Not long ago I posted about Joy Karega, who appears to be an unhinged anti-Semite, bigot and conspiracy theorist who fits right in at perhaps the most Authoritarian Leftist college in the U.S.: Oberlin (Ohio). If she had posted stuff about Muslims the way she has about Jews, she’d have been subject to far greater approprbrium. But never mind, for as I noted before, however hateful and ridiculous she is on social media, that shouldn’t impinge on her job, for it’s freedom of speech. The only issue for Oberlin is this: is she doing her job teaching as an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition? Or is she bullying, brainwashing, or censoring what her students say? Does she promulgate stuff like this (highlighted by Inside Higher Ed) in her classroom?:
Well of course what’s highlighted is a lie: ISIS is not run by the CIA and Mossad (the Israeli equivalent of the CIA). But if she wants to promulgate lies and delusions on her Facebook page, she should be able to do so without penalty. But she can’t do it in the classroom. (Note too that the spelling and style above is not exactly what one would want from a professor of rhetoric and composition!)
I have no idea about that, but I wasn’t aware what she was teaching until I saw the post above and Grania called my attention to an article about Karega in The Tablet (a Jewish website). Yes, “Social Justice Writing”!
Were I an administrator or department chair at Oberlin, I’d be just a wee bit worried about what’s going on in this classroom, for it sounds like she’s propagandizing her students. And that, as opposed to her extracurricular delusions and hate, is what could affect her professional fate. Tablet agrees:
As the New York Times reported, Karega, a professor of rhetoric and composition, teaches “social justice writing courses.” According to Oberlin’s course catalog, one such class is “RHET 204 – Writing for Social Justice.” In it, “Students will develop, negotiate, and revise their own writing strategies and ethics as they write on social justice issues relevant to their interests.”
In other words, Oberlin hired an unrepentant bigot to teach undergraduates to write about justice and guide them in their moral development.
This astounding fact suggests that the entire hiring process for social justice-related fields at Oberlin is fundamentally broken and easily gamed. After all, it’s difficult to imagine a greater or more systemic failure than Karega being chosen to teach students how to communicate about moral causes.
Seen in this light, the debate over whether Oberlin should discipline or fire Karega is a distraction from an even more serious reckoning. Because whether Karega herself leaves or stays on, Oberlin must account for itself far beyond one individual professor. It must ask how its hiring committees missed the signs that they were contracting a bigot to teach ethics. What questions did they fail to pose during the interview process? What areas of the applicant’s background and past work did they fail to investigate? Did any members of the faculty who chose Karega share her prejudices and thus allow them to slide? If Karega could slip by, who else might have?
On the other hand, if the school merely scapegoats Karega while letting off those who enabled her to come in contact with undergraduates in the first place, Oberlin will have demonstrated that it is not interested in addressing its prejudice problem, but rather suppressing its symptoms.
Now it’s not always clear what constitutes propagandizing and what constitutes a professor’s own viewpoint, one that must be justifiable. Regardless, though, in matters like ISIS, a professor must allow some dissent in the classroom. It’s not clear that Karega is doing that.
On the other hand, because she’s teaching at Oberlin, it’s entirely possible that her entire class is composed of people who think like her—though it’s hard to imagine a classroom of kids who all think ISIS is being run by Israel and the CIA. The fact that Karega is “proud” of the apparent ideological agreement among her students is something that should raise alarms.
But, as you recall, Oberlin is the home of the Great Cafeteria Scandal, in which students raised a ruckus about General Tso’s Chicken being made with steamed rather than deep-fried meat, and gustatorially incorrect banh mi sandwiches. It’s perhaps the most extreme example of what happens when virtue signalling and victimhood promotion dominate higher education.
Lord help these students when they try to get jobs! With luck they could get a sinecure like Karega’s, but it’s more likely that they’ll wind up as unemployed (and unemployable) Authoritarian Left bloggers, begging for money on Patreon.
h/t: Grania
“Social justice writing” is a euphemism for doing a #2 on the toilet, right?
Right?
As long as its clear to students in course advertising what the course is about …. imagine shelling out money for rhetoric and composition skills (I mean you need composition skills to write a resume, or an essay or a book, and rhetoric helps with making any case though It was reasonable rather than manipulative as rhetoric can be, but no doubt useful in many professions)
+ 1
Well, that depends on what “number two” is an euphemism for. If it’s liquid and easily washed away, that’s one thing. But I’ve spent too much of my life scraping sticky adhesions off pans to take the question lightly.
