Nate Knows Nada

This exhibit at MIT is fascinating.  Furniture built with books.

I’ve never been too fond of the various models of American diversity
that float aorund out there.  The “melting pot” metaphor reduces
too much, homogenizing all things, in some sense.  The “tossed
salad” metaphor doesn’t really work either, as it means that the
separate elements retain their separate natures, not being changed in
the process of encountering one another.

This article from Thursday’s paper exemplifies my new idea for an American national blending metaphor — turkey with curry.

Thanksgiving, which began as a party for immigrants, remains the most
accessible American holiday for many newcomers. It requires no specific
religious or political allegiance. Even if an immigrant is from a
culture where whole roast turkey is never on the menu - and that is
nearly everywhere except North America - most are willing to give it a
try.

Everybody’s got a common element: the turkey.  And everyone does
is somewhat differently, putting their own spin on the common part:
Mexican-descent Americans simmering the bird in garlic and onions
before baking, Indians using curry, and Arabs “bathing it in lemon and
olive oil and stuffing it with rice, beef and pine nuts.”

“Turkey has become so iconic to our mythic heritage that by cooking
that turkey, even if you don’t like it, you are part of something
bigger,” said Lucy Long, a professor of popular culture at Bowling
Green State University and the author of “Culinary Tourism” (University
Press of Kentucky, 2003). “You are symbolically showing unity.”

Of
course that translates into a nation of cross-cultural Thanksgivings,
where sticky rice stuffing edges out corn bread, and curry fights with
gravy for dominance on overloaded plates.

Fernando Rojas, an
immigration lawyer in Miami, came to the United States from Colombia
with his family when he was a boy. His wife, Jeanette Martinez, is
Puerto Rican. They will share their Thanksgiving meal with his Cuban
and Colombian godparents. The critical mass of Latin cultures means a
spread that could put Manhattan’s best fusion chefs to shame: roast
turkey rubbed with garlicky adobo sauce, served alongside plantains,
roast pork and platters of black beans and rice.

That’s more American than melting pots or tossed salads.

I don’t normally find Tom Friedman’s column in the Times worth reading.  But today’s bears examination.

But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at
a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can
enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. Yes, I
want to be Tom DeLay. I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel
in solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are
dying for….

If I can’t be The Man, then I at least want to be the owner of a
Hummer - with American flag decals all over the back bumper, because
Hummer owners are, on average, a little more patriotic than you and me.

Yes, I want to drive the mother of all gas-guzzlers that gets so
little mileage you have to drive from gas station to gas station. Yes,
I want to drive my Hummer and never have to think that by consuming so
much oil, I am making transfer payments to the worst Arab regimes that
transfer money to Islamic charities that transfer money to madrassas
that teach children intolerance, antipluralism and how to hate the
infidels.

And when one day one of those madrassa graduates goes
off and joins the jihad in Falluja and kills my neighbor’s son, who is
in the U.S. Army Rangers, I want to drive to his funeral in my Hummer.
Yes, I want to curse his killers in front of his mother and wail aloud,
“If there was only something I could do …” And then I want to drive
home in my Hummer, stopping at two gas stations along the way.

If I can’t be any of these, then I want to be just a simple blue-state
red-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank
God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the
public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to
voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to
spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to
thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways
we really don’t deserve them.

Noted on the website of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops this morning.

Note how the second word of the title is spelled.  I believe they
meant “Noting.”  Otherwise, this looks pretty unfortunate.

Worth Nothing in December

Prevention Messages Increasingly Critical This World AIDS Day

With African Americans and Hispanics now accounting for 70 percent of
new HIV infections each year, pastors and parish coordinators across
the country are preparing to seize the opportunity on World AIDS Day
“to incorporate prevention messages into their homilies. Families and
communities will become aware of the pandemic from a Catholic
perspective, which has its foundation in the inherent dignity of every
human person,” says Ronaldo Cruz, executive director, USCCB Secretariat
for Hispanic Catholics. …

A week ago, the Times had an article about Republicans in academia. 
Or, rather, why they are scarce.  I submitted a manuscript reply
but they did not want to use it.  So I publish it here.

