The great comments to my Whirl post moved me to act as witness to the Walt & Mearsh Show when I'd probably otherwise have stayed away, continuing to tread that well-worn path of least resistance, of greatest avoidance, minded to spare myself the futile upset. How very Boycotted British Academic!
Having been detained most of the summer preparing to fight this bonkers boycott, by tracing its gory genealogy, I felt confident that I'd seen it all before and that nothing new could be gained or witnessed.** I knew how it was going to be: depressing, dispiriting and likely severely to exacerbate this already pervasive boycotting effect. And I knew it would be futile because I'd feel voiceless & powerless. And so it was.
But for your sake or thanks to you - BBA Forumniks - I compromised! I still bottled it, big time, for I stayed well clear of my own campus at the appointed hour. Nothing new there then!
I made do with reports from people who did show and, figuring it would be less threatening and unbearable, I took in the W&M show playing on another campus. Someone I encountered in the whirl, who seems to have shown up at several gigs, assured me that there was nothing to distinguish the show I went to from the one I avoided.
I'm glad I bottled it! I don't need to witness campus colleagues revealing themselves, as inevitably as some would, to be in a truly frightening state of moral limbo, blinkered and blind to the obvious bigotry being peddled liberally in Boycotting Britannia. I just couldn't hack witnessing that and feel I've seen more than enough already what with this whole UCU boycott experience - I'd prefer to keep alive the hope/fantasy, faltering as it often is, that their presence isn't too heavy on campus than to risk knowing that indeed they are all over the place. My situation is already virtually untenable as things stand!
I even managed to miss the first of my chosen alternative W&M gigs - my conscious self having recorded the wrong time while my subconscious seems to have been continuing to resist your challenge & counsel! However, with a good deal of luck and quite some ordeal, I managed to catch up and I witnessed one of their campus gigs in the end... What a palaver!
In fact, such was my dedication to this witnessing project, I underwent the ordeal of hearing the exact same preposterous show TWICE. Not out of masochism but compensation: I was so upset by the nature of the debate on campus that I wanted to see the show in what I hoped would be a setting which would compensate & offset the dreadful terms of debate dictated by these 'brave' scholars: outside the university, with an audience of experts. The downside was that this was a more intimate and cloistered setting (in contrast to the campus gig, which was packed, standing room only and not much of that), which brought W&M just that bit too close for comfort! In the event, nothing much was gained: the Q&A was kept rigorously short, a taxi ready & waiting conveniently to curtail the sort of scrutiny and challenge which such a thesis requires if it's to be debated at all. With the show having started late to begin with, it was all over before it had started and thus, W&M wriggled away from anything approximating debate.
I understand something similar occurred at another of their expert gigs (a reduced time having been trailed in advance on the event's advert), with people feeling they didn't get the chance for a proper challenge. In contrast, one can note that at the campus gigs - which could be expected to offer the most sympathetic audience, with a majority of impressionable students well primed for the show, and experts or other persons of stature comparable to the authors more likely to be in the minority - the Q&A part went on for as long as one hour & 10 minutes!
Both the gigs I witnessed closed with the chair, by all appearances all buddy-buddy with W&M, stressing the importance that this debate was actually held, the campus chair emphasizing how crucial it was that it should be conducted in a "civilized and fair-minded fashion" - both of them concluding with completely unfounded self-congratulation as to the debate's all-round success, even highlighting how the event showed the hosting institution in good light. I found myself asking whether I'd attended the same debate for all I heard was a controversial and, in the view of many, an abhorrent, unscholarly & indefensible thesis, with major methodological & other problems, being advanced without the opportunity for its problematic claims to be debated properly.
On campus, the questions were mostly supportive of the authors and they were rewarded with much obsequiousness and fawning. In one case, it was so extreme & exaggerated that the chair joked that W&M's publisher must be in audience. (Actually, the person in question is known to us as an outspoken boycotter - quelle surprise!) I got the sense that many people had stayed away, just as I would have done. And there was so much competition & clamouring to reap the kudos of showing support that perhaps those who wanted to pose challenging questions & actually engage with the substance of the argument (albeit only to demonstrate how there isn't any!) didn't get their chance .
The authors were applauded in the most absurd places, and got a loud 15 second impromptu applause at the campus gig at the end of their presentation, even before the Q&A, as if people just couldn't wait; being crowned, at the end, with a sustained round of applause. The experts gig was more measured and I didn't perceive the end (and only) clapping to have been too enthusiastic (although I was making a point of not clapping myself so I might have been distracted, given the intimate setting, by this pathetic enactment of the only act of resistance I felt was still open to me!).
