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(03/20/02 5:01am)
When it comes to the NCAA tournament, the University of Kentucky can always win, should always win and will always win. I learned this growing up in the Bluegrass. \nWhen it comes to war, the United States can always win, should always win and will always win. I learned this from watching television. \nUnfortunately, both statements are gross exaggerations. It's hard for me to believe. About the basketball, I mean. I was raised to believe that our beloved 'Cats were guided by a divine force that would unfailingly steer them toward victory. I was there for the glory days of Rick Pitino…the glory day of Tubby Smith. But now my Wildcats are on thin ice. You would think that it would be easier to accept after four years of Hoosier education. But once a true blue fan, always a true blue fan. The old instincts are kicking in, and I can feel the self-delusion flooding through my veins. If the tournament is on, you'll find me in the corner, my fingers jammed in my ears.\n"La la la la la! Kentucky's going to win! Kentucky always wins!"\nThere's nothing like a Kentucky fan. She's the kind of woman (and I'm writing about my mom here) who will sit in the Commonwealth Football Stadium on a cold, wet day, watching her team slop around like wet rags in a sink, and mutter to herself, "Just wait until basketball season." It's called blue blindness. \nIn Kentucky and Indiana, we're always waiting for that championship season. \nThe same can be said for this White House administration, except that they're even more impatient than college sports fans. The president's ad men, so eager for victories, have started celebrating hollow successes. \nSix months after Sept. 11, you would think we could have caught a six-foot tall terrorist who keeps sending us annoying video telegrams. Who knew we wouldn't be able to capture a bunch of yahoos who aren't even with it enough to watch "Friends?" It looks like we may not be winning the war after all.\nThat's where Operation Anaconda came in. We needed a victory, and the military cooked one up, Anaconda. Ooh! Doesn't that sound scary? Hiss hiss! What a success, according to the top brass. If only those shifty Afghan fighters on the ground would stop telling MSNBC what a failure the ordeal was. According to commander Abdul Wali Zardan, "Americans don't listen to anyone. They do what they want. Most people escaped. You can't call that a success."\n Hey Abdul, you're a party pooper. We lost a handful of American lives engineering this media coup, and we're not going to let some Afghan so-and-so spoil the victory parade. Get back to searching those caves while we pull out the champagne and start planning the next ground assault. (Pakistan? Yemen? Iraq? So many choices!)\nAbdul isn't suffering from -- I mean, blessed with -- red, white and blue blindness. It's the result of a belief that one's country is guided by a divine force that will insure victory. It helps presidents and little people ignore the realities of war abroad, allowing them to get down to important home front business, like watching "Friends." \n"La la la la la!" That's the president, over there in the corner, his fingers jammed in his ears. "There is no news like good news. Theirs is no news but good news! The U.S. always wins! Right"
(03/06/02 4:42am)
Once again, we are failing to use our language. If anyone else calls the current Middle East crisis a "conflict," I will buy him a plane ticket to Jerusalem and ask him to report back in a couple of weeks, so that he can explain to me the difference between a conflict and a war.\nI'm sure there are some delightfully political reasons for Dubya and his buddy, Secretary of State Colin Powell, to avoid using the word "war." And the pundits in the media are probably confused after months of calling our own un-fettered international aggression a war, when it's really a should-be criminal investigation that's lost track of its criminal (Osama, where are you?). If you want to see war, look to Palestine.\nOr Israel. Or use the name I've invented for conversations with people who have a personal stake in the matter: "You know, that place over there…with the bombs and violence and Arabs and Jews and suicide and tanks and burned down homes and misery…where all the king's men couldn't put Israel or Palestine or anything else back together again."\nThis kind of conversational athleticism is necessary when I have to contend with my Arab friends or my Jewish friends, because heaven knows, I want to agree with them all. I have friends who will lecture me for hours on end when it comes to the Jews' right to a homeland and to the West Bank. On the other hand, I am friends with an activist who is fighting for Palestine, and who can tell numbing horror stories about Arab ambulances that aren't allowed past road blocks, and innocent families whose homes are demolished by an "occupying army." And the killings. The horrible, endless killings of Jews and Palestinians. \nI don't understand wanting a homeland that is wracked by violence. It's a wonder everyone over there doesn't move to Ohio! Perhaps, if there were a chance of peace…But as it stands now, with this particular period of aggression having lasted seventeen months, and this general aggression having lasted more than fifty years, and absent a major change of sentiment from war-mongers on both sides, there is no hope. \nI know that sounds bleak and fatalistic, but who can argue? The Israeli government (or the occupying government, as my Palestinian friends would have it) has rejected requests from the international community to exchange the West Bank and part of Jerusalem for peace, emphatically reasoning that to give an inch would invite the Palestinians to take a mile. Palestine (or the Palestinian Authority, as my Jewish friends would have it) has little hope in the face of this inflexibility. The mad actions of the suicide bombers under the control of lawless groups like Hamas pull Palestine further into a desperate corner.\n Lucky, and quite symbolically, my Palestinian friends and my Jewish friends are never in the same room at the same time. If that were ever to happen, I'd have to put my head between my knees, and screw my fingers in my ears.\nIn fact, that's pretty much the posture of our country, at least when it comes to the war in the Middle East. We'd much rather fight against an invisible enemy who keeps changing to suit our needs, disappearing and reappearing along an axis of evil. Meanwhile, we can't even bring ourselves to call what's going on in Israel, Palestine, or whatever, a war. No matter who is winning that war, I'm pretty sure the United States is losing it. At least in terms of language.
