Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
The Anthropology department doesn’t represent Columbia. Whatever their academic merits, Anthropology has beclowned itself in campus politics.
Last year, they led the charge against ROTC at Columbia and were trounced both in campus opinion and in the faculty-dominated University Senate’s lopsided vote in favor of ROTC. I suspect some university senators who had no other interest in the debate votes for ROTC because Anthro made so much noise in opposition. Anthro is like a bizarro canary in the coal mine – Columbians tend to favor whatever Anthro makes a stand of opposing, and vice-versa.
A prima facie example of ” Revenge of the Hippies ” if ever there was one…
The class is taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, who boasts about her nights camped out in Zuccotti Park
I would bet the mortgage that Dr. Appel attended plenty of Grateful Dead concerts and spends her days writing her ” Blame America First ” tome which will be published as a method of capitalizing on her innate knowledge of the subject of how everything good about the USA is repressive to the rest of the world.
I say we chip in and buy her a ticket for her choice, Cuba or Venezuela, one- way of course.
Send her to North Korea. NK seem to be the logical endpoint of the OWS “share the wealth, let no crab escape the pot” philosophy.
Yeah, she’s a NORK. Fit right in there, until she started asserting her “rights” at which they would escort her to the nearest wall to collect her rights.
Nah. Times are tough. I can only afford a ticket to send her halfway to Cuba.
Unfortunately her class will likely be filled to capacity.
Once again, I’m ashamed of my Alma Mater. I’m shocked that any tenured professor would want to devote valuable class time to studying the OW-sers. As far as I’m concerned they are a fringe group of spoiled brats who failed to plan a course of study which would give them a viable career path in a “down” economy. So they feel that they have to protest the cruel world which didn’t hire them, thus forcing them to live in Daddy’s and Mommy’s basement. That’s rubbish. The U.S. is still a land of great opportunity. Just ask our smart and inventive military retirees.
When I graduated from Columbia in 1951, I had a career path plotted out, with alternatives I could temporarily follow if necessary. 1951 was not a great year for the economy, but there were still opportunities to be had in alternate areas. I had hoped to work in a publishing house, but there were no jobs available, because every English major wants to work in a publishing house. Now I’m glad I didn’t find work in a typical publishing house. The world of business magazine editing was just opening up for women at that point. So after my first husband died of service connected disability, I returned to my hometown, rented a basement apartment and found a job with one of the big heavy-industry manufacturers. Within my first two weeks of employment, I put out my first issue of The Falk Reflector, and I was on my way to one career, and a very interesting life.
If I seem a wee bit intolerant of the OW-sers, it’s because they are wasting valuable time protesting the cruel world, instead of conquering it.
Marianne
Spoiled brats warrant study. Can we understand US politics without understanding the generation that formed the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, or even John Kerry? A quick google search doesn’t turn up too many red flags. I’m guessing this is serious anthropological interest, not secreting indoctrinating students. The Economic ideas of the participants determine their ideas about how society works and should work. Their failed attempts to maintain order without the police reveal assumptions about human misconduct and desire. Their minimal hygiene efforts even reveal their naivete about keeping people in the field. Their conspiracy theories are even more revealing about their mental states.
Read all the articles on the OWS movement in the Conservative blogosphere, we’ve been studying them too. The only concern I have with having a formal academic course is that it might inflate the importance of OWS too much.
That said, most anthropologists who study Africa are Left-wing (the few Right-wing ones have to publish outside the normal journals) and there probably will be a Leftists slant to it.
I wouldn’t mind studying them. Then I’d tell them to bend over, hold their ankles, as I reached for the paddle in prep to wear their padding down a bit.
Ivan0026/
In theory I agree with you, but realistically, experience with such activities as practiced by what, after all, is a fairly known commodity (these people didn’t just arrive from another Galaxy–their views have long been pretty well known–as is the case re those organizations backing them)shows all this costly “serious anthropological interest” will, imho, turn out to reveal little more detail insofar as the essence of the central thrust of it all than was pretty much intuitively obvious from the onset.