While a few brave sorts did manage, against all odds, to pose some challenging questions, W&M have become adept by now at appearing to deflect the criticism without really addressing the challenge. Such a debate needs riposte and counter-argument, for the challenger to have the chance to respond to W&M's disgraceful evasions. This would have been provided had the debate taken place in a fairer context. But not in Boycotting Britannia. Instead, people were left to shout, the microphone having been quickly whisked away, only to elicit hissing from the crowd for the impertinence of seeking to debate.
At the expert's talk, one questioner hinted at the real cowardice of these 'brave' authors, asking them whether they'd finally acceded to Professor Alan Dershowitz's invitation to debate. The answer is dumbfounding: we don't debate anyone who wants to discuss antisemitism! So much for taking extra special care, eh? They won't even discuss it!
And yet: one questioner at the campus gig observed how someone had approached him earlier, upon entering the lecture theatre, to ask whether this was where the talk about the Jewish Lobby was taking place. Other questioners were fuming about various things to do with Jews, whether it was about their holding public office (what a cheek, how dare they?!) or about invitations being offered by communal organizations to the occasional member of the government to eat/talk at their annual dinner (who would have imagined such a thing?!). Oh, how quickly and transparently did W&M's much vaunted yet slippery caveats get lost in the 'debate'!
Throughout, I couldn't quite shake off my Dr Watson analogy of the other day and kept asking myself why the two cases were being treated so radically differently. Forget about the freedom and its limits. That's irrelevant to the problem here, such are the depths to which this problem seems to have descended in the present case. It's the application of the freedom, whatever its limits may be, to this case which is itself racist & discriminatory, revealing just how prepped we already seem to have been for this show.
The whole experience left me feeling, as I say, depressed and worried. Foolishly, I checked CiF only to be told there's nothing to worry about - what's the fuss about? Blogging and CiFing... As you can see, I'm making my usual progress with those damned deadlines!
This morning, I awoke to the extended news (Today programme) whose main headlining story entailed discussion of:
Nazi Germany in the 1930s as an example of how people's minds could be poisoned against a community.
These were the words filtering through to me as I emerged from slumber:
What you had in the 1930s was all sorts of popular fictions were spread about the Jewish community that they were responsible for all ills that were occurring. They were made into folk-devils.
We mustn't demonise.
In my state of semi-consciousness, I must have registered the contemporary relevance being drawn over our air-waves from this history and - suspended between this reality I'm experiencing and what passes for fair campus & intellectual debate; between sleep and waking - I managed somehow to incorporate the story into the whole whirl of the W&M Show. Finally, I mistakenly registered, people are coming to understand and see what all the fuss is about!
But that was in my dreams and then I woke up.
~~~~~~
** I don't recommend the link provided but if you're really curious, here's more to witness! It's a long debate in the days when W&M (actually, M in this instance) were still courageous enough to have this debate as a debate, namely on a podium with experts, as defended in my previous post, with others able to contribute the element which has been so sorely missing in the Walt & Mearsh Show which has just ended here. Even in such (now unimaginable) debate settings, it is nauseating to note how the audience still managed to boo & hiss & applaud in the most inappropriate places, apparently impervious to compelling, well-reasoned argument furnished by W&M's competent debaters, preferring to hear whatever message they wanted to hear, however much it had just been thoroughly discredited for all to hear. And this was NYC. I knew it would be worse here. And it was.
Thanks to everyone who shared views on the W&M show with me (especially GG)
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mearsh. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query mearsh. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, 10 November 2007
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
In the Whirl of the Walt & Mearsh Show: Some Dilemmas
Over two weeks have passed since my last post. This just won't do. Not daily, not weekly; nor even bi-weekly! I would have let you know had I known myself - there's no simple explanation.
I've pinned up a big note behind my computer screen, in bold red marker pen, which reads:
Don't blog. Forget the boycott, CiF etc. WORK!!
That's the explanation: I've been desperately trying to mitigate the damage of this summer of boycotting belligerence, scrambling to meet, in the final hour, some pressing publication deadlines which were forced until now to slip behind the boycott in priority. As usual, I imagined I'd meet them more easily and in a shorter time-span than has proven to be the case. I thought it'd be but a brief blogging interlude...
Also, it was obviously an error to think I could have the luxury of being able to ignore all this - the boycott always stood as symbol for something much larger and that something is ever enlarging and the larger it gets, the more distracting it becomes and the more impossible it is to concentrate on my academic writing.
The latest distraction comes by way of the Walt & Mearsheimer show coming to a campus soon near ... ME! (that should be flashing neon, in an academic sense of course!). Coming to my campus, to be precise. The very campus from which I've grown to feel boycotted, the hosting of W&M being just another sign of my hostile & exclusionary working environment.
[apologies for the photo & the scatological expressions which ensue, this is upsetting and the photo cheered me up when I found it, as does the scatology it has inspired. In my defence, please know that you find me a pauper for want of other ways of dealing with this. A feature which makes this whole period we're living through all the more frightening for, at each juncture of speech, my right is withdrawn, whether by way of being branded a lobbyist apologist or dismissed as paranoid or otherwise psychologically-traumatized. And in the end, all I'm left with is sick humour. Muzzlewatch my you know what!]