So, are we talking euphemistic piss, or euphemistic shot?
Bloody autocorrelation!
ratemypoo dot com
Kind of like ‘ratemyprofessor’ but set up specifically for social justice instructors:P
“Poo” is a social construction. Respect is called for. It makes stuff happen and should be maximally spread around
Good comment.
She really thinks ISIS is run by the CIA and Mossad? I wonder if she’s also a 9-11 Truther, because they spout the same kind of garbage.
She is. Also evidently a holocaust denier and someone who thinks Israel is responsible for both the Charlie Hebdo attacks and France’s support for Lebanon. No, it doesn’t even make internal sense, does it?
But the more I read about her, the more likely I think it is that this problem will fix itself at her next tenure track review.
It just boggles my mind every time I come across someone who is clearly intelligent who believes this stuff. At least with religion people have huge numbers in society constantly affirming their beliefs, but Holocaust denial etc is just bizarre.
Does Oberlin also have courses in Agitprop? In the free marketplace of ideas, some kids just bought an adulterated product.
She’s right. You have to look up some shit.
I have clear evidence that ISIS is NOT CIA/Mossad, but, is, in fact, a vast army of extremely pissed-off English department adjuncts unable to pay off their enormous student debts and unwilling to be enslaved as baristas.
And they’re coming for us. And the rhetoricians are the tip of the spear.
Anyone stupid enough to incur an “enormous” student debt for an “English” degree … well I suppose the appropriate punishment depends on how enormous the debt is. A couple of days accommodation would be a fair line between “worthwhile” and “wasteful”.
Maybe. Or maybe she changed her approach after getting tenure. That happens too.
***
BTW for anyone (like me) who didn’t know what the “French Flag Facebook” issue was, its this: after the Paris attacks, Facebook enabled a “flag overlay” feature they’ve used for other events to allow people to overlay the French colors on their individual pages. They did not enable a flag overlay for Lebanon, even though it had also experienced a bombing at the same time. This caused two groups of complaints: (1) the activation for France but not Lebanon shows bias. (2) people may feel “unsafe” viewing a facebook page with the French flag overlay, if they disagree with the sentiment the overlay communicates. Therefore no such overlays should be allowed for bombings etc. but only for unserious things like sports team colors during a tournament.
IMO (1) has merit, but could easily have been an administrative oversight. As long as they treat requests for overlays equitably in the future, I can’t see getting terribly upset about it. (2) is, frankly, insane. But goes hand in hand with the leftist authoritarianism we’ve been seeing elsewhere.
The flag issue is ubiquitous. Our local swimming pool use to have about twenty five full size flags from all over the world. One day, they all disappeared. Why? Who knows: someone wanted their flag put up, someone did not like a flag that was up, there was not enough room for everyone’s flag, someone did not like the arrangement of the flags, someone is offended by all flags, someone was mad their kid could name all flags and they could not, …
“…they’ll wind up as unemployed… Authoritarian Left bloggers, begging for money on Patreon.” Begging? No. Demanding!
I must correct my first comment; she’s not a tenured professor, but rather an Associate Professor who received her Ph.D. in the ancient hallowed year of 2014.
So to answer Darwinwins’s comment below, no we should probably not expect that the hiring committee had access to some long academic track record of anti-Semitic comments, since she’s a very newly minted academic. On the plus side, if Oberlin decides they don’t like her pedagogy or treatment of students in the class, there’s an obvious solution that presents itself; nonrenewal of contract.
And as an aside, wow you can get an Assistant Professorship in Rhetoric and Composition with essentially no post-docs under your belt? Must be nice…
For several decades now, students have been able to pursue (peruse?) PhDs in Rhet & Comp, studying in university departments separate from English/literature. Their degrees have for the most part been deemed inferior to those in lit, although there is an element of snobbery here. In any case, the notion that one can actually TEACH effective writing (rather than simply learn it by talent and early practice)has always struck me (emeritus prof of literature)as dubious at best.
But a position such as Prof. Karega’s is almost perfect for slipping in her kind of bigotry: we’ll be working this term on argumentation, students, and I suggest we make the case for Mossad and the CIA’s being behind ISIL.