(02/20/02 5:12am)
Breathlessly, almost gleefully, the reporters filed their stories from once-forgotten Noble, a small town in the northwest corner of Georgia. Now that the Canadians have their gold, the "eye on America" has refocused on the once-again Gothic South.\nIt turns out that Ray Brent Marsh, the operator of Tri-State Crematory, hasn't been following through on the job. Local officials have discovered more than 130 bodies hidden on the Tri-State property, all in varying stages of decomposition. According to Ray Brent, the crematorium hasn't worked for some time, so it's only logical that he and his accomplices have been stuffing dozens of corpses into tiny vaults and handing over urns of pulverized concrete to bereaved families. This scheme worked like a charm until one of the crematory's neighbors, while walking her dog, literally stumbled on a skull.\nHaven't I seen that in a movie?\nFinally, sighed television reporters. We'll have some body bags to broadcast. Up in New York City, it was a problem that the bodies were cremated, pulverized along with the concrete. The lack of bodies dulled the edge of the media spectacle. \nBut down in Georgia, there are bodies aplenty. The helicopter shots of huge plastic bags scattered all over the Marsh compound remind me of that television spectacular -- the Hale-Bop-Heaven's-Gate cult suicide. Remember those purple shrouds and the new white Nikes peaking out from underneath?\nOnly this time, instead of cultish order, the scene is pathetically chaotic, as if some child had hidden what he thought were his toys. It's as if Ray Brent is the silent character in Eliot's Wasteland, who quietly listens to someone ask him, "That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout?…Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, / Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!"\nThe spectacle in Noble, Ga., is notable not only for the media shamelessness, or the similarity it bears to a 20th-century poetic masterpiece, or that it reminds us that many Southerners have two first names. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the absence of a contemporary Zeitgeist, an emblem for the spirit of our times.\nWell, folks, we may have hit upon something.\nIn the final analysis, Ray Brent and his accomplices do not bear the full responsibility for this fiasco. There are only two funeral home inspectors for the entire state of Georgia. Noble's former county coroner had complained about Tri-State, but to no avail, Michael Pearson writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Feb. 16. When the first set of bodies was discovered, the crematory had an unquestioned license to operate. Quite simply, it was a network of irresponsibility, carelessness and greed that allowed Ray Brent to stockpile the cadavers.\nRight now, Slobodan Milosevic is standing trial, in part for the killings that filled some of the mass graves during three wars in the former Yugoslavia. In Noble, they're emptying the mass graves of capitalism gone wrong. Pitiful neglect and bizarre profit motive aren't unique to Georgia and Tri-State. They're at work in the Enron collapse, vice president's Richard Cheney's energy policy manipulations, our inner cities and our happy-go-lucky war-mongering.\nThe lesson learned from Noble, Ga., is the lesson of emergence. We keep stuffing the implications of our education shortcomings and our international shortsightedness into dark corners, hoping they won't be discovered. But like tragedy in a tiny southern town, they will emerge. Piercing through the media haze that dulls our own senses and sensibilities, outlandish small-town tragedies always help remind us to look in the dark corners.
(02/13/02 4:07am)
I'm sick. I've got something in my gut. It has nothing to do with a virus or bacteria or the vending-machine sandwich I ate this past weekend. It has to do with the news that U.S. forces may have committed an atrocity in Afghanistan. I'm not talking about the vague predictions of civilian casualties or the hints George W. has made that our forces may not stick around in Afghanistan long enough to ensure stability. I'm talking about a specific, horrendous atrocity.\n"The Pentagon yesterday began investigating allegations that mistakenly detained Afghan villagers were beaten in U.S. custody," Vernon Loeb wrote in the Washington Post Feb. 12. "The incident began when U.S. troops took 27 Afghan villagers captive and killed 21 others during raids late last month."\nWeeks later, military officials finally realized their mistake. \n"All 27 captives were released last week after Hamid Karzai, head of the country's interim government, said the raids had been carried out by mistake on 'friendly' forces," Loeb wrote. "Four of the 27 detainees, upon returning to Uruzgan, reported having been beaten during their 16 days in U.S. custody."\nThere has always been something wrong with the tone of this war. The rhetoric -- spiced up with references to "The Evil One" and divine justice -- was problematic from the beginning and remains unacceptable. The so-called "evil axis" to which Dubya referred in his State of the Union address is just another case of thoughtless language used to construct the current conflict.\nBut this latest news goes beyond construction. The beatings, if they are confirmed to have happened, will be all too real. They will hint at the possibility that the reality of the war is reflected in the language of the war: hasty, hyperbolic and unsound.\nAm I naïve to believe that we could have a military armed with as much reticence as it is armed with fire-power? I will support every soldier who fights with regret in his heart, able to commit acts of war-time violence only because he believes it is a last-resort protection of American life and liberty. Likewise, we should support our military forces and our commander in chief only if their intercontinental destruction is restrained to what is necessary and carried out not with enthusiasm, but rather with a saddened sense of duty.\nVengeance, which I can't imagine is condoned by any religion except for the likes of that horrible mutation of Islam practiced by Mr. bin Laden, should never be part of the American military equation. It only leads to caustic aggression and the persecution of the innocent. When war is necessary, it ought to be waged with a moral imperative of safety and freedom, not crude playground notions of one-ups-manship.\n This is what separates us from men who plow planes into tall buildings. Or rather, I should say that I hope it separates us from them.\n With warnings of another terrorist attack, to take place here in the States or in Yemen, the issue of war-time abuse is not a case for the history books. For the last 10 years, Americans have heard a lot about "family values," and politicians have had an un-real tendency to intrusively comment on the way we live our private lives. \nNow, we are faced with a matter of national values, which are being savagely tested on the battlefield. We must decide whether or not we embrace or disdain violence. We can fight a war with either attitude, but I think that enthusiastically embracing violence is the surest way to compromising ourselves.
(01/30/02 4:07am)
The Zeitgeist is looking particularly ghostly this decade.\nThe German phrase is translated as "the spirit of the times" and serves witty opinion columnists who want to sum up entire eras by pointing to people like Marilyn Monroe, Spiro Agnew and Monica Lewinsky. "There's the Zeitgeist! Look how shallow/wicked/pitiful everything was!"\nBut if we had to decide on a Zeitgeist for the Oughties, it might have to be all the things that aren't there. Like the vice president, it's being kept in an undisclosed location. It's the feeling that what is visible is pretense, and that the real action goes on beneath that veneer of institutional smiles and reassurances.\n"This is a new era in Washington! We're putting government back in the hands of the people."\n(Meanwhile, the vice president refuses to release to Congress records from his meetings with Enron officials. Whatever the notes say, it must be bad. Otherwise, the Washington rule is that public scrutiny of something slightly embarrassing is worse than the media scrutiny that comes with the refusal to hand over secret documents. Remember the Zeitgeist of administrations past? And this is the war-time height of presidential popularity. Makes you wonder what the man is afraid of.)\n"Oh, sure! The economy is fine. Recovery is around the corner. Go ahead and build that backyard swimming pool."\n(But pay no attention to the implosion of companies like Enron, Global Crossing Fiber Optics and K-Mart…K-Mart, for Heaven's sakes!)\n"It's time for a tax cut, not a tax hike! Tell those dirty Democrats not to raise your taxes."\n(When in fact, the surplus has vanished, Social Security and Medicare are in real trouble, the War on Terror-Perpetrated-on-the-United-States continues to drain resources and somebody has to foot the bill to protect us from biological menaces. As for Democrats raising taxes, Sen. Ted Kennedy's call for a hold on tax cuts amounts to a temporary inconvenience for the wealthiest one percent of Americans.)\nPresident Bush to corporate America in his State of the Union Address: "Now is the time for corporate prudence!"\n(President Bush to corporate America in his address to a fund-raising dinner: "Now is the time to make your checks out to…)\n"Thank God we've saved the Afghan women from the Taliban's oppression!"\n(But in Northern Nigeria, where the hard-line Islamic government has sentenced an accused adulteress to death by stoning, don't expect U.S. intervention.)\n"The situation in the Middle East cannot be characterized by the words disaster, tailspin or imminent train wreck."\n(Have you watched the news lately?)\n"During last year's election crisis, we learned that across the nation, over two million ballots were thrown out of the counting process.\n"It's time for real voting reform, and we'll have it before the midterm elections in 2002."\n(Ha ha ha ha ha!)\n"This administration really cares about the environment." \n(This administration's stated policy is to let polluters police themselves, while Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman learns to play Nero's Fiddle Concerto.)\n"Everything is different after Sept. 11. We will embrace those things that make America great."\n("Fear Factor" is still on television.)\n"The Winter Olympics are going be really exciting this year!"\n(Need I say more?)
