The Occupation Continues! From the Ivory Tower Out into the Streets.
As I've said before, we can thank our educational establishment for much of this. At the Madison protests last spring, teachers led students in the protests--on behalf of themselves. So if you see a young person with an incoherent sign shouting slogans you can likely thank her teacher.
A Collaborative Learning field trip in Oakland.
(twitpic by way of Michelle Malkin)
Sometimes, though, they do come up with complete sentences, as did a student who told a local paper, "I uphold the principles of nonviolence and do not think any violence commissioned by a ruling class and executed by the state in order to uphold a system of oppression is justified."
Dissident Prof suspects, though, that this may have been plagiarized from an academic paper by the student's women's studies professor.
What the young scholar was objecting to was the dismantling of the tents in Atlanta's downtown park, which Mayor Kasim Reed finally asked the City Potty Trainers, I mean police, to do after a man legally carrying an AK-47 was seen walking around the park. But all good liberals know that a weapon carried by a licensed, law-abiding citizen is much more dangerous than a stolen one carried in the waistband by a probationer.
Just A Safety-Minded Citizen Strolling Through an Atlanta Park
That man may have saved the city some money because so far, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, city taxpayers are going to have to cough up close to a half million dollars for the "free speech" rights of people who like know they will never pay off students loans for graduate degrees in Sustainbility Studies, and who are Very Concerned about Social Injustice, and are being good Change Agents who know better than the Oppressors Who Enforce the Law because they know, like, Conflict Resolution, which is like Collaborative Decision Making which is like Collaborative Learning, which was so much fun in eighth grade with that really cool Ms. Benson, who, like, gave you an A, just for like becoming Engaged and showing Leadership Potential. Like that is what school should be like, respecting like all differences, tolerating all cultures, like especially from Africa and the Middle East. So like you know that after all those group projects and class discussions and explorations in journals, we can't get jobs. Like it's so unfair!
Before they hurt themselves, the kiddos were put into the city jail for the night.
"Occupy Atlanta" Leader Tim Franzen with a Diverse Person
But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's resident political philosopher Jim Galloway pontificated upon the wisdom of Philosopher-King Kasim Reed who dispensed his wisdom and diplomacy upon the denizens of the polis. Said the AJC's Aristotle, the judgment exercised by His Majesty in dispensing with Executive Orders on camping in downtown Atlanta reflected the "tide of history." The "tide of history," of course, is Atlanta's legacy in the Civil Rights movement. Somehow the "civil disobedience" of a bunch of mostly college kids and retired hippies grants them special privileges--privileges the Tea Party never had, as I reported last week. The Tea Party was required to go through the city's byzantine bureaucracy and cough up thousands in permit fees--a process that met Soviet style stall tactics.
Dissident Prof wishes she were a fly on the wall of classrooms in the great land for she knows she would be hearing lessons about Civil Disobedience comparing modern-day campers to people sitting at lunch counters and taking a seat on the bus.
But it's not only in the pages of the AJC that columnists sing the praises of the Great Leader of the City Too Busy to Hate. Matt Towery, in Townhall, places Kasim Reed in the line of "great black mayors" of Atlanta, which includes Shirley Franklin and Andrew Young. Towery praises Reed for his handling of the Occupiers. Andrew Young, who was a member of the Great Tide of History, btw, was giving encouragement to the Occupiers in the form of a personal appearance. Young was able to parlay his own youthful experience in the civil rights movement into a lucrative career, which Dissident Prof suspects current Occupiers are aiming for too. She knows that such "activism" will be a boon to resumes for teaching, library science, and "public service." Van Jones didn't do too badly for himself by participating in the Rodney King riots, did he?
Pre-Occupied
The Great Tide of History is also the concern of "Guerilla Librarians" across the land as they contribute to the Occupation on Wall Street, offering recommended reading to Occupiers. On the Occupiers' library blog was a notice of an incoming work called "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party." The Inside Higher Ed essay (under the section "Intellectual Affairs") reports that the library gatekeepers, the American Library Association, will take up the topic of such libraries at various Occupations across the land at their annual meeting in Dallas in January: "an informal working group of library and information-science profesionals who supporting (sic) the occumpation movement will get together to compare notes."
Patti Smith, friend of librarians
The librarians have garnered the support of "poet and rock performer" Patti Smith, who has donated a tent to protect the collection at the Wall Street Occupation. But guerrilla publicity tactics are in mind, for "the image of cops destroying a library, even an informal one, would go around the world in about two minutes," writes Scott McLemee.
Besides the commentaries on communism, Dissident Prof has been monitoring references to Howard Zinn's more subtly titled "A People's History of the United States" as a favorite inspirational tome for Occupiers.
Dissident Prof is surprised that young people would be rereading a book from their syllabus. Her own report on the late professor Zinn can be accessed here.
In other great tides (squawls?) of history Wisconsin Lawmakers (even a Democrat!) consider eliminating "race as a factor" in a grant program.