People, it's really hitting the fan around here, getting flung around far & wide up and down our campuses, and coming no doubt to a campus near you, for these guys are putting themselves about, turning up here & there: two central London campuses, an Oxford college, and on and on. I have too many connections with those I've highlighted than I am comfortable with, both as a staff member & alum. And, to top it all, W&M are even lecturing Whitehall. So much for coursing one's way through the rivulets of power!
The authors have insisted that they stand uncontested on the podium, alone & free to state their incendiary thesis without the possibility of being challenged by an authority able to do so - on a panel with experts in their field, able to demolish their thesis as anyone expert in the field would. Walt justified this condition to the New York Times: "when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you." Good one!
Here's a little thought-experiment: imagine Dr James Watson** had been accorded freedoms of speech comparable to those granted by all and sundry to W&M, in this case, to promulgate an abhorrent thesis making connections between race, genes & intelligence. In fact, Watson was prevented from speaking because of the outrage his thesis provoked but just imagine, for the sake of this analogy, that the freedom of speech which gets W&M invited to all these supposedly prestigious universities were applied equally to Dr Watson. Do you think for one minute that he'd have been given the right to speak, uncontested, without at least someone of like stature & authority on the podium alongside him, able to contest his obnoxious contentions?
It is obvious what would have happened - this just wouldn't have been allowed. He wouldn't have been afforded the freedom to speak, as we know by how events turned out; and he certainly wouldn't have been invited to speak in such a protected, cosseted setting. But in the comparable case of W&M, it's another matter entirely and the onus & burden of resistance & contestation is placed on those harmed by such speech: those who experience this speech as racist, or worry about its obvious incendiary ramifications for a particular group known to experience racism. It's for the victims to speak out & challenge this speech. I'd like to think there'd be widespread audience revulsion against the W&M thesis, or it would be laughed-out, but I've been following this too long to rely on this being the case - the opposite is, sadly, just as plausible. Probably more so, hence the trepidation to turn up.
And perhaps, were I to muster the courage and will to do so, it might well be only to discover that these 'bold & daring' scholars have insisted on not taking any questions from the floor or on only taking questions which have been vetted in advance to ensure that nothing too tricky comes up, bringing to light the obvious bigotry implicated in their arguments. They've made their debating tactics, evasionary as they are, perfectly plain: they insist on speaking uncontested, so this would come as no surprise.
Readers, what should I do? Should I go and voice my protest, in possibly the most stressful context: my own university, my own campus, surrounded by my peers & students? Should I go and risk seeing my colleagues join the throng of fans adulating these ' brave' theorists, some of whom, frightening as this prospect may be, I might hitherto have respected? Should I stick around to hear the audience applaud their 'courageous' thesis and possibly boo & hiss even louder at those like me who object to this toxic posturing? Should I risk doing this even when I know it'll only exacerbate this already potent boycotting effect? Or should I stay away, just as I stayed away all those years from UCU (and the AUT beforehand)?
As I contemplated all this, getting distracted yet further from those damned deadlines, I've been hunting around for inspiration. Obviously, Engage is always a brilliant source (the link is to a compendium of the critiques W&M's book has attracted - as you will see, there's much to wade through, such are the problems with this familiar and now rejuvenated hate-screed). Then I came upon a rather shocking chart, which says it all with a simple juxtaposition of text extracted, on the one hand, from the W&M book and, on the other, with comparable passages from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's International Jew (p.4 of the link).
Please help. The decision is imminent...
~~
** I chose the links on the Watson debacle deliberately: they are all pieces criticizing Watson's views on race & intelligence and arguing he shouldn't be offered the freedom to advance such an incendiary thesis since it risks reigniting racist claims we'd hoped were long-buried. The author of these op-eds is significant: he just so happens to be the very same man who, along with his wife, was the original instigator of the wave of UK boycotts against Israel. The Steven Rose who started it all (yes, it was the Roses, and not - as has been widely claimed - the Palestinian unions!). Oh the irony, the travesty... But what do you expect from someone who, although rightfully indignant against certain forms of racism, dismisses one particular form of racism as 'the cheapest rallying cry of Israel's Zionist apologists'?!
Here are some extracts from the linked comment pieces by Rose, with slight modifications, substituting one racist claim for another: replacing the racist claim about race & intelligence with the racist claim about Jewish world domination. Rose, and apparently the academic consensus on these campuses which invited W&M to speak uncontested, see a problem for racism in one case but seemingly not in the other:
New Statesman
Every time we think we have buried...racist claims about Jewish world domination, some attention-seeker attempts to re-ignite them.
