Dear Dr. Allison A. Brown
RRTCADD (M/C 626)
Dept. of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois at Chicago.
CONGRATULATIONS !!
YOURS IS AN EXCELLENT REFLECTION REMINDING US
ACADEMICIANS OF OUR RESPONSIBILITIES TOWARD
THE EDUCATION OF RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS CONCERNED
ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE, DISCRIMINATION AND ABUSIVE
BEHAVIOR TOWARDS THE UNDERPRIVILEGED.
I had written the reflection enclosed below. A few days later I read Mr.
Fish's article "Why We Build the Ivory Tower" and I was appalled !! I
couldn't believe that someone that had been President of a serious academic
institution could have such constrained view of our role as teachers of
tomorrow's citizens. I commented that should he had lived in Nazi Germany
he would have preached that human experimentation and the killing of
millions of innocents were political issues of no concern to us academicians
!!
Unfortunately, immersed in our academic egoism, this is not an uncommon way
to educate students, which on its own explains why most societies are still
structured as in medieval times with absolute disregard for the human
rights of the "other", who happens to also be a human being deserving to be
recognized in his own dignity.
Carlos Vassaux, M.D.
Past President, Guatemalan Academy of Sciences
When the first reports about the behavior of American and British troops in
Falluya became public, many of our American colleagues doubted their
veracity. If the atrocities had been attributed to Iraqi combatants, they
probably would not have been questioned. Why?
Now with the confirmed reports about the torture of prisoners, we all feel
distressed; but even worse is the realization that there were serious
irregularities within the chain of command, that the abusers were not acting
on their own and that the torture of prisoners (Vietnam, Guantánamo, etc.)
is not an exception but rather a repetitive behavior.
The real question that surfaces is: why did Americans believe that the
behavior of their troops was going to be different from the behavior of
military personnel from the rest of the world?
The concept of the honorability, rectitude and just behavior of Americans,
be they soldiers, regular citizens or politicians, is so ingrained in
American culture, that it is very hard, if not impossible, for many to
understand that this idealistic belief is not true, and that the U.S. is
similar to the rest of the world.
For example, they rightly accept as terrorism, civil targets for political
and ideological purposes, NY 9/11 (2,800 deaths) or Madrid 3/11 (300
deaths) but not the invasion of Panama (2 - 3,000 deaths), the support,
training and arming of the "contras" and the mining of the port of Corinto
in Nicaragua ( ? thousands of deaths), the war in Afghanistan ( 2,500
deaths and thousands more contaminated with depleted uranium), the invasions
of Iraq (1990: 3,000 soldiers deaths, +/- 600 buried alive, plus 500,000
children deaths and 150-200,000 civilians deaths in the ensuing ten years as
a consequence of UN sanctions, plus over 10,000 civilians deaths since last
year's war, and thousands more contaminated with uranium. ( DU: Cancer as a
weapon-Radioactive War by Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair. (
http://www.counterpunch.org/du.html )
In regard to international relations, how shall we interpret the invasion of
some countries, the bombing of others, the multiple official intents to
assassinate some of their presidents or leaders, the unilateral use of
commercial and financial blockades, the local subsidies and the manipulation
of the international prices on which the economies of developing countries
depend, the dis-honoring of the international agreements (NPT, International
Court of Justice, Kyoto), the maintenance and enhancement of the largest
arsenal in the world of nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional
weapons and the readiness to use them without adequate diplomatic
intervention and with arrogant dismissal of international opinion, etc. All
of these are never understood as the real image of the country's
international policies.
During the last weeks, we at IPNW (International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War) have been following the debate regarding the
inadequate information of which the American public is a victim, and have
discussed ways to counteract this weakness, partly through writing to local
newspapers, friends and colleagues in different areas of the country. I
believe this is a good initiative. Nevertheless, I am afraid that we fall
short of understanding that even with adequate information; most of them
will either not be willing or not be able to change their views.
This belief stems from the following experience. During the last few months,
I have commented, in different times and circumstances to different
intelligent American university professors, all but one, living in the U.S.,
some well known public facts related to American international
interventions. Their responses speak by themselves
- one of them, around 66 y.o., told me he didn't read the NYT because it was
a communist paper.
- another, an outstanding physicist, also in his sixties, told me he had
read the news and had seen it on TV, but had not understood the implications
in the same way I did, and in reality was not interested in learning more
about the subject.
- another colleague, brilliant in medicine, in his fifties, still believed,
last March 04, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that destroying
them had been the purpose of the war.
- a younger colleague in his forties, asked a friend not to send him such
controversial articles (NYT and IPPNW postings) because he felt that by
receiving them his personal and family security in the U.S. could be
endangered.
- a wonderful and dedicated physician in his fifties, who for the last 25
years has been working with social/health issues in a developing country,
showed disbelief of some of the NYT articles that I had mentioned, and asked
me for the original references.
- as of this day there has been been no academic protest regarding the
recent U.S. government's prohibition to publish scientific reports from
countries which are not allies of the U.S.