Meanwhile, the smarter-than-everyone-else American Political Science Association continues the drumbeat for "diversity." As example, Inside Higher Ed points to that stellar institution of higher learning, Wheelock College, known as being "without peer in diversity", turning out it seems many social work and education graduates to fill the tax-payer-supported positions to address the social ills that come from all the social welfare programs supported by taxpayers.
Inside Higher Ed also reports on the "debate" about Kent State Associate Professor of History Julio Pino who "shouted an anti-Israel statement." The "debate" is about "appropriate and inappropriate ways to express views." Actually, what the scholar shouted was "death to Israel" in the fashion that has now become common on our campuses. The Great Minds at Inside Higher Ed, though, ponder the "appropriateness" of a tenured professor shouting such a statement to an invited speaker and then stomping out of the room.
The Rhetor Pino
Dissident Prof, who still believes in teaching Aristotle's Rhetoric to freshmen, longs for the day of Albert E. Manley, President of Spelman College, who fired Howard Zinn for "insubordination."
Last Tenured Professor Fired for Insubordination?
Maybe it was because former University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor Ward Churchill could not be fired for comparing 9/11 victims to Nazis that Colorado citizens voted against a tax increase that the Chronicle presents as "benefiting schools and colleges."
The Professor Ward Churchill
What taxpaying citizens need to do after cutting off funding is to change the rules so we can have presidents like Albert Manley, the first black president of Spelman, btw, who saw Howard Zinn for the Communist agitator that he was.
Last College Pres Who Dared to Fire a Commie Professor?
Citizens could then work together to get more of a balance on our campuses, for example, a counter to the strong support for Elizabeth Warren's run for the Democratic nomination for Senate from academics at the "leading universities."
Maybe then we could revive the Aristotelian notion of "common sense" and be allowed to teach the founders' ideas, namely that we are a nation of laws, and which part of "illegal" do you not understand?
Or maybe some "critical thinking" could be applied to the pages of our newspapers, like the interesting confluence of articles on November 2 here in Atlanta. The editorial page reported on the millions farmers lost due to a labor shortage that resulted from the state's strict new immigration laws. The same day, four Mexican senators were going to come for a pow-wow with some state legislators.
Dissident Prof would like to raise her hand to offer a suggestion to the "labor shortage," since the prisoner-pickers-in-the-fields program didn't work out so well: How about taking the Occupiers out to the fields? They already have the camping equipment, they're used to the outdoors, they like communal living. In fact, they're just like the Amish, who we all know are the best farmers around. . .
Okay, just saying.
Speaking of prisoners, Tina Trent's interview from the America's Survival conference is here. What she reports about how George Soros is undermining the criminal justice system and harming police will alarm you. (Pray for the police dealing with the Occupiers, especially those in Oakland.)
I encourage you to sign up to receive America's Survival updates and to visit their site for the videos and reports from the conference. This is about the real Tides of History, and the man George Soros who is directing action behind the curtain.
Speaking of the Tide of History, Rusty Humphries, whose radio program sometimes lapses into what Dissident Prof imagines is frat house conversation, had on Hillsdale College History Professor Burt Folsom to lend an air of intellectual seriousness as he talked about his new book, FDR Goes to War. One thing that caught her ear was his discussion about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's opposition to the internment of Japanese-Americans. Folsom pointed out that Hoover advised FDR against interning an entire group of people, when only a few, if any, were a threat and could be monitored individually.
Another principled conservative who was opposed to FDR's internment of the Japanese was George Schuyler (thank you for the Bakwin Fellowship, Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization).
George Schuyler, Great American
Of course, most students won't hear this version. Instead, they'll get the Howard Zinn version that calls them "concentration camps," which they then associate with conservatives and Republicans. That's what students are putting into their essays, as I learned from a colleague when I graded AP exams in 2009. (I was fired for not punishing students who displayed "incorrect thoughts" in essays on Shakespeare.) I also had had the temerity to question a history professor's claim in a talk she was giving to mostly high school teachers about the non-existent threat of the former Soviet Union.
Of course, the Communist threat was real. It still is real. The difference is that Tenured Radicals chronicling the Tides of History are leaving out important parts, like the 100-million plus killed by Communists. And, you, dear taxpayer and tuition-payer, are funding them.
Dissident Prof values accuracy in history, and all other subject areas. She regrets therefore the error in last week's post regarding the name of the canine specimen whose photo she posted. She attributes it to the item immediately preceding about "Lesbo Prof." She must have been suffering gender confusion. The canine in question is not Nikki, but Gunnar, her sister's other German Shepherd. The item is corrected and an apology is extended to Gunnar for calling him a girl.
Gunnar, NOT Nikki
Dissident Prof has had a pretty good week. She got her papers graded and assigned to students Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address as the Civil War was coming to an end, as a subtle point of comparison between a "unifier" of a nation divided by a civil war and someone who expresses support for lawbreaking Occupiers and says he "can't wait" for Congress. In terms of the Tides of History, this is a tsunami wave.
She also commends Rusty Humphries for inviting Burt Folsom, whom she regards very highly. She extends an offer to lend some gravitas to his show by her own appearance and insights into the Re-Education of America.