But the scholar’s glamour means that his words, which are without scientific merit, will reignite an otherwise long-buried fight over Jews and power, bring cheer to racists and must be firmly rebutted.
CIF Oct 21st
As for freedom of speech, these freedoms are and must be constrained. We don't have the right to casually cry fire in a crowded theatre, or to use hate speech - at least in Europe, as opposed to the US. If even two of the world's most distinguished academics, speaking with the authority of their academic appointments, are not allowed to get away with such racist assertions, maybe this shameful episode will prove to be a final nail in the coffin of the long and inglorious history of such racist claims.
CIF Oct 24th
I think human rights trump free speech rights... freedom of speech should not be used to abuse and encourage prejudice or violence against minorities for this may damage the human rights of these minorities.
I've pinned up a big note behind my computer screen, in bold red marker pen, which reads:
Don't blog. Forget the boycott, CiF etc. WORK!!
That's the explanation: I've been desperately trying to mitigate the damage of this summer of boycotting belligerence, scrambling to meet, in the final hour, some pressing publication deadlines which were forced until now to slip behind the boycott in priority. As usual, I imagined I'd meet them more easily and in a shorter time-span than has proven to be the case. I thought it'd be but a brief blogging interlude...
Also, it was obviously an error to think I could have the luxury of being able to ignore all this - the boycott always stood as symbol for something much larger and that something is ever enlarging and the larger it gets, the more distracting it becomes and the more impossible it is to concentrate on my academic writing.
The latest distraction comes by way of the Walt & Mearsheimer show coming to a campus soon near ... ME! (that should be flashing neon, in an academic sense of course!). Coming to my campus, to be precise. The very campus from which I've grown to feel boycotted, the hosting of W&M being just another sign of my hostile & exclusionary working environment.[apologies for the photo & the scatological expressions which ensue, this is upsetting and the photo cheered me up when I found it, as does the scatology it has inspired. In my defence, please know that you find me a pauper for want of other ways of dealing with this. A feature which makes this whole period we're living through all the more frightening for, at each juncture of speech, my right is withdrawn, whether by way of being branded a lobbyist apologist or dismissed as paranoid or otherwise psychologically-traumatized. And in the end, all I'm left with is sick humour. Muzzlewatch my you know what!]
People, it's really hitting the fan around here, getting flung around far & wide up and down our campuses, and coming no doubt to a campus near you, for these guys are putting themselves about, turning up here & there: two central London campuses, an Oxford college, and on and on. I have too many connections with those I've highlighted than I am comfortable with, both as a staff member & alum. And, to top it all, W&M are even lecturing Whitehall. So much for coursing one's way through the rivulets of power!
The authors have insisted that they stand uncontested on the podium, alone & free to state their incendiary thesis without the possibility of being challenged by an authority able to do so - on a panel with experts in their field, able to demolish their thesis as anyone expert in the field would. Walt justified this condition to the New York Times: "when you’re promoting a book, you want to present your ideas without appearing with someone who is trying to discredit you." Good one!
Here's a little thought-experiment: imagine Dr James Watson** had been accorded freedoms of speech comparable to those granted by all and sundry to W&M, in this case, to promulgate an abhorrent thesis making connections between race, genes & intelligence. In fact, Watson was prevented from speaking because of the outrage his thesis provoked but just imagine, for the sake of this analogy, that the freedom of speech which gets W&M invited to all these supposedly prestigious universities were applied equally to Dr Watson. Do you think for one minute that he'd have been given the right to speak, uncontested, without at least someone of like stature & authority on the podium alongside him, able to contest his obnoxious contentions?
It is obvious what would have happened - this just wouldn't have been allowed. He wouldn't have been afforded the freedom to speak, as we know by how events turned out; and he certainly wouldn't have been invited to speak in such a protected, cosseted setting. But in the comparable case of W&M, it's another matter entirely and the onus & burden of resistance & contestation is placed on those harmed by such speech: those who experience this speech as racist, or worry about its obvious incendiary ramifications for a particular group known to experience racism. It's for the victims to speak out & challenge this speech. I'd like to think there'd be widespread audience revulsion against the W&M thesis, or it would be laughed-out, but I've been following this too long to rely on this being the case - the opposite is, sadly, just as plausible. Probably more so, hence the trepidation to turn up.
And perhaps, were I to muster the courage and will to do so, it might well be only to discover that these 'bold & daring' scholars have insisted on not taking any questions from the floor or on only taking questions which have been vetted in advance to ensure that nothing too tricky comes up, bringing to light the obvious bigotry implicated in their arguments. They've made their debating tactics, evasionary as they are, perfectly plain: they insist on speaking uncontested, so this would come as no surprise.