(01/23/02 3:27am)
\"Ruby and I are here to lay our burden down."\nOssie Davis ended his speech with a reference to a traditional black spiritual. The occasion was the dedication of the Theatre/Neal-Marshall Education Center. The actor and civil rights activist brought audience members to their feet, and more importantly put all of us to shame.\nDavis spoke of the potential of a university such as this one to respond to the social needs of a country in which the differences between the privileged and underprivileged are stark. He reminded us that it is not only the job of our academic community to study things as they are, but also to respond with a vision for what they might be. Not only should we dream up a new vision; it is also our responsibility to realize actively that vision. \nAnd yet, two days after celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., how much further down the path have we carried Mr. Davis's burden? For he did not lay it down as an admission of defeat or a concession to exhaustion. Rather, he offered his burden to us, that we might pick it up. \nAnd with our Department of Theatre and Drama and our Black Culture Center under one roof, what better place to pick it up than at the intersection of the University's most vibrant centers of creation? Now that the African American Arts Institute and the nationally renowned drama program share a home, can't they share the stage?\nThis semester's production of the musical "Parade," in which a mixed-race cast tells the story of a young Jewish man's death by lynching, might be a beginning. Why couldn't this be the first in a long line of plays that put students of various colors on stage together? Of plays exploring the American divides that all too often run along barriers of black and white? Of multi-cultural stagings of the classics illuminating old texts with new understandings. We'll have to wait and see what next season holds. I challenge the Department of Theatre and Drama work with the Black Culture Center to select at least one work that reflects the new housing situation.\nOf more importance than the composition of the theater season is the composition of the Department of Theatre and Drama faculty. With a team of full-time professors that consists entirely of men, all but one of them white, the departmental make-up is a throw-back to the very injustices against which Dr. King fought. It is a disservice to budding actresses, young black directors and all theater students who cannot find mentors who offer experience-based advice on the very real race and gender troubles in the career world. Furthermore, the situation limits creativity and productivity. \nThe recruitment of ethnic minority and women members for the full-time faculty must become a priority for the Department of Theatre and Drama. This is the kind of action that Ossie Davis was asking us to take when he laid his burden at our feet. The same kind of changes waiting to be made under the roof of IU's newest building are probably begging to be made all across the campus.\nThe time for building with bricks, mortar and good intentions is over. We must break ground on real institutional adjustments that will advance the cause of civil rights. There is no better place to start than in the theater, where we create would-be, could-be realities.
(01/16/02 4:02am)
Dear Mr. Bush,\nI write to inform you that your wartime grace period is over. Your leadership during this crisis is appreciated. But it is the conclusion of this columnist that your domestic policies warrant serious investigation, and that to stifle criticism of a president is tantamount to letting terrorists win.\nLast week, in responding to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's criticism of your tax break for the wealthiest Americans, you suggested that, "It's time to take the spirit of Unity that's been prevalent in fighting the war and bring it to Washington, D.C." Despite this insinuation that fighting your often troublesome agenda displays a lack of patriotism, an international crisis doesn't give any president a free-pass to wreak whatever domestic havoc he or she wishes.\nIn other words, just because the dog guards the hen house, that doesn't mean he should get to sleep in your bed.\nSincerely,\nStill Breathing in Indiana\nIt's been easy to go along with the tide of praise: "Bush has really stepped up. He's a real leader. The training wheels are off."\nBut recent developments in a range of issues have confirmed what we already knew. Despite the fact that President Bush's foreign policy team can carry on a campaign in Afghanistan, there's no reason to blindly support the man whose outrageous tax cuts will run the United States into the red before we are able to pay for increased airport security, a bio-terrorism protection program, the re-building of downtown New York, Medicaid and Social Security. \nTake for example the Enron disaster. But first, a little background:\nIf it smells like a dead rat, don't serve it for dinner. \nBut that's exactly what the folks at Enron did when they cooked the books. Enron Vice President Sherron S. Watkins wrote to her boss that she was "incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals."\nChairman Kenneth Lays' response was to continue encouraging his employees to hold onto their stock. After the confusion wore off, the execs put a six-week hold on their employees ability to cash in stock. Meanwhile, board members and top corporate officers were divesting themselves of the stuff, to the tune of a billion dollar profit. Thousands of working stiffs who were encouraged to ride out the rough spell ended up riding their retirements into the ground.\nThis should not have happened. Bells and whistles were supposed to sound. Government regulators were supposed to sniff insider trading in the air. Enron, after all, was a public entity.\nPresident George W. Bush's most benevolent corporate donor, to the tune of more than half a million dollars, is Enron Corp. Enron is a patron of countless other Washington office holders. Enron officials met with the vice president at least six times last year. Only a vigorous investigation of all parties involved (including the administration) will bear out the facts. Such an investigation will also help to spotlight the disgraceful role of corporate money in politics…a role that seems all too prominent in the presidency of George W. Bush.\nLike I told the president, anything less than a forceful inquiry would be un-patriotic.
(01/09/02 4:50am)
\"Are you going to visit Ground Zero?"\nIt was the first question out of my grandmother's mouth. I was visiting with her before leaving on a Christmas trip to New York City. I was shocked that she asked, since she's the same person who refused to take me to see "Schindler's List." "I lived through all of that," she told me. Grandma is not one to dwell on morbidity.\nWhen I came home from the Big Apple, my stepfather immediately asked if I had seen Ground Zero. My mother also asked about it after expressing her dismay at the plans for viewing platforms that will enable on-lookers to get a better view of the disaster site. She spoke solemnly about the religious quiet she experienced at the Pearl Harbor memorial, and of her fear that the viewing platforms in New York would become a commercial mockery of that kind of experience. "Devastation! Brought to you by the proud Americans at Acme insurance!" Arriving before the viewing platforms had been constructed, I had to settle with the street level view. It was awful. But to be honest, it was no worse than the photos we've all been digesting for the past several months. The fact of the matter is that an enormous skyscraper complex in the financial district of New York was demolished by two large passenger planes. In the process, thousands were killed. And the dust of the destruction can still catch in your throat.\nWith an active imagination, that's all the information you need.\nThe only startling revelation is how far you can see. Normally, in Manhattan you have to crane your neck to take a look at the sky, and the buildings are so close together that it often feels like a cloister of concrete.\nBut now, turning the corner onto a blocked-off-block filled with police cars and memorials, you can glimpse a space that seems as wide open as the prairies must have felt for early pioneers.\nThat's really what Ground Zero is: the last remaining patch of American frontier. We've won the West and walked the moon. Who would have thought that the last bit of undiscovered country would open up in the middle of the most developed, settled plot of land in the entire U.S. of A.? It's a landscape of uncertainty and fear, and just as rugged as the one crossed by the settlers, the gold diggers and the Oakies.\nWe Americans have such a mixed history with frontiers. We stole one from the natives, settled it with slaves and killed un-counted Chinese and Irishmen in the process of tying it together with railroads. We've had a bit more luck with the medical and technological frontiers, but there have been serious glitches. Thousands of uninsured children. "Temptation Island."\nA frontier is a space of possibility. It can be filled in any number of ways. Right now, a myopic man-hunt for Osama bin Laden is distracting us from contemplating the possibilities. After that, it will be hard not to confront the emptiness in New York. Do we want to fill it with the same greed and hubris that drove Manifest Destiny? Or will we approach this new horizon differently, committed to resettling our country and our culture on the backs of ideals, not the backs of men and women?\nCall it a New Year's resolution.
