Letters to the Editor

Article Misrepresents the Spartacus Youth Club

To the Editor:

Your article “External Political Groups Maintain Campus Presence” (Dec. 7) says the Spartacus Youth Club “could not be reached for comment.” We were, in fact, not contacted, but would like to comment. We have a long history at Columbia, from the 1968 occupation, to protesting ROTC, to publicizing the case of innocent death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. We are known for what we are: revolutionary Marxists.

Columbia’s union-busting slumlord administration wants to keep the campus “safe” from “outside agitators,” in order to maintain Columbia as a bastion of race and class privilege. “Outside agitator” is a time-worn slur used against those who fight racism, exploitation, and injustice—from black and white civil rights organizers to those who occupied Hamilton Hall in ’68. We oppose the administration and its acolytes censoring the political views to which students can have access. We defend the rights of groups, including the International Socialist Organization, ANSWER, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, to present their views on campus.

In response to David Judd, we plead guilty to the charge of combating illusions in the reformability of the racist capitalist system. Judd is a supporter of the ISO, fake socialists that did sell out the working class by supporting capitalist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union and do today.

We fight to break students from illusions in the Democrats and to take a side with working people and the oppressed. With racist reaction rising from Jena to Columbia, our group, which fights for free quality integrated education for all, immigrant rights, and black freedom through socialist revolution, must be heard on campus. Nationalize Columbia!

Hal Salt, New York Spartacus Youth Club
Dec. 7, 2007

Column Has Interesting, If Flawed View on Professors and Students

To the Editor:

Regarding Atossa Abrahamian’s column “Cruel to be Kind” (Nov. 30), I have several things to say, both in defense of as well as in criticism of the ideas expressed therein.
As someone who has also studied in Europe, and with European-born professors here at Columbia also, I can only second Ms. Abrahamian’s issue with the superficial “prof as pal” sort of garbage that, now more than ever, pervades American academia. I join the chorus of my foreign-born, often continental-trained colleagues who wince at the type of whining given in the lamentable instance of a college-age student.

But in gentle defense of the college student, many university instructors and professors, both from overseas and from the US, frequently allow themselves license to be as snide as they wish (especially the tenured variety), usually to the detriment of a nurturing learning environment.

I am a teacher and have been one now for many years. Whilst I do question this politically correct need for “inclusion” and even “diversity of opinions” at any cost, I take a certain umbrage at Ms. Abahamian’s assumption that all full professors, such as her philosophy professor, got where they are exclusively on their merit, skill, and scholarly brilliance. The latter smacks of the grossest naivete! Has the author ever heard of a “sinecure”—a political appointment to a certain post, usually as a lifetime bureaucrat, whose position was probably arranged through considerable pull, with qualification being secondary?

Admittedly, the above may have been less common in Western Europe until recently, but it is quite common here. It is incorrect to assume that someone’s mere position entitles them to behave badly, even cruelly, just to prove a point. Imagine the countless fine minds out there being squandered if only because some self-important professor deemed their ideas “stupid” or “idiotic.”

Thomas Edison, at age 10 or so, was yanked out of school by his mother when young Edison’s teacher called him “addle-brained” and thus learning disabled. Can’t pedagogues learn to strike a balance between overpraise and belittling torment?

Elliot Junger, CC ’87
Dec. 3, 2007

Core Reform Should "Do Education" Rather Than Examine the Other

To the Editor:

As reported in the Spectator ("Reform Effort Pre-Dated Strike," Dec. 5), the issue of Core Reform is said to be the quantitative one of class size and discussion format, something already being discussed by College committees well before the recent strike. I trust, however, that these were not the only issues considered germane to so-called Core reform. Even more central and consequential is the real heart of the “Core”, the substance embodied in classic works so commanding in their stature and durability that they stand as major artifacts of human civilization – landmarks which cannot be ignored if one wants to focus on perennial core issues. These are classics that have proven themselves by surviving centuries of scrutiny and contestation in the long development of the West.

The conceptions of how Core issues might be defined and debated, and they believed that these indigenous works should be given priority over modern western, second-hand characterizations of other civilizations. Such awareness on the part of the founding fathers of the CC and Humanities (like Harry Carman, Mark Van Doren, Lionel Trilling, Jacques Barzun) led in the 30's and 40's to the establishment in 1948 of the Asian Humanities and Asian Civilization courses based on the same principles as their predecessors – the reading and discussion of classic texts.

Courses that purport to qualify for so-called Major Culture can only be considered authentic and legitimate if they are predicated on a prior consideration of the value premises and conceptions of other civilizations. This means more sections of Asian Humanities and Civilization. Then one will not be talking about “others” but “doing education” the way other civilizations did, learning on what basis they could meaningfully respond to the challenges of modern civilization without completely surrendering their own identity, or losing it in the unhappy experience of racial minorities.

Wm. Theodore de Bary
Dec. 5, 2007

The author is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost Emeritus.