Readers, what should I do? Should I go and voice my protest, in possibly the most stressful context: my own university, my own campus, surrounded by my peers & students? Should I go and risk seeing my colleagues join the throng of fans adulating these ' brave' theorists, some of whom, frightening as this prospect may be, I might hitherto have respected? Should I stick around to hear the audience applaud their 'courageous' thesis and possibly boo & hiss even louder at those like me who object to this toxic posturing? Should I risk doing this even when I know it'll only exacerbate this already potent boycotting effect? Or should I stay away, just as I stayed away all those years from UCU (and the AUT beforehand)?
As I contemplated all this, getting distracted yet further from those damned deadlines, I've been hunting around for inspiration. Obviously, Engage is always a brilliant source (the link is to a compendium of the critiques W&M's book has attracted - as you will see, there's much to wade through, such are the problems with this familiar and now rejuvenated hate-screed). Then I came upon a rather shocking chart, which says it all with a simple juxtaposition of text extracted, on the one hand, from the W&M book and, on the other, with comparable passages from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford's International Jew (p.4 of the link).
Please help. The decision is imminent...
~~
** I chose the links on the Watson debacle deliberately: they are all pieces criticizing Watson's views on race & intelligence and arguing he shouldn't be offered the freedom to advance such an incendiary thesis since it risks reigniting racist claims we'd hoped were long-buried. The author of these op-eds is significant: he just so happens to be the very same man who, along with his wife, was the original instigator of the wave of UK boycotts against Israel. The Steven Rose who started it all (yes, it was the Roses, and not - as has been widely claimed - the Palestinian unions!). Oh the irony, the travesty... But what do you expect from someone who, although rightfully indignant against certain forms of racism, dismisses one particular form of racism as 'the cheapest rallying cry of Israel's Zionist apologists'?!
Here are some extracts from the linked comment pieces by Rose, with slight modifications, substituting one racist claim for another: replacing the racist claim about race & intelligence with the racist claim about Jewish world domination. Rose, and apparently the academic consensus on these campuses which invited W&M to speak uncontested, see a problem for racism in one case but seemingly not in the other:
New Statesman
Every time we think we have buried...racist claims about Jewish world domination, some attention-seeker attempts to re-ignite them.
But the scholar’s glamour means that his words, which are without scientific merit, will reignite an otherwise long-buried fight over Jews and power, bring cheer to racists and must be firmly rebutted.
CIF Oct 21st
As for freedom of speech, these freedoms are and must be constrained. We don't have the right to casually cry fire in a crowded theatre, or to use hate speech - at least in Europe, as opposed to the US. If even two of the world's most distinguished academics, speaking with the authority of their academic appointments, are not allowed to get away with such racist assertions, maybe this shameful episode will prove to be a final nail in the coffin of the long and inglorious history of such racist claims.
CIF Oct 24th
I think human rights trump free speech rights... freedom of speech should not be used to abuse and encourage prejudice or violence against minorities for this may damage the human rights of these minorities.
Monday, 26 May 2008
Beyond Words: Post Hydra
BBA has been having a hard time surviving by the swamp since the last post, way back, the upshot of which has been this silence which has prevailed in the ensuing - another spell for which I find myself apologizing to you, yet again... Thanks for your perseverance and understanding in keeping up with BBA through this ordeal, for staying with me in spite of my silence and even growing in number. That must defy some kind of blogging law, surely. Anyway, thank you...
Apparently, such spells have become a regular feature of my job these days - you'd have thought I would have become accustomed by now to the scene around here, to the point that I wouldn't descend into this state time and again. Yet descend I do, each time this beast resurfaces, for I am left incredulous by what I see, unable to make sense of the manifest travesty which is being made of our anti-racism commitments, as I observe those I might once most have expected to understand what's required to promote equality, in fact, massively falling foul of our anti-racism laws, and willingly, knowingly & obviously so - indeed, in some cases, wearing this breach as some kind of preposterous and deeply nauseating badge of honour!
From today's warped perspective, it's an honour not merely incontestably to reveal, beyond all doubt, how much dereliction of duty there is about here amongst critical actors in the fight against racism - our unions and our academics who ought to be showing the way in how the duty to promote equality is to be discharged. It's an honour flagrantly to flout laws aimed at achieving greater social equality and eliminating discrimination in society. It's an honour to expend precious resources and divert the whole academic corpus, away from the pressing core issues we face today, towards instigating, year upon year, the absolute antithesis of that to which this duty is meant to conduce.
I hope it's obvious wherein lies the cause for this silence even if it's presently apparently still too challenging & debilitating for more direct expression, such that, instead, in the interim, this blog has had to speak louder through silence, beyond words...
Just like Hercules, it took some friends to get there in the end, bringing fire to the labour. Here, virtually and anonymously, for this blog has attracted others to come on here to proffer an explanation or at least a clue for this silence, by giving testament when I have been left speechless all this time, flailing about close to the edge, having ventured too near the swamp and the horrors it conceals, then finding myself shocked & terrorized into silence by what I have seen, and by the stalker-bullying ways of this lot, lost in so many senses, not least, lost for a way to describe what the scene over here has been looking like since I was last in touch.