(12/10/01 3:36am)
In this mass-mediated culture someone is always trying to convince you that nothing can really happen.\nThat's at least one of the reasons the Sept. 11 assault was a watershed event. That horrific cataclysm cut through a culture that has gone as far as to stage reality on "Temptation Island" and "Big Brother." For a few days, things were so violent and raw it seemed as if we were all part of a stunningly real world. \nWho needs cute spectacles like "Where in the World is Matt Lauer," in which The Today Show used dizzyingly diverse global backgrounds to jazz up their ratings? Shows like this made it seem as though the world was just another inviting theme park controlled by the benevolent gods of amusement. As the planes crashed into the towers, we were suddenly right there with Matt Lauer "in the world." Peter Jennings and Dan Rather didn't have a chance to clean things up and make it feel like the world was a sanitary receptacle for our money, our influence and our distraction. \nFor a few weeks, it looked as if an era of alienation had ended. The fact that two large buildings had been demolished by terrorists and that thousands of innocent lives had been lost seemed to show that we couldn't go on living as though the world was a television creation. The era of believing that we were safe and sound in our living rooms had come to an end. Suddenly, things like politics, ethnic violence and foreign affairs were an intrinsic and dangerous part of our world. \nWe were thrust into the thick of things.\nErin Brockovich has now come to the rescue. And wonder of wonders, she's doing it with a "reality" show. \nAccording to Reuters, "Brockovich, the brash underdog who helped win a legal windfall for a down-and-out desert town, will now take on the even harder task of helping to save Manhattan on national television…in a prime-time special, 'Challenge America with Erin Brockovich: The Miracle in Manhattan' on ABC." \nAn ABC statement explains that Brockovich will be given an as-yet unspecified, "seemingly impossible task …to accomplish in only a week's time."\nAn ABC executive gushed that "At the heart of the task will be the story of the American spirit, the transformation of a city and the response of ordinary people and businesses called upon to perform an extraordinary duty." \nThere you have it, America. The television gods are back, and the world is once again safe for "ordinary people" like Brockovich to do extraordinary things while the rest of us subordinaries watch everything unfold on the boob-tube. \nIs it any wonder that Walt Disney Co. owns ABC? After all, you can't have Brockovich without the specter of Julia Roberts, and before you know it you're wrapped up in a bunch of Cinderella hoo-ha. \nDon't believe it. We're all in on reality. It's not just something for a bunch of argumentative beach bunnies fighting over $1 million dollars; or even a brash, miracle-working underdog. Which means that we've got to come up with a way to grab the reins away from television executives and take part in this scary new world. Nothing less should be expected of citizens of the most powerful country on the map. \nScary thought, huh?
(12/03/01 4:07am)
More terrorism. This time in Israel. Let's get 'em. Let's smoke 'em out. Saddle up, cowboys. \nOf course, this one is trickier ... it's a bit more difficult not to look for a reason for the suicide bombings in Haifa. You don't have to go much further than the Christmas capital of the world, Bethlehem.\nThere, Israeli tanks and bulldozers have been hard at work, busy in the 50-year-old campaign to remind Palestinians that they aren't welcome in a land that used to be their home. It's a campaign that has been in full throttle since the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania made it cool to go after anyone named "Abdul." \nBut none of that matters, does it? Let's just find someone to "git." Shoot the bad guy. You know, the one who's wearing black. Never mind that this problem, like all problems, has a history. Never mind that complex social, political, economic and psychological ingredients are what make the Israeli situation so complex. Never mind that arguments could be made to call Israel both an illegal occupation and a much-needed haven for persecuted people. And that both of the arguments would have their own legitimacy.\nJust round up a posse, find a John Wayne type to lead it, and make sure they're equipped with weaponry that is "Spy Game" cool and Afghanistan deadly. Give them a name. Maybe the "We're Always Right Team" (WAR Team, for short). Back here on the homefront, we'll support the WAR Team with unyielding (and un-thinking) patriotism and a watershed loss of our civil liberties. \nThink this game plan is outrageous? It's no less outrageous than the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which published a report called "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It." \nThe Council is one of those organizations that moans and groans about the erosion of core curriculum at the university level, worries that we're all reading Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou instead of Shakespeare and Milton, and generally hearkens back to the good old days, when studying American history made you feel all warm and happy. This particular organization claims Lynne Cheney, the wife of our vice president, as its founder and chairman emeritus.\nThese groups usually go quietly about their McCarthyism, discreetly funding initiatives that encourage the teaching of American history (which usually means teaching their own version of American history, to the exclusion of versions that account for all the scars and blemishes on our record). But the Defending Civilization report is anything but quiet. And I quote:\n"While America's elected officials from both parties and media commentators from across the spectrum condemned the attacks and followed the president in calling evil by its rightful name, many faculty demurred. Some refused to make judgements. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself."\nThe report cites 115 egregious statements made on college campuses, including the sentiments of a speaker at the Harvard Law School, whose crime was saying that "(We should) build bridges and relationships, not simply bombs and walls." Also cited for outlandish anti-patriotism was a Pamona College faculty member, who stunned the ACTA by suggesting that America should "break the cycle of violence."\nThis report reeks of insistence on viewing the world in terms of black and white, American and un-American, good and bad.\nIn other words, an insistence on a cowboy patriotism at the expense of rational, well formulated reasoning. It gets us in trouble at every turn.\nIsrael, Afghanistan and even Los Angeles. The subtleties of race, history, geography, culture and reason are all sacrificed to that we saddle up and ride the evil ones out of town.