One thinks of Plato’s definition of Sophistry (the practice of the Sophists, his sworn intellectual enemies): ‘teaching to make the weaker argument appear the stronger.’
Eh. Even if you’re right, its a formal and social pressure to practice writing a lot more than you might otherwise do on your own. Also the teacher (and other students) provide objective and different (i.e., non-friend) critics that you might not otherwise seek out. These characteristics of the class could easily make it useful and worthwhile for anyone looking to go into writing.
Very much like a gym exercise class; the teacher isn’t actually making you fitter, they’re just spurring you to perform a good practice routine that most of us wouldn’t have the willpower to practice on our own.
I don’t know how it is in English, but up until recently in fields like philosophy postdocs were rather rare. One would simply get a tenure track or a teaching track position “immediately” (after success on the market, anyway) in most cases.
Given that the concept of “social justice” is becoming increasingly bound by rigid ideological constructs, the likely purpose of the class is indoctrination.
I’ve incorporated a section on freedom of speech on college campuses into my classes on argumentation, and Karga’s antics should make for an interesting discussion.
As loathsome as I find her beliefs, I support her right to express them on social media. However, outright fabrication in the classroom stretches the concept of academic freedom beyond the breaking point.
I would think that a good teacher of rhetorical writing would intentionally force students to write in favor of some cause they objected to/opposed. Because that’s the best way for them to learn the techniques of inspiring writing, and for the professor to know that they actually learned the lessons. Very much like debate-style rhetoric, you’re only really good when you can argue any side you’re given, not just the sides you’d personally choose.
Good point but Karega appears to be promoting One view and good argument should be informed by the students being able to examine things from different view points to assess best argument.
rhetoric strikes me as a bit dishonest. Like the modern obsession with story telling. Manipulative emotion pulling and distortion of (or refusal to acknowledge)broader context or constraints equals lies
I don’t think its necessarily dishonest. There are lots of jobs where you are hired/paid to communicate someone else’s point or position. That sort of job isn’t to decide what the hirer’s opinion is or should be, it’s to represent it well. If you hire a lawyer to argue your innocence, Somer, you don’t want him independently deciding to argue your guilt, do you? That’s not what you paid him for. Likewise if you hire an ad company to do an ad for Somer’s Dishwashing Product, you don’t want the billboard they produce to read “Somer’s Dishwashing Liquid! We here at GloboAds like Bob’s dishwashing liquid better.” That would be unethical of them; dishonest to take your money and produce an ad like that. You didn’t pay them for their opinion on your product, you paid them to represent your opinion of it. Rhetoric is (part of) the art and science of doing that.
Not only I’m not surprised that her views were not an obstacle for hiring her, I’m quite confident that they were part of her qualifications.
Antisemitism is nowadays part of the leftist set of beliefs.
I don’t know where to beginon how crazy this is….
Nor do I.
I wonder if trying to root out every last nut is useful. What do her students say about her? I once had a professor who wore noise reduction ear muffs so as to better hear the voices in his head!
Did he wear the ear muffs while “professing”?
Please give some details!
Why? Karega’s motivations are complex and likely not directly related to any concern for ISIS. It is possible she thrives on contentious remarks and that she happens to think people have an appetite for those selfsame remarks.
This is just a Facebook post but I wonder about this woman’s academic standards. She appears to sees tertiary teaching as a conversion crusade not an exploration and refinement of what’s learned.
She writes:
“read some shit” “Especially the Unconventional and hard to find stuff”. No you need to look at different interests/points of view and work out whats going on. Also don’t look up leading terms -like some ideologues key in emotional highly politicised phrases to search engines and call that “research”
I noted the spelling and expression are pretty poor though of course its just a Facebook post. But an Associate Professor of rhetoric and composition should be fostering peoples facility to make their own expression (for creative, professional, personal Or political purposes but for their own purposes), communication and good language skills, not teaching politics.
On the other hand if the University allow courses like something called a “social justice writing class” as characterising “rhetoric and composition” this is what they are effectively asking for and I think they have something to answer for in allowing such course design to go ahead or indeed in not being aware of it. If the course design is very vague or she is subverting it that too is obviously an issue.
Sorry – looks like the course is advertised as about Social justice issues.
