Radicals Speak Out At Columbia 'Teach-In' (Sedition Alert)

Newsday ^ | March 27, 2003 | Ron Howell

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By Ron Howell
Staff Writer

March 27, 2003, 7:29 PM EST

At an anti-war "teach-in" this week, a Columbia University professor called for the defeat of American forces in Iraq and said he would like to see "a million Mogadishus" -- a reference to the Somali city where American soldiers were ambushed, with 18 killed, in 1993.

"The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."

The crowd was largely silent at the remark. They loudly applauded De Genova later when he said, "If we really believe that this war is criminal ... then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine."

At least two of the speakers who followed De Genova distanced themselves from his comments. One of them was teach-in organizer Eric Foner, a history professor, who disagreed with De Genova's assertion that Americans who called themselves "patriots" also were white supremacists.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Foner went further in his criticism, calling De Genova's statements "idiotic."

"I thought that was completely uncalled for," Foner said, referring to De Genova's allusion to the Mogadishu ambush and firefight, portrayed in the film "Black Hawk Down" and known for the graphic image of a slain American soldier being dragged through the streets. "We do not desire the deaths of American soldiers."

Foner said that because of the university's tradition of freedom of speech, it was unlikely De Genova would suffer professionally in any way because of what he said.

"A person's politics have no impact on their employment status here, whether they are promoted, whether they are fired or whether they get tenure," Foner said.

Foner said he did not know whether De Genova had tenure. De Genova was not available Thursday for an interview.

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De Genova's email address: npd18@columbia.edu

[only1percent]

America-hating radicals in academia do more harm to the "peace" movement than they do to anything, or anyone else. Kind of like the blood-spattering, traffic-blocking protesters.

"I support the troops, bring them home safe and sound" is a seductive slogan to someone who doesn't know the facts -- it puts us in a "yes, but," mode, which is always challenging.

"I want to see Americans slaughtered," reveals the true face of the movement, more persuasively than we ever could.

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More about De Genova:

Nicholas De Genova’s doctoral dissertation, entitled Working the Boundaries, Making the Difference: Race and Space in Mexican Chicago, explores socio-cultural processes implicated in the mutually constitutive productions of racialized difference and urban space in the experiences of Mexican migrant factory workers in Chicago. De Genova’s research posits a Mexican Chicago as a standpoint of critique from which to interrogate the U.S. nation-state, political economy, racialized citizenship, and immigration law. His article “Race, Space, and the Re-invention of Latin America in Mexican Chicago” is forthcoming in Latin American Perspectives (1998), and a photo essay entitled “The Junkyard of Futures Past” will appear in Anthropology and Humanism (December 1997). De Genova has previously published another photo essay called “Split-Level Bedlam: Chicago at the End of the Twentieth Century” in Public Culture (Fall 1996). He has also published on the politics of rap music and popular cultural criticism in Transition (Fall 1995), and his essay “Gangster Rap and Nihilism in Black America: Some Questions of Life and Death” appeared in Social Text (Fall 1995).

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More about De Genova:

An article from Campus Watch in which he is quoted as saying, "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. The state of Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust."

[EdReform]

BTTT

[vbmoneyspender]

"A person's politics have no impact on their employment status here, whether they are promoted, whether they are fired or whether they get tenure," Foner said.

Sure.

[thetruckster]

"The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night. "I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus."


A**h*le. Mogadishu him.

[Dont Mention the War]

DUPLICATE POST. Please let's keep this unified; getting the word out about scum like this is too important, and we shouldn't be disorganized.