(11/26/01 5:08am)
Is it a Dickens novel we're living in? The Washington Post reports that every year, 1.6 million mentally ill Americans are housed in jails because there aren't enough hospital beds, group homes or shelters to accommodated them.\nAnd in spite of this bleak situation, the plight of homelessness and of the mentally ill shows up as a discreet blip on the radar just as often as Tipper Gore's husband is running for office. Even then, it was only long enough for Mrs. Gore to drag a journalist to one of Washington's parks, where she introduced him to some of the familiar faces sleeping on the sidewalks. \nOr is a piece of fiction by George Orwell, who penned 1984? It seems very likely, since President George W. Bush has already authorized the use of secret military tribunals for suspected terrorists. And not only the ones we capture in Afghanistan, but also the suspects living in the United States.\nTraditionally, even illegal aliens have been guaranteed Constitutional protections. Oh well.\nAnd not only are these secret tribunals a break with Constitutional standards; they are also going to be held at sea or on U.S. installations like Guantnamo Bay, Cuba. \nAccording to The New York Times, the release of information from these courtrooms "might be limited to the barest facts, like the defendant's name and sentence. Transcripts of the proceedings. . . could be kept from public view for years, perhaps decades." Objective monitoring of the tribunals will be impossible. So, if there are violations of justice, no one will know about them for a long time. \nAnother echo from Orwell's classic of manipulative totalitarianism is the changing face of America's enemy. In a scene from 1984, our hero Winston watches his fellow Oceanians tear down anti-Eurasian banners. In a classic act of doublethink, his country is, and has always been, at war with Eastasia. Winston watches the change: "The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform. . . Nothing altered in (the speaker's) voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia." \nOf course, nothing like that has happened in the war with. . . wait a minute, who are we fighting? At first, I thought it was "the evil one," Osama bin Laden. And then it was the al Qaeda network. Of course, we had to go to war against the Taliban, who were protecting al Qaeda. And now we almost have Afghanistan under our control (or at least, under the control of the northern alliance). \nOf course, we have all of Afghanistan except for the rural pockets of Taliban resistance. And the Pushtun Afghans, who aren't fond of the Taliban, but nonetheless aren't about to be lorded over by the Northern Alliance. But anyway, we have Afghanistan. \nOsama who? Never mind. In The New York Times, conservative columnist William Safire is already moving on to Iraq.\nOr should this all be coming out of a Ray Bradbury revision of Fahrenheit 451? In which American middle class utopia means putting Sept. 11 behind us so we can get on with the important business of ignoring international events and domestic crises. In which the loss of civil liberties, the abuse of presidential authority, and human suffering here and abroad is met with a collective shoulder shrug. \nOr maybe it is Dickens after all. Who cares if it's the worst of times for someone else? As long as it's the best of times for me.
(11/05/01 4:28am)
If only it was as simple as, "The more we know, the more we understand."\nOr as ironic as, "The more we know, the more we don't know." Nope. It's just, "The more we know, the more we know."\nEach new shred of information -- about the terrorists, about the war, about a newly foreign world -- either brings us two steps closer to understanding what everyone is calling the "new normalcy" or else drags us three steps away from that understanding. It's like a health official finding anthrax in another government building. He's glad to know, but don't ask him to draw any conclusions. \nIt seems that the 19 terrorists suspected of taking over the Sept. 11 airplanes did the bulk of their planning in a Las Vegas Econo-Lodge, according to The New York Times.\nThere's no accounting for taste.\nThe same article suggests that the group was loosely divided into a three-tiered hierarchy. Just like a group of middle school bullies, the boundaries were drawn between the leaders, the brains and the muscle.\nAlso like middle school, the muscle may not have known what they were getting into. The FBI speculates that the 12 henchmen were led to believe their mission was a traditional hijacking, carried out for financial gain or political bargaining. The al Qaeda terrorism handbook suggests, "operation members should not all be told about the operation until shortly before executing it, in order to avoid leaking of its news."\nIt's somehow comforting that there's really no honor among thieves. Thank goodness they weren't bound by genuine trust and brotherhood. Knowing that there was deceit and even a little bit of treachery amongst them is oddly helpful.\nBut like every other bit of news, it's a cold comfort. Tom Ridge, our new director of Homeland Security, has promised to give three press briefings a week. . . presumably so that three times a week, he can publicly change his mind about the seriousness of the anthrax threat. Of course, every dot-com news site scoffs at that kind of frequency. These days, the real news cycle lasts mere seconds. If you're a busy executive, Washingtonpost.com will even send you a daily e-mail digest of the War on Terrorism.\nIn the golf-ball hail of information, it's getting harder and harder to think straight. Every day, we learn more about bridge-bombing threats, bio-terrorism threats, "I dunno, but it could be bad, so watch out" threats. We learn about small villages in a region of the world that everyone thought was the global version of the South Dakota Badlands. And despite the promises of the information age -- that "Knowledge is power, and we've got all the knowledge" -- we learn about our own powerlessness. \nIt is not a small world, after all. \nThe carnival barkers of the Internet pledged that the distance between here and Shanghai would be made inconsequential by the bells and whistles of the new technology. Somehow, it seemed that global differences would melt into a shared affection for McDonald's chocolate shakes. If we could just develop a few more cable news channels and watch a few more documentaries about South Africa, we could really learn to manage all of that pesky diversity, multiplicity and difference. \nIt is a big, scary world. While it's worth learning more about each other, the effort to live in peace with our neighbors is not about CNN feeding us a constant stream of what happened seven seconds ago in Beirut. It's about a patient, critical consideration of ourselves and others. It's not always pretty, and not as coldly comforting as reading newsflashes about far away military semi-victories or dead terrorists who are already easy to hate. \nThe more we know, the more we have to think about.
(10/30/01 5:43am)
I've had some awful dreams lately. Although some of them have to do with my thesis advisor sending me to Siberia, most of them involve further acts of domestic terrorism. Let's just say that the government's two most prominent theories on the anthrax assault -- Al Qaeda or an American "mad scientist" -- aren't doing anything to stop visions of mushroom clouds from dancing through my head. \nLast week was particularly sleepless. The realities of war in Afghanistan are far more complicated than what President Bush described as an effort to find Osama bin Laden and "smoke him out." \nHere are just a few "Fun Facts from the Front."\n1.The smart bombs: It seems like just yesterday that we were all watching what CNN news analysts called "smart bombs" cut neat corners on winding Iraqi streets, and maneuver themselves down the chimney of some particularly evil foreigner. This myth of weaponry that can't go wrong, and that does only right and righteousness, has been pulverized by the recent accidental bombing of the Red Cross headquarters in Kabul. \nAccording to the Associated Press, Red Cross officials were stunned when "U.S. warplanes bombed its aid compound in the Afghan capital, Kabul -- for a second time." That's right, after the first bombing, which has been blamed on "human error," four of the five buildings in the compound were destroyed. All this, despite the fact that "every building had a huge flag with a red cross on its roof." \n2. Afghanistan's nosy neighbors: According to reports from CNN, last Saturday more than five thousand Pakistani tribesmen tried to cross the border into Afghanistan, in an attempt to join Taliban soldiers fighting the United States. Another group, whose numbers were reported as being in the thousands, left later the same day. The men were carrying various weapons, including rifles, rocket launchers, missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. So much for fighting a bunch of saber-waving yahoos. Not to mention the fact that Pakistan is supposed to be our ally in wartime. Then again, it's been fun to watch the administration's foreign policy team "forget" that almost all of the Taliban's international support came from Pakistanis all too delighted at the religious zealotry of their fellow Pashtuns.\n3. That's right, Pashtuns: It appears that over here on the home-front, the entire issue of ethnic group conflict has once again managed to escape us. One would think that after conflicts in Serbia, Somalia and Los Angeles, the U.S. public and government would be more attuned to conflicts between people whose ethnic differences present a time-tested challenge. Not so. We're still hung up on national boundaries, which have so often been drawn by post-war or post-colonial treaties that gave little thought to the fact that people like Serbs and Croats, Pashtuns and Tajiks, simply don't get along. That's one of the major difficulties in any cooperation with the so-called Northern Alliance. According to The New York Times, that dubious group is made up of "Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras -- minorities unacceptable to the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group." Suggestions that these people be involved in a post-war coalition government of Afghanistan are going to be pretty laughable to the Afghans we are saving from the Taliban. \n"Now that we've rescued you from religious persecution, we'd like you to band together with groups you hate for ethnic reasons."\n4. Speaking of the Northern Alliance: The United States has, in the past, teamed up with some pretty rag-tag allies, but these guys take the cake for pluck. A loose collection of warlords whom our government thought would be thrilled at the prospect of any U.S. action against the Taliban, they have begun to complain that our forces aren't doing enough to devastate Afghan targets. \nObviously, they're not too concerned about the Red Cross.