“RHET 204 – Writing for Social Justice.” In it, “Students will develop, negotiate, and revise their own writing strategies and ethics as they write on social justice issues relevant to their interests.”
Social Justice these days is often construed as hardline Crit theory her methods though seem fairly one dimensional and she should not be directing her students to one very narrow social justice interpretation.
Mind u given the current social milieu in Unis this could cover her ideas easily – although its problematic if she’s promoting anti semitism in class.
I really hope there are classes offering an antidote to this kind of perspective at the uni.
The faculty who helped hire her would not know about her particular slant on ISIS b/c ISIS is a relatively recent thing.
But I can say that any faculty search committee would want to strongly consider a candidate who was female and a minority. I know that I would were I on a search committee.
Strongly considering is one thing, not doing due diligence in hiring is another. I find it hard to believe this racist anti-semite did not have such a history when she was hired.
Reminds me of Prof. Angela Davis who teaches “history of consciousness” or some similar BS she has invented.
Isn’t that Donna Haraway?
I meant this person:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis
John Lennon glorified her some decades ago, proving that great talent is quite compatible with being clueless.
The ISIS/CIA/Mossad conspiracy is not that new…
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/cia-israel-isis-conspiracy-theories-hilary-clinton_n_5677687.html
One of the definitions of rhetoric:
“language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.”
Just like the word faith represents a character flaw, not a virtue, rhetoric is often used for deception or obfuscation.
+1
I suggest that instead of this easy, lazy, ignorant and unthinking tilting at something you don’t know much about, you might read Brian Vickers'”In Defence of Rhetoric”, which is a splendid account of the importance of rhetoric to Renaissance writers like Shakespeare, Jonson & Milton as well as to moderns like James Joyce. CHOICE said of it: “In this fascinating and powerfully argued study, Vickers traces the history of the rhetorical tradition from its earliest beginnings in Greece to the present….His historical analysis of the fragmentation of classical rhetoric in the Middle Ages and its eventual reconstitution in the Renaissance is likely to become standard. Without doubt, this is one of the most interesting and valuable books on rhetoric to appear in the past few decades. Accessible to general readers.”
I left in the bit about general readers to encourage those who complain on the one hand about those who refuse to extend themselves by learning something about science while simultaneously entertaining ignorant prejudices about other subjects that they do not wish to correct – to encourage them to actually find out something for themselves and think about it instead of rehearsing unconsidered prejudices. It is what we are told is constantly done in science, so why not in other areas?
As for Associate Professor Karega, she should be encouraged not to teach at a university, or anywhere, really.
I don’t see any evidence within the article of an “unrepentant bigot”. This may or may not be true but I couldn’t find it therein.
To me, attributing ISIS to CIA and Mossad is clear evidence of bigotry. And because even the most recent opinions expressed by Prof. Karega are in this line, she is unrepentant.
Absolutely right.
“ISIS is not run by the CIA and Mossad”
But it was helped along the way by US funding.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092#.wxu3wealn
And it started early – already Al Qeada was in part a US funded organization.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_blaming_islam_for_isis_would_have_supported_osama_bin_laden_in_the_80s/
Rational people – and institutions – do what seems best for the moment, trying to balance short-term and long-term considerations, instead of sitting idle because what they do now can result in some damage decades later.
The Western allies knew that siding with Stalin would have disastrous consequences, yet with Hitler taking over Europe, there was little choice. I think they were right.
Later, the Soviet Union tried to take over the world. The USA supported local resistance movements, such as the mujahideens in Afghanistan and the Contras in Nicaragua. I think they were right, again.
The US funding allegedly contributed to the genesis of Al-Qaida (I say “allegedly”, because we do not know whether without this funding, Al-Qaida wouldn’t appear based on Saudi funding alone). In Nicaragua, however, no Al-Qaida appeared. Why? Because, whatever other disadvantages this country may have, it is not plagued by Islam.
Now, the United States are blamed for ISIS because they have supported some Syrian rebels. I blame them for not supporting the Syrian rebels enough. As for ISIS, some people from the Near East attribute its genesis largely to Assad.
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/22/6057055/syria-cartoon
I did not notice much ‘rationality’ about American policy under G.W. Bush & his cronies… Perhaps you did? As for ‘siding’ with Stalin, it was not after all as a result of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union that countries like Britain entered the war, or as a result of Britain’s being at war with Germany that the Soviet Union entered the war.