Timeless values, not
politics, lie at the heart of academia

            What role
should conservative or liberal politics play in the life of a university
today?  According to The Times,
two studies of campus politics seem to indicate that “liberals� are winning the
battle with “conservatives”to control curricula and admissible
viewpoints.  Such a conclusion seems to
oversimplify and to miss the point besides.

            Like all
academics and teachers, I have my own biases on matters of politics and
society.  As a political scientist, I
must deal directly with matters where there are “liberal” and “conservative”
(and other) viewpoints.  I cannot avoid
or deny their existence, or I would be remiss in my duty to educate.  Of course, I do my best to avoid explicit
statement of my views on particular issues. 
In working with my students, however, getting to know them, teaching and
learning from them, I’m sure they discern some of my political opinions.

            Such
discernment on their part hardly matters. 
Over and over, I emphasize in word and deed that I do not care in the
least whether my students share my biases or opinions.  My task is to help my students learn to
write, to think critically, and how to learn. 
I often tell them, “I’m sympathetic to your opinion, but your logic is
flawed and your argument is cluttered, and so your opinion holds no weight.”

I have studied and taught at both
UC Berkeley and at Harvard University. 
I have had extensive contact with hundreds of students, in discussion
sections, over meals, and one-on-one. 
They often have a multitude of ideas, opinions, and values.  But they have not yet learned how to
evaluate, criticize, or test those. 
It’s true that most of my students seem to be politically moderate or
liberal.  For this reason, I often
treasure the insights of my “conservative” students, because they help me to
teach the value of questioning everything, and they challenge me to find new
ways to challenge them and criticize their thinking process.

The Times quotes the current
editor of the Berkeley Republican newspaper complain that she did not want to
have another class about “victims of American oppression.”?  I’d argue that she needs such classes to
learn that America has often done the wrong thing, just as my “liberals” need
to learn when America has done the right thing.  Moreover, I had a previous editor of the California Patriot
admit to me that most of her political science classes endeavored to challenge
her to think, rather than serving as left-wing agitprop.  (She also noted that factions within the
campus Republican clubs suffered some of the same problems of knee-jerk
ideology that the current California Patriot editor attributes to campus “liberals.”)  In brief, I understand my
job to be a devil’s advocate for each of my students, no matter what they or I
think.  All the good teachers at these
universities — and there are many at both — attempt to do the same.

Most social science research
indicates that people grow more “liberal� with more education, as they learn to
question strenuously the status quo, received values and ideas, and extreme
value systems.  For most people, this
process leads them to become more liberal; for others, this leads to
conservatism; in both cases, we educators hope it leads to better thinking.

For conservatives who
argue for
more representation of their viewpoints in academia, the contradiction
proves
almost humorous, as conservatives generally would support no other such
form of “representation,” especially if it were based on race,
religion, gender, or
what have you.  It seems to me less
likely that conservative scholars face explicit rejection in hiring and
promotion than that another explanation is at work.

In my own research, I focus most on
questions of political philosophy, religion, and international politics.  Conservative political philosophers tend to
focus on the works of the Western canon or on textual translations.  In international politics, more conservative
scholars focus on matters of war and national security strategy.  A department may only be able to hire five
or six political philosophers or international relations scholars.  If it has a couple of Plato or Aristotle
scholars or a couple of war and conflict scholars, it will not hire more of
them.  This occurs not because Machiavelli
or military studies are not important, but because there is a need for scholars
to study contemporary democratic theory, the politics of international
economics, and a whole host of other phenomena.  More than political diversity, most scholarly communities value
methodological and topical diversity. 
If conservative scholars concentrate in method and subject (and it seems
that they often do), while politically moderate and liberal scholars broaden
themselves on these criteria, it should not surprise us that there are a larger
number of  “liberal”? scholars at work.

To criticize, to question, to
evaluate, to understand, and to explain. 
Political opinions come and go, but these values provide surety in a
changing world. These are the values that Western universities have pursued for
over a thousand years.  Focusing on
these value, not on politics, are what will ensure we can educate for a
thousand more.