~~~~~~~
This clue can be found in some comments which have been left to my last post by this blog's erstwhile whistleblowers who heroically come on here to perform the necessary task of shedding some light on what has been going on behind closed academic doors around here, when I've manifestly been in no position to do so. If this blog does nothing else, at least that. Thank you!
A word of explanation about the comments: they are extracts from the discussion list hosted by UCU supposedly for its activists to further core union aims & objectives. As you'll see, in fact, what the list confirms and enacts is the exact opposite: a breach of the same. Readers may remember this list under the label it goes by on this blog and elsewhere: the Bigot's Playground. I recognize the text reproduced in these comments as I have had the great misfortune of having had to read these messages, and many others like them, in more or less real time, as they were sent, for I am registered as a subscriber to this list and now no longer have the luxury but to torture myself with it regularly, given developments (masochistically, I fear, for this act continues to be put to little tangible effect to date, as you may well imagine given my silence even on here - well, no effect beyond inducing and worsening this state of terror all this seems to put me in!).
For those with the incredible luck not to be in this 'privileged' position, I thought an explanation might be needed to clarify what is catalogued in these comments: the poster or posters who sent these messages (as 'anonymous') must either be UCU members themselves or people to whom list messages have been leaked (for, yes, even though it's a list whose secrecy is being policed to near-Stalinist extremes (about which, more in a forthcoming post), its contents are apparently all the while being liberally leaked, to the point of making this secrecy a frightening sham whose only objective can be to protect the racists!). The name which appears at the bottom of most of the comments on the hydra thread is the name of the UCU member who originally sent out the message in question to some 700-odd sorry subscribers to that list. Frighteningly, many of the original authors of these messages work as academics here in Boycotting Britannia, would you believe, a few even in top posts at well-regarded universities...
~~~~~~~
In case the language I have been using of late to describe this beast of a boycott strikes some as objectionable, just check out those comments. This is nothing if not terrifying and monstrous, and the comments give the measure of how toxic and poisonous a working environment I am having to face here as BBA in result. Given the nature of the 'argument' on display in these comments, it seems fitting that all this has been, as it were, dumped following the hydra post where I first called upon the myth to capture the scenario unfolding over here.
Since my last blog post, I've been trying to find what it takes to earn some distance from what I observe, sufficiently to react in time to set the context. It would probably have been clearer had our whistleblowers had a more up-to-date post on which to dump this stuff, giving an account of what's been going on in and around the bigot's playground of late, but that post's even more overdue than this one and is, I promise, imminently forthcoming. It's even worse, if you can believe, than that which can be seen through the window on all of this which the hydra comments furnish. Truly frightening happenings around here, over by the swamp...
It was Zkharya who first got me worrying about applying the myth to this context, in a comment over at Engage (a much belated thanks, as ever, for the great honour of the link...). Thinking through one of Zkharya's objections lead me to the realization that I was drawn to use the language of this myth not particularly because of our monster itself, although clearly the obvious parallels in its properties and nature first got me thinking along these lines: the fact that the monster keeps reappearing when it ought to have been put to rest long ago, many, MANY times over; its poisonous & nefarious effects on our campuses, our 'civil' society debates and our principles of equality and non-discrimination - all of which should have functioned by now to rid us of this particular beast when, in truth, the very opposite has transpired, allowing it to grow into such a monster as to defy all that which should so obviously have defeated it; and leaving BBA thereby more terrorized in the experience...
But what gave the myth its salience at the time lies more in the character of Hercules, the labour and not particularly the monster, as a way of representing my feelings about the nature of the role I seem to have landed myself in, merely by dint of having chosen to work in this profession, innocent (or, more accurately, in denial) of the fact that this would entail working in an environment where such beasts would be allowed to keep spewing out this sort of venom, for this long, with this frequency, this ferocity. It was the Herculean task I felt to be required of me in such circumstances which made it have resonance. So Herculean, in fact, that in the ensuing I felt defeatist again, without what it takes to survive in such an environment; and thus, silence once again took over.
My point was not particularly that the boycotters are beastly, although they clearly are, as the extracts which have been attached to the hydra post patently attest. The point, rather, was more to highlight the fight which is required of me, one I would need to feel like Hercules to fight. And since I am not Hercules, what did I do? Yes, BBA, through and through...