I haven’t claimed any of these things. We seem to be chronically miscommunicating.
Then why talk of ‘siding with Stalin’ at all? And what are you implying when you talk of the practices of ‘rational people and institutions’? What you seem to me to be implying (otherwise why write what you have written?)is that the ‘West’, in particular America, even when it is clandestinely encouraging and assisting rebellions against legally elected governments and massacres in Nicaragua, Salvador and Chile, is pretty unfailingly rational and is always doing its best, whereas the benighted rest of the world wallows in its screaming irrationality and tyranny and deserves what it gets, and if a few eggs get broken in this rational process it doesn’t matter.
For one of these broken eggs, you might read the story of the imprisonment and torture of the pianist Miguel-Angel Estrella, whom my wife and I knew and were friendly with in London when we were young. It is not only Eastern Europeans who have suffered and suffer, you know.
The fact is that the extraordinary incompetence of the American occupation of Iraq has a great deal to do with the rise of ISIS, as has the funnelling of funds to Salafist rebels in the knowledge that they were religious extremists in order to weaken Assad; someone who like Saddam Hussein definitely deserves to go, but Stalin deserved to go to, and the rational thing to recognise is that it is very easy to make a bad situation even worse – which is what has happened as a result of Western meddling in Libya, which has also become a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists – who mostly terrorise their own people, of course: a consideration that makes Golan’s remark about its being Islamophobic to hold Muslims accountable thoroughly distasteful. It’s no different from holding ‘Jews’ responsible for the activities of the extremist Israeli settlers who are helping to make a difficult situation even more intractable.
If we are talking about holding people accountable, then we should surely be willing to hold ourselves accountable, and not to indulge in the self-pitying mantra that it is always the US or the West that gets blamed, a mantra that prevents thinking and leads to the happy and self-righteous conclusion that the West’s hands are always pure, or if not, justifiably not, and that it is the other who is to blame. And one great weakness of the New Atheism is surely that by its concentration on the evils of religion alone it faults account other important factors, and it thereby encourages comments such as Golan’s.
last sentence: ‘…it fails to account for other important factors…’
Western Europe and the Soviet Union were both attacked by Nazi Germany, and this is why they made an alliance. What I was stressing was that this alliance was, for the West, a difficult compromise with far-reaching consequences.
I don’t think it was a difficult compromise at all in the circumstances. What alternatives were there?
Early, massive US intervention. But there was nothing to motivate it. I think that only the threat of USSR taking over all Europe motivated the Normandy landing.
‘…a consideration that makes Golan’s remark about its being Islamophobic to hold Muslims accountable thoroughly distasteful. It’s no different from holding ‘Jews’ responsible for the activities of the extremist Israeli settlers who are helping to make a difficult situation even more intractable.’
The above was very badly expressed (perhaps I need to take a course in rhetoric!) and may be taken to mean the opposite of what I intended; I was writing too quickly. What I intended to suggest was that Golan’s remark about holding all Muslims accountable for the excesses of the Islamists is not much different from saying that all Jews should be held accountable for the activities of Israeli extremists who forcibly take over land belonging to Palestinians.
To me, “holding Muslims accountable for their actions” means specifically those Muslims who commit the actions in question.
“It is not only Eastern Europeans who have suffered and suffer, you know.”
Of course. If we take only post-WWII, we have the Bengali genocide, the genocide in Cambodia, the sufferings of Chinese, Vietnamese, North Koreans, the genocide in Rwanda. Not a comprehensive list, surely. All these are non-Europeans events, and for many, communism was to blame. I am particularly amazed by the perception of the Vietnam war and its aftermath in the West. Almost everybody is talking against the war, yet almost nobody realizes that the villains in the story were those who forcibly made Vietnam communist. It seems easy to think that little yellow people are OK without property.
“…If a few eggs get broken in this rational process it doesn’t matter.”
Just several lines above, you had actually implied that if tens of millions of eggs got broken in the process of Stalin exercising power, it didn’t matter, because the circumstances were such. To my knowledge, there were, and to some degree still are, difficult circumstances across much of Latin America. Even without speaking the local languages, one can see that the culture is heavily skewed toward socialism. I studied together with several young people from this region. They were all orthodox Marxists, that is, they believed in their right to take power by force, to nationalize other people’s property and to repress any opposition. They hated America and the Americans because they were convinced that without US meddling, all Latin America would be socialist. I suspect they had some right in this. Not that they were against meddling in general; actually, their desire to meddle rivaled that of a superpower. They thought that every Latin American communist had a right to make revolutions in any Latin American country he would choose (their idol was Ernesto “Che” Guevara). And one girl had a boyfriend who, by her own admission, had fought in… Angola.