Since I teach undergrads, I get a lot of excuses.  But they’re
usually pretty lame.  On days when papers are due, computers have
serious problems three hours before the deadline, printers go on the
fritz, roommates have emotional crises that must be tended to, and so
forth.

They’d be less insulting if there were more believable.  But
they’re usually pretty unoriginal, and the same “problems” come up all
the time, and they also seem much more common than I have ever noticed
otherwise.

I try to tell them that I’m pretty good at sniffing out the relative
veracity of stuff like this — it’s my business after all.  But
that rarely seems to settle into heads, it seems.

Got it at 9 am this morning.  Fantastic.

The album-ender.  Prayer.  It’s no wonder that I return to them for advice on living, listening, and God.

Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don’t make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will

What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

Lyrics: Bono & The Edge

From Rolling Stone’s review of the album:

Halfway through the excellent new U2 album, Bono announces, “I like
the sound of my own voice.” Well-said, lad; well-said. Ever since
U2 started making noise in Dublin several hundred bloody Sundays
ago, Bono has grooved to the sound of his own gargantuan rockness.
Ego, shmego — this is one rock-star madman who should never scale
down his epic ambitions. As the old Zen proverb goes, you will find
no reasonable men on the tops of great mountains, and U2’s
brilliance is their refusal to be reasonable. U2 were a drag in the
1990s, when they were trying to be cool, ironic hipsters. Feh!
Nobody wants a skinny Santa, and for damn sure nobody wants a
hipster Bono. We want him over the top, playing with unforgettable
fire. We want him to sing in Latin or feed the world or play Jesus
to the lepers in his head. We want him to be Bono. Nobody else is
even remotely qualified.

U2 bring that old-school, wide-awake fervor to How to
Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The last time we heard from them,
All That You Can’t Leave Behind, U2 were auditioning for
the job of the World’s Biggest Rock & Roll Band. They trimmed
the Euro-techno pomp, sped up the tempos and let the Edge define
the songs with his revitalized guitar. Well, they got the job.

On Atomic Bomb, they’re not auditioning anymore. This
is grandiose music from grandiose men, sweatlessly confident in the
execution of their duties. Hardly any of the eleven songs break the
five-minute mark or stray from the punchy formula of All That
You Can’t Leave Behind. They’ve gotten over their midcareer
anxiety about whether they’re cool enough. Now, they just hand it
to the Edge and let it rip.

During the course of Atomic Bomb, you will be urged to
ponder death (”Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”), birth
(”Original of the Species”), God (”Yahweh”), love (”A Man and a
Woman”), war (”Love and Peace or Else”) and peace (”City of
Blinding Lights”), which barely gives you time to ponder whether
the bassist has been listening to Interpol. “Vertigo” sets the
pace, a thirty-second ad jingle blown up to three great minutes,
with a riff nicked from Sonic Youth’s “Dirty Boots.” “City of
Blinding Lights” begins with a long Edge guitar intro, building
into a bittersweet lament. “Yahweh” continues a U2 tradition, the
album-closing chitchat with the Lord. It’s too long and too slow,
but that’s part of the tradition

…It’s a reminder that what makes U2 so big
isn’t really their clever ideas, or even their intelligence — it’s
the warmth that all too few rock stars have any idea how to turn
into music.

Perfectly exemplified here:

I
was walking across a bridge one day, and I came across
a man standing on the rail, about to jump. I said ‘Stop!
don’t do it!’

‘Why
not?’ he said.

I
said, ‘Well, there’s so much to live for!’

He said, ‘Like what?’

I said, ‘Well… are you religious or atheist?’

He
said, ‘I am quite religious.’

I said, ‘Me too! Are you a Christian?’

He said, ‘I am.’

I said, ‘Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?’

He said, ‘Protestant.’

I said, ‘Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?’

He said, ‘Baptist!’

I
said, ‘What a happy coincidence. So am I. Are you Baptist Church
of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?’

He said, ‘Baptist Church of God!’

I
said, ‘Amen!
Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist
Church of God?’

He said, ‘Reformed Baptist Church of God!’

I
said, ‘Amen and Amen! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation
of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?’

He said, ‘Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation
of 1915!’

I
said, ‘Die, Godless heretic!’ and pushed him off the rail.