(10/22/01 3:57am)
There's a lot to worry about.\nLike Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's nascent war on the Palestinian Authority, which began with the assassination of an Israeli cabinet minister last Wednesday. \nOr smallpox, which can't be detected for about a week, making it easy to spread throughout a large population. (Did I mention we are totally unprepared for such an epidemic? And that one of the symptoms is "severe bleeding?") \nOr the possibility of war between India and Pakistan (the latter apparently has few qualms about using its new nuclear capabilities). \nOr that The Washington Post reminded Americans in an article Sunday that "Airport Security Still Spotty."\nAnd finally, I'm awfully worried about President George W. Bush's recent pronouncement that we are what we buy.\nAt a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Bush explained that the terrorists are trying to "shatter confidence in the world economic system." In The New York Times Sunday, Bush was quoted as saying to his Asian counterparts that "I'm here in Shanghai to assure our friends and to inform our foes that the progress of trade and freedom will continue ... The ties of culture and commerce will grow stronger."\nSo that's what was attacked, and that's what we're defending. I had a feeling it was something like that, ever since Sept. 12, when I started being told that it was my patriotic duty to buy more sports utility vehicles. \nDon't go to church or the synagogue. Go to the mall. Don't read the newspaper or Islam's holy scripture, the Quran. Read your Eddie Bauer Catalog.\nAnd for heaven's sake, don't try to simplify your life, spend more time with your family or get back to the basics. Instead, get a bigger, better television and use your cell phone a lot. \nOf course, this rallying cry isn't anything new. Ever since market analysts started using nasty words like "downturn," "slump" and "my career is over," we have been exhorted to spend, spend, spend -- even though we're awfully worn out and perhaps ready for a commercial-light millennium. It brings to mind a master training his bedraggled dog. "Come on, Spotty. You were rolling over so well yesterday. Show Mrs. Jones what a great trick you can do. Roll Over, Spotty. I'm going to tell you one more time, you little mongrel!" \nAs morbid as it is to think of oneself as merely a spending cog in the machinery of the new economy, it becomes even more so when politicians and commentators use a national tragedy to heighten the urgency of picking out a new winter wardrobe.\nIt was the day after the attacks when a media commentator from the British "Economist" suggested that, in addition to the sympathy everyone was expressing, the rest of the world was worried that in the wake of the attacks, America wouldn't want to shop as much. With real fear in his eye, he told CNN's Judy Woodruff that we were what fueled this keen global economy. \nAm I an American citizen or an American spender?\nI know where I stand with most of the people on television. Thank God I don't have cable.\nI've been watching the leaves change. After three years of being told how lucky I was to go to school in a place with such famed foliage, it took planes crashing into big buildings for me to really look up in the air at autumn's bright red leaves. Somehow, it helps me stop worrying about smallpox.\nIn another article in The Washington Post Sunday, Dick Cheney suggested we're going to have to live with a different kind of normalcy. If that normalcy means embracing the kind of beauty that you can't buy at the Gap, then I couldn't agree with him more.
(09/17/01 4:51am)
Hundreds of tons of human remains, according to the calculations of The Washington Post.\nThat's one of the elements through which the New York rescue teams are searching. That, in addition to concrete, steel, broken glass, asbestos, terrorist passports, family photos, and office furniture. \nIt's a better reason than oil. It's a better reason than commerce. It's a much better reason than ego. \nThe best professors at West Point would agree. They would explain that we have to fight back, because if we don't, we will look weak and open ourselves up to further aggression. Furthermore, we must punish. Justice must be served.\nBut America has a limited idea of what this justice will be like. We have inured ourselves to pictures of planes surging into buildings; planes that seem oddly fast, only because we hardly ever see them in relation to still objects. But this morning, I found some different pictures on the Internet.\nPictures of Afghanistan, the country we might destroy. It is rough, often covered with snow, and brown, unbelievably brown, as if spring never touched the valleys folded up in the rugged mountain terrain. \nIn the capital city, Kabul, the citizens have painted their old homes white in protest of the brown that makes no distinction between the rural and the urban landscapes. And what an urban center! While it falls between San Diego and Philadelphia in population, the pictures remind me more of the dilapidated poverty I saw when my parents, residents of Kentucky, would take me on drives through Appalachia. Yet, on some street corners, cars drive past what the Afghans must call their high-rises; six story buildings built before the 1979 Soviet occupation.\nThese are the buildings we will destroy. George W. Bush promised to make no distinction between terrorists and the states that harbor them. Kabul, the Taliban's newly acquired capital, will surely fall. And consequently, where those six-story high rises stand now, there will be holes filled with concrete, glass, asbestos, and tons of human remains. A Sri-Lanken friend of mine, accustomed to terrorism, warned me that Americans will have to prepare for civilian bloodshed. She was talking about "them:" their secretaries, janitors, and chief executives of sugar-beet companies (one of Kabul's major industries), their widows, orphans, and amputees. \nI was thinking about our new civilian casualties. If we destroy cities like Kabul and Baghdad, the hatred directed against the United States will see new levels. If this is a war against terrorism, we can rely on terrorists striking back. Perhaps five thousand people won't die all at once, but Americans in Wyoming and Illinois will have to brace themselves for the possibility of losing a hundred small groups in acts of terrorist retaliation. \nThe current administration thinks it can win a war against terrorism. But where do we send the bombs, the troops, and the tanks? To Kabul and Baghdad, because the administration's understanding of the world is old, and they believe the problems are contained within political borders? Kill the country, kill the terrorism, right? But you and I know that the hijackers in Tuesday's disaster lived in Hamburg, Germany, and Sarasota, Florida.\nBut we can bomb Kabul. We'll take out a couple of Bin Laden's henchmen, and not feel terribly guilty about the innocent people who lived in such a strange, brown country.