Here is what I copied from Wikipedia about Uruguay:
“An urban guerrilla movement known as the Tupamaros formed in the early 1960s, first robbing banks and distributing food and money in poor neighborhoods, then undertaking political kidnappings and attacks on security forces. Their efforts succeeded in first embarrassing, and then destabilizing, the government.”
Once a country has fallen to this, there is no way for it to remain democratic and to have rule of law. It will either succumb to the leftist terrorists and become a communist dictatorship, or will become a right-wing dictatorship destroying all suspected leftists and all others disliked for some (any) reason. Your friend had the poor luck to find himself in such a country and to attract the junta’s attention. Nevertheless, I still think that the right-wing dictatorship is the lesser of the two evils.
“…Whereas the benighted rest of the world wallows in its screaming irrationality and tyranny and deserves what it gets.”
On the contrary, I think that all people, at least in principle, deserve a basic package of material and non-material possessions. This is why I think it is better to intervene than to stay idle out of fear to make a bad situation even worse. I think that Ukrainians deserve better than isolation and aggression, Iraqis deserve better than Saddam, Syrians deserve better than Assad and Libyans deserve better than Qaddafi. It is some others, particularly Obama, who thinks that no fate is too bad for other people; and this is why I hate him.
“…The self-pitying mantra that it is always the US or the West that gets blamed, a mantra that prevents thinking and leads to the happy and self-righteous conclusion that the West’s hands are always pure, or if not, justifiably not, and that it is the other who is to blame. And one great weakness of the New Atheism is surely that by its concentration on the evils of religion alone it faults account other important factors…”
There are undoubtedly other evils, but to me (personally), the greatest threat to humanity now is its takeover by Islam, a religion. I suspect that religion plays a role also in other problems seeming unrelated. I wonder e.g. whether religion differences contributed to the results of the Apr. 6 Dutch referendum. Anyway, New Atheism is a movement against religions, this is its cause. I guess you wouldn’t blame e.g. a disability advocacy movement for – say – failure to engage in efforts to eradicate an infection.
As for the “self-pitying mantra”, I generally agree with it, with very few exceptions. I’d agree with you if you would say that we should not just pity but also act. However, I think that you are recommending white guilt and the battered wife syndrome, in which the abused wife stays with her abuser and after every beating finds guilt in herself and excuses for him. I find it important for a victim to realize her victim position. Several commenters have already likened Europe’s relation to Islam to that of a battered wife.
I am sorry, Mayamarkov, but you are arguing dishonestly and the suggestion that I am recommending ‘white guilt and the battered wife syndrome’ and the suggestion that I am saying that the millions of people who were murdered under the Stalinist terror don’t matter are simply despicable. Yes, Iraqis deserve better than Saddam, yes, Syrians deserve better than Assad, yes, Libyans deserve better than Gaddafi – but, again, they deserve better than ISIS and the other Islamist groups who have profited both from clandestine Western support and from the chaos that various recent Western interventions have brought about.
Miguel-Angel Estrella, by the way, is Argentinian, although he was imprisoned in Uruguay. He had nothing to do with the Tupamaros, or with Communism. You might, or might not, like to enquire into the desaparecidos of Argentina… I suspect not.
Perhaps you might like to justify your accusation that Obama, in particular, ‘thinks no fate is too bad for other people’.
I know that you think I am arguing dishonestly. You have stated it before. I said that we are miscommunicating.
By the time the Western allies allied with USSR, Hitler had not yet done the Holocaust but Stalin had already done the Holodomor. Nevertheless, you see nothing difficult in the decision to ally with such a ruler – which I cannot interpret in any way other than the victims that already existed, and those who were sure to follow, were unimportant.
I checked that Mr. Estrella is from Argentina and was forced to leave the country by the danger posed by the dictatorship there. I mean that he was unlucky because the country he was allowed to go was no better. And, to me, Tupamaros was the main reason why Uruguay had degenerated to this level.