These examples refer to intelligent, educated and well informed
professionals who at a personal level are competent, decent, honest and
uncorrupted by partisan politics. Many of them are my good friends.
Although I duly recognize and appreciate that most colleagues in IPPNW think
and act differently, I know that they are the exception. Why? If the
attitudes of the mayority are not only the result of inappropriate
information what could then be the problem? Is there a common denominator?
Could it be that the prevailing educational system has been so successful
in transforming intelligent people, born to be subjects with independent
thinking, promoters of social change with predictable social impact, into
human objects conditioned to consume and believe what is taught and said to
them, without questioning?
Unfortunately this problem is not limited to the U.S., it happens all over
the world. In my own country, people continue to deny the carefully
documented reports that describe the terrible atrocities, worse than what
has happened in Iraq, inflicted upon the civilian population throughout the
long thirty years of internal war. Perhaps this is why I am sensitive about
these issues. Most graduates of one of our universities are so conditioned
by a distorted tunnel vision of our grim social reality that they blatantly
deny what is absolutely obvious. A few years ago they coined the
expression: "ambientalism ( ecological concerns) is the new disguise of
communism". Are the students being educated as subjects or are they being
conditioned into compliant objects ?
Doesn't the small constituency of IPPNW all over the world in a sense
confirm that health workers and physicians who think, question and reflect
upon commonly adopted beliefs, are indeed the exception ? How many
physicians risk questioning the technified and dehumanized modern medicine
that is practiced almost all over the world ?
Are we being educated to enhance our capacities for critical analysis or
have we lost our intelligence and objectivity through (inadequate)
education?
Perhaps we should again read Nietzsche's "The Twilight of Idols"
Carlos Vassaux. Guatemala
.----- Original Message -----
From: "Allison Brown" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 10:11 AM
Subject: [SDOH] FWD: A Farewell Message From Stanley Fish: "Good Professors
Do What They're Told" / Jun 14
> > ======================
> >
> > ZNet Commentary
> > A Farewell Message From Stanley Fish: "Good Professors Do What They're
> > Told" June 14, 2004
> > By Paul Street
> >
> > Some ZNet readers have by now caught a whiff of the putrid Stanley
> > Fish droppings that floated to the top of the New York Times editorial
> > page last week. Fish's May 21st New York Times commentary, marvelously
> > titled "Why We Built the Ivory Tower," is dedicated to the proposition
> > that academics need to quit messing around in areas where they don't
> > belong, like the struggle for a just and democratic society.
> >
> > Fish, an academic mini-celebrity who will thankfully step down this
> > June as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Science at the
> > University of Illinois at Chicago, thinks that all good little
> > professors need to remember where their bread is buttered and what
> > they are "qualified" to talk about. They need to focus more on "the
> > responsibilities [they] take on when [they] accept a
> > paycheck...meeting classes, keeping up in the discipline, assigning
> > and correcting papers, opening up new areas of scholarship and so on."
> >
> > Good little academics in Fish's ideal university respect "the
> > injunction to police the boundary between academic work and political
> > work." They do not "surrender [their] academic obligation to the
> > agenda of any non-academic constituency," like say, the more than 1
> > million black children who live in "deep poverty" - at less than half
> > the federal government's notoriously inadequate poverty level - in the
> > United States. Fish can find many of those children by taking short
> > ride from his Near West Side Chicago campus in his expensive sports
> > car - one of the many accoutrements of the academic good life he
> > publicly loves to enjoy.
> >
> > Good UIC professors receive their departing Dean's approval when they
> > understand that the appropriate and responsible academic vocation is
> > to turn Karl Marx on his head: Their "job," he says, "is NOT to change
> > the world, but to interpret it."
> >
> > Good academics don't mess with foolish efforts to instill democratic
> > values, public morality, and global and social justice in their
> > students and the wider community. The politics that ought to concern
> > them is "the politics appropriate to the enterprise they signed onto.
> > And that means arguing (and voting) about things like curriculum,
> > departmental leadership, the direction of research," etc.
> >
> > Good academics stick to "their job." They do what their employers pay
> > them to do. And "while academic labor might in some instances play a
> > role in real-world politics [imagine! PS] - if, say, the Supreme Court
> > cites your book on the way to a decision [now there's a feather in
> > your academic cap! PS] - it should not be the design or aim of
> > academics to play that role."
> >
> > In Fish's ideal higher-educational system, people like historian
> > Howard Zinn (who let students obtain credit for undertaking activist
> > causes to change history), Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Henry
> > Giroux, and Robert McChesney - to name a few of my favorite
> > public-intellectuals-activists who receive academic paychecks - are
> > dangerously deluded. They are renegade, wrong-headed boundary
> > crossers.