I'll even confess, just so that you get a fuller picture, pathetic as it is, that I had qualms about the naming & shaming I was acquiescing in by leaving the comments unmoderated and I even investigated how I might edit some of these hydra messages (there's no way which I discovered...). As you know, even if I try to conjure up an image of a monster in growing into this role I never conceived of having to take on, I have, in fact, been annoyingly decent & civil to these boycotter types: I've not named them or even reproduced their toxic filth on here but resorted, in my meekness, merely to reproducing the objection of anti-boycotters to the same. Oh so Herculean! So if I was bigging anyone up, I was in fact desperately trying to big myself up! And I apparently failed abysmally as things seem to have panned out...
~~~~~~~
Another poster on that Engage thread, YbA, suggests that perhaps a later labour in the myth would be suitable to describe the scene around here:
the Augean Stables (Herakles' 5th Labour) - the anti-boycotters need to divert the rivers of anti-racism and commonsense to wash away the filth
Which made me think of this site, of course, whose title is inspired by the 5th Labour but whose banner is illustrated with a picture of our labour of the swamps (I guess not too many paintings can exist of the 5th Labour for obvious reasons!).
YbA does well to bring up the image of large amounts of dung in describing the problem on our campuses these days - I used scatological references myself at the time the Walt & Mearsh show was playing on my campus, largely to let off steam during a rather nauseating moment which came to pass over here by the swamp. And it's dung - truck loads of it - which is poisoning debates amongst activists in my union and bringing my profession into disrepute.
What, this is solidarity?!
~~~~~~~
I think perhaps I might just possibly have worked myself to a position of greater robustness at present so, tentatively, I hereby pledge to blog more regularly. Thanks for all the links and the appreciation you've shown this blog. I will try to make your clicks more worthwhile from henceforth...
Let's just hope this spirit & pledge survive our imminent UCU Congress and that this swamp of swamps doesn't cause me to retreat into silence anew...
Apparently, such spells have become a regular feature of my job these days - you'd have thought I would have become accustomed by now to the scene around here, to the point that I wouldn't descend into this state time and again. Yet descend I do, each time this beast resurfaces, for I am left incredulous by what I see, unable to make sense of the manifest travesty which is being made of our anti-racism commitments, as I observe those I might once most have expected to understand what's required to promote equality, in fact, massively falling foul of our anti-racism laws, and willingly, knowingly & obviously so - indeed, in some cases, wearing this breach as some kind of preposterous and deeply nauseating badge of honour!
From today's warped perspective, it's an honour not merely incontestably to reveal, beyond all doubt, how much dereliction of duty there is about here amongst critical actors in the fight against racism - our unions and our academics who ought to be showing the way in how the duty to promote equality is to be discharged. It's an honour flagrantly to flout laws aimed at achieving greater social equality and eliminating discrimination in society. It's an honour to expend precious resources and divert the whole academic corpus, away from the pressing core issues we face today, towards instigating, year upon year, the absolute antithesis of that to which this duty is meant to conduce.
I hope it's obvious wherein lies the cause for this silence even if it's presently apparently still too challenging & debilitating for more direct expression, such that, instead, in the interim, this blog has had to speak louder through silence, beyond words...
Just like Hercules, it took some friends to get there in the end, bringing fire to the labour. Here, virtually and anonymously, for this blog has attracted others to come on here to proffer an explanation or at least a clue for this silence, by giving testament when I have been left speechless all this time, flailing about close to the edge, having ventured too near the swamp and the horrors it conceals, then finding myself shocked & terrorized into silence by what I have seen, and by the stalker-bullying ways of this lot, lost in so many senses, not least, lost for a way to describe what the scene over here has been looking like since I was last in touch.
~~~~~~~
This clue can be found in some comments which have been left to my last post by this blog's erstwhile whistleblowers who heroically come on here to perform the necessary task of shedding some light on what has been going on behind closed academic doors around here, when I've manifestly been in no position to do so. If this blog does nothing else, at least that. Thank you!
A word of explanation about the comments: they are extracts from the discussion list hosted by UCU supposedly for its activists to further core union aims & objectives. As you'll see, in fact, what the list confirms and enacts is the exact opposite: a breach of the same. Readers may remember this list under the label it goes by on this blog and elsewhere: the Bigot's Playground. I recognize the text reproduced in these comments as I have had the great misfortune of having had to read these messages, and many others like them, in more or less real time, as they were sent, for I am registered as a subscriber to this list and now no longer have the luxury but to torture myself with it regularly, given developments (masochistically, I fear, for this act continues to be put to little tangible effect to date, as you may well imagine given my silence even on here - well, no effect beyond inducing and worsening this state of terror all this seems to put me in!).
For those with the incredible luck not to be in this 'privileged' position, I thought an explanation might be needed to clarify what is catalogued in these comments: the poster or posters who sent these messages (as 'anonymous') must either be UCU members themselves or people to whom list messages have been leaked (for, yes, even though it's a list whose secrecy is being policed to near-Stalinist extremes (about which, more in a forthcoming post), its contents are apparently all the while being liberally leaked, to the point of making this secrecy a frightening sham whose only objective can be to protect the racists!). The name which appears at the bottom of most of the comments on the hydra thread is the name of the UCU member who originally sent out the message in question to some 700-odd sorry subscribers to that list. Frighteningly, many of the original authors of these messages work as academics here in Boycotting Britannia, would you believe, a few even in top posts at well-regarded universities...