As for ISIS, while its individual victims are innocent, it is a local product. It is a result of a large proportion of the Mideast population being fundamentalist Muslims, as Tupamaros is a result of the large proportion of leftists. Of course, it is blamed on the West both in Iraq, where Western intervention destroyed the old order, and in Syria, where there was no Western intervention; both because US-backed Shia government in Iraq fired Sunni military and security personnel, so the poor ones remained without income, and in Syria, where the some of aid intended for non-Islamist anti-Assad rebels ended in the hands of Islamists. Whatever the West does, it is bad, and it is the cause of any troubles that follow.
From Obama’s 2008 victory speech:
“Instead of alienating ourselves from the world… rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century… The Taliban has been on the offensive… Al-Qaida has a growing sanctuary in Pakistan. That is a consequence of our current strategy… We cannot tolerate this strain on our forces to fight a war that hasn’t made us safer… It’s time to strengthen stability by standing up for the aspirations of the Pakistani people… Instead of threatening to kick them out of the G-8, we need to work with Russia… For eight years, we have paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening; that divides us from one another – and from the world – instead of calling us to a common purpose.”
Here we go again. I wonder where you learnt your rhetorical skills, Mayamarkov? Now, it seems, I ‘see nothing difficult in the decision to ally with such a ruler (i.e. Stalin) – which I cannot interpret in any way other than the victims that already existed, and those who were sure to follow, were unimportant.’ Your abilities where interpretation is concerned seem strangely limited to the direction in which you would like what you are pleased to call your interpretation to travel. Britain was at war with Nazi Germany when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union (unleashing his own reign of terror, particularly in the Ukraine); the two countries became ‘allies’ by force of circumstance and faute de mieux. Such ‘alliance’ as existed disappeared abruptly when the war ended, and rightly, too. I don’t propose to go on. It leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth dealing with such ploys as yours.
It was Britain’s choice to go to war with Nazi Germany.
I also note that you see nothing controversial in turning yesterday’s ally into today’s adversary.
The previous time you accused me of dishonesty (and in 3rd person to boot), I had stated that migrants to Europe have a disproportionate share of military-age males (Nov. 21, 2015 post). When the same was said by other commenters in a later post (Jan. 10), you didn’t challenge their opinions. Therefore, the unpleasant taste in the mouth is mutual.
Also, I remember well how different analysts after Sept. 11 wrote articles that the Islamic terror was a result of the indignation of people suppressed by US-backed dictators such as Mubarak. Their thesis was that the USA should stop supporting dictators, and then terrorists would lose their support and base. Maybe G. W. Bush believed them. Now, different analysts are writing articles that the Islamic terror is a result of USA toppling Saddam Hussein and supporting anti-Assad opposition. Whatever the US policy and whatever happens, it is always US fault. It is never Islamists’ fault.
+1.
Holding Muslims accountable for their actions is Islamophobic.
OBL wrote a lot of public messages about his grievances before the 9/11 attacks. I have about 200 pages worth of his writing and speeches covering 1996 through 2008. In that time, he didn’t mention Murabak once. He makes reference to Egypt 25 times, but most of those are comments like “praise to our Egyptian brother Bob who was killed…” and not geopolitical references to the country or him being angry about our involvement in it. The geopolitical references are uniformly positive; he saw Egypt in a good light. It is the Saudi Arabian government and the House of Saud that he really saves his anger for.
I’m sure there is/was a lot of local resentment against US involvement in Egypt. But that wasn’t a significant part of the reason Osama Bin Ladin attacked us.
I didn’t mean that US support to Mubarak and toleration of Saddam Hussein was the reason for 9/11, or that OBL claimed it to be the reason. I meant that American and other Western analysts claimed that it was the reason. I even tried to find some of those masterpieces online, particularly one titled “The enemies created by our friends” or something of this sort. If I remember correctly, it specifically referred to Mubarak and to the Egyptian nationality of Mohamed Atta. Unfortunately, I’ve read most of them in translation, so I haven’t even the exact key words.
To me, Prof. Karega seems not only a bigot but a quack who, according to our best knowledge, hasn’t yet produced anything of true intellectual value and most likely isn’t able to. I think social sciences need some bar to keep away the lazy and stupid people who want just a cushy job (to be paid for printing gibberish or expressing hate). Alas for the good old days when these studies were firmly on “classical” rails and, to get a cushy job, one needed at least to become fluent in a couple of dead languages! Any ideas what to demand instead?
