Last week we spoke about the US Army innovatively using the skills of anthropologists to tease out the cultural lines of force in Afghanistan and Iraq, the better to clap a stopper over the violence there, saving lives, restoring normality and hastening the return of our troops. We spoke a bit as well about those stateside professors who thought all these things were ignoble goals that oughtn’t be supported. That ought, in fact, be opposed.
Add this then to the George Mason University list of approved reasons why anthropologists should not only not volunteer to help stop the bloodshed, but prevent others from doing so: It’s fracking up their interviews. In Mexico.
Even after full disclosure of my university employment, publications and current research design, I found myself blocked out of some potentially useful interviews. Headlines like “Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones” (front page, Oct. 5) will make future research all the more difficult.
They really ought to put some windows in those ivory towers.
Yes, lex, windows indeed. And make the smug, willfully blinded academics look outside of their little world, too.
How can so many of today’s academics not want to learn something and then share it?
Marianne Matthews
It is closeted insanity. Why academics wouldn’t want to help those suffering is simply beyond me.
I guess the reason is something I heard a few months ago; those on the left only want to intervene in areas where the U.S. has no strategic interest.
Very strange but I believe it to be true more and more each day… Better to let the American soldier die in the field than to help him. Never mind the natives, they don’t count…
Babs, they cannot look past their limited sight lines to see the bigger picture and recognize how their profession might help end the conflict.
My reply to that opinion piece would be “I’m sorry, Dr. Lancaster; at first I mistook you for an educated person.”
Lex,
yes, God forbid some academic should take his degree and actually put it to use to make the world a better place. Sigh.
I ran into this attitude many years ago. I had signed up for a fiction writing workshop at our local university. On the first day of class, my instructor had us take turns introducing ourselves and why we were there, and i made the mistake of honestly answering her question.
I said that i wished to polish my skills as a writer in order to make a btter living for myself.
She exploded into a spit-flecked tirade that NO ONE should be writing for money, that MONEY was to writing as prostitution was to sex and that anyone who took her class with an idea to turning a buck ought to withdraw. Writing was an art, and as such, ought to be done for art’s sake, NOT for making a living.
I determined to see her class through, and refused to withdraw, eventually earning a “B” from her because she couldn’t find a good excuse to rate me any lower.
Her attitude is exactly what is wrong with universities.
Respects,
Defenestration- not just another word to be used by academics in its figurative sense.
As AW1 Tim said, it’s learning for the sake of learning. It’s not to be shared, heavens no! It’s all about learning, keeping that knowledge and only sharing it with others who want to insulate themselves from any shred of reality. They want to remain in their windowless ivory towers, spouting their particular beliefs, looking down on those who would put themselves into the real world and in general becoming the snobs they were born to be.
AW1 Tim’s experience is why I’m an engineering student. Our professors know most of us are here so that we can make money. Save the world, of course, but make a nice bit of coin doing it.