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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: November 5, 2002
Latest Update: November 25, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Taking the Time to Hear and Understand

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Lot's happened last week, and it was emotionally devastating. It was hard to read the news and recognize that in some ways we are already at war in Iraq. We bomb Iraqi territory daily. It was hard to watch from the sidelines as we heard rumors flying that our administration (guess that includes all administrators - the rumors didn't specify) debated the cancelling of a teach-in on that war. It hurt to see a well-groomed bright young student challenge the director of the teachin-in panel inappropriately before the guests who had spoken on that panel on the grounds that the apologetic perspective for war on Iraq had not been presented. The panel as announced and advertised, judging by its members, was a left radical panel, strongly committed to peace. That, in and of itself is a political position worthy of a teach-in and desperately needed to supplement the more traditional aggressive position of the US as presented by the corporate media. To ask a question, or to challenge a panel member on an issue is appropriate teachin-in behavior. To claim vaguely that there is some other valid position (the opposition) out there, and that they, the students have been deprived of the opportunity to hear that opposition is insulting to the organizers and the panel. Someone should have taught them not to behave that way.

If you have a problem with the faculty choice of curriculum, there are appropriate ways to address that issue. Ask faculty to support your position to organize a forum for your discussion from the perspective you seek to understand. When the panel was suddenly expanded without explanation I did instruct my students that it was inappropriate behavior to enter into any specific debate on war as opposed to no war, given that we had planned our small demonstration on the radical left position which was what was supposed to have been presented. There was inadequate time provided for students to discuss issues of peace and the cost of war, let alone to include any of several opposing positions. The expansion of the panel prevented meaningful questioning time, and prevented one of the essentials of real learning: the time to mull things over with those who have spoken. We (those in favor of peace) didn't jump up to insist that our time was unfairly taken by some (to us) unknown group that had apparently neither planned for the teach-in, nor supplied any notes of facts that might have helped us later refer to their position. Given that I specifically explained to my students how a tightly focused debate on some issue outside the panel's agenda of the great cost of war to humans, could distort the planners' agenda, I believe that others should have instructed their students to show some respect to the planners agenda also. The aggressive, war-supported position is the majority position in this country at present. How can anyone suggest that its validity claims have not been presented?

TO MY STUDENTS: For the rest of this semester, and for all time, I ask that you be respectful of multiple perspectives of social problem issues. In case no one has heard, war IS a social problem. Respectful of multiple perspectives means that you not disrespect those who express agreement with the opposition or any other perspective, and that you seek illocutionary discourse to try to understand them as persons, as students, if they are, as members of a global society, confused and frightened by its own exploding growth. Do NOT insult guests we have brought to our campus for your edification. I have brought priests who weren't sure how to defend against strong resentments of female genital cutting in Africa. None of you insulted them for their position. All of us listened. And ultimately we began to put up materials on female genital cutting that offered some of the responses they didn't have at that moment, such as the inappropriate distortion of that one claim over such claims as the tribe's inability to feed itself and its young. We didn't manage all that in one teach-in. It took us several weeks and continued communication with the priests, who have become our friends. That is the result illocutionary discourse is meant to produce: respect and dignity in the midst our disagreements.

TO MY COLLEAGUES: Please enforce the respect of multiple perspectives on our campus. This is the 21st Century. If a teach-in claims through the list of its participants, to be left radical, in favor of peace, let it be. That is a valid and real position held by many Americans who are being silenced by rudeness and superficially thought out "patriotism." The academy owes its students a better model than that.

Provide some legitimate means for students who have legitimate interest in social problems to ask supporting faculty to present them. And do NOT permit those students to rudely interrupt faculty and guests who have designed a session of that which interests them and their students. Political and social discourse are the foundation of the academy. Teach your students to respect them, not with tests of "Do you respect every citizen's right to engage in political and social discourse as part of their learning?" but in actual praxis. Give them these opportunities and enforce appropriate behavior. Dewey would have called that learning.

JUST FOR THE RECORD: I believe there is something inherently wrong with the concept of a teach-in on a commuter campus. Most of us are constrained by many conflicting commitments, and we don't have the leisure of public discourse on a campus where we reside with relatively few concerns outside the academic sphere. That doesn't mean we don't have the passion to understand the issues and talk them over in public discourse. It just means that we need to build time for that discussion into the session itself, since so few of us are able to hang around and talk things over afterwards.

And the talking things over I'm talking about is a lot more than the opportunity to ask questions of the speakers. Too much of our activities today are oriented towards dispensing information, without adequate follow-up notes, and with little opportunity to think things over deeply. At the Anti-War Panel, I would have very much appreciated a fact sheet from those who participated. I know they may not have had any to offer. But why couldn't someone like Brandi, who has so much energy, passion, in Derrick Bell's sense, have asked the speaker from Physicians for Social Responsibility to give her the website references on the data he cited. She's doing that now, and we're putting that data up because I couldn't remember the source, becauses some people couldn't be there, and because thousands more will read and become involved when we put it up on our site. That instance stuck in my mind because I cannot repress the horror that there are places here in California where the water has been so polluted by the coprorations who contracted to build our mass destruction weapons, that that water can never be cleaned and will never again be potable for humans. The thought dumbfounds me. This is our water. And this was done for profit???