I’m not sure its fair yet to judge her on her publication record or ‘splash’ on the field. She got her Ph.D in 2014. So we would probably only reasonably expect between 1-5 primary publications anyway, and not much splash.
If she’s had any publications, such as book chapters, journal articles, or books of poetry, they’re not listed on her faculty page (unlike those from her departmental colleagues). It’s not as if a PhD student in “rhetoric and composition” has to do experiments, collect and analyze narratives in endangered languages, do fieldwork, or spend time on any of the other diverse tasks that fall under the umbrella of academic research. Seems to me the main responsibility in the discipline would be writing, and it looks as if she chose to do most of it on social media. I suspect that Karega is neither particularly intelligent nor hard-working, yet she’s obviously good at drawing attention to herself. The Oberlin gig is pretty cushy, I’ll bet.
Yeah I looked there and thought it pretty weird that she doesn’t have a CV up or at least a list of publications, invited talks, etc. That stuff’s pretty standard; academics typically want people to read their research.
My guess is she doesn’t have any formal publications. Which is not too surprising given her age and experience; I don’t particularly hold that against her or hold it against Oberlin that they hired an Associate just out of school with little in the way of publications. In fact, good for them for giving the young academic a try. I’m sad it didn’t work out for them but nevertheless, I’m fine with colleges recruiting Associates recently out of school. My negative view of her is much more about what she has said informally rather than what she hasn’t done formally.
She’s listed as an Assistant Professor. Perhaps it’s not usual to do postdoctoral work or fellowships and build up publications in that field. At least she has a PhD, which is more than one can say for some of the Professors and Associate Professors in other departments at Oberlin. I’m rather surprised that at least one person is listed as a Professor, with highest degree attained (at least according to what’s posted) = BA.
Undoubtedly that’s my PhD- and multiple postdoctoral fellowships-privilege talking. Or maybe being a lab rat who’s content to do bench work for years is not the best path to success in academia …
Because of people like this, I’m starting to really dislike SJ and that’s an unfair thing.
I cringe a little when I hear the term these days.
I try to distinguish between:
Social justice ACTIVIST
Social justice WARRIOR
For the SJW, social justice = getting offended, usually on the internet
SJAs get sh*t done.
“The only issue for Oberlin is this: is she doing her job teaching as an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition?”
perhaps she is a living breathing piece of rhetoric and a fine example to the students of how a biased rhetorical brain can derail itself and decompose.
Awww your mixed metaphor made me feel sorry for trains. 😉
Sorry about that, I’m a big fan of trains, spent lots of time on them in my travels.
I guess I got on the wrong train that morning and I just didn’t know when to get off.
A bit like this batty individual Karega.
‘Social justice writing’ sounds like a completely bogus subject to me. Why would writing about social justice require some specialised technique? I would have thought a course in ‘effective communication’ would be more useful.
I have this sneaking suspicion that the most likely outcome of a course in ‘social justice writing’ would be a vocabulary that instantly turns off everybody except fellow SJW’s. (You know, like ‘hegemony’ and ‘privilege’ and ‘discourse’ etc etc etc).
cr
When reading the headline, I thought social justice writing was a class where you read the works of some great writers involved in social justice. Like stuff by feminist writers or the works of black writers concerning the apartheid period for instance. That would actually make sense and be a good class.
Teaching someone a special strategy for writing about social justice however? That makes me suspicious.
The money quote (x2): “Authoritarian Left bloggers, begging for money on Patreon.”
She lost me at “read some shit.”
The other day I was reading a (free speech related) blog article. The blogger started the discussion referring to Oberlin, then clarified: ‘for those of you outside the US, Oberlin is an insane asylum located in Ohio…’
All of this craziness around “social justice” drives me loopy too. I used to volunteer (and still financially support) at a *sane* organization for this topic. These people are doing nothing of the sort.
Writing: well, write well and for a broad audience and *know your stuff* was the idea behind the organization I was/am involved with. The director, for example, had degrees in journalism and in what one might call “political economy” (I am not sure exactly how it was put ; it was a special program).
It is obvious from her own description that Karega was brainwashed to become a conspiracy theorist as a child. Sad.