Liberal professor asking for advice

[quoting students] "The major difference between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War is that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Therefore, our war against Iraq was entirely justified."

What's ironic is that there were plenty of sound reasons for attacking Iraq which had nothing to do with 9/11, but the Bush administration has largely ignored some of the most important. Perhaps he didn't think they'd go over well, and perhaps they indeed wouldn't have, but they would have been truthful.

If a criminal is placed on probation, he doesn't get to decide what requirements he will follow and what ones he won't. Probation is simple: follow all the requirements and stay out of prison; violate any, and go back.

Saddam Hussein was, following Desert Storm, a criminal on probation. His probation required him to

Provide a complete inventory of all weapons meeting certain criteria
Render all weapons beyond use, but not beyond recognizability.
Supply all of the now-useless weapons to inspectors so that they can check them off the inventory list supplied in #1.

Perhaps that was not a good set of requirements to impose on Saddam, but they were imposed by GHWB, not GWB. Saddam made clear that he had no intention to comply with them. The U.S. really only had two choices:

Announce to the world that other countries should feel free to disregard any cease-fire or other obligations to the U.S., or
Acknowledge that Saddam Hussein had dissolved the cease-fire and the the state of war that existed during Desert Storm still existed.

President Bush regarded option #1 as unacceptable, and I really don't see that there was any other choice but #2.

It turned out that we lacked virtue in race relations, therefore we lost the freedom to relate racially as we pleased.

If the government had been race-neutral, rather than segregationist, I think people would have demonstrated much more virtue than they were allowed. People like Jackie Robinson and Duke Ellington didn't make it to the top because of forced-association laws. Indeed, had such laws been in place they probably would have been relegated to token roles instead of becoming the stars they were.

If anything, they hurt businesses and it was simply another way for government to control and regulate how businesses operated.

Jim Crow laws were anti-capitalist, but that isn't the same thing as being anti-business. They benefited some businesses at the expense of others. Indeed, in many places they may have benefited the majority of businesses. Many people often regard "pro-business" and "capitalist" as synonyms, but in fact many businesses seek benefits beyond what honest capitalism would provide.

I found this response disturbing...

This is a case where role-play discussions can be very useful. Example: In my 101 survey (Western Civ to 1500), I have them read about early Islam and early Christianity. I divide them into three groups, one Christian, one Islamic, and one group of pagans who have decided to convert. I set a year, let them form strategies for a few minutes as a group (with the pagans deciding what questions to ask), then split them into groups of three students, with one Christian and one Muslim trying to convert the pagan. There are rules, of course. They can't "sell sins" -- argue for drinking in Christianity, multiple marriage in Islam, and the pagans *must* decide based purely on the arguments they hear and not on any pre-held bias (which, of course, they often do anyway -- but that's grounds for discussion). They then have to stand in front of the room and explain why they chose what they did. Undergraduates tend to be pretty competitive, and this "2-on-1" game generally works well.

Where I can figure out which of my students are particularly strong Christians, I *always* make them Muslims (and, with the rare exchange student, vice versa). Forcing a student to take a role s/he might ordinarily attack is a good way to begin the process of cracking open a particularly closed mind. In your case, you could hold a similar discussion on the voting rights act and make your student a representative of the NAACP.

Making students intellectually uncomfortable is one of our most solemn duties. We just have to find ways to do it that do not represent direct attacks. Subversion is an old revolutionary technique!

Greg Monahan
Eastern Oregon University
gmonahan@eou.edu

I agree with you, racism was institutionalized by government.

It's a bit more complicated than that. One wouldn't have a racist government in a community of totally non-racist people. On the other hand, the people would probably not have remained racist were not the power of government not protected racism from market and other forces.

I wish more people would realize that markets are far better at determining policies than are majority-rule governments. While there are times when it is necessary to have one policy imposed upon everyone, oftentimes it is far better to have people select for themselves what policies they favor. If 51% of the people in a town want to eat in a restaurants that forbid smoking while 25% want one that allows smoking (with the other 24% not caring one way or the other) would it make more sense to forbid smoking in all restaurants, or to let individual restaurants set their own policy (with 67% or so forbidding smoking and 33% allowing it)? If the above statistics were accurate, a city-wide smoking ban might well improve business for 67% of restaurants. Such a policy might be considered "pro-business", but it would hardly be capitalist.

After several responses the original professor posted the following. It appears that she should be teaching Sociology rather than History, as in my mind it is not her place to engender "regard" for a movement, but understanding of it:

From christinerickson@comcast.net
Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 3:42 pm
Subject Re: Difficult situation in survey query

Hello all, thank you very much for all of your responses. I want to make it clear that I was not grading this student for his political opinions. That, as folks have pointed out, is certainly not within my purview as a history professor. The first two sections dealt with the book itself – the last section, as I made clear to the class, was subjective – I wanted them to try, as best as they could, to put themselves in that time frame and really think about whether or not they would have been involved. No right or wrong answer. I was simply looking for an intelligent, thoughtful, well-written response. (Students are graded down if 1) they don’t answer the question, and 2) if they make silly grammatical/punctuation kinds of mistakes).