(09/04/01 4:43am)
Pencils ready!\nYour first quiz!\nQuestion One: Who is Gary Condit?\nHere's a hint: He's a congressman from California who, by all accounts except his own, fooled around with Chandra Levy. \nQuestion Two: Who is Chandra Levy?\nHint: She's the former intern, and present missing person, who is said to have had an affair with Gary Condit (see question No. 1). \nPencils Down.\nI hope you scored well, because you've all had the best tutors money can buy -- Connie Chung, People magazine, USA Today. Broadcasters and the executives who speak through them have been giving Americans daily primers on the basics of Condit's on-again-off-again commitment to cooperating with the police in the Levy disappearance case. \nIf you haven't caught Condit fever, you're sure to soon. The word on the street is that they're going to confine Condit and his family to the same house occupied by Vernon Jordan, Kato Kaelin, and that butler who stole a whole bunch of furniture from the estate of Princess Diana. They'll rig the house with cameras, and each week the Supreme Court will get to vote one of the contestants ... I mean, news personalities, out of the house.\nBut that's only the word on the street.\nBut don't worry. It's not just reality television that's making room for the California congressman's story. Henry Winkler (Fonzie from television's "Happy Days") has been signed to play Condit in a television re-creation of the already popular news saga. Mayim Bialik and Joey Lawrence (reuniting after the cancellation of television's "Blossom") will play Condit's loyal children, while Florence Henderson (Carol Brady from television's "The Brady Bunch") is set to play his fragile wife.\nAdditionally, Condit himself is set to join the roster of the Cleveland Browns. Head coach Butch Davis commented that, "At least our television audience will expand."\nBut how Condit will have time to play football, and serve as the new KABC-Los Angeles weatherman, I'll never know.\nI asked Condit's new theatrical agent how his client was surviving the double stress of new-found fame and involvement in a police investigation. Marty told me that "the congressman is exploring all his options. Of course, he's interested in signing Harrison Ford for the film, but Michael Douglas is still on the back burner, so to speak. Of course all of this is exciting for Gary, but remember, this guy has to make it back to Washington at least a couple of times a week -- you know, to cast votes, and whatever."\nAnd what does Condit's stylist, whose famous blow-dries have been bandied about as the defining feature of the Condit look (watch out for a Condit hair care product line), think of all this?\n"I just kept telling Gary, 'You've got one of those get-noticed faces, Gary.' I knew it wouldn't be long before he became a big celeb. I mean, just look at all that volume!"\n(There's just one downside to all of this Hollywood glitz and glamour. Oh, well, besides the fact that there's a young woman missing from her home and family. I mean the real downside to the dreamy tinsel-town tale we've told.)\nIt's not far from the truth.
(04/30/01 5:04am)
Did you think I had forgotten about you, George? It's our hundred-day anniversary. \nAfter spending your first few weeks in office mining the newspapers for a definitive answer to the question, "What exactly is compassionate conservatism?" I decided to let you have your first hundred days to yourself. What the heck -- how much damage can the Return of Bush do?\nWas I naive, or what? \nAt this point, I have one question:\nHave we finally elected the true American President?\nLast week, President Bush told The New York Times that he hoped expectations for his presidency were low. Of course, he said with a nod and wink -- and a clap on the back -- and while he was at it, he called the reporter "quick Eddy," as is his nicknaming wont.\nWhen he isn't busy lowering the presidential bar, our George likes to spend his time picking fights with Cold War enemies. Poor Russia! No one told the president that they're feeding their army dog food, so when it came out that a long-time U.S. intelligence employee was actually a double agent, Bush behaved as if there was still that old-fashioned "Soviet threat." Alas, Russia just wheezed out a pitiful protest and rolled over. \nNot one to let global modernization and democratization keep him from throwing sand in a powerful country's eyes, the president recently threatened China with a "Good Morning, America" interview trumpeting something of a new policy statement. To sum up, he told Charlie Gibson that, oh yeah, we're gung ho about defending Taiwan with lots of scary soldiers, ships and bombs. \nIt took a massive effort on the part of the vice president, Dick "Heart Flutter" Cheney, to convince China we aren't involved in an Australian troop build-up. Nevertheless, the Chinese aren't at all happy with us and console themselves with a version of the Nano Baby that offers the owner a chance to raise his very own Giga George. \nOn the domestic front, President Nano Baby has been working hard to lower environmental standards, ensure that children spend more time working on standardized tests and send some of your tax dollars to his wealthy friends in Kennebunkport, Maine. \nBut seriously, folks, the president's budget is a hoot and a holler. It's the package we've all been waiting for! The amazing $1.6 trillion tax cut that was good when times were good, and is great when times are bad. \n(Shhhh! Don't tell the president that Indiana's massive tax cut is part of the reason this state is facing a half billion dollar difference between what we need and what we got.)\nFunny! I thought we were going to give seniors a prescription drug benefit and shore up social security. As for the latter, while this administration is frittering away a surplus that may not materialize, the most they've done to fix the nation's foundering retirement plan is think about appointing a commission that might make a report later this year.\nNo pressure. \nAl Gore, where is that lock-box when we need it?\nAnd on the environmental front, the president and his Environmental Protection Agency director, Christine Todd Whitman, have had a ball with repeat performances of the following skit:\nWhitman: Members of the press, I want you to know that the president is serious about protecting trees, water and the ozone.\nPrez: Psst … Christie … lay off … We decided that was too expensive.\nWhitman: (sighs) Members of the press, what the president meant to say is …\nMeanwhile, the president wants you to know that none of this activity has proved overly strenuous. By largely ignoring the California power struggle, he manages to preserve (or, as he likes to say, "persevere") his precious afternoon siesta. \nSiesta! That's a Spanish word, and boy can the president speak Spanish. So much so that his staff openly admits that he prefers meeting with foreign leaders from Mexico, South America and Latin America. I'm going to send some Spanish instruction tapes to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. That way, he'll have a better chance of getting an appointment with Il Presidente.