By leaving us time to express the enormity of our concerns, to mull them over, and to contact these people again, we start the performative acts that may lead to change. There is so much attention given to "teaching," and so little given to the meaningful exchanges that become performative acts of dialog and then change the system that isn't working to protect us and the earth. Our whole semester was devoted to understanding performative acts of illocutionary dialog and how they could help to empower us. But we are not connected enough on this campus to know that about each other and to work toward the development of such academic discourse as Bourdieu insisted we fail to prepare our students for.

Thre was no time for performative acts of dialog with Derrick Bell either. But I know him. I can build the dialog into the site. And that has now begun. Please take the time to work together toward performative acts of education. Who'm I talking to? God, I guess. I have no idea who on this campus I could turn to to help us build enough "teach-ins" that they could become part of performative acts. I have no idea who on this campus cares as passionately as I do about social justice and peace. I know that I was once told by a colleague not to mention the word justice as part of criminal justice. Well, I wasn't silenced. I not only mentioned it, I teach my students that I consider the criminal justice and the legal justice systems racist and sexist. But I am silenced when my department fails to give a damn, or even to listen. And then I am so deeply discouraged.

But Derrick Bell reminds me that I can live a life of meaning and worh even though promotions, commendations, recognition, the support I need are never there. And I agree with Derrick Bell. Sticks and stones do hurt my bones, and my soul. My colleagues looking the other way, refusing or just not bothering, who knows, to acknowledge any of the work of Dear Habermas, and never taking any time to speak to me. Oh, yes. It hurts. But that does not take away the joy of seeing those who once were silenced recognize the power of no longer accepting that silence. I hate the theory questions. But I can't write a whole set in a week, which is the deadline Bill gave me because he just inherited the job from Alan, who never did anything, the implication runs. But Alan was praised by Dean Dorn for running the graduate program so well. So, who's lying, guys? I can say to the world, I hate the comps as they are because it frightens my students, is unclear, and makes them afraid for their own worth. They tell me they can be thrown out of the program if they fail the test twice. I find that wrong and unjust. I guess nobody ever asked me. But it is wrong. And I've been here so long, how come nobody ever asked me, especially given that I have a Ph.D. in Leraning Theory, also known as Education? Particularly in this college, with such varied and conflicted backgrounds, it's our job to teach them theory, and all the other stuff we agree to test on.. If they don't get it, it's our fault. And throwing them out does not absolve us of our duties to say it simply, say it clearly, make it accessible, and provide the practice they need. That's teaching.

And as long as I'm at it, maybe you'd like to consider how it feels to be hired as a statistician and methodologist, only to discover that you wouldn't let me teach it until Herman and Faye left. And then as soon as you could find someone else you took stat away again. Of course, now you're giving it back. After two years, now I get to try to prepare it all over again to fit it in with the reinterpretation of theory, and performative act dialogs and all that stuff that makes it real for our students. And I guess no one will consider what that cost me in energy and thought -- two years with no chance to teach it. It hurts. Now I have to go renew all my old sources. But at least I get to teach it again.

It's wrong you wouldn't let me teach methods. It's wrong you took theory from me, and only let me teach elective courses. It's wrong you keep the "good majors" away from me. It's wrong you wouldn't let me teach theory, methods, and statistics as a core experimentally when I asked to. And your excuse that no single teacher could teach them all because such a bad job had been done with our students in the past. Got any idea how that hurt? But, of course, I wasn't the one who had been teaching them. I was just the one that couldn't teach them on those grounds. Don't bother to tell me there's your version, too. Steve wanted the course, Bobby wanted the course, you have new rules you just made up. It hurt. A lot, that I was kept from the graduate students. And, as Catharine MacKinnon pointed out, that is what it felt like; you never bothered to listen to or process those feelings; they are valid in their own right. Feminist theory, guys.

And I guess this wouldn't have come up except for Thursday. Retiring gave me lots more important things to get on with, like the site that none of you would ever acknowledge. (I mean, like, you PAID someone to make up a sociology site??? They must have been really good. Too bad I was home grown, hmm?) But I had kids I know and care about in my office last Thursday pouncing on Reese cups, and spilling out their fears and frustrations over the comps. Please stop scaring my kids. They're good kids. Have an illocutionary discussion, why don't you, and try to get to know them. Quit asking them to be who they're not, and learn to appreciate who they are. Why didn't any of you think to humanize the process? What makes you think it's OK to treat humans this way? Duncan Kennedy wails about it at Harvard, so it's not just CSUDH that treats its kids like this. And Duncan Kennedy blames the kids for not fighting what he admits is a structurally violent hierarchical system. He's wrong. The kids are in no position to fight it. We are. It's our system! We are making it up! But it's structurally violent to limit your concerns to your own perspective, and to fail to really make an effort to know the Other. Trust me; it's structurally violent what you're doing. And I don't think it's a valid position that you have to be structurally violent just because you failed to plan for a deadline and didn't make the process humane to start with. jeanne