Ivan…You
Disregard previous two words
Besides the fact that this has to be the best example of a BS class I ever heard of it speaks volumes that any University, especially and University that claims to the title of “Elite” would even allow this dribble to be offered under their banner lest it tarnish their reputation.
Of course, those institution that seek to offer real value for the educational dollars would never stoop to this level triteness.
And their endowment (and God knows how much Federal Tax-payer financial aid) help pay for this crap.
I’m enrolling in Graduate School to seek a Masters in Aerospace Engineering – at least that is the goal. Somehow I don’t think I’ll get credit for any classes where I camp out in a park and pee in the bushes on the way. If I did I’d ask for my money back.
Columbia’s distortion of cultural anthropology to legitimize Soros’s socialist agenda is short sighted. After stooping so low to trade on its name, the wisdom of Columbia’s faculty can no more be taken for granted by Ivy League aspirants than Harvard MBAs can explain this DECEMBER 4, 2008 news:
“Harvard University’s endowment suffered investment losses of at least 22% in the first four months of the school’s fiscal year, the latest evidence of the financial woes facing higher education.”
As Soros well knows, suckers are born every minute.
I could almost see an Antro field class to study the emergence of the “Culture of the Occupy Movement” with an emphasis on maintaining objectivity. But when the course description includes “ it is important to push back against the rhetoric of ‘disorganization’ or ‘a movement without a message’ coming from left, right and center.” you have observer and observed merging into one, and objectivity is lost. Add in the question of why it is important for a class at a university to “push back” against what the prof sees as rhetoric and it becomes clear that she wants a way to get paid for participating in the Occupy thing.
Well Joe, making money out of the OWS makes her an entrepreneur. So by definition she is not part of OWS. If she is adjunct faculty, her risk-taking is trying to get more than one section full of paying students. Win-win — for her.
C.P. Snow weeps for the mono-cultural ignorance on display here. Friedrich Hayek hardest hit.
I wonder if they’ll apply their critical thinking skills to this observation by Tyler Cowen back in April 2010 (as cited by Arnold Kling)
He was discussing “How much political power do the big banks have?” He offers that even if the big banks were broken up, Washington would assemble some other privileged financial institutions to keep the money coming in to finance their schemes.
I think the solution is simple, the #OWSers should be showing up freshly showered and shaved at the Tea Party asking how they can help balance the budget and thus end the evil bankers.
And worth at least a year’s paid sabbatical to do proper “field work” amongst the “natives.” Old T6, you picked the WRONG field of endeavor–FAR better to be able to let the taxpayers, (Govt univ. grants, etc) and/or students (via tuition/fees) pick up the tab for the functional equivalent of general dorm-room BS..
The problem isn’t just Columbia offering such drivel, but Mommy and Daddy, who are paying tuition, allowing their brilliant, beautiful and perfect offspring to take such tripe. I strongly suspect there is a word in their vocabulary they didn’t use often enough as parents. It sounds like… NO.
It’s no use pointing out the irony to them, they don’t understand.
I smell the stench of “Goldfinger” aka G. Sorros thrice removed in the “OWS” and the good professors yearnings and burnings .
Ivan… You’ll have to pardon me if I come across as a grumpy old man. As far as I’m concerned, these folks are the dregs of society. Their actions do nothing toward the betterment of our nation. I’m apalled when I hear of these mindless twits that crap on police cars and p*ss in the bushes at the side of the street. Half of them couldn’t even tell interviewers what they were protesting. They are not worth the time and effort that it would take to “study” them.
Nuff said.
If these overpriced klowns want to live in squalor and
see how government solves inequality-go to a Indian Rez like, say, Pine Ridge.
I’m 1/4 btw- Eastern -and- Oklahoma Cherokee..
Nez Peirce friend of the famly has a bumper sticker
(next to his USMC sticker)-”Trust the government- ask an Indian..”
I could understand the course on OWS if Columbia had a veterinary arts program…but HUMAN anthropology?
It is to laugh.
Anthropology has been all ate up with Boasian Frankfurt School nonsense since 1930 or so. From what I read, the only good thing about it is that female Anthro undergrads are easily Gamed into bed, they being so dumb, and all.
Too true. Only thing easier is an English major.
Or so I hear. Been a while since I was an undergrad.