(04/23/01 3:48am)
Dear Dr. Brehm, \nThis series of open letters to you, our incoming chancellor, is almost over. Or, at least, the semester is almost over, and it's time to wrap things up. Sentimentality is hiding around every corner in Ballantine Hall, the Musical Arts Center and even the creepy stacks of the Main Library. \nYou can't let vague sentimentality infect the opinion page, but specific sentimentality is another thing.\nDr. Brehm, I'm afraid my articles have been pretty negative. That's only because, as you approach your job, on the other side of your desk there will be hundreds of people who want to build a better University. People who will want you to engage in the kind of earth-moving changes that are associated with words such as "renewal" and "renaissance."\nThis kind of exciting urgency is just what you need if you're serious about leaving IU a better place than when you found it. But Madame Chancellor, I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't mention some of the glorious specifics that amount to the best of Indiana University. \nThe nitty-gritty good\nAs I said, let's avoid vague sentimentality. We're not going to get anywhere by quoting statistics or student-to-faculty ratios. Let me tell you about the nitty-gritty good stuff. There's Ed Maxedon, the education curator of the IU Art Museum. I met Ed in the docenting class offered by the Museum every semester. His passion for art in general, and for our museum in particular, is inspiring. I recommend you take a tour with him, because he is a walking catalogue of the collection, and he'll make you laugh. Ed's commitment to the museum, and to serving the University community, is a tremendous example for the rest of us. \nSo too is Austin Caswell. He's a professor emeritus of music who teaches two of the Honors College's foundation courses in the great books. But he gets treated more like a rock star than a musicologist. Friendly recommendations for his class burn like grass fires through the residence halls, and past students like to re-discover Austin with a visit to his current crop of thinkers. A typical Caswell class has the students sitting on the orange carpet in Forest 238, pitted in an epic academic battle, alive with passion for ideas that are centuries old but have the immediacy that a great teacher can inspire. Professor Caswell is adamant that all he does is teach people to read, write and talk about great writing. Definitely stop by for a visit, Dr. Brehm. \nAnother often-overlooked spot on a highlights tour of IU is the office of the Individualized Major Program. This jewel of the College of Arts and Sciences gives independent-minded students a chance to craft their own education. If you'll just walk into the office, you'll be sure to sense the energy and excitement that bubbles from everyone involved in the IMP. Sit down and chat with Professor Ray Hedin and Rima Merriman, and you'll meet people who have invested themselves in countless students. These two leaders of the IMP have held the door open for innovative and dynamic young people, and you'll learn a lot from them about how to encourage excellence. \nSpeaking of innovation and dynamism, you cannot miss out on a visit to Collins Living-Learning Center. This residence hall is also a unit of the College of Arts and Sciences, and for more than 25 years has been offering students a place to celebrate the synergy of ideas and action. Collins is an experimental setting that encourages students to really live their University experience. I beg you, Dr. Brehm, eat a meal in Edmondson Dining Hall in Collins. The magic atmosphere in the dining hall will introduce you to passionate students who can help you realize the potential of this University.\nYou know, Dr. Brehm, it's a lot harder to write a column like this, that celebrates instead of criticizes. After all, it's a fact that grousing columns grab more readers. \nThe bigger challenge is that there just isn't enough room to take note of all the good things going on here. Space simply won't allow me to tell you about the nascent academic community that English majors are calling "The English Muffins"; or Abhijit Basu's class "The Geology of Sculptor's Material"; or the Honors College, or Helen Walsh, or Lewis Miller. Or all the other people whom you must meet to understand this big, beautiful behemoth of academic splendor that's hiding behind impersonal statistics, tight-fisted legislative funding and the tiresome media-athletic complex.\nWelcome to Indiana University, Dr. Brehm. We're excited to show you around.
(04/09/01 3:43am)
Dear Dr. Brehm, \nAfter almost two years of writing about Election 2000, I was a bit shocked by something you told the Office of Communications and Marketing. The press release announcing your arrival stated, "Brehm said she plans to spend much of her first months on the job listening to faculty, students, staff and city officials."\nAll well and good, Dr. Brehm. But...\nLearn a Lesson From Hillary 2000\nWhen Sen. Hillary Clinton kicked off her campaign for a New York Senate seat, she announced a listening tour. What ensued was the first lady/candidate/New Yorker's non-stop, multi-city effort to learn about her new home state. Each event would begin with a few short words from Hillary herself, followed by a long spell of constituent testifying. Clinton would listen. We could tell that she was listening because of her sympathetic nods and her evident bouts of compassion.\nWhether the tour was a well intentioned learning experience for the candidate or a sly maneuver meant to shield her from the rigors of a real campaign, it sure didn't play well with the media and the voters. When the first lady wasn't making big political mistakes, she was being impaled in the press for her "non-campaign," her "tour de farce" or, as it was called in the New York Observer, "Sound, Fury, Shtick -- but Signifying What?"\nIn that July 1999 article, columnist Tish Durkin said "being seen to be listening is an act with all the naturalness of Styrofoam -- and, by Day 3, the approximate spontaneity of in vitro fertilization."\nThe listening tour was frustrating for the press and the public because Clinton wasn't saying anything. New Yorkers didn't want to send a listener to the Senate. They wanted to vote for a leader. Fortunately for the state and the state of Hillary's campaign, she found her voice and learned that dialogue necessitates speaking and listening.\nSo when you come to campus this summer, Dr. Brehm, go ahead and listen. We certainly have a lot to tell you, and it will be a relief to get it off our backs. But the longer you confine yourself to listening, the more likely you are to fade into the bureaucratic woodwork of University administration.\nThat's the last thing we need.\nThis campus has a history of very public leadership. Former Presidents William Lowe Bryan and Herman B Wells were familiar sights on campus. Wells was a fixture at the symphony, the theater and the stadium. His presidency was distinguished by his gregarious personality, his ubiquitous presence and his fearless willingness to lead a public dialogue about the purpose of the University.\nSince the role of president has been overwhelmed by demands from the satellite campuses and the athletics division, it has fallen to the Bloomington chancellor to lead this campus. Departing Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis was hailed in a recent editorial for his camaraderie and involvement with students.\nSo you see, Dr. Brehm, we're used to leaders who do more than listen.\nSince Gros Louis announced his retirement, we have missed the vital presence of someone willing to speak out in the best interest of this campus. We have missed a consensus builder whose common-sense voice can cut through the cross-campus feud for resources, students and money. We have missed having a leader.\nOf course, leadership is not politically cautious. It would be much safer for you to sit back, listen and wait for us to forget about the Office of the Chancellor. After all, the University is a dangerous place, with ambitious cut-throats waiting for you to make a mistake. The business of higher education is a battlefield.\nNo, it might not be politically cautious for you speak out for excellence, to engage in dialogue with students, staff and faculty and to be the kind of strong-willed public leader upon which this University thrives.\nBut we haven't asked you here to practice political caution, Dr. Brehm. Instead, practice bold leadership and active involvement in the campus.\nYou can only listen for so long.
(03/26/01 5:33am)
Dear Dr. Brehm,\nWelcome to campus! Although you won't officially be our chancellor until sworn in by the trustees, I thought it best to dispense with formalities and get in touch with you as soon as possible. You see, I have what could be some vital information -- information that's not in the reports you've been reading, and that might not circulate at the high-profile cocktail parties you've been attending. I want to give you the inside scoop: all the dirty little secrets they haven't told you.\n I'm not trying to scare you away from IU, Dr. Brehm. You've told reporters you don't want to be an ivory tower administrator, so you need this information. You know, the underbelly of the University. The other side of the academic track. The word on the street!\nSo, watch my column for the next couple of weeks. At the very least, it will be a nice break from retention reports and faculty recruitment statistics.