Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

People in Cambridge, Massachusetts often complain about the apparent lack of intellectual and academic achievement displayed by our top politicians.  A Harvard PhD in an appropriate field ought to make one more qualified for any job.  Why then do Americans elect to high office people who sound as though they were strangers to the world of the university?

A glimmer of an explanation emerged when a friend told me about the loud argument she’d had with her father, a humanities professor at a university here in Boston.  Professor X, an immigrant from Europe, stated that Osama bin Laden was one of his heroes because he was a champion of the working man.  Daughter X asked for some clarification as to how a Saudi who had inherited $250+ million from his daddy could be said to represent the interests of the average worker.  Professor X noted that Americans deserved to be attacked on September 11th because the U.S. exploited workers in poor countries and that Osama represented those workers.  Even those who believe that Professor X is correct will admit that his opinions are out of sync with those of the average American voter.

How about the students?  An increasing number of graduate students, especially in technical and scientific departments, are foreigners.  A kid who grows up in a Muslim country where the mood is relentlessly anti-American can’t be expected to abandon his antipathy to the American government and the American lifestyle merely because he is so excited to be studying here at U.S. government expense.  If you wanted to attend an anti-Israel rally 10 years ago the local university would have been the most likely place to visit.  Those rallies turned into anti-Jewish events 5 years ago and are today places to denounce the current U.S. government and the millions of Americans who voted for it.

For better or worse American universities have become our main local venues for displays of anti-American feeling.  Perhaps this is one reason that our most successful politicians don’t sound as though they’ve spent too much time on campus.

[I'm off to Oaxaca, Mexico now and will be there on November 2 during what, no matter who wins, promises to be something of a national tragedy.  I managed to be away for all of September 2001 in Nova Scotia and am beginning to feel lucky to have escaped our nation's most painful moments.]

At a dinner party last night hosted by an artist her daughters shared tales of the severity of their upbringing.  No sugared cereal.  No gun toys.  No coloring books because they stifle creativity; kids should draw freehand.  It was just like our family, I responded!  We were always envious of our cousins who got to eat Fruit Loops and enjoyed coloring books to their hearts’ content.

How did the experiment work out in our family?  My cousin Douglas, raised on a steady diet of coloring books, got his first full-time job at Walt Disney as a character animator.  His credits include Scar in the Lion King, the Hunchback in Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc.  I, by contrast, used the superior drawing skills and creativity acquired in a coloring book-free childhood to become… a computer programmer.

[Where is Doug now you might ask?  He would be working at Disney still if the executives had not looted $2 billion from the company into their personal checking accounts when the economy was booming.  As soon as the economy stopped booming, however, the executives were shocked--shocked!--to discover how depleted the corporate checking account was.  So they said "We can't afford to do animation in Los Angeles anymore" and shut down the studio founded by Walt Disney himself in 1923.  Doug moved up north to Pixar.]