel of investigators? Both men were responsible for the incident. They feared each other, the report reasons, and acted accordingly. Gates shouted, Crowley locked him up. Because of their mutual fear, the commissioners reason, the two men shared responsibility for the incident because each might have taken a step back at a crucial moment. (Note to historians: this could be a real methodological breakthrough, as we sift through the evidence of a variety of people whose oppression and genocide might have been avoided if only they had kept their mouths shut and not frightened their colonizers so badly.)

My esteemed colleague DeVega rightly points to the report's implication that Gates' main error was to be in unlawful possession of negritude of the uppity variety. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard colleague and Gates' attorney, noted that while "the report is important and timely" and will help move the community forward, the notion that "both Gates and Crowley had an equal opportunity to deescalate the situation is just breathtaking and unbelievable." See? This is the difference between lawyers and English professors. English professors start yelling; lawyers say something nice to get your attention, and when you are listening, say that the other side is full of $hit.

As Ogletree points out, only Crowley had the power to make an arrest: Gates did not, nor was it within his power to compel the officer to leave his house or to require an explanation for why Crowley invaded it in the first place. At the time of Gates' arrest, opinions abounded about his role in this confrontation: that he had lived so long in the university bubble that he had lost touch with the deference to police authority required of all African-American people; that all people, black or white, who express anger at our friends the police deserve what they get; and that Gates ought to have been grateful that Crowley was there to protect his property, even though he was arrested as a result. Even President Obama, by calling the "beer summit," where all three of them sat down in the spirit of shared masculinity (underlining graphically that "racism is over" because the least socially privileged ma at the table was Crowley, the White Guy) tried to divert us from the real issue here.

And what was that issue? Why the valorization of state power, of course, and the pervasive propaganda that nothing in post-civil rights Amerika is racist anymore. What looks like racism is just collateral damage accidentally inflicted on people of color as the police state keeps the rest of "us" safe from -- whatever.

That's right. If, for example, of the 8,000 people on the "no fly list" there are some who are there by mistake and cannot return to the United States, that's too bad, but wouldn't you rather have one or two or 1000 people falsely imprisoned, tortured and exiled to prevent another 9/11? Sure you would. Particularly when it isn't you.

It's why we all stand there passively while TSA people treat us rudely, shout at us when we move too close to a bag that they are searching, and grab their coworkers to point and giggle at the private items we have in our luggage. Similarly, our current desire to yield all moral authority to the state has many Americans' fully persuaded that Arizona's new anti-immigrant law is aimed only at people without legal residence documents, not Latino/as -- even though Canadians, Irish and Russians don't seem to be rushing to the the Sunshine State to take below minimum wage jobs. If you are arrested and deported because you look Latino/a and have no documents handy, well then stupid you, because you had the power to choose to carry documents. If you die while being deported, it isn't racism; just a misunderstanding you could have avoided by not coming to the United States in the first place or by carrying documents that prove your family lived in Arizona in 1848.

The point that is occluded by our national zeal to be endlessly cooperative with law enforcement is that the law, even when written as a neutral instrument, inflicts itself unevenly because police spend their time actively looking for criminals, not doing good deeds. White people tend not to appreciate this fully because they (and their family members) are usually not the ones dressed in the Sing-Sing bracelets, being tasered to death at the Mexican border or trying to find a place to stay in Cairo for the indefinite future. More importantly, however, policemen are the instrument of the law, not citizens, and it was Officer Crowley alone who was responsible for acting correctly during the course of a "misunderstanding" about whether that elderly black man needed to be taught a good lesson about respecting authority.

But there is a second point about racism and the law that the Cambridge report misses. While racism in the application of the law is an important way to discuss state power, in a few decades Americans seem to have forgotten a lot of history: racism became so powerful in the United States because of the law and because the military and the police have historically enforced racism even when no laws are broken. In other words, had racism simply been a matter of personal ignorance and social attitudes -- as people choose to believe nowadays -- it would have had less impact on history than it had. The law was frequently enforced informally by whites who exercised various forms of violence on people of color, but when said whites were challenged as to their right to control or exclude people of color, they could always point to the laws that ratified the racial order.

Theoretically, of course, the law is race neutral. But you can see, by the following analogy, how discrimination written into the law produces aggrieved attitudes among those who the laws privileges. According to the New York Times, when repeatedly questioned about her initial attempt to bar military recruiters from Harvard's career counseling center (Harvard's nondiscrimination policy includes GLBTQ people, and is therefore in conflict with the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy),

Ms. Kagan repeated that she found the ban “unwise and unjust,” and told the committee that she had been trying to reconcile Harvard’s own antidiscrimination policy with a provision known as the Solomon Amendment, which requires universities that receive federal financing to give full access to the military. Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, helped write the amendment, and made clear his displeasure with Ms. Kagan.

“You were punishing the military,” Mr. Sessions said at one point. Later, outside the hearing room, he came close to accusing Ms. Kagan of lying, calling her “not rigorously accurate” in her explanation.

Two things seem immediately obvious to me here. In a truly interesting hearing, someone might have asked Kagan the legal question: are there not two federal laws in conflict here (e.g., that institutions that accept federal funds must allow military recruiters on campus and that institutions, legally, must enforce their own rules as they are written, including those barring discrimination) and how would she rule if such a case came before her?

The second -- to come back to Mr. Gates -- is this: under what conditions does the Dean of the Harvard Law School have the power to punish the military, even if s/he wanted to? Is withholding space on the Harvard campus tantamount to banning military employment for Harvard graduates, or even an actual humiliation to the federal government? Even if it were, would such a "punishment" be in any way similar to the power the government has to damage research at Harvard by withdrawing grant and scholarship money? Or humiliate GLBTQ soldiers by drumming them out of the armed services?

And is not the government's insistence that institutions defer to them and abandon their own principles an act of far greater, and utterly needless, vanity?