> >
> > Has their painstaking work of research and interpretation into
> > difficult and relevant topics - for example the theft of the 2000
> > presidential election (completed by Fish's noble Supreme Court), the
> > concentration of the communications system into ever fewer media
> > hands, the encroaching dismantlement and re-segregation of public
> > education, the mass-murderous economic sanctions imposed on Iraq
> > (1991-2003), the dangerous Bush Doctrine, the disastrous and illegal
> > US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the corporate neo-liberal assault
> > on living and working standards and sustainable ecology, or emergent
> > neo-fascism in the world's most powerful nation - led them to the
> > conclusion that "modern" America and indeed the world is in need of
> > dramatic democratic transformation of the sort that involves massive,
> > many-sided citizen engagement?
> >
> > "Too bad" and "wrong answer," says Fish. "Return to your offices,
> > libraries, and department meetings, lowly professors," says the openly
> > materialist (Fish once claimed that the only reason he read poetry was
> > to get rich as a literary critic) dean.
> >
> > "It is not your role - and we don't pay you - to concern yourselves
> > with such issues and to hold such opinions. You must control your
> > ideas and feelings on these and other matters and insert them gently
> > into a clever, carefully crafted lecture, monograph, or article, one
> > that is sensitive to the latest developments in your specialized
> > academic field.
> > You should be content to see the product of that labor collect dust on
> > an academic library shelf, unless it happens to be benevolently
> > rescued from the condescension of posterity by a wise high-state
> > official. This, my dear little professor, is the limit of your
> > appropriate political ambition as long as you are privileged to toil
> > in the ivory tower."
> >
> > One wonders what Fish might have told a hypothetical German academic
> > whose research in the 1920s led her to believe that her homeland was
> > heading towards a fascist-totalitarian takeover that would culminate
> > in the racist mass executions. By Fish's "aim low" standard of
> > appropriate academic focus, this academic would have needed to "stick
> > to the tasks she was paid to perform," keeping her terrible knowledge
> > within proper academic boundaries. If a leading German state official
> > saw fit to read one of her books or hear one of her lectures on the
> > matter, well, perhaps that would be her good and appropriate chance
> > for political relevance.
> >
> > By the middle and late 1930s, of course, it would have been too late
> > as her wise policymakers would happen to be Nazis. But oh well,
> > politics and policy are what Fish calls "someone else's job," and so
> > good professors are like good Germans, content to leave policy to
> > those who are "qualified" to conduct high state affairs - people like
> > George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
> >
> > It is interesting in the context of this analogy to note the strong
> > parallel between Fish's thesis and a much more robust and impressive
> > (if equally toxic) argument made by the German sociologist Max Weber,
> > who also warned academics not to "outrageously" advance democratic
> > ideas in the sacred realm of the lecture hall (see Weber's 1918
> > lecture on "Science as a Vocation" http://www2.
> > pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/ DSS/ Weber/scivoc.html).
> >
> > It is interesting and revealing that Fish makes Karl Marx - western
> > academia's and modern social science's favorite defining whipping boy
> > (Weber's field was formed to throw bourgeois social-scientific cold
> > water on Marx's dangerously social-democratic theories) - the symbol
> > of what he opposes in academic behavior.
> >
> > If he was looking for intellectual giants who thought differently than
> > him, he could just have readily and far more relevantly cited the
> > heralded mainstream American educational philosopher John Dewey. Dewey
> > thought that the basic purpose of education was precisely to produce a
> > genuinely free and democratic society, one that is not controlled by
> > the wealthy few and does not tolerate such outrages as the
> > simultaneous and geographically proximate existence of super-affluent
> > deans alongside desperately poor ghetto children. Such in large
> > measure was the core democratic and historical mission of American
> > public education, a system Weber disdained.
> >
> > Ironically enough, most academics function in pretty much the narrow,
> > anti-Marxist/anti-Deweyite lines that Fish prescribes. Where ARE all
> > these excessively, hyper-activist and democracy- and
> > social/global-justice obsessed academicians that Fish bemoans? Chomsky
> > and Zinn et al. are very much the ivory tower exceptions as far as I
> > can tell. Intellectual radicals like me - a former academic turned
> > left public intellectual (as in "for the public," not simply "in the
> > public") - often end up doing what we see as academics' real jobs
> > (including much of what Fish abhors) at teach-ins, public lectures,
> > and the like.
> >
> > What a sad and curiously anti-intellectual and authoritarian testament
> > Stanley Fish has chosen to leave for all to see in the nation's
> > leading newspaper of record.
> >
> > Paul Street is an urban social policy researcher in Chicago, Illinois.
> >
>
> Janine M. Jurkowski, MPH, PhD
> Department of Disability and Human Development
> University of Illinois at Chicago
> 1640 W. Roosevelt Ave Room 736 M/C 626
> Chicago, Illinois 60608
> 312-413-1294
> [log in to unmask]
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Allison A. Brown
> RRTCADD (M/C 626)
> Dept. of Disability and Human Development
> University of Illinois at Chicago
> 1640 W. Roosevelt Rd.
> Chicago, Illinois 60608
> 312.413.1588 (V)
> 312.413.0453 (TTY)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "A classified and hierarchically ordered set of pluralities, of variants,
> has none of the sting of the miscellaneous and uncoordinated plurals
> of our actual world." (Dewey, 1925)
>
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