Much as I hate to credit a rival page, the Daily News' Stanley Crouch today has the best commentary so far on the recent (and unfolding) hate crimes craze at Columbia University. His take: take it easy.
If you haven't heard of the noose found last week on a black professor's door at Columbia, the article might explain why I've been getting some serious deja-vu recently. Not that I'm alleging, as Crouch hints, that anything Kerri-Dunnesque is going on here, but the "I'm being silenced" rhetoric and endless discussion groups naturally bring back strong memories for me.
And then there's this passage (Claremont historians, take note!):
"The reason I am skeptical of the Columbia incident is that when I taught at the Claremont Colleges from 1968 to 1975, it was not unusual for some black students to send racist mail to themselves to manipulate the administration when negotiations about campus racial policies were at a tipping point."
Well. The more things change...
Showing posts with label columbia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label columbia. Show all posts
Monday, October 15, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
More Mahmoud
Not sure what I think of this piece from Peggy Noonan. She remains one of my favorite writers, but I'm always a bit wary when she gets into scoldly/nostalgic mode. Especially when she sounds just like Barack Obama in the process.
She's on to something, however, in scolding Columbia President Lee Bolinger for "introducing" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an angry condemnation. Not that it wasn't deserved, but it gave A-jad his one legitimate point of the entire circus: "In my country, when you invite someone as a guest, you treat him with respect." A lot of people thought Bollinger redeemed himself by sticking it to A-jad. "He really stood up to the dictator" and all that. I thought the whole thing was unseemly -- if not plain dishonorable.
And William F. Buckley agrees with me. At least he did in 1962, as the folks at NRO's The Corner dug up a few days ago. This is worth reading. Money quote: "Fight the tyrants everywhere; but do not ask them to your quarters, merely to spit upon them: and do not ask them to your quarters if you cannot spit upon them."
More broadly: What's with the notion these days that sticking your tongue out at a bad guy constitutes some great act of courage? I got the same kind of feeling a few months ago, when A-jad released those captured British sailors, who went on to sign book deals as soon as they got home. The woman among them bragged about her real snappy comeback when A-jad asked her about her family during his "amnesty" ceremony. Not to minimize their travails, but that aspect was particularly lame.
A theory: Is it a matter of confusing the nature of evil? The belief that genocidal dictators can be embarrassed as if they were run-of-the-mill unscrupulous politicians? Say Bush = Hitler enough, and you'll get some seriously mistaken ideas about who Hitler was.
She's on to something, however, in scolding Columbia President Lee Bolinger for "introducing" Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an angry condemnation. Not that it wasn't deserved, but it gave A-jad his one legitimate point of the entire circus: "In my country, when you invite someone as a guest, you treat him with respect." A lot of people thought Bollinger redeemed himself by sticking it to A-jad. "He really stood up to the dictator" and all that. I thought the whole thing was unseemly -- if not plain dishonorable.
And William F. Buckley agrees with me. At least he did in 1962, as the folks at NRO's The Corner dug up a few days ago. This is worth reading. Money quote: "Fight the tyrants everywhere; but do not ask them to your quarters, merely to spit upon them: and do not ask them to your quarters if you cannot spit upon them."
More broadly: What's with the notion these days that sticking your tongue out at a bad guy constitutes some great act of courage? I got the same kind of feeling a few months ago, when A-jad released those captured British sailors, who went on to sign book deals as soon as they got home. The woman among them bragged about her real snappy comeback when A-jad asked her about her family during his "amnesty" ceremony. Not to minimize their travails, but that aspect was particularly lame.
A theory: Is it a matter of confusing the nature of evil? The belief that genocidal dictators can be embarrassed as if they were run-of-the-mill unscrupulous politicians? Say Bush = Hitler enough, and you'll get some seriously mistaken ideas about who Hitler was.
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