So, I didn’t need any help in grading this. I did not base his grade on the content of what he said in that last section. I guess all I was saying, was that I was having a tough time dealing someone who has absolutely no regard at all for the civil rights movement, no sense, still, after all of the reading, videos (I show the PBS’s the Murder of Emmett Till), what civil rights activists (and other blacks in the south) were going through.

Perhaps this was not the correct forum to express my sense of frustration.

Chris Erickson

Maybe this is just my cold, un-regarding, un-empathic, hard-science self talking, but methinks this person just might be FrontPage Magazine material.

Yes, if the people weren’t racist, they’d not have tolerated segregationist laws. It wouldn’t be tolerated today in most places in America, for instance, though I daresay there are some communities that would go for some form of it. Of course, in my view, affirmative action is racist, and that is legislated and practiced with fairly wide approval.

I also agree with your point that businesses regularly try to enlist the aid of government to stifle competition. John Stossel wrote a nice little book on the subject, called “Give Me a Break,” that really brought that point home to me.

Making students intellectually uncomfortable is one of our most solemn duties. We just have to find ways to do it that do not represent direct attacks. Subversion is an old revolutionary technique!

It is good to make people thoroughly examine the arguments for opposing viewpoints, and often good to make them play "devil's advocate". It is bad, however, to try to make people argue sincerely against their point of view to convince a neutral third party. The scenario as described is particularly reprehensible because the people who would be the most capable of rationally justifying their own religion in a proper debate would, if honest, be at a severe disadvantage in this one.

I hope people don't see this is as spam, but here's a real gem of a response (nah, no bias here):

From Karen Rubin
Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:45 pm
Subject Difficult situation/Anne Moody

In response to the post regarding the student who could see no purpose for the Civil Rights Movement, I wanted to share some similar experiences and how I try to capture "teachable moments":

I teach Anne Moody in every semester that I teach Race & Ethnicity here in Tallahassee -- still a very racially charged place -- and I get this *frequently.* I recently had a graduate student who railed (in an essay about women's religious memoirs) against the "secular humanist" academics who devalued religion in history, but I digress.

As others have pointed out, a student may make legitimate critiques about the CRM [Civil Rights Movement] (as indeed Anne Moody did, especially at the end of her book!), but they may not rail against individuals or groups (that is, what would amount to a personal attack, or thinly veiled racial attack), as per the rules of good analysis writing. I would offer the student a re-write. Give him the opportunity to explain his "interpretation" in a more historical fashion. I have very strict guidelines about re-writes, and they must *re-conceptualize* the thing, but with a student you may have to "live with" for a while (and who MIGHT me educable about technique), I'd invest the effort.

I like to use Moody to show how bitter & angry, and yes, racist she had become as a result of her marginalization in the movement. I ask students why other MS blacks would not join the movement; I would never inquire why a student born in the 1980s to privilege & whiteness (that is, born "out of context" to the movement) would not march.

I would also like to say, tangentially, I do NOT see it as my mission to "leave my politics at the door." Is that "Noble Dream" rally possible? I was trained that it was not -- nor is it, as sociologist James Loewen would suggest, a positive value. Students, welcome to life. Did you "check your politics at the door" when you selected Anne Moody for the kids to read? And I've about had it with feigning neutrality when I teach Vietnam, or the Spanish/American War, for that matter. I teach like I was taught, that is, with passion. The very slides I show, the very words I incorporate into my lecture have "opinion," but we don't like to call it that, do we? I refer to it as "interpretation." (and I tell my students when I am presenting my own.) If there was "truth," the kids could buy "the book" and skip my class entirely.

And when the gun-nuts send me off-color e-mails about Hillary Clinton, I simply delete them rather than respond.

Karen Rubin
Florida State University

Windcatcher:

I did not catch that response. That is really disturbing stuff. If you randomly assign students to groups and one of them happens to be a strong Christian or Orthodox Jew or whatever, that is one thing.

But the lady is engaging in the worse stereotyping: Christians are bigots. Which simply ignores huge chunks of history. And I say that as an older Jew who remembers the day when certain types of young people could do a fairly good number on you for being Jewish (I joined the boxing club at school and stopped the nonsense. Guess schools don’t have boxing clubs these days—what a shame.)

Still, this is just flat out bigotry.

McVey

I actually think that the strategy of taking the other sides position and debating is very useful. What are you afraid of?

I think there's a difference between playing 'devil's advocate', and what's being discussed here. It is good to play devil's advocate when sparring off with a person who shares one's viewpoint. Doing so will allow both people to better examine their viewpoint, and--if it is worthy of defense--defend it more effectively.

To effectively play devil's advocate, however, one must be debating someone who shares one's true point of view. In the scenario being discussed here, people are required to argue against their point of view, against someone who is also against their point of view. Not devil's advocacy, and not something I'd condone.

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