~~~~~~~
In case the language I have been using of late to describe this beast of a boycott strikes some as objectionable, just check out those comments. This is nothing if not terrifying and monstrous, and the comments give the measure of how toxic and poisonous a working environment I am having to face here as BBA in result. Given the nature of the 'argument' on display in these comments, it seems fitting that all this has been, as it were, dumped following the hydra post where I first called upon the myth to capture the scenario unfolding over here.
Since my last blog post, I've been trying to find what it takes to earn some distance from what I observe, sufficiently to react in time to set the context. It would probably have been clearer had our whistleblowers had a more up-to-date post on which to dump this stuff, giving an account of what's been going on in and around the bigot's playground of late, but that post's even more overdue than this one and is, I promise, imminently forthcoming. It's even worse, if you can believe, than that which can be seen through the window on all of this which the hydra comments furnish. Truly frightening happenings around here, over by the swamp...
It was Zkharya who first got me worrying about applying the myth to this context, in a comment over at Engage (a much belated thanks, as ever, for the great honour of the link...). Thinking through one of Zkharya's objections lead me to the realization that I was drawn to use the language of this myth not particularly because of our monster itself, although clearly the obvious parallels in its properties and nature first got me thinking along these lines: the fact that the monster keeps reappearing when it ought to have been put to rest long ago, many, MANY times over; its poisonous & nefarious effects on our campuses, our 'civil' society debates and our principles of equality and non-discrimination - all of which should have functioned by now to rid us of this particular beast when, in truth, the very opposite has transpired, allowing it to grow into such a monster as to defy all that which should so obviously have defeated it; and leaving BBA thereby more terrorized in the experience...
But what gave the myth its salience at the time lies more in the character of Hercules, the labour and not particularly the monster, as a way of representing my feelings about the nature of the role I seem to have landed myself in, merely by dint of having chosen to work in this profession, innocent (or, more accurately, in denial) of the fact that this would entail working in an environment where such beasts would be allowed to keep spewing out this sort of venom, for this long, with this frequency, this ferocity. It was the Herculean task I felt to be required of me in such circumstances which made it have resonance. So Herculean, in fact, that in the ensuing I felt defeatist again, without what it takes to survive in such an environment; and thus, silence once again took over.
My point was not particularly that the boycotters are beastly, although they clearly are, as the extracts which have been attached to the hydra post patently attest. The point, rather, was more to highlight the fight which is required of me, one I would need to feel like Hercules to fight. And since I am not Hercules, what did I do? Yes, BBA, through and through...
I'll even confess, just so that you get a fuller picture, pathetic as it is, that I had qualms about the naming & shaming I was acquiescing in by leaving the comments unmoderated and I even investigated how I might edit some of these hydra messages (there's no way which I discovered...). As you know, even if I try to conjure up an image of a monster in growing into this role I never conceived of having to take on, I have, in fact, been annoyingly decent & civil to these boycotter types: I've not named them or even reproduced their toxic filth on here but resorted, in my meekness, merely to reproducing the objection of anti-boycotters to the same. Oh so Herculean! So if I was bigging anyone up, I was in fact desperately trying to big myself up! And I apparently failed abysmally as things seem to have panned out...
~~~~~~~
Another poster on that Engage thread, YbA, suggests that perhaps a later labour in the myth would be suitable to describe the scene around here:
the Augean Stables (Herakles' 5th Labour) - the anti-boycotters need to divert the rivers of anti-racism and commonsense to wash away the filth
Which made me think of this site, of course, whose title is inspired by the 5th Labour but whose banner is illustrated with a picture of our labour of the swamps (I guess not too many paintings can exist of the 5th Labour for obvious reasons!).
YbA does well to bring up the image of large amounts of dung in describing the problem on our campuses these days - I used scatological references myself at the time the Walt & Mearsh show was playing on my campus, largely to let off steam during a rather nauseating moment which came to pass over here by the swamp. And it's dung - truck loads of it - which is poisoning debates amongst activists in my union and bringing my profession into disrepute.
What, this is solidarity?!
~~~~~~~
I think perhaps I might just possibly have worked myself to a position of greater robustness at present so, tentatively, I hereby pledge to blog more regularly. Thanks for all the links and the appreciation you've shown this blog. I will try to make your clicks more worthwhile from henceforth...
Let's just hope this spirit & pledge survive our imminent UCU Congress and that this swamp of swamps doesn't cause me to retreat